The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Albert Tucher Bismarck Rules from Oregon Literary Review

“Hi,” Said Mary Alice. “I’m Crystal.”

The man in the doorway recognized the name. After more than ten years in the business, Mary Alice still welcomed the relief that followed. Once, early on, she had knocked on the wrong door. Getting away had taken some fast talking.

“I’m Steve. Come in.”

His living room was down the hall and to the right. She liked it when he invited her to sit. Some men didn’t. They stared at her and resented her for confronting them with their own needs.

She crossed her legs. As he enjoyed the view, she sized him up. He had the wiry build, weather-beaten features, and slightly graying hair of a man who could have been thirty or sixty.

So far he seemed okay.

“How can I help you?” she said.

“I want you to do something for me.”

A lot of men started slowly. She waited for more.

“Nothing illegal,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay. But it’s still my time, and it’s still two hundred dollars an hour for the first two, and a hundred after that. I’ve cleared my morning for you, so that’s six hundred and counting.”

“That’s fine. Can you drive a stick shift?”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

She hated to admit it. What kind of hooker knew less than the client?

“It means exactly what it sounds like,” he said. “I’m talking about driving my car.”

“Why do I need to drive your car?”

“Can you drive a stick? If you can’t, we’ll have to go in your car, and I don’t think you want to do that.”

He was right. She didn’t like clients seeing her license plates. If they knew what to do with the information, they could penetrate her private life.

“I can drive a stick. I learned on a stick.”

“Good. Then you can drive me to the doctor.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “You just came up with something I haven’t done before.”

He smiled.

“You could explain,” she said. “If you wanted to, that is.”

“I just turned fifty. Today I have to go for my first colonoscopy.” He seemed to think that explained everything. It didn’t.

“They say I can’t drive myself. I have to bring somebody to take me home. They won’t even let me call a taxi.”

She still didn’t get it, and she could tell that her failure was starting to annoy him.

“I’m divorced. Five years now. I don’t date. No wife, no girlfriend. My sister lives in Chicago, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me, anyway. My parents are alive, and they’re stuck with me. But that would be just too pathetic. Fifty years old, and my mommy and daddy have to drive me? Come on.”

Mary Alice understood. This job was still hooking. He had no woman in his life, and he needed one.

“When I come out, I want to have a nice-looking woman waiting just for me. Of course, I didn’t realize I was going to get this lucky. I love your kind of coloring.”

He didn’t know it, but he had scored with that comment. Mary Alice had grown up among Scandinavian blondes, and her dark hair and olive skin had always made her feel like an imposter.

He smiled so charmingly that she decided to do the whole job, even if he hadn’t mentioned it.

“I’m not sure what the prep for that procedure is,” she said. “Did they say anything about sex? I mean, are you feeling up to it?”

His surprise made her wonder, but she decided to let it go. She stood. He got up and led the way down the hall.

Steve kept his bedroom spare and tidy, and it made her feel inadequate. Mary Alice seldom made her own bed.

She went through the motions. They were good enough for most men, but not for her. Sex always reminded Mary Alice of a television left on in a neighbor’s apartment. She couldn’t enjoy the program, and she couldn’t turn it off.

When Steve had finished, he rolled off her and lay on his back with his eyes closed. Mary Alice looked around. Something was missing from this room that the living room had also lacked.

No photos, she thought.

Steve opened his eyes.

“Photos are just another thing they can take away from you,” he said.

“Not my business. Sorry. I was thinking out loud.”

“Plus, I had to pose for my share of them. When they don’t give you a choice, it’s no fun.”

She left that one alone.

“That felt vaguely familiar,” said Steve. “Just now.”

Mary Alice wondered whether she had been insulted.

“It’s just about eleven years since the last time.”

“Wait a minute. You’re divorced for five. What happened to the rest?”

“I wasn’t available.”

It was starting to add up in a way that meant she would have to protect herself.

While he showered, she stood at the sink and freshened herself with a clean washcloth that he had laid out for her. As she watched him dry off, she thought about his way of standing as if he hoped to deflect attention.

In the car she depressed the clutch with her foot and turned the key in the ignition. The hand-foot coordination came back effortlessly. Nothing distracted her from thinking some more.

“Okay,” she said. “You were in prison — for quite a while, is my impression.”

“That was the eleven years.”

