Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 775 & 776, March/April 2006

Still Life With Wolf by David Knadler

Newspaperman David Knadler works on the national/foreign desk of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Most of his extended family lives in Montana, where he grew up — in a town like that policed by his fictional deputy sheriff, John Ennis. “I wanted Ennis to be kind of an anti-CSI guy, discovering the true nature of wrongdoing without a shred of forensic evidence,” Knadler says, “jus familiarity with the way people are in a small town.”

Two gunshots in rapid succession. Then one more. Coming from downstairs, loud enough to feel through the floor. The clock radio next to the bed showed 1:40 A.M.

Someone was discharging a firearm inside the hotel. In John Ennis’s experience, there was hardly ever a benign reason for that kind of thing. He rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants. He was headed for the door when he heard a car door slam on the street below. He ran to the window and pulled back the curtain, just in time to see a dark Nissan Maxima pull away from the curb and accelerate up Germantown Avenue, right through the stoplight that was bleeding red across the rain-slicked cobblestones.

His room was next to the stairs, and he ran down in his bare feet. The little hotel lobby was right across from the first-floor landing. The smell of cordite hung in the air. Down the narrow ground-floor hallway a door opened and half a face slid into view. The old woman’s voice was querulous.

“What happened?”

“Call nine-one-one,” he said.

Ennis approached the front desk, which now appeared to have a sizable groove in its polished surface, surrounded by mahogany splinters. It looked as though another large-caliber bullet had punched through the antique mail slots behind the counter. That accounted for two shots; he had heard three.

Something moved behind the desk. He peered over the side, half expecting to discover a corpse twitching in a pool of blood. It was nice to see instead the girl named Heidi Novak staring back at him, looking no less beautiful for the apparently minor cut on her forehead — and the terror still in her eyes. Another bullet had gouged the tiled floor beside her. Shot number three.

“You okay?”

She nodded dumbly, then looked down as if to confirm it. There was a movement behind Ennis. He turned. The old woman was edging closer, clutching her terry robe together as she tried to get a better look. “Did they kill her?” she said. “Why would someone want to kill her?”

Ennis had to admit, it was a good question.

A few days earlier he had been jolted from another sound sleep, this time in a late-night phone call from Chuck Butler.

“Yo,” Chuck said. “You’re going back to Philly, right?”

Ennis couldn’t remember mentioning the trip to anyone outside the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, but after five years in Worland, Montana, population 1,900, he had quit being surprised that even casual acquaintances seemed to know as much about his life as he did.

“Tuesday,” he said. He was about to elaborate on the domestic-violence seminar the county had decided he should attend, but Chuck kept on.

“Look, man, I need to ask a favor, okay?” Ennis was still groggy from sleep; there was no time to formulate a tactful reply. “I met a woman, lives back there. Small world, huh? I wondered, when you’re out there, if you might swing by her place. Check her out.”

“You met a woman? What, on the Internet?”

“It’s great, man, you can get in these chat rooms, talk with any number of ladies. I been casting my bread upon the waters. You should try it.”

Ennis would never admit this to anyone, but in fact he had tried it. There had been a time, following his divorce a few years ago, when he had ventured into some Internet chat rooms himself, late at night. The novelty had quickly expired. He had never gotten fully comfortable with the abbreviations LOL and ROFL, or the endless array of little “emoticons” everybody used. He still had an Internet account, but he used it now primarily to see how the Eagles were doing.

“She sent me her picture,” Chuck was saying. “Man, I gotta tell you something: Beautiful. Stunning, and I shit you not. You know Britney Spears?”

Ennis allowed that he had heard the name.

“This woman makes ol’ Britney look like, I don’t know, Rosie O’Donnell.”

Ennis cleared his throat. “Not to burst your bubble, but people often get in these chat rooms so they can be who they’re not...”

“That right? I never heard that. C’mon, man; I didn’t just fall off the hay wagon. This is different. This woman, she’s the real deal. Smart, too. Going to some college, she said. I love a smart woman.”

“Who doesn’t?” Ennis said. “Except a really smart woman would quickly see through your tissue of lies.”

“What? I’m being totally up-front: Christian man, don’t drink anymore, don’t smoke. Hell, probably quit chewing one of these days. I love long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners — all that type of crap. What she sees is what she gets.” His voice took on a confidential tone. “One thing I’ve noticed, some of these Eastern women really dig cowboys.”

Ennis thought about this. “How about portly convenience-store managers?”

Chuck ran the Town Pump, a combination minimart, gas station, and casino that was the center of commerce — and culture, if you counted the video rentals — in Worland.

“Hey, I got a hat,” Chuck said. “Like your job is so damned glamorous: rousting high-school keggers. C’mon, don’t piss on my campfire. You’re going out there anyway. I thought you could have a look, tell me what you think.” Chuck paused. “I wouldn’t ask, except I been helping her out a little financially and I got to thinking I should probably find out more about her.”

“You’re sending her money?”

“Well, not a lot. Couple hundred or so. Like I said, she’s a student. Figured I’d help her out.”

Ennis sighed. “Well, then you have her address, right? Long as it’s not just a post-office box...”

Another pause. Chuck coughed. “Probably not the smartest thing, huh?”

“Unbelievable,” Ennis said. “Worldly man like yourself.”

“Hey, I trust her. She even called me on the phone. She’s got class. Not like some of these women; you wouldn’t believe. Did I mention the foreign accent? I’m a sucker for an accent. Anyway, we exchanged pictures.”

“You sent her a picture of you?”

“No, Yasir Arafat. Hell you trying to say, man? Yeah, I sent her a picture of me. ‘Course, I didn’t have any recent ones. But she’s got the basic idea: rugged, strong but gentle.”

“King of the cowboys.”

Chuck laughed. “That, too.”

