Blind Pursuit

19

Erin was opening a can of tuna fish for dinner when the idea came to her.

Slowly she disengaged the manual opener from the rim of the can and lifted it toward the light. The cutting blade was sharp. It could serve as a file.

Last night she’d concluded that her only hope of defeating the bolt on the cellar door was to pry it open with an ice pick or similar tool. Now she wondered if she could make what she needed.

Rummaging in her suitcase, she found her comb. Eight inches long, with a hard plastic spine the color of tortoiseshell.

Might work. Just might.

Did she dare try it now? She still had no clear idea of the time, but to judge by her appetite, it must be at least seven o’clock.

Her abductor had said he would be back in the evening. He could return at any moment.

Or not for hours. Or not at all.

Risk it.

Gund arrived at Erin’s apartment building at 7:15.

He’d closed the flower shop forty-five minutes earlier, dropped off the floral centerpiece at Antonio’s Restaurant, then grabbed a fast-food meal at a drive-through window. Eating as he drove, he’d headed south to Broadway, then east toward the edge of town.

The ranch wasn’t far. He would get there by eight at the latest. But first he had to retrieve Erin’s epilepsy medicine.

He parked the van and got out. Briskly he walked to the lobby door, the same door Erin had buzzed open last night. Her own keys let him in this time.

The lobby was empty. He ducked into the stairwell and hurried up the four flights of stairs, encountering nobody along the way.

On the top floor he peered into the corridor and saw a man in a business suit unlocking an apartment door. Gund waited until the hall was empty, then left the stairwell and proceeded directly to Erin’s apartment.

Key in the hole, twist of the knob, and the door swung open.

The living room lights were on. Annie must have neglected to turn them off.

Unless-disturbing thought-unless she was still here. But she couldn’t be. Her meeting with the police detective had been scheduled for 4:15. It couldn’t possibly have lasted three hours.

Even so, he paused in the doorway, listening for voices within the apartment.

Silence.

Down the hall the elevator pinged, signaling someone’s arrival. The noise prodded him into the apartment. Softly he shut the door.

Safe. And unobserved so far.

Now just get the medicine and depart.

Despite his haste, residual caution made him pad quietly through the living room to the apartment’s interior hallway. To his right were Erin’s bedroom and, next to it, the den.

He froze.

In the den-Annie.

She sat at Erin’s desk, hunched over the computer keyboard, reading text on the amber monitor.

Her back was turned to him. She hadn’t seen or heard him yet, didn’t suspect she was not alone.

But if she did discover him…

No way he could talk his way out of it. He would have to kill her.

His pistol and stun gun were in the van. But he could do the job with his bare hands. Grasp her by the chin and give her head a swift sideways yank He could almost hear the crackle of snapping bone.

No. It wouldn’t come to that.

All he had to do was get what he’d come for and leave. Annie would never know he’d been here.

The bathroom was to his left. He crept inside, grateful that the overhead light had been left on. Soundlessly he eased open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and scanned the shelves.

There. Top shelf. Small plastic bottle, white label.

Leaning against the counter, he reached up and closed his fist over the bottle.

Tegretol. Two hundred milligrams.

He pocketed it, turned toward the hall, and from the den there came the sound of a footstep.

Annie shut off the computer and stood. Pain jabbed her temples; stress and fatigue had brought on a headache.

Long after Walker’s departure, she had lingered in Erin’s apartment.

No reason to stay, except she’d felt a desperate need to be close to her sister. Pointlessly she had wandered through the neat, uncluttered rooms, touching the walls, reading the titles of books on the shelves, smiling briefly as she fingered a carved ironwood turtle she’d given Erin as a birthday present a few years ago. The smile had seemed to hurt her mouth; she’d found herself biting her lip as if in pain.

“Erin,” she’d said to the lonely space around her, “where are you?”

The ticking of a clock had been the only reply.

In the den she’d noticed Erin’s computer, the keyboard covered by a dust shield. Erin kept a journal on the hard disk. Walker had recommended reading it for clues to her state of mind.