“I don’t care, except that going to prison is expensive. Lawyers, then you can’t earn much while you’re inside. I’ll have to see some money.”

She should have handled business up front. Something about him had thrown her off from the first moment.

Steve took an envelope from the left side pocket of his sport coat. He lifted the unsealed flap and let her glance at the bills inside. The top one was a hundred. She would check the rest at the first discreet opportunity.

“Thank you.” She reached across her body and took the money with her left hand. “I’m sorry, but I have to protect myself. Collection agencies won’t touch my problem accounts, if you know what I mean.”

She tucked the envelope into the side pocket of her suit coat.

“Money’s not a problem,” he said. “Even after the civil suit. I have royalties from some patents.”

“Civil suit. For what?”

“Let’s not go into it.”

Mary Alice wondered whether to turn the car around and go back. The bad feeling was getting worse, and she didn’t know why. She had been with ex-convicts before. There must be something more.

Her indecision pulled the words out of him.

“Let’s just say I was convicted of something. The State of New Jersey says I was guilty. I say I wasn’t.”

“I hear you,” she said, for something to say.

“I’m not sure you do. People have a tendency to stop listening.”

Mary Alice signaled right and steered to the curb. She stopped the car and sat staring straight ahead. Steve looked at her for a long moment and nodded.

“Keep the money. It spends.”

He took a tiny cell phone from his other front pocket and began to punch in numbers.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Canceling the appointment.”

“I’m definitely keeping the money. But that means I’m going to earn it.”

She checked her left mirror and pulled back into the traffic.

They left Lakeview, where Steve lived, and made their way into Witherspoon Township. The proctologist had his office in a small two-story professional building. She had passed it hundreds of times without noticing. The lot was half-empty, and she found a space right by the patients’ entrance.

Inside, Steve led the way to the desk, where the receptionist greeted him.

“Mr. Golisard. We’re running a little behind. You have someone with you?”

“My girlfriend.”

“You understand you have to stay here the whole time?” said the receptionist to Mary Alice. “No shopping.”

She smiled to soften the order. Mary Alice nodded. She joined Steve, who had already taken a seat on one of the long couches. Her shoulder touched his, which was just right for the relationship they supposedly had.

But something in the room felt wrong. She looked around the waiting room, until her eyes found a man on the other couch diagonally across the room. He was in his hard-used forties, and he wore a dark gray suit that was beautifully cut, but old. With both hands he gripped the handle of a battered briefcase that rested in his lap. He glared at Steve, who seemed not to notice. Mary Alice found it hard to ignore the man.

It was a relief when the receptionist called Steve into the consulting room. Mary Alice stood up with him. She kissed him and stroked his cheek.

“I’ll be here.”

When she took her seat again, she noticed that the man had transferred his glare to her.

“Stephen Golisard.”

He made the name an accusation.

Mary Alice raised her eyebrows at him.

“I said, Stephen Golisard.”

“I heard you.”

“Your boyfriend. Do you know what he’s really like? What kind of man he really is?”

Mary Alice broke eye contact and reached for the current Time in the magazine rack. She flipped some pages but found nothing new.

A few minutes later another couple came into the waiting room. They looked about fifty, but the woman could have been a defeated thirty-eight. They checked in with the receptionist and looked for seats

“Mr. Pilarczyk?” said the receptionist.

The new couple had just sat down. As the woman stood, she turned in a full circle, as if she had no idea where to go. When she faced the window over the parking lot, the outdoor light made her seem defenseless. The woman froze for a moment before turning back to the waiting room.

Mr. Pilarczyk didn’t move until he saw his wife get up.

Mary Alice realized that the man must be hard of hearing. She loved the moments that told her things about the people around her. Magazines couldn’t compete.

The receptionist led the couple toward the consulting offices, which seemed to enrage the man with the briefcase. When she came back, he was ready for her.

“I don’t appreciate being treated like this. I have an appointment. I’m prepared to pay for the doctor’s time, although I don’t see why I should. I’m offering to make him a lot of money.”

“Doctor Roenn has told you he’s not interested in investing in your idea. You made the appointment under false pretenses. You don’t need a professional consultation, so you’re not entitled to any of the doctor’s time. Now excuse me, please.”

For a moment the man looked as if he would hit the receptionist, who stopped herself in mid-flinch and glared back at him.

“I won’t forget this,” he said.