Ennis was aware of one photograph of Chuck Butler. He had it hanging on his wall over the battle-scarred couch in his doublewide: Ennis guessed that it had been taken around 1984. In it, he wore a Fu Manchu moustache, enormous cowboy hat, and a fierce grin. He was gripping the antler of a dead elk in one hand and a can of Falstaff in the other. It was not a particularly hideous photo, but if you were going to be charitable about it you could say that in the intervening years, Chuck’s face had filled out some, and he had lost some hair.

“So, you’ll have a look, okay?”

“Kind of a problem if all you have is a post-office box,” Ennis said. “Philly’s a big town. How am I supposed to find her?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Chuck said. “You’re the detective.”

On the plane Ennis looked again at the photo Chuck had printed out. There was no denying the woman in it was attractive, if not an immediate threat to the career of Britney Spears. The photo appeared to have been captured by cheap Web camera; Ennis could see an unmade bed and dresser in the background. Her short, dark hair curved around an oval face. She wore a tight black camisole and was looking shyly up through her long eyelashes in the manner of Princess Di. Trying to look sexy for the camera, and mostly succeeding. There were no such women in Worland. Ennis could understand why his friend was smitten.

She had given Chuck the name Heidi Novak. He also had a phone number, which Chuck had copied from his caller ID the one time she had called him. Last night, Ennis had called one of his last remaining friends at the Philadelphia Daily News and asked him to check the number against a city directory. Half an hour later he got a call back: The number belonged to a P. Voros. The address: 612 St. Martin’s Lane, Philadelphia.

Ennis knew the area from his few years with the PPD: St. Martin’s Lane was in the middle of Chestnut Hill, a leafy neighborhood of new Volvo station wagons and massive stone houses that looked as if they all had billiard rooms. It was hard to imagine a woman from that particular neighborhood, with that particular face, spending her nights tapping out double entendres with Chuck Butler. Ennis was pretty sure his friend had not yet found the woman of his dreams.

The domestic-violence seminar started the next morning and lasted all day. There was still plenty of daylight when it broke up that afternoon. Ennis had a drink in the lounge with some of the other officers, but turned down an invitation to make a night of it. He supposed this was as good a time as any to run his errand on behalf of Chuck Butler.

It was warm for late October, so he left the windows down in his rented Sentra as he tooled up Kelly Drive in the slanting sunlight. There were crews rowing out on the Schuylkill and he felt a slight pang of homesickness. He would not have admitted this years earlier, but Philadelphia did have its moments; it could be as vibrant and beautiful in some places as it was dead and ugly in others.

Chestnut Hill was one of the beautiful places. Especially in the fall: Along Wissahickon Avenue the streets were lined with venerable old homes and towering oaks and maples and sycamores, which were now alight in brilliant yellows and reds. By the time he reached St. Martin’s Lane, the early October sun had drifted low, turning pink as it sank into clouds on the horizon. The warm light made every street corner a calendar scene.

The address Ennis found was just as charming, a three-story apartment building called St. Martin’s Court. It was an older brick building, impeccably maintained and surrounded by a stalwart wrought-iron fence that enclosed lush courtyards on either side. Not exactly student housing. But not much was, in this neighborhood.

There were entry foyers facing each other across an inner courtyard. An older woman kneeling among the shrubs rose and regarded him suspiciously as he inspected the names in the first entrance and then approached the second. Here he found P. Voros on one of the brass mailboxes. Apartment D-2. He briefly debated whether to buzz the apartment. Well, why not? He pushed the button, waited for a few seconds, then pushed it again. The foyer door opened behind him.

“May I help you?”

The shrub lady had her hat off now and didn’t convey the attitude of someone who really wanted to help. She wore gardening gloves, but was arrayed in a tasteful ensemble of earth-toned sweater and slacks — Mrs. L.L. Bean herself. Her neat silver hair and imperious manner suggested she was more than the gardening help at St. Martin’s Court.

“I was hoping to catch Ms. Voros at home,” he said in what he hoped was an engaging tone.

“Are you a friend?”

“Well, friend of a friend.”

“I see. An actual friend would probably know that Mrs. Voros has been hospitalized for some time.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Ennis said. “Someone so young.”

“Mrs. Voros is in her seventies.”

Ennis coughed. “Well, that’s hardly old these days. Is someone looking after her apartment? Her daughter?”

The woman stared at him. “I hope you’re not a friend of the girl. What is your name?”

Ennis told her. “And you are...?”

“I’m the owner of this building. Do you have some identification?”

Annoyed, Ennis drew out his wallet. She briefly eyed the Montana driver’s license and regarded him the way she might a centipede on one of the well-tended coleus plants outside. “Well, Mister... Ennis. I don’t expect Mrs. Voros will be returning anytime soon. So...”

She held the door open. Ennis smiled stiffly and walked back to his car, feeling her gaze on his back.

Well, that had gone well. Hands in his pockets, he lingered on the sidewalk for a moment, thinking that as long as he was in the neighborhood, he might as well have a drink and something to eat at one of the restaurants on Germantown Avenue, which was only a couple of blocks from here.

He waited for cars to pass before crossing the street. Down the block, a young woman was approaching along the gray slate sidewalk, carrying a bag of groceries. She was small, just a girl, really, wearing a cheap vinyl jacket that was supposed to look like leather. Their glances met as she passed and she gave Ennis a slight smile. He smiled back and walked across the street to his car, hoping she hadn’t registered his surprise. He pretended to fumble for his keys at the Sentra, watching over the roof as she found her own keys and entered the building.

He withdrew the photo from his shirt pocket. Her hair was a bit longer now, and if he looked closely he could make out the scar he had just glimpsed, a pale, jagged line from the edge of her mouth to her chin. He hadn’t noticed it before. But she was certainly the person Chuck Butler knew as Heidi Novak.

