The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

Twenty-five

He left the house, drove into town, caught Sheriff Radburn in his office. “Nothing,” he reported. “If there’s a boyfriend, he must be living in her attic. I leave her alone most of the time, but whenever I track her there’s nothing doing. She goes shopping, she gets her hair done, she goes to work, she goes home. I’m wasting my time and the county’s money.”

“But not too much of either, I don’t suppose.”

“No, and some of it I won’t bill for. I got on her tail the other day and she led me to a mall way the hell south of town. There was a movie house at one end of it, and that’s where she went.”

“So you turned around and came home?”

“No, I watched the movie, and I’m not planning to bill the county for my ticket.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

“There’s something else you should know,” he said. “I dropped in on George Otterbein a few days ago. I wanted a look at him, so I turned up at his office with some story about a missing heir with the same name.”

“Oh?”

“He poured me a drink and listened to what I had to say, and it didn’t lead anywhere because there was nowhere for it to lead. And then a few days later he called me and hired me.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “To check on his wife,” he said.

“No, he never even mentioned her. What he wanted was for me to run some background checks on some of his tenants. I like to call it legwork, but the fingers get more exercise than the legs.”

“How’s that?”

He mimed typing. “They do the walking,” he said, “through the internet. The point is, if I’m working for him—”

“You shouldn’t be investigating his wife.”

“I’m not sure of the ethics of it,” he said, “but it’s not as though I was getting anywhere.”

“No, Doak, and I’m beginning to agree with you that there’s nowhere to get. I think she was serious enough when she told Gonson to set her up with a hit man, and I think something scared her off. It’s beginning to look like she’s staying scared.”

“Or just realized murder’s a bigger step than she’s prepared to take.”

“Or that,” Radburn said. “Oh, if George turns up with a couple of bullets in him, she’s the first person I’ll want to talk to. Think it’ll happen?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. Meantime, at least you got yourself a client.”

He drove from Radburn’s office to Stapleton Terrace and parked where he could keep an eye on the house. There was a single car parked out in front, a Korean compact that he recognized as Ashley Hannon’s.

Go and get yourself pregnant, he thought, and Georgie Boy’ll spring for a Lexus.

He checked his watch. Just past ten-thirty, and maybe she was a lady of leisure, maybe she never rolled out of bed before noon. Or maybe she was out jogging. She was young and fit, and people were crazy enough to do that sort of thing, even in Florida with summer coming on.

No, there she was, walking out her front door, dressed like those Eastern European girls who’d bored him senseless playing tennis on TV. The same blonde hair, but hers was curly. A short white skirt, a white top. No headband, and no tennis racquet, either, just a canvas tote bag over her shoulder and a set of keys in her hand, and she triggered the remote to unlock the car door, got in it and drove off.

George had given him a key, but not without getting an explanation first. Two of them, in fact, because the first one Doak floated got shot down.

“No tapes,” he said. “You think I want to be on any damn tape recording?”

“It’s the best way to be sure she’s not seeing anyone,” he said, “but I can understand that privacy’s a legitimate concern. I’ll still need access, though. I assume she has a computer.”

Well, of course she did. Who didn’t nowadays?

“If she’s like most people,” he said, “her whole life’ll be on it, just waiting to be downloaded. I’ll be in and out of there in no time at all, and then you can have your key back.”

Right.

He gave her time now to remember what she’d forgotten and come back for it. When this didn’t happen, he picked up his clipboard for camouflage and walked to the front door. He rang the bell, because you didn’t want to take anything for granted, and when it went unanswered he used the key and let himself in.

What furniture there was looked as if it had been ordered all at once from Walmart or Ikea — everything white, everything new, and none of it built to last. The one thing that wasn’t white was her portable massage table, folded and propped against a living-room wall. Her Mac laptop rested on a dinette table in the small kitchen. He booted it up, and the home page supplied her daily horoscope.

He plugged a flash drive into a port and dumped her hard drive onto it.

While the life and times of Ashley Hannon were busy reproducing themselves on the Kingston flash drive that lived on his keychain, Doak climbed the stairs to the bedroom. More white furniture — a six-drawer dresser, a queen-size captain’s bed with drawers on both sides.

She hadn’t made the bed, and one pillow still held the impression of her head. He picked it up, inhaled her scent. For an instant he had the sense that he was being observed, and then his eyes met those of a teddy bear propped on the other pillow. The bear was dressed in striped overalls and a matching railroader’s cap, and looked as though he’d seen it all.

He put the pillow back, then took the microphone from his pocket and looked for a place to mount it. It was not much larger than his flash drive, and the underside of the bed would have been a logical spot for it, but the bed’s platform sat flush on the floor.

He opened drawers until he found one that held blankets. Barring a cold snap, there’d be no reason to open the drawer — and there wouldn’t be any cold weather for a while, not in a Florida summer.

He set up the mike all the way in the back of the drawer, on top of a blanket; the battery-operated receiver went in the crawl space, which he reached by pushing up a panel in the hall. A quick look showed she had nothing stored up there, and thus no reason to come upon the receiver.

It would work, he thought, but did it have to? If he hadn’t already owned the equipment he wouldn’t have bothered.

He opened her closet, rummaged through her clothes. Once again he found himself breathing in her scent, and he let himself imagine her body, all firm toned flesh, with a puff of blonde curls at the juncture of her thighs.

He stood there, let himself feel what he was feeling...

And then there was the sound of a car outside, braking to