He turned sharply around and headed for the door, but as he passed the coffee table, he reached into the right side pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a handful of business cards. He dropped the pile of cards onto the table. When he saw Mary Alice watching him, he produced an effortful smile.

“I never let an opportunity go by. You might tell your boyfriend that.”

He marched out of the office. The door banged shut behind him.

Mary Alice couldn’t resist. She leaned forward and picked up one of the business cards. The man’s name was Harold Mohn, and his card proclaimed him an inventor. She put the card in the right pocket of her suit coat.

There was no one else to entertain her. For a while Mary Alice stood at the window and counted cars in the parking lot. The receptionist had to call her twice.

“Mr. Golisard is ready to go.”

In the examination room Steve had dressed, but he looked woozy. With the nurse’s help he stood up and crossed the room to Mary Alice, he put his arm around her shoulders, and his hand bore down heavily.

They left the office and made their way to the parking lot and the car. She helped him climb into the passenger seat and get settled. On the way home she decided to make conversation.

“There was a little excitement in the waiting room.”

She told him about Harold Mohn.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Steve. “Mohn. He never gives up.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him. We’ve never met. I’m not surprised I sat six feet away and didn’t recognize him.”

“You’re not his favorite person.”

“Losers like him always find somebody else to blame.”

“How do you mean?”

“While I was in prison, he came out of nowhere and tried to take advantage of my... indisposition. Sued me for infringing some patents he holds. Total bullshit, but it happens all the time. Somebody takes a shot at you just to see what he can get.”

“I had the impression he really believes you did something to him.”

“Maybe he’s convinced himself.”

They waited silently at a red light. As Mary Alice started up on the green, Steve said, “I like you. I hope you believe me.”

His voice had a different tone, one that she had heard before. It belonged to a client who had decided he was in love. Other women in her business exploited the situation or dumped the client, but Mary Alice had a weakness for men who fell for her, the more flamboyantly the better.

It was a problem. In her line of work she needed to stay uninvolved. She wished she knew how to fix the problem.

“Believe that you didn’t do it?”

She heard her own voice soften to match his, and she scolded herself. That didn’t mean she would stop what she was doing.

“That I’m not guilty.”

The distinction seemed to matter to him, and she wondered why.

“The girl was a sexy little piece of work. She knew what she was doing. Nobody can say she didn’t.”

His pain medication must have destroyed his inhibitions. Mary Alice realized it later. But at that moment her insides lurched, and her throat clenched against the urge to vomit.

She welcomed the turmoil. It kept her too busy to look at him.

He didn’t seem to notice the admission he had just made, or her silence. She kept driving. When they stopped in front of his house, Mary Alice wondered how she had remembered the route, and how many pedestrians she had hit. She turned the engine off and sat in the driver’s seat, until she remembered that it wasn’t her car. She would have to get out. Somehow she did. She didn’t know how she had allowed him to touch her, but he was hanging on to her shoulder again as they approached his front door. He handed her his keys, and she opened the door. She gave the keys back to him and left him without a word. He called something after her, but she didn’t answer. Some instinct made her turn left onto the sidewalk. After a while, maybe a few minutes, maybe hours, she found herself at her own car.

It was a bad idea to drive in her mental state, but she had no choice. If she waited until she was more in command, she might still be there the next day. She put the car in gear and lurched away from the curb without a glance in any direction.

Luck stayed with her all the way to her home, an apartment over the only pharmacy left in downtown Driscoll. She even found a parking space near her entrance at the side of the building. Normally she would have parked somewhere else for security, but on this day any distance would have felt like a death march.

She had started her day hours earlier than usual, and she hadn’t tried to eat breakfast. In her refrigerator was a leftover portion of Chinese takeout that she had put aside to reward herself at lunchtime. Now she couldn’t consider eating. Instead, Mary Alice went straight to the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet. Her body had needs. Immediately she began to retch. Nothing came up but a few tablespoons of bile. That didn’t stop her from heaving for several more minutes.

She had known she would vomit, and she knew what would come next. One at a time she moved her hands from the edges of the toilet bowl to the floor. She let herself sink until she lay curled up on her side on the bathroom tiles. As if it were happening now instead of twenty-five years earlier, she heard the hinges of her bedroom door squeaking. She was fifteen, and it had been going on for over a year, since her mother’s death. Mary Alice heard Daddy’s loud, wet breathing and felt his hands as they ran over her body, first on top of her nightgown, then underneath it. She smelled sweat, liquor, and cigarette smoke. His hand found her vagina. She always hated herself for lubricating, because it made her feel responsible for what came next.

