Nightlife: A Novel

33

Anne Forster heard the news on the radio at seven in the morning, when she had already driven halfway into New Mexico. She had the radio tuned to the strongest signal she could find, the Albuquerque morning drive-time program.

The woman who served as sidekick to the funny morning man read the story. “There’s a bizarre twist to the hunt for Tanya Starling, the woman wanted for questioning in multiple murders in several states. Last night in Flagstaff, Arizona, a sniper opened fire on a police detective from Portland, Oregon, who has been pursuing the case. Police say the sniper shot at Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes in the parking lot of her hotel. The sniper, in turn, was killed in an attempt to apprehend him, and remains unidentified. There is no word on the whereabouts of Tanya Starling.”

“I’m sorry, Ty,” she said quietly. The words sounded really good to her, with just a small break in her voice. She said it again, and it was even better. That bad-little-girl voice would have made Tyler’s knees buckle. The thought made her miss him for a moment.

She was irritated that the woman on the radio was trying to make everything sound like her fault. Was she supposed to feel guilty now that this Catherine Hobbes had killed a sixteen-year-old? Anne’s eyes passed across the items that Ty had left in the car when he had gone off with the rifle. He had left his baseball cap, some pocket change he’d been afraid would jingle, his jacket. She reached into the jacket with her right hand and found his cell phone.

She set it down and reached into her purse. She found the little notebook where she had written the phone numbers of Catherine Hobbes in Portland, Oregon. She dialed the home number and listened to the recorded invitation to leave a message.

“Hello, Catherine,” she said. “It’s me again. I’m thinking about you.” She was pleased with that. She had not practiced or even planned it, but it had sounded scary. “I just heard on the radio that you killed the boy. He saw the press conference where you and the fat cop said nothing would happen to him. I told him to trust you. But you killed him. That was a disgusting thing to do. Good-bye, Catherine. I’ll be thinking about you.”

She turned off the telephone and smiled: pretty good. If she had made the call any spookier, it would have seemed intentional. She left the telephone open and dropped it out the window, onto the pavement. This route—Interstate 40—was one of the busiest east-west roads in the country. In a few seconds one of the big fourteen-wheelers she had been passing for hours would come along and crush Ty’s phone to powder.

She put on Tyler’s baseball cap so the brim would help shade her eyes as she drove east, toward the rising sun. She glanced in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. She looked cute. Maybe she should wear hats more often.

When she reached Albuquerque, she watched the signs and took the turn at one that said I-25 North. She wasn’t sure where she was heading, but soon she began to see signs that listed cities, as though they were items on a menu: Santa Fe, Colorado Springs, Denver, Cheyenne. She would have to start avoiding little places, where people remembered everyone they had seen in their whole boring lives.

She called me again.” Catherine Hobbes stood in Lieutenant Hartnell’s office, still holding her cell phone in her hand.

Hartnell lifted his eyes from the file on his desk. “Tanya?”

“Yes. She called my house in Portland and left a message about a half hour ago.”

“Can I hear it?”

She lifted her cell phone, tapped the keys to replay her message, and handed it to him. He listened to it, then took a small tape recorder out of his desk drawer, turned it on, and hit the 1 key on Catherine’s phone to replay the message beside the microphone. Then he pressed the 2 to save it, and handed it back to her. “She seems to think that you ambushed him.”

“She seems to,” said Catherine. “The phone company says the call came from a cell phone, and the origin was Albuquerque. Here’s the number.” She handed it to him on a sheet from a desk message pad. “They say it belongs to Tyler Gilman, of Darling, Arizona.”

“That’s just down the road, outside of town,” he said. He stood up and went to the door, then beckoned to someone. When one of the detectives came in, he said, “I need you to find out what you can about a Tyler Gilman. The address is in Darling. I think he’s either another victim or he’s our sniper.” Hartnell turned and came back to his desk.

“Well,” said Catherine, “Thanks for letting me in on the investigation. I’d better be going now.”

“Going?”

“The call came from Albuquerque. I’ve got to see if I can get on a plane.”

“You know she definitely talked that boy into trying to kill you?”

“Think of it. She can talk somebody into that, and I can barely get my dates to open a door for me.”

He didn’t laugh. “If you know, then you ought to take some precautions.”

“I spend all my time with other cops.”

“Think about tomorrow or the next day,” said Hartnell. “She could do it again. Some man you never saw before could walk up and put a bullet in your head, just to win points with her.”

“Absolutely true,” said Catherine Hobbes. “It’s always been a crummy job.” She stepped to his desk, leaned across it to hold out her right hand. “Thanks for everything.”