At McCrory’s Tavern on Germantown Avenue, Ennis downed a couple of Yuengling lagers and reflected on what he might do next. He had not discovered much, really, but he supposed he could now phone his friend and confirm that Heidi Novak was a real, living person. If he left it at that, he wouldn’t have spent much more than the half-hour he’d first allotted for the favor.

But there was something else. Ennis thought of the faint smile she had given him, the cheap jacket, the scar on her unlined face. She looked young, even younger than the picture suggested. This was what bothered him. An older man’s money for a younger woman’s attention was not a freakishly exotic arrangement in the course of human events — but maybe she was too young. He decided he should find that out, for her sake as well as Chuck’s.

She had told Chuck she worked in a hotel in the neighborhood. If that were true, only one would fit the description: The Wissahickon Inn. It was a couple of blocks south of McCrory’s on Germantown Avenue. Small by any standard, just three stories, maybe thirty-six rooms total. But it was also precious — like many of the buildings on this stretch of the avenue, it had been built of native stone well over a century ago and had since been restored. Now prim shutters flanked each exterior window and replica period furniture graced each room. The hotel was connected by a breezeway to the Wissahickon Grill, an upscale bar and restaurant that got a lot of dining trade from the upscale residents of Chestnut Hill.

A slight chill had crept into the evening light as Ennis walked down to the hotel. Clouds were piling up in the west and there was a faint smell of wood smoke in the air. Still, the outdoor tables were mostly filled: men in sport coats, well-dressed women giggling over second bottles of white zinfandel. Ennis entered the hotel’s small lobby and approached the front desk.

“May I help you?” The kid at the counter looked well-fed, and maybe a little more comfortable in a suit and tie than somebody that age should be. The little name badge said Kevin Patterson. Ennis was arrayed in his ratty windbreaker over a Montana Grizzlies T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes. He was carrying no luggage. He had the sense that his ensemble might be a couple of cuts below what was customary at the Wissahickon.

He had decided to get a room. He could cancel at the Marriott and commute to the seminar tomorrow and the next day. In the meantime, he’d have a little more time in Ms. Novak’s neighborhood.

“Do you have a reservation?”

Ennis smiled thinly. “No.”

“I hope you’re not out of luck, then.” Kevin didn’t sound like that’s what he hoped at all. He began tapping at the little keyboard in front of him, frowning. He sighed.

“Smoking or non?”

“Non.”

Another burst of tapping. Ennis looked at his watch. Maybe the guy was finishing up his novel.

“I only have smoking. Room 202.”

“Whatever. By the way, a friend of mine used to work here. Heidi Novak? She still here?”

Kevin had started another chapter with his keyboard, but stopped abruptly. “Heidi? And what is your name?”

It was the second time in an hour Ennis had been asked that question in that tone, and it was beginning to grate. He slid over his credit card. “It’s on the card. I’ll have to say hello while I’m here. What are her hours?”

Kevin looked at him coldly. “She comes in at nine. I’ll tell her you were asking about her.”

It was dark by the time Ennis had driven back into Center City and returned with his things. Kevin was no longer defending the front desk, but neither was Heidi Novak. He went up to the room. Small for $140 a night, but still cheaper than the Marriott — and somehow a little more charming despite the lingering aroma of stale Marlboros. He took a long shower and followed it with a short nap. He was up and pulling on a clean pair of jeans when the phone rang.

“Is this Mr. Ennis?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Ennis, this is Heidi Novak. Your long-lost friend?”

Chuck had mentioned the foreign accent, but he was still a little startled to hear it. Eastern European, he thought. Heidi’s voice sounded even younger than she looked.

“Oh. Hi. Actually, what I meant was, friend of a friend.”

“Really? What friend?”

“Chuck Butler.”

Silence.

“From Montana.”

“Chuck Butler,” she said thoughtfully. “From Montana? Hmm. I wonder if you have confused me with someone else? I’m sorry to say I don’t know any Chuck Butler.”

“I see. Are you working now?”

“Yes, I am working, Mr. Ennis. I am sorry to have bothered you.”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” he said. But she had hung up.

Ennis finished dressing. He donned his venerable corduroy sport coat and regarded the image in the full-length mirror: a guy pushing fifty who occasionally slept in his clothes. He turned this way and that, sucking in his stomach. Could be worse, he decided. The mysterious stain over the left pocket of the sport coat was barely visible; you had to be looking for it.

Heidi and Kevin Patterson had their heads together and were talking heatedly about something when Ennis came down. Both looked up. Ennis smiled. Heidi averted her eyes; the kid frowned and thrust out his chin. “That’s the guy,” he said.

“This is the guy,” Ennis agreed. He offered his hand. “John Ennis, Ms. Novak.”

She tentatively took his hand. Her touch was warm and dry.

“Nice to meet you. I am, uh, sorry to disappoint you. But there must be a lot of Novaks around. It’s a common name.”

He withdrew the picture and handed it to her. “Well, there’s just one thing: My friend? He said you sent him this. It is you, isn’t it?”

Her face reddened. “Yes, I guess it’s me. I don’t know where it could have come from.”

“He said you sent it to him, over the Internet.”

Kevin, the aspiring hotel manager, stared at Ennis and then at the picture. He took it from her and laid it carefully on the counter. He straightened his tie.

“I don’t know how you got her picture,” he said, “but she has indicated she doesn’t know you or your... friend. I suggest you leave it at that.”

Ennis gave the kid a look. Kevin attempted one of his own, but quickly blinked. Heidi put a hand on his arm. “Please, Kevin, just give us one minute.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Call me if you need me,” he said.

Heidi watched him stalk away. When she looked at Ennis, he rolled his eyes and this bought another faint smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really don’t know about this. How could I know your friend on the Internet? I don’t even have a computer.”