She had read recently that women are hardwired to lubricate even under duress, but the knowledge had come too late.

Daddy came to her room many times, but this was the occasion she remembered. This was the night she decided to kill him when she got the chance.

Her mind took her to that frigid night a few weeks after she had turned eighteen. Her father lay unconscious where he had fallen, just short of the front steps. Mary Alice opened his coat and packed snow against his chest. When the snow melted, she packed more in. Each time it lasted longer, as he lost the battle against the prairie winter. She sat on the steps and watched. It seemed important to note his last breath, but at some point she realized that she had missed it.

When she had finished remembering, Mary Alice gathered herself up from the bathroom floor and studied herself in the mirror. Nothing in her reflection showed that this had been her worst day in years. That was good, because she had a lot to do. First she brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth. Then she went to her bedroom and opened the closet door. In a shoebox on the shelf was a .32-caliber revolver and a box of cartridges. She popped the cylinder open and inserted six rounds.

Her father had taught her to shoot. He had never seemed to realize that a bullet could come looking for him.

She closed the cylinder and put the gun into her suit-coat pocket with Harold Mohn’s card and her keys.

That reminded her. She pulled Steve’s money out of her other pocket and stowed it in a dresser drawer.

Mary Alice walked down the stairs and out the side door of the building. She got into her car and drove back to Lakeview, where she parked in front of Steve Golisard’s house. The midafternoon silence of the neighborhood made her believe that no one would see her.

Or maybe she didn’t care if she was seen.

The gun was small but surprisingly heavy. It dragged her right hand downward as she approached the house. She reached out with her left hand, but she stopped it in midair, just short of the doorknob. After a moment she understood that she was reluctant to break in. She had come planning to kill the man in this house, but now she felt squeamish about damaging his property.

She would laugh about it another time.

But when she pulled the screen door open, she saw that someone had prepared the way for her. The inner door stood slightly open. Mary Alice pushed it farther.

Even as she looked, she pondered her indifference to what she saw. It was gruesome enough for anyone’s taste, but it didn’t bother her at all. Just far enough inside the house to avoid blocking the door, Steve lay dead on the floor. Blood told the story. Someone had shot him at least once in the chest and again through his open mouth, as he gasped or screamed or pleaded for his life. His face showed no damage, but a halo of blood had spread around him on the floor. Whoever turned him over would see a large exit wound in the back of his head.

That’s that, Mary Alice thought.

With the gun still in her hand, she walked back to her car. She had to exchange the gun for her keys in her coat pocket. She drove carefully home and climbed the familiar stairs again. She sat on her aging sofa and waited.

The police would come. She had been arrested and fingerprinted early in her career, and she remembered touching the fixtures in Steve’s bathroom. Her experienced eye had told her that a good cleaning service came in regularly. Her prints and his would be the only ones there.

Unless she got lucky, and the killer had been careless.

She thought about her gun. Should she dump it somewhere, or should she let the police find it and work their magic to eliminate it as the murder weapon?

It’s too complicated, she thought. Just get rid of it.

But the task would have to wait. The day had caught up to her and made her feel too heavy to move. The thought of getting up made her want to be sick again.

As if she had anything to vomit. At this rate she would never eat again.

At some point she realized that the room had become dark. It was time to do something. She rolled off the sofa and crawled to her bedroom. The last thing she did before climbing onto the bed was to strip off her suit coat and throw it toward the corner of the room. The gun in the pocket thudded on the carpeted floor.

When Mary Alice awoke, the bedside clock read five in the morning. She had the feeling that she had just missed something. The doorbell rang again. The infuriating sound pried her out of bed.

She looked down and saw that she still hadn’t managed to change her clothes from the day before. If her morning breath bothered the cops, that was their problem.

Who else could it be but the police?

She trudged down the stairs and opened the door. Detective Eckert of the Lakeview police looked back at her. Eckert was very cute, but with her he was all cop and all business. He had another plainclothes cop with him, the kind of middle-aged man whose own wife can’t remember what he looks like.

“This is Detective Rostow from Driscoll,” said Eckert. “Can we talk to you?”