A waste of time, most likely; still, no option could be overlooked. And Annie had known of nothing else to do.

Sitting at the desk, she’d booted up the word processing software. With a vague feeling of guilt about invading her sister’s privacy, she’d begun to read the journal. The earliest entries were dated two years ago; the file was forty pages long.

She’d assumed the journal was personal, but quickly discovered she’d been wrong. It was concerned almost exclusively with the progress of Erin’s patients. Little about her private life was included.

Even so, Annie had read it all. She’d sat there staring at the amber monitor for two hours. And she’d learned nothing.

In Erin’s notes there had been no hint of any intention to stop work or leave town. Quite the contrary, in fact. The last entry, dated April 16, had concluded: Tony still resisting; try sentence-completion Wed.

Wednesday was tomorrow.

No, Erin hadn’t been planning to abandon her patients. But Annie had already known that.

Grimacing, she rubbed her forehead.

Aspirin. She needed aspirin. Major headache coming on.

Wearily she wandered down the hall, into the bathroom.

The door to the medicine cabinet hung open. Funny. She thought she remembered Walker closing it.

She looked inside. Allergy pills, antacid tablets, antibacterial ointments…

Then she frowned, suddenly alert, headache and exhaustion forgotten.

Where was the Tegretol?

The new refill of Erin’s prescription had been kept on the upper shelf. Walker had studied it, then put it back-and now it was gone.

But it couldn’t be gone.

Had Walker only pretended to replace the bottle? Had he taken it for some reason? No, ridiculous. Removing property from the premises without permission must be illegal. Anyway, why would he want it?

She looked through all the items on every shelf of the cabinet. No Tegretol.

The bottle had disappeared. And the cabinet had been left open…

As if someone had been here. As if someone had taken the pills.

Crazy thought. She’d been in the apartment the whole time. Nobody could have broken in without her hearing it.

But maybe there’d been no need to break in. Maybe the intruder had used Erin’s keys.

Maybe it had been Erin herself.

No, impossible, unthinkable. She was imagining all this. Of course she was.

Yet even as she told herself as much, her gaze crept to the far end of the bathroom, to the shower stall and the blue shower curtain hanging limply from the rod.

The curtain was translucent, but the glow of the ceiling light barely reached into the stall. Someone could be hidden behind it.

And suddenly she felt with unnatural certainty that someone was.

“Erin?” she whispered. “Erin, are you there?”

She took a step toward the curtain.

Every instinct shouted at her not to touch it, not to draw it back and expose whatever-whoever-might be concealed on the other side.

Another step. She was within reach of the blue plastic folds.

Her hand closed over the edge of the curtain.

Don’t, a panicky internal voice warned.

A jerk of her shoulder, and she threw aside the curtain.

Hooks scraped noisily on the rod. The curtain accordioned against the tiled wall.

No one was there.

Annie exhaled a slow sigh.

Nerves. That was all it had been. Just nerves getting the better of her.

She turned away from the shower, then glanced back to reassure herself that it was empty. A soft chuckle briefly startled her before she recognized it as her own.

Nobody had come here to steal the Tegretol. The stuff was missing for some perfectly ordinary reason. Perhaps it simply had fallen off the shelf to the floor, then rolled out of sight.

She stooped, looking under the sink and behind the door.

Nothing.

But in a corner a blue-green sparkle caught her attention. A small turquoise stone, catching the light of the overhead lamp.

The stone bothered Annie, though she wasn’t sure why. She picked it up, studying it with a frown.

Then she realized what was troubling her. Erin never wore turquoise. Disliked it intensely, in fact. Always had, ever since childhood, despite the gem’s ubiquity in Arizona.

So what was it doing here?

Well, other people had used the bathroom. Friends, neighbors, anyone who’d dropped by for a visit. Presumably one of them had lost the stone, which might easily have fallen free of a gem-inlaid boot or purse.

The missing Tegretol was a mystery, but in all likelihood the turquoise was of no significance at all.

Even so, before leaving the apartment, Annie wrapped the stone carefully in a tissue and put it in her purse.