Five hours later, Ennis was standing in the same place, this time barefoot, as Heidi took his hand and struggled shakily to her feet behind the bullet-scarred counter. Now other doors had opened down the hall and people were venturing out, glancing nervously at the bullet holes and then at the door.

“Police are on the way,” someone said.

It was dawn before they finished. At the 14th District police station Heidi told the police the same thing she had told Ennis: She was alone at the front desk when a heavyset man entered, wearing what appeared to be black-patterned pantyhose over his head. He hadn’t spoken, just pulled out a shiny, long-barreled pistol, pointed it her way, and fired twice. In her panic she had dived for the floor, hitting her head on the printer stand below the front desk. Then the gunman had evidently come around the counter and fired one more shot, missing her head by barely an inch. She was stunned and huddled in a fetal position at the time, bleeding from the cut on her head, so it was possible the assailant thought she was dead and decided not to wait around to take a pulse.

Ennis gave a statement about the car he’d seen leaving the hotel. One of the PPD officers was Larry Fish, a guy Ennis had worked with before moving west. He was a sergeant now. He smirked as Ennis explained his quest in Chestnut Hill.

“Internet, huh? This your friend we’re talking about, or you?”

Ennis smiled thinly. “I’m too old for that. Anyway, she said she never heard of him. And she doesn’t have a computer. Maybe somebody’s been sending her picture around.”

“Just to make her life miserable? It happens.” Fish rubbed his chin. “Thing is, she’s Russian.” Belatedly he looked around, but Heidi had just gone out the door in the company of a uniformed officer. “He’s taking her home. No identification. And she’s having a little trouble finding her green card.”

“Somebody tries to kill her, you put Immigration on her?”

“Hey, war on terror. Illegal aliens don’t get a lot of slack these days.”

“Still, seems like you’d be interested in the attempted murder.”

“What, she your girlfriend or something? We’re interested, don’t worry.”

“So?”

He shrugged. “Like I say: She’s Russian. Young, good-looking, doesn’t know anybody here. I’m guessing she’s, uh, making a few compromises to keep her head above water.”

“So now she’s a hooker, too? C’mon, she already has a job.”

“At the hotel? Yeah, hookers never frequent hotels, do they? We talked to her boss; she’s there two, three nights a week. Pulling down about $8.50 an hour filing her nails at the front desk. Tell me how she pays her rent in Mount Airy on those kind of wages.”

Ennis looked at him. “Mount Airy?”

“Yeah.” He looked at his notebook. “Over on Glen Echo. She’s renting a twin over there, 415. Why?”

“I thought...” Ennis stopped himself. It seemed Heidi hadn’t mentioned the upscale apartment on St. Martin’s Lane where she’d been headed with a bag of groceries.

Now the cop who had just left with Heidi returned alone. He looked around, frowning. He approached Fish with some diffidence.

“She come back in here?”

“The girl? Why?”

The cop pushed his hat back on his head, rubbed his forehead.

“I had her at the car. You know, talking to a couple of the guys; I turn around and she’s gone.”

Fish stared. “Gone, huh? You’re really a talented officer, you know that?” He shook his head. “Well, look, give it half an hour, then get your ass over to her place and see if she shows up there.”

By then it was nearly five A.M. Ennis was dead on his feet. He decided to skip the second day of the seminar and head back to the hotel.

The room phone was blinking red when he woke up about noon. The message was from Larry Fish.

The detective sounded annoyed when Ennis returned the call. “You wouldn’t happen to know where this Heidi Novak is, would you? This address she gave us: It’s bogus.”

Ennis wasn’t sure why he decided not to mention the St. Martin’s apartment. Maybe it was his feeling that it really wouldn’t help the girl much if the police found her.

“I assume you tried her boss.”

“Uh, yeah, Ennis. We tried her boss. That Kevin kid. He said she called, but wouldn’t tell him where she was. Then I got this crazy idea you might know how to reach her. It occurs to me I didn’t ask how you found her in the first place.”

Ennis quickly embroidered the truth. “She called this friend of mine from the hotel. Caller ID showed it, so I went there and voila. Got lucky.”

Fish sounded sceptical. “And you have no idea where she might be now? Reason I ask: Guy who shot at her is probably going to try again.”

“You know who it is?”

“If my hooker theory is sound. You remember Mikhail Primakov? Forget if he was around when you were here. Known as Mad Mike these days, heads the Russian mob here. Has a couple of nephews, Milo and Serge. Just teenagers, but these two knuckle-heads are getting a reputation for meanness, if not finesse.”

“What’d she do to them?”

“Doesn’t have to be much. Probably just tendered her resignation. Decided to freelance. Russians don’t like that type of shit. If you’re lucky, they’ll just kill you. I’ve seen ’em do a lot worse. Make the Colombians look like Buddhist monks.”

Ennis could hear Fish lighting a cigarette, taking a mighty drag. “Anyway, this thing here could fit Milo’s M.O.: It’s crude, ruthless, fairly stupid. Now we have to find the little shit. Preferably before he finds out he screwed up. Would have been nice if you’d noted the license plate.”

“It was dark,” Ennis said.

“That’s what they all say. Dark Maxima, though; that sure narrows it down. Only about forty thousand of those in the Greater Delaware Valley.”

“I remember now: It was a big red Lamborghini.”

“Just pulling your chain,” Fish said. “Anyway, you’ll let me know if you run across the winsome Ms. Novak, right? Don’t let her charms cloud your judgment.”

That afternoon Ennis walked the few blocks from the hotel to St. Martin’s Court. After a brief reconnaissance revealed no sign of Mrs. L. L. Bean, he slipped into the foyer and again pushed the buzzer for D-2. He waited a minute or two, then rang again. He was turning to go when her voice came on the intercom. It was barely audible.