Mary Alice knew how to translate his words. He meant, “Let us in, or you’re out of business.” She turned and started to climb back up the stairs. That was all the invitation she felt like giving them. They followed.

She opened the apartment door and held it open for one of them to catch. They joined her in her small living room. She pointed to her sofa and waited for them to sit. She took the armchair, which was angled toward the two detectives.

“Stephen Golisard,” said Eckert.

It was the same thing Harold Mohn had said, and it confused her for a moment.

“You know him?”

“Yes.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday.”

She saw no point in making them work for the information. The more effort they put into getting it, the more they would want to read into it.

“What time?”

“I got to his house before nine in the morning. Heft him between twelve-thirty and one.”

“And you stayed in the whole time?”

“I didn’t say that. Let me ask you something.”

She knew Eckert wouldn’t be pleased, but she didn’t care.

“Did you find an appointment book?”

Eckert didn’t answer. He had a good poker face, but she still thought the answer was no.

“I drove him to the doctor’s office. His proctologist.”

Eckert blinked. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but she enjoyed it. “He’s a friend of yours?”

“No, he’s a client.”

She had almost said, “Was.”

This is fun, she thought. And dangerous.

She told him Steve’s reasons for hiring her.

“So you were just the world’s most expensive car service? No sex?”

“I figured he had bought a quickie.”

“How did that go?”

“What is wrong with you today?”

“Your client has a history. A sexual history. Makes me wonder if he could perform.”

Of course they knew about Steve. She shrugged.

“He managed. He seemed to like it. I’d hate to think neither of us did.”

“What happened to the condoms?”

“One condom. I heard him flush.”

Mary Alice wondered when she should lose patience and demand to know why the cops cared about Stephen Golisard. She decided that sooner was better.

“What’s this about? You finally decided to shut me down?”

“No, you’ve got bigger problems than hooking. You say he was alive at twelve-thirty. Very soon after that he was dead. Shot. We have you at the scene. So far, we don’t have anyone else.”

He looked at her expectantly. She shrugged and looked back. “So what was it?” he said. “Some kind of argument? Did he say something? Do something?”

This time she didn’t bother to shrug.

“You don’t like your work,” he said.

“Not particularly.”

“Or sex in general?”

“It doesn’t do much for me.”

“Ever wonder what you’re missing?”

“Only about a million times.”

“There’s therapy for that.”

“Where I come from, we don’t do therapy. If something bothers us, we think about something else.”

“Where’s that?”

“Bismarck, North Dakota. Is that illegal?”

“Shooting him is. Which is why I’m thinking you might not want to play this by Bismarck rules. Your state of mind could make a big difference.”

“And I’m thinking you’re a really bad social worker.”

“Okay. We don’t know why you did it. Let’s go on to the how. Would you consent to a search of this apartment?”

She didn’t have to think. She was still a hooker without rights. She looked defiantly at Detective Rostow, who was already holding out a form for her to sign. She accepted his pen and scrawled her name. Rostow took out his cell phone and made a brief call. Mary Alice and the two detectives sat without speaking or looking at each other, until the doorbell rang. Cops had a way of making the bell sound different. Rostow went down to answer it.

He came back with two uniformed officers, who joined in the search. It was the younger, cuter uniform who came out of the bedroom carrying her suit coat with the gun in the pocket. He seemed proud of himself. Eckert looked at the gun. He covered his disappointment well, but she saw it.

“Any other guns here?”

“That’s it.”

“I don’t suppose you have a permit.”

“No.”

“We’ll take this with us.”

“You don’t look very happy about it. I guess it’s the wrong caliber?”

He said nothing, which was as good as saying yes.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” she said, “would you care to hear about somebody else who might have done it?”

Eckert gave her a sharp glance.

“Who would that be?”

She told him about Harold Mohn and about Mohn’s card in her pocket. Eckert held out his hand for the coat, which the young officer handed to him.

“And you didn’t mention this before because?”

“Because you were taking things one step at a time. Step one being me. I know better than to tell cops something they don’t want to hear.”

He glared at her. When it didn’t seem to make him feel any better, he dropped the suit coat on the sofa and turned to leave. The other cops went ahead of him. At the door he stopped and turned back to her.

“How does anybody get from Bismarck to Driscoll, New Jersey?”

“My ex was in the air force out there. I came back with him. It didn’t work out.”

“No kidding.”

He stared at her for a while.

