Born to Run

Chapter 25

Paulette was in her car when an idea came to her.

Tomorrow’s schedule was busier than usual, starting at 6:00 A.M., when she and the congressional correspondent, the chief political consultant, and the senior legal analyst were slated to begin taping a four-part segment on the political and legal ins and outs of the Harry Swyteck nomination. Paulette should have driven straight home and gone to bed. Instead, she drove home, grabbed the key to Chloe’s apartment, and hopped right back in her car.

There was no available parking on the street, so Paulette pulled around to the back alley and squeezed her car in between a Dumpster and a utility poll. She climbed out, and the car door closed with an empty thud. The quiet alley was dimly lit, a single yellow-tinted light glowing at the street entrance. While the cold night air had felt good upon stepping out of Club SI, it now made her cinch up her coat and walk quickly. The click of her heel echoed in the alley, and it made her stop and look around. The backs of the surrounding buildings were covered with burglar bars. Not another human being was in sight. The sounds of the city had seemed to evaporate. Urban quiet. It reminded Paulette of her first job as a crime-beat reporter-that eerie, ghost-town effect that marked high time for crime. Her gaze drifted toward Chloe’s apartment building, and she could see the lone window in the corner with its second-story view of the alley. She thought for a moment of Chloe all alone, looking out her window toward trash cans and the backs of buildings. Then her thoughts turned to a stranger standing in this very spot, looking up toward Chloe.

Paulette shook off the image and started toward the rear entrance to the building.

The back door was locked, but Chloe’s passkey still worked. Paulette pushed the door open and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The police tape was gone, and there was absolutely nothing about the door to Chloe’s apartment to tell the world that a young woman had been murdered. Weird, but even though she’d attended the funeral and written the obituary, Paulette had a fleeting thought that if she knocked, Chloe might answer. Murder was against the natural order of things, and it could play terrible tricks on the mind.

Paulette inserted the key. The tumblers clicked, the lock disengaged, and Paulette opened the door. She was about to switch on the light, but she stopped. From where she was standing, she could look all the way across the little efficiency and out the lone window in the corner. In the darkness, with the alley lit behind the building, she could actually see the very spot where she’d been standing and looking up toward Chloe’s apartment just a few minutes earlier. She walked across the room in the dark and tried to pull the Venetian blinds shut. They were broken, however, and the slats wouldn’t close all the way. It gave Paulette an eerie feeling. She wondered if it had ever occurred to Chloe that she was on permanent display.

Paulette went back and switched on the light. She would make this quick.

The forensic investigators had left the place reasonably undisturbed-nothing like the way they would have dissected an actual crime scene. The rent was paid through the end of the month, and one of the tasks on Paulette’s to-do list was to sort through Chloe’s belongings and clear things out. Tonight, however, her focus was on just one of Chloe’s possessions. A prized possession. Her autographed photograph of Vice President Grayson.

The framed photograph was still hanging on the wall. Paulette crossed the room and took it down.

She hadn’t studied it closely on her last visit, the morning after Chloe’s death, when the homicide detective had brought it to her attention. Seeing it then had triggered only sadness. A seemingly unimportant detail, however, had lodged in her brain-and with all the recent talk of the vice president’s daughter, her sadness had morphed into suspicion.

Elizabeth Grayson was in the photograph.

Paulette moved closer to the lamp for a better look. The pose seemed almost candid, or perhaps it was a staged pose that had broken down into something more casual. The vice president was seated on the corner of his desk. Chloe was standing next to him. Elizabeth was right beside Chloe. Right beside her-with her arm around Chloe’s shoulder. The two women were smiling widely, heads tilted to the point where they were almost touching.

Paulette laid her hand atop the photograph and covered the vice president. With him out of the picture, the photograph told an entirely different story. There was nothing forced about the connection between the two women. Chloe and Elizabeth looked like old girlfriends, a couple of college-aged women cutting up and having a laugh in the White House.

Suddenly, the vice president’s betrayal was of a whole new magnitude.

Shit, Chloe. How could you have done that to a friend?

Paulette put the photograph back on the wall and switched off the light. One last glance through the half-opened blinds re-kindled that I’m being watched feeling, and she resolved to come back and clean out Chloe’s apartment in the daytime. She locked the door on her way out, took the rear staircase to the back entrance, and started toward her car. She hadn’t parked far away, but the night was turning colder, and the walk across the cracked concrete seemed longer than it was. Paulette didn’t frighten easily, but she was eager to get out of there. She reached into her purse as she approached, disengaged the lock with the keyless remote, and opened the driver-side door. Her hand was actually shaking as she aimed the key at the ignition-and the tip had just touched the slot when she felt the plug of cold metal behind her right ear.

She froze.

“Don’t make a sound,” the man said. He was behind her in the backseat with his gun to her head.

“What do you want?” said Paulette.

There was silence. Enduring silence. The man couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her what he wanted. Paulette did not take that as a good sign. Suddenly his left hand was at her throat. She gasped, about to scream, but he shoved a bottle in her open mouth.

“Drink,” he said.

Paulette couldn’t have swallowed if she’d wanted to. The barrel of the gun pushed more firmly against her skull.

“I said drink.”

Paulette’s heart raced with fear, but whatever was in the bottle had to be better than a bullet in the brain. She tilted her head back, and the warm liquid poured down her throat. It was bitter and a little salty, unlike anything she had ever tasted. She coughed through the last few swallows.

“All of it,” he said.

She closed her eyes tightly and forced the rest down. When she finished, he took the bottle from her lips.

“Good girl,” he said, though his voice seemed strangely distant, as if she were hearing only the tail end of an echo. “Now we wait. We wait. We…waaaaaait.”