“Who is it?”

“It’s John Ennis, Heidi. I was at the hotel.”

A long pause.

“What do you want?”

“Just making sure you’re okay.”

Another long silence, and then the door buzzer sounded. Heidi seemed pale, jittery, her eyes bright in a way that reminded Ennis of amphetamine use. Or maybe it was just that she still hadn’t recovered from being shot at.

The apartment had the potential to be elegant, but it was in disarray now. There was a mound of clothes and a cheap duffel bag on the sofa. Junk mail and magazines occupied most of the other horizontal surfaces in the room. A few photographs adorned the walls, along with a couple of Georgia O’Keeffe prints, one of which was hanging slightly askew. The place looked as though it hadn’t been dusted in a month — maybe about the time Mrs. P. Voros had been taken to the hospital.

Ennis explained about the phone number, how he’d happened to see her on the street. She seemed unconvinced. “So what do you want?”

“I guess you don’t think the police can help you. I thought I’d see if I could.”

A bitter little laugh, which stung Ennis a little. “How could you help? Do you have a gun?”

“No.” There had been no reason to bring his service piece to Philadelphia, particularly with airline security being what it was. “I don’t know; you need a ride someplace? It might be better if you weren’t alone.”

“Well,” she said, “it is sweet of you to care.”

She looked around the cluttered room. She seized a pack of cigarettes from the fireplace mantel and shook one out. Her hands shook slightly as she lit it. She held the cigarette in her mouth, squinting through the smoke as she rummaged through the pile of clothes, at last grabbing the lot in her arms and jamming it all into the duffel bag. She struggled to zip it shut, bits of garment and the strap of a shiny red shoe spilling out from the sides. Finally she threw up her arms.

“I can’t take all of this,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Out of the city. To New York, maybe. I’ll take a train.”

She collapsed into the overstuffed chair. Ennis sat on one end of the sofa. For a few awkward seconds they regarded each other in silence. He looked around the room.

“Nice apartment.”

She shrugged.

“It’s not mine. The woman, Pearl, she’s old and wanted someone to help her. When she went to the hospital I decided there was no sense to waste it. But now the rent... That woman, the owner, she said she will call the police if I don’t go.”

“What about your job?”

“No worry there. I don’t have a job anymore. Kevin fired me.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Men firing guns in the hotel, it’s bad for business.” She sighed. “He was nice at first. But they all are, at first.”

Ennis didn’t know how to answer that.

“If you want, I can hang around until you decide what to do.”

She squinted at him through the cigarette smoke. When she smiled, it was without warmth. “Yes, you could keep me company.” She ran a hand through her dark hair. “Maybe spend the night, huh? But we have to go someplace else. Do you have money?”

Ennis stared at her. He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”

She regarded him suspiciously, then shrugged. “Okay, you can give me a ride, then. I have to finish packing. Would you like something? Some tea?”

“Tea would be fine.”

Heidi disappeared into the little kitchen. He heard the clatter of pans; shelves opening and closing. Evidently the tea kettle was not close to hand.

He stood and paced around the living room, idly regarding the pictures on the wall. People in antique clothing, smiling and squinting in black and white. Ennis guessed they were all part of Mrs. Voros’s past. There were two bedroom doors off the hall, one slightly ajar. He heard a scratching sound from the other. He opened the door and a large tortoiseshell cat swept out of the room with a whine. Ennis peered inside: a king-size bed, unmade; a dresser with a couple of drawers open. Opposite the bed was a small cherry writing desk. It looked expensive, but what interested Ennis more was the open laptop computer, displaying a screensaver of woodland scenes. It was connected to a phone jack, and to a Web camera beside it.

The hardwood floor creaked behind him. Heidi was there, cradling the big cat in her arms. It was purring loudly. She seemed both angry and embarrassed.

“What are you looking for?

“I see you do have a computer. Chuck says hi. Do you know who tried to kill you last night?”

Heidi released the cat, blew a few stray hairs from her face with a loud sigh that seemed to deflate her.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I do.”

He watched the girl as she repacked the big duffel bag, this time carefully choosing which items she’d take. She talked softly as Ennis sipped his tea.

“My real name isn’t Heidi,” she said. “It’s Marina. Marina Petrova. I just liked the sound of Heidi Novak. I made it up. It was my American name.”

She held up the red shoes, seemed to regard them fondly, then tossed them aside. The daylight was fading from the apartment but she made no effort to turn on a light.

She was not from Russia, Marina said, but Moldova. She lived with her parents and two brothers in a village not far from the city of Chisinau. Two years ago she had met a Russian man, Arkady, who told her he worked for a company interested in hiring young women to work abroad. This company had all kinds of jobs available in the West: hostesses and dancers, waitresses and secretaries.

“I was seventeen,” she said. “We were very poor. My father did not say so, but I knew he would be happy to see me go. Anyway, I wanted to go. I wanted to have a job.”

Arkady had no trouble recruiting other women. In Chisinau, she found herself in a group of seven others. All of them, like her, were young, unskilled, relatively pretty, and desperately poor.

There was a catch, of course. Apologetically, Arkady explained that transportation to the West was very expensive, but the fee could be repaid later, in installments, through the generous wages they would earn in their new jobs.

“We believed him,” she said. “We didn’t care; we could earn in a week what might take months in Moldova.”

Of the group, only Marina spoke any English. On the way to Italy, she realized that Arkady and his friends were unaware of this.

“Sometimes they would speak English when they didn’t want us to hear,” she said. “That was how I found out we had made a big mistake.”

By then it was too late. In Turin, they found themselves virtual captives, and no comprehension of English was needed to understand the nature of their new jobs. The women were confined to squalid hotel rooms while the Russians brought in a steady procession of foreign men.