“We’ll find that other gun. Count on it. And when we do, we won’t owe you a thing.”

He left the apartment, and his footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Mary Alice went around the apartment picking up what the cops had thrown around. She didn’t need help making a mess of her home.

The day got worse. She had a regular lunch-hour client to see, one of the men she could do without. If the cops had to make her a suspect, couldn’t they at least give her an excuse to miss this weekly appointment? The man was one of those who liked to be spanked and verbally abused.

When she got back from the date, Eckert and Rostow were waiting for her in their car. Again they followed her up the stairs.

“I just got off the phone,” said Eckert when he and Rostow had seated themselves.

Mary Alice waited.

“I was talking to an old friend of yours.”

“I don’t have any old friends. I made a clean break when I came here.”

“Somebody remembers you. John Stettinius. He said to tell you Johnny says hello.”

“I doubt it.”

“Good call. What he actually said was, is she in jail yet? When I asked him why he would think that, he told me about your father.”

Mary Alice felt cold, which was strange on a warm day in May.

“He says it always bothered him that your father’s death went down as an accident. He never believed it, but he couldn’t prove anything. Your father had a broken leg, and his blood alcohol was high enough to stun a horse. He could have fallen and frozen to death on his own, but Detective Stettinius thinks he had help. From you.”

She had to try twice to make her voice work.

“And why would he think that?”

“Timing, for one thing. A little earlier, and you’d have been a minor. You would have lost your brothers to foster care. As it was, they stayed with you. Then there were the rumors about your relationship with your father.”

Relationship. It sounded as if her father had asked her out on a date, and she had said, “I’ll have to ask my... oh, hey, no problem.”

Mary Alice wanted to get her fingernails into Eckert’s eyes. Instead she clenched her fists.

Eckert showed her his palms in a placating gesture.

“The way I see it, you couldn’t possibly consent to something like that. I wouldn’t call it your fault. And then when you found out about Stephen Golisard’s history, well, I wouldn’t expect you to swallow that. How did you find out about him?”

Mary Alice bit down until her back teeth threatened to break.

“What about Harold Mohn?” she asked, when she trusted herself to speak.

“Alibi. He went back to the doctor’s office to make another scene. The cops were taking him out of there while Golisard was getting shot.” Eckert grinned. “Tell you the truth, the uniforms said they didn’t have much to do. The receptionist was handling her business just fine.

“The thing is, people remember you being very affectionate with Golisard in the office. To me that suggests you found out sometime later, maybe on the ride home. Or maybe even later than that.”

Eckert’s eyes focused on something. Mary Alice followed his gaze to her computer on the desk in the corner of the living room. He saw her looking, and annoyance at being caught crossed his face.

He had some kind of idea.

Eckert looked at Rostow. The two cops got up and left without another word to her.

Mary Alice knew what to do next. She picked up the phone and speed-dialed a number.

Her friend Diana listened without interrupting, as Mary Alice had known she would. Diana also didn’t accuse Mary Alice of doing anything stupid. Diana knew from her own experience that trouble can come looking for a hooker.

“I think I know what’s on his mind,” Diana said. “But we can’t use your computer. We don’t want to leave a trail. Meet me at the library.”

It was twilight when they met at the public library. Diana greeted the librarian and asked for one of the public-access computers.

“Step right up,” said the librarian, a woman about Diana’s age — early thirties. “Two machines, no waiting.”

Diana called up Google and typed in “Megan’s law registry.” The first hit was the State of New Jersey’s official list of released sex offenders. She clicked on “geographic search” and then Sussex County. There weren’t many entries, and Steve’s came up in moments. There was his mug shot, the date and particulars of his crime, and the make, model, and license plate of his car. The site stated ominously that offenders’ home addresses might be added once the courts permitted.

Mary Alice thought she knew what had happened, and with the knowledge came a plan.

“What?” said Diana. Her smile said that she saw Mary Alice’s mind working.

“Maybe later. It’s probably better if you don’t know.”

“I’m here.”

“I know,” said Mary Alice.

When Diana had gone, Mary Alice made some notes from the website. Then she went low-tech and checked a name in the telephone book. She thanked the librarian and left. On the sidewalk she stopped and thought. It was time to stop using her cell phone for a while. The police might become interested in her calls. To her left were two pay phones, but they looked too exposed. She drove a mile down the road out of town, where she remembered another pay phone at the Shell station. The two young pump jockeys eyed her until she glared them into submission. She dropped coins into the phone and dialed.

