Blind Pursuit

32

Annie found Walker at a desk in the detective squad room, eating a cruller and sipping black coffee. Crumbs littered his desk blotter.

He stood, wiping his mouth self-consciously, as she approached him. A smile brightened his face, then faded as he saw her obvious distress.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I heard from Erin.”

He remembered courtesy. “Sit down.”

She seated herself before the desk. Walker took his chair again, then leaned forward and studied her in the wan fluorescent glow.

“Was it a phone call?” he inquired gently.

“Letter.” She almost handed it to him, then hesitated. “Do you think it ought to be tested for fingerprints?”

“Fingerprints? Is it some kind of ransom note?”

“No, but…”

“Don’t worry about prints. Let me see it, please.”

He read it carefully, taking more time than he needed.

Other men in suit jackets hurried in and out of the room. It occurred to Annie that all of them, and Walker, too, had guns concealed beneath their jackets, sleek pistols or bulky revolvers. The thought struck her as obvious and, at the same time, somehow bizarre-like a child’s first realization that people were naked under their clothes.

Finally, Walker put down the letter. “This is your sister’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then… it’s good news. Isn’t it?”

She’d hoped he would see instantly how stilted and unnatural the phrasing was. Now she wondered, with a flutter of doubt, if she could convince him.

“No,” she replied, speaking carefully. “It’s not good news at all. It’s a trick.”

“A trick.” Though he said it evenly, not giving the words the inflection of a question, she heard his skepticism.

She swallowed. “I know it sounds… far-fetched. But Erin wouldn’t write this. I mean, she wouldn’t write it this way.” Was she making any sense? It had seemed so clear to her on the way over, but now she couldn’t find the words to express her thoughts. “I mean, she’d never be so impersonal and cold. It’s totally out of character for her.”

“So is running away.”

“She didn’t do that, either.”

“What you’re saying is that your sister was kidnapped and coerced into writing this letter.”

Hearing her theory stated so coolly in this orderly place, this place of gray metal desks and pea green filing cabinets and men with guns, Annie thought it sounded preposterous, absurd.

Gamely she stood her ground. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” A pause, then a shrug. She might as well play the full hand she’d been dealt. “There’s this, too.”

She showed him the envelope. He examined it with cursory interest. “The address is wrong,” he said.

That surprised her; she hadn’t thought he would notice. “Yes. I live at 509, not 505.”

“I know. I booted up your M.V.D. file along with Erin’s.”

“You did? Why?”

“Just gathering information,” he replied vaguely. “So what are you telling me? That Erin couldn’t have filled out the envelope? You already said the handwriting is hers.”

“Yes, it’s hers. She wrote the wrong address on purpose.” She took a breath, fully aware that she was about to make a fool of herself in his eyes, plunging ahead anyway. “The fives are written to look like S’s. See? SOS.”

To his credit. Walker showed no reaction to her suggestion. His face remained politely impassive as he did her the courtesy of appearing to consider the idea.

“Yes, well,” he said at last, “it could be seen that way.”

Hopelessness swallowed her. “You think I’m a paranoid lunatic, don’t you?”

“I haven’t said that.”

“No, you haven’t. You’re a nice guy. Too nice to tell me how you really feel. But the thing is, I know Erin. I know how her mind works, how she thinks. This SOS signal is exactly what she would do. She must have thought it up on the spur of the moment, and gambled that her kidnapper wouldn’t catch on.”

“Or she may have made a small slip of the pen while she was preoccupied with getting out of town. Evidently she wasn’t thinking very clearly. She addressed the envelope with the intention of mailing it, but there’s no stamp or postmark; she must have hand-delivered it to your home.”

“ Someone delivered it by hand,” Annie said. “I don’t think it was her.”

“We have no reason to suspect otherwise.”

He wasn’t buying it, as she should have known he wouldn’t. Still, there was one more angle of attack she could try. “The Tegretol is missing.”

It took him a second to find a context for the remark. “From the medicine cabinet?”

She nodded. “I stayed at Erin’s apartment yesterday evening, reading her journal-there’s nothing in it that indicates any intention of leaving, by the way-and when I went to get some aspirin, I noticed the Tegretol wasn’t there.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Maybe… whoever kidnapped her went back to the apartment and took the bottle.”

“While you were still there?”

“He could’ve gotten past me. I was preoccupied.”

“Why would he take that kind of risk just for the medicine?”

“Because Erin needs it.”

“You mean her kidnapper is keeping her alive somewhere?”

Annie grasped that this was what she did mean. The realization that Erin very likely was still alive lifted her like a cresting wave.

“Yes,” she said, holding her voice steady. “Yes, that’s right. He abducted her and forced her to write this phony letter, and then later he returned for the Tegretol because, without it, she could die.”

There. She had said it. Even to her it sounded grossly implausible, but she was grimly certain it was true.

Walker shut his eyes. Suddenly he looked tired. “Annie…”

She waited, refusing to make things easier for him by anticipating what he wanted to say.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” he asked finally.

She saw where this was leading. “Five or six hours,” she lied.

“That much?”

Oh, hell. She’d never been a decent fibber. “More like three or four.”

He nodded. “How about the night before? Did you sleep well then?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“You had circles under your eyes yesterday. You seemed kind of wired, as if you were operating on adrenaline.”

“Okay. I had insomnia that night, too. So what?”

“So you’ve been functioning on virtually no rest. You’re distraught. Your imagination is overacting.”

“I hallucinated not seeing the Tegretol. Is that it?”

“Under the same circumstances I might have overlooked it, too.”

Frustration and anger boiled up inside her. She thought about opening her purse, showing him the turquoise wrapped in the tissueDid I hallucinate this, you son of a bitch? — but rationally she knew the stone proved nothing.

She took back the letter, folded it in the envelope, put the envelope in her purse. Her hands were shaking, and her knuckles were white.

“So,” she said stiffly, “that’s it, I guess. Case closed. Nothing more you’re willing to do.”

“I just don’t see any basis on which to proceed.”

“Sure. Of course.” She was on her feet, the chair scraping the short-nap carpet. A detective at a nearby desk glanced up at her, his attention drawn by the implied violence in her body language.

“Annie-”

“I understand.” Tears burned her eyes. “Really.”

He was rising, reaching out to her. She turned away.

“I understand,” she said again, and then she was out of the squad room, fleeing blindly down the hall.