“Still they tried to reassure us,” Marina said. “They told us, ‘It’s just for now. But you owe us a lot of money and this is how you must begin to repay the debt.’”

Her voice quavered, and she took a deep breath.

“Some of us protested, tried to go. We were beaten,” she said quietly. “Raped. We were only cattle to them. We had no visas, no friends. In a foreign country, they knew we could do nothing.”

One day another group of men came through the hotel in Turin. They looked at each woman, indicating in careless gestures which ones they wanted. Marina understood: They were being sold. It was the deepest despair she had ever known. The next day she found herself on a ship bound for America, in the company of at least two dozen other women — and a crew that expected their own payment in trade.

They had only been in America a few days when the Russians introduced them to the drugs: heroin, crack cocaine.

“They said, ‘You don’t even need to pay,’” Marina said. “‘For now, we’ll just add it to what you owe.’”

No one refused. The drugs provided solace, then oblivion. The women forgot their dreams of happiness, forgot the families they’d left at home. After a while, the Russians didn’t worry about them running away. The drugs’ hold was stronger than any lock, and the loss of it more terrible than any beating.

“But I tricked them,” Marina said. “I heard them laughing about it, the way we could be made to do anything for drugs. I pretended I was like the others, a junkie. I kept what they gave me. I would sell some to the others, they could never get enough. Finally I had enough dollars to leave.”

At great risk, she had surreptitiously lifted the cell phone of her pimp, young Milo Primakov, and answered a newspaper ad for an elderly woman needing a companion in Chestnut Hill. The same night, she had been sent to meet a john in a Center City hotel. While Milo waited in the lobby, she entered the elevator, got out on the next floor, and made her way to the fire exit in back. Two blocks away she hailed a cab, paying twenty-five dollars for the ride to Chestnut Hill and a new life. That was when she had also taken her new name.

Pearl Voros, it turned out, was also an immigrant, who had arrived from Hungary in 1956. Maybe that was one reason she had taken a strong liking to Marina. She gave her young companion the run of the place, even showing Marina how to use the little computer in the bedroom.

Marina was intrigued by the Internet. Her late-night excursions into the chat rooms convinced her of two things: Men were the same swine on-line as in real life, but some were willing to pay for their fantasies — and she never had to touch them.

She took a low-tech approach. No credit cards, no billing. Just a Web camera and Mrs. Voros’s post-office box in Chestnut Hill. She cruised the seamy forums on Yahoo and AOL. The men who sent money received Web-cam poses and erotic messages and Heidi Novak’s apparently enthusiastic interest in their mundane lives. The ones who didn’t send money just found themselves ignored. It was easy and safe.

Except for the one mistake: She had called Chuck Butler from Mrs. Voros’s phone, sensing that a little push might get him to open his wallet. She hadn’t then known anything about caller ID.

It was dark in the apartment now. Ennis could barely see the girl’s face. He leaned forward and found room for his cup on the crowded coffee table.

“You make a lot of money like that?”

She shrugged. “Not a lot. But it’s not much work. And the money is all mine to keep. Some I send home.”

Some job, Ennis thought. But he supposed cyber prostitution had to be several cuts above the real thing, particularly in Marina’s case.

“Then Mrs. Voros had her stroke,” Marina said. “And the landlady, that bitch, told me I have to leave. So I looked for jobs. At the hotel, Kevin said he could pay me in dollars. How do you say it? Below the table. So I didn’t need any papers; it’s impossible to get them.”

“I see. What does Kevin get out of it?”

She looked at him balefully and Ennis regretted the question. “He’s a pig, too,” she said. “But at least he’s just one pig.”

Again, Ennis didn’t think he could blame her. She was doing what she had to do to survive. It was too bad the Russians weren’t ready to leave it at that.

He remembered what she’d said about borrowing the pimp’s phone, calling Mrs. Voros from it. He supposed Milo had just gotten around to looking at his bill, used the number to find the apartment, and followed her to where she worked. If so, that meant that they could show up here at any time, as soon as Milo figured out he had botched it the first time.

She was watching him now; he got the idea she had just figured out the same thing.

“We should go soon,” she said. “They’ll find out I’m here. Will you give me a ride to the train station?”

“I’d be happy to.” He stood.

She picked up the duffel bag, but dropped it again. “Oh, I almost forgot!”

Marina disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a large sketchbook and a pack of colored pencils.

“I can’t forget these,” she said. She zipped open the duffel bag and tried to smooth the jumble of clothes so she could lay the sketchbook carefully inside.

“Do you draw?”

She made a deprecating gesture. “Not well, but I like it. I always thought when I was little I would be an artist.” She hesitated. “Would you like to see? It won’t take long.”

“Sure.”

She sat beside him on the sofa and opened the sketchbook. The first picture was a horse, a black stallion, inexpertly drawn, rearing high and pawing the air. Behind the stallion, fantastic mountain peaks rose to a cobalt sky. Ennis looked at it. The proportions were a bit off, and it seemed that Marina had lavished undue attention on the horse’s eyes, which fixed the viewer with a disconcerting stare.

“Very nice,” he said. “You must have had lessons.”

She blushed. “Oh no. I just got a book at the Borders. I learned a lot from it. Look.”

She turned the page. Here was a large wolf. It was perched on the edge of a sofa, like a sphinx, again staring directly out of the page. Ennis studied the drawing; there was a lamp and archway in the background. He looked around, and saw that Marina had used this room as the setting, the same sofa they were sitting on now. She saw his recognition and smiled.

“I like animals,” she said. “I like wolves. See, I made him a friend of my cat.”