Her client Gaylord answered. His nasal voice with its slightly wet consonants summoned a vivid picture of him to her mind — short and thin, with dark hair as manageable as a wire brush. He was a reporter who wrote for the Newark Star-Ledger, several small weeklies, and any magazine that bought serious stories on local corruption.

“Hi, sweetie, it’s Crystal.”

“Can’t now.”

He sounded surly. He usually did when he was in the middle of a story. When he had finished with his obsession of the moment, he became as friendly as a puppy, and he couldn’t understand why other people hadn’t forgotten his rudeness.

Mary Alice forgot things like that for a living.

“I need a favor,” she said.

That got his attention. She had never asked him for anything except her money.

“What?”

“I’m guessing that you can find out more about sex offenders than they put in the Megan’s law registry.”

“That’s big trouble,” he said. “Contempt of court, maybe worse.”

“But if anybody could, you could, am I right?”

“Maybe I could find some things out, but why do you want to know?”

“Sweetie, you’re going to have to trust me on this. I really need to know. Nobody’s going to get hurt. I can promise you that.”

She hoped she was right.

“What do you need to know?”

“Addresses for the local ones.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You’re paid up for three months if you do this for me.”

“A year. And it can only be one name. And there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s your real name?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I just do,” he said. “I want to know everything about you.”

Mary Alice cursed silently. Here was one client she had managed to keep at a businesslike distance, and now he wanted to get closer.

“Come on,” he said. “You know I could find out if I wanted to.”

“That’s coming pretty close to a threat. Not a smart move if you want to keep seeing me.”

“I said I could, not that I would. I want to know your name, but I want it to come from you.”

Mary Alice felt the resignation that came with making a mistake and knowing it. It struck her that she had a lot of experience with that feeling.

“Okay,” she said. “One name, but it has to be the right one. It has to be one with a car. An older car.”

He listened.

“And it’s Mary Alice.”

“They probably all have older cars. They can’t get much in the way of jobs when they get out. I’ll get back to you about it. . Mary Alice.”

“You know my pager.”

She hoped the message was clear. He had her first name, but he wasn’t getting her home phone number or anything else.

Mary Alice had driven home and was halfway up the stairs to her apartment when her pager beeped. She turned and went back down to the street. She walked for a good fifteen minutes, passing several pay phones before deciding on one that seemed remote enough.

“Hi, Gaylord, what have you got?”

“Peter Glebb.” He spelled the name and gave her an address right in Driscoll.

Mary Alice rummaged in her bag for the notes she had made at the library. She read off the license plate to Gaylord, who verified it.

“It’s a 1985 Chevy Caprice Classic.”

That should work, she thought.

“He’s got a busboy job at an Italian place in Morristown,” said Gaylord, “but that should be the only time he’s not home. He’s still under supervision.”

Mary Alice knew the restaurant. It served dinner only, which meant that Glebb should work from midafternoon until sometime after midnight. She decided to do what she needed to do at his home rather than his job.

She went home to wait. It was hard to do. She stared at her current romance novel for a while, and then at the television screen. She saw nothing. Twice she opened the refrigerator and verified that her Chinese takeout was still there. Maybe someday she would eat it.

Mostly, she sat in the dark.

At three in the morning she drove to the address Gaylord had given her. Peter Glebb seemed to have a basement apartment in a dilapidated two-story house. The location was perfect — on a side street for privacy, but close enough to Main Street for traffic noise. No lights showed in the apartment. She hoped that Glebb had gone to bed after a tiring night’s work.

For a couple of years after killing her father, Mary Alice had looked for ways to punish herself. She had avoided drugs, because the state would have taken her brothers after all she had endured to keep the family together. Instead she drank, and took up with a succession of dangerous boyfriends. From one of them she had learned to steal cars.

She knew now that she had been lucky. The state would also have frowned on a conviction for auto theft, but the police had never caught her.

Mary Alice had no idea whether her skills applied to new cars, which was why she had asked Gaylord for an older model.

Her fingers remembered what to do with an old Chevy. In seconds she had opened the driver’s door, and in a minute she had the engine running. She pulled away from the curb and looked both ways before turning left onto Main Street. Three blocks later she signaled a right turn up the hill.