What had first appeared to be a round pillow next to the wolf was in fact a cat, evidently the same one that was now purring loudly and rubbing itself back and forth on Marina’s ankle. In the picture, it was curled against the wolf’s stomach and sleeping peacefully. Again, proportions in both animals were slightly off-kilter, the shading and perspective not quite convincing. It was amateurish, not the sort of work anyone would hang on their walls. But Ennis knew he would never tell her that.

“I like this one,” he said, hoping he sounded sincere. He gazed at it, telling himself that he really did like what it represented to him: a young girl who retained some creative impulse despite very difficult circumstances.

Marina turned the pages slowly, shyly remarking on each picture. She had dozens of them. Horses, wolves, and cats were a recurring theme. In the last one, the wolf was on the floor, resting its head between its paws, looking out of the picture. On one side was a potted plant, on the other an open window, an impossibly blue sky with puffy clouds drifting by. Ennis studied the picture, wanting desperately to like it. The girl deserved that much.

“I think this is my favorite,” he said.

“Thank you,” she murmured. After a silence she closed the sketchbook and packed it away.

Ennis looked at his watch. “Are you hungry? We could have dinner before we go to the train.”

“Here? I don’t have anything...”

“There’s a place a few blocks from here,” he said. “We can drive there. My treat.”

Marina went to the living room window and pulled back a drape. She inspected the street below.

“Well, there’s no one there now. And I have you to protect me.”

She smiled as she said it, teasing him. Ennis smiled back.

“Okay. Let’s chance it.”

Ennis took Marina’s bulging duffel bag, she took up a smaller suitcase, and over her shoulder she hung a small clutch purse festooned with little sequins. She looked around the apartment with some regret. Ennis realized it was the only time she’d ever had a place of her own.

“What about the cat?”

Marina closed her eyes, nodded. She scooped up the beast and carried it gently to the back door. Ennis could hear her murmuring, and then, after a long silence, the door closing. When she returned, her eyes were glistening.

Ennis touched her shoulder. “She’ll be all right,” she said. “I left her some food. Someone here will help her.”

It was fully dark when they emerged from the restaurant, and the cobblestone streets of Germantown Avenue were almost deserted. The rain had stopped.

They walked in silence toward the car.

“I am sorry about your friend,” Marina said. “I was nice to him, of course. That’s why they give me money.”

“Chuck will understand,” Ennis said.

“Well, he was different. Nice. He liked to talk about movies, books. He told me to read Anna Karenina. He was very pleased to learn I already had.”

“Chuck has read Anna Karenina?” Ennis was amazed by this. His friend was not easily stereotyped. “I had no idea.”

They were almost to the car. Ennis was wondering what he’d do when they got to the train station. Just say goodbye? Kiss her? On the cheek, maybe. Anything more would seem wrong, would be exploiting a girl easily young enough to be his daughter. Marina Petrova had been exploited by enough men in her short life. Deeper down, Ennis supposed he couldn’t discount the possibility of Marina exploiting him. She appealed to his vanity in the way only a beautiful young woman could, seemed to genuinely enjoy his company. But the cynic in him guessed that was a skill you could acquire if your livelihood depended on it. Well, fine. He decided that if he could keep her safe, it didn’t matter.

As they approached his rented Sentra, his reverie was interrupted by someone emerging from the car parked just behind his. It was a Nissan Maxima. The guy was stocky, powerfully built. He had something in his hand... Ennis tensed, stepped in front of Marina. “Run,” he said.

Marina gasped. “It’s Milo.”

The guy’s arm came up. He was pointing an enormous pistol that Ennis recognized ten feet away as a Desert Eagle, probably a .44 Magnum. Its long barrel gleamed lethally in the glare of the streetlight.

“Don’t run.” Milo said. The Russian accent was thick. “I’ll kill you both, right here. Get in the car.”

The Maxima smelled like tobacco and marijuana and something else — body odor, Ennis guessed. From the front seat, Milo kept the muzzle of the enormous pistol trained on Ennis’s face as his partner maneuvered the car through darkened side streets. They had turned north on Germantown Avenue, and then left toward Wissahickon Park. Marina sat next to him, her head down, dumbly clutching her small purse. The two men exchanged words in Russian and the gunman laughed. He leered at Marina, uttered some more Russian. She flinched but did not reply.

Milo laughed again, now looking at Ennis. “You want to use my whores, you have to pay me,” he said. “Too bad for you, the price tonight is very high. Especially for this one.”

Milo spoke some more Russian, leering at Marina. She looked at him, then replied. Just a few words, without inflection, but the Russian’s face contorted. He lunged over the seat, grabbing her hair and jerking her head forward. He slapped her hard in the face and brought his arm back for a second blow. Ennis grabbed the arm, tried to wrench it down. Milo roared and swung the Desert Eagle. It was a 4.5-pound gun and the long barrel caught Ennis on the side of the head. Stars exploded, then flashed again as he took another blow from Milo’s fist. Ennis tasted blood. The Russian was shouting Slavic oaths now. The driver was shouting, too, evidently trying to calm his companion.

When the shouting subsided, Milo was breathing heavily and displaying a grin of pure malice.

“Tough guy, tough American.” He spat. Ennis felt the gob strike the front of his all-purpose sport coat. He thought dimly that it was probably time to get it dry-cleaned.

The car turned left onto a darkened street. Ennis saw the sign: Dexter Street. It was a narrow cobblestone lane that ran along Wissahickon Park and dead-ended at the park entrance. From there a trail led down to the center of the park and Forbidden Drive, which was off-limits to cars. If you were looking for a remote place in Philadelphia at night, Ennis didn’t think you could beat this one.

Milo was watching them both. “You’re going to die, tough guy,” he said to Ennis. “First you, and then her. That’s what happens.”

Marina wiped at her bloody nose with her hand. She had the little purse on her lap and opened it. Milo thumbed the hammer back on the gun, but she didn’t look at him. She withdrew a Kleenex and began to sob.