The house was one of the Victorians on the north side of town. She passed the mailbox with the correct address on it, stopped, and backed into the driveway. It occurred to her that she had to get out and check something. Leaving the car running, she walked around and verified that the light over the rear license plate worked. She climbed the front steps, crossed the front porch, and rang the doorbell for a count of ten.

Only one person in the house would hear. The other occupant was deaf or close to it.

Back in the car, Mary Alice sat in the driver’s seat and counted off three minutes on her luminescent watch. They seemed to take three hours.

She put the car in gear and drove slowly away. Somehow she knew she had been seen.

A block from the house she came to a stop sign. Mary Alice braked and waited until she saw the headlights behind her. She led the other car to a small neighborhood playground.

In the parking area Mary Alice rolled her window down and shut the engine off. Trees shielded her from the few street lights. The darkness was so intense that she felt it on her face. Footsteps sounded softly to her left. She reached up and switched on the car’s courtesy light.

“Hello, Mrs. Pilarczyk.”

Mary Alice heard a sigh.

“Call me Mavis, I guess. I know you, but I can’t quite come up with it.”

“I’m not Peter Glebb.”

“You don’t say. Wait a minute. You were with that other one at the doctor’s office. You’re his girlfriend.”

Mary Alice turned her head and looked. The woman’s hand trembled even more than her voice. That was a problem, because the hand held a gun.

“I’m not his girlfriend. He had to hire me to pretend.”

“So you’re what, an escort?”

“Close enough.”

“How did you know?”

It was time for the confrontation, but now Mary Alice tried to remember why she had worked so hard to make it happen. Who cared that Mavis had looked through the proctologist’s window and seen Steve’s car? Who cared that she had memorized the Megan’s law registry and knew Steve’s license plate, and Peter Glebb’s? Who cared that Mavis had exploited the commotion around Harold Mohn to steal Steve’s address from his medical file?

Mary Alice said nothing.

“Okay,” said Mavis, “I killed Golisard. Why do you care?”

“I don’t, really. But the cops think I killed him. And they’d have been right if you hadn’t beaten me to it.”

“Why did you want to kill him?”

“Probably for the same reason as you. Who was it, your father?”

“Don’t you dare,” said Mavis. Her hand started trembling again. “He was a good father.”

“So was mine. To my brothers, anyway.”

“Sorry,” said Mavis in a calmer tone. “I have trouble with this.”

She laughed.

“I know, ‘No kidding,’ It’s weird, but this whole thing just came up recently.”

She waited for some kind of encouragement, but Mary Alice didn’t feel like giving it.

“I was on a jury. Not a child abuse case, but the creep on trial was making his daughter give him an alibi. I looked at him, and I looked at her, and I knew what was up with them. And I looked at that young girl, and I said, wait a minute. She’s a kid, but I’m not. It’s about time I took some responsibility.”

Again she paused.

“Look at me. Would you say I spend a lot of time pushing people around? But you should have seen me. I wouldn’t let up until we all voted guilty. They were afraid of me, the other jurors. It was fun. I could definitely get used to it.”

Mavis closed one eye and sighted the gun at Mary Alice’s forehead.

“Well, isn’t this awkward? I don’t have anything against you, far from it. But you’re in my way. From now on, nobody gets in my way. Tell me, what would you do?”

Mary Alice looked at the gun inches from her face. She refocused on the other woman. The gun went strangely with Mavis’s bathrobe and slippers.

“I would probably shoot me.”

“Don’t you care?”

“No,” said Mary Alice, “not really.”

That’s interesting, she thought. How come I didn’t know that until this moment?

“Good luck,” she said. “I hope you get them all, before the cops figure it out. I have to doubt it, though. Things don’t work out like that.”

The scene would have held as much drama as commuters waiting for a train, except that commuters get dressed first, and they don’t usually wait with guns. Mary Alice watched the muzzle and the finger on the trigger. It annoyed her, but she knew she was about to flinch. Her face didn’t want to get shot, even if she didn’t care.

Mavis dropped her gun hand to her side.

“I can’t do it.”

She seemed surprised.

“I guess you’d better run along. Tell the cops I’ll be waiting.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Is that the best you can do? I gave you what you wanted, didn’t I?”

Mary Alice almost laughed. Who could give her what she wanted? What could that be?

But Mavis was waiting, and none of this was her fault.

“I guess.”