This seemed to please Milo. The driver spoke again in Russian, a question. They had come to the trailhead parking lot. Milo looked around and nodded. The car came to a stop.

Well, this was it, Ennis thought. Milo would have to get out to open the door; he guessed his only hope now was to come out hard and somehow try to get the guy down. This seemed extremely unlikely, the stuff of bad movies, but there seemed nothing to lose by trying and everything to lose by not. Go along, and the best-case scenario was a bullet in the back of the head — or wherever Milo decided to put the first one. Ennis just hoped he could do some damage first, give the Philly cops a better chance to crack a double homicide.

Ennis didn’t know which was worse: the fear he felt, or his profound shame at letting this young girl think he could protect her. She had deserved a little better effort than this.

Marina wouldn’t look at him. She was sobbing, fumbling for more Kleenex in her little purse. Milo surveyed the parking lot, looked back at Ennis. Now his smile was gone, his eyes flat and cold.

“You first,” he said. He turned to open the car door. The dome light came on. Ennis took a deep breath and tensed for his doomed, last-ditch lunge. Marina’s hand came up, as though she meant to clean the blood from her face. But she was reaching forward. Ennis caught the metallic gleam and saw something white, but it was not a Kleenex.

There were two loud pops and Milo slumped away, into the half-open door. The driver shouted, snatched for his own gun inside his black leather jacket. Marina swung her arm toward him. She was holding a little purse pistol, maybe a .32. The white Ennis had glimpsed was its pearl grips. She fired two more shots just as the driver’s big Beretta cleared the front seat. The driver screamed and his gun went off, deafening Ennis and punching a hole in the roof.

The driver was still alive, struggling weakly for the door handle. Marina leaned forward, placed the gun barrel just above the man’s ear. She said something in Russian. And fired again.

Ennis stared at her, his ears ringing from the shots. She leaned over the front seat, past the Russian’s body. The backseat door locks popped up. They got out and stood in the darkness, the car between them. He thought he could hear her shaky breathing, and the sound of his own heart still thudding rapidly in his chest.

He couldn’t see her face in the darkness. Then he heard footsteps on the gravel and realized she was walking away.

“Where are you going?”

The footsteps paused.

“We have to get away from here. The police.”

Ennis hesitated. Two dead Russians, each shot in the back of the head. What the Daily News tomorrow would call an execution-style slaying. Certainly the Russians had meant to kill them both; certainly it was a case of self-defense, but at the moment he could think of no words to adequately explain that to Philadelphia police in a way that would help Marina Petrova.

“Let’s go this way,” he said. “Through the park. There’s a trail, it will take us back toward the apartment. Less chance of being seen.”

Wordlessly, she followed him into the darkness.

Ennis had used to run in the park, years ago. The narrow path from the parking lot was barely visible. It led down through dense trees and brush and opened at last on Wissahickon Creek, gleaming dimly under the faintly luminous urban sky. A stone footbridge arched over the creek. Ennis paused in the middle of it, held out his hand.

“Give me the gun.”

He took the little pistol from her and sailed it far out over the creek. After the splash, they stood quietly in the darkness.

“It belonged to Mrs. Voros,” Marina said at last. “I’m glad I thought to bring it.”

They stood looking at each other. Ennis found he had nothing to say.

The in-flight movie featured Adam Sandler. Ennis declined the five-dollar headset — and not solely because he loathed the actor. He was also pretty close to broke. At 30th Street Station in Philadelphia he had used his credit card to buy Marina a two-hundred-and-sixty-four-dollar Amtrak ticket to Columbia, South Carolina — a place they had chosen because it was far from Philly and Ennis knew a woman there, someone he’d known since high school and still corresponded with, who might be willing to help.

The train wasn’t boarding for hours, so he’d sat with Marina under the gaze of the Walker Hancock sculpture at the far entrance, the bronze angel solemnly bearing the fallen soldier upward through the shadows. He bought a book and tried to read it, but instead he watched her wander through the airy terminal, or play absently with her hair, or draw in her sketchbook. When it was time to board he had surprised himself by opening his wallet and handing her all the cash he was able to withdraw from the ATM: two hundred dollars.

She looked at the folded twenties, then slowly reached to accept them.

“Thank you,” she said. She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

Ennis was glad she hadn’t tried to refuse, hadn’t forced him to dismiss false reluctance with a false show of nonchalance — the truth was, four hundred and sixty-four dollars was a lot of money on a Montana deputy’s wages.

But he wanted her to have it. Maybe it would give her some options, keep her from having to earn it some other way, at least for a while. Maybe he wanted to prove to himself that a young woman with no friends or family didn’t have to trade her body for help.

He wasn’t sure what he’d tell Chuck, but he knew his friend would understand. Ennis had thought the guy a fool for sending cash to a woman he didn’t know. And here he was, handing over even more. He didn’t know much about Marina, either, he reflected — other than her real name, and that she had killed two men before his eyes, and that she liked to draw even if she wasn’t very good at it.

He groped in the carry-on bag at his feet, drew out the rolled-up drawing. She had given it to him at the train station. He unspooled it in his lap and studied it carefully, returning the wolf’s laconic gaze, almost smelling the flowers at its side, gazing past it out the open window Marina had drawn, where it seemed the sun was shining and the air was cool and clean. He saw that she had signed her name down in the right corner. Her real name, not her American one.

The woman next to him looked at the picture and smiled. “That’s very nice,” she said. “Did your daughter do it?”

“No,” he said. The woman waited for him to elaborate, but Ennis couldn’t think of what to add. She sniffed and returned to her paperback.

He regarded the drawing for a few minutes more. A wolf at a window. Amateurish, not really his cup of tea. But it was growing on him. Maybe he would hang it on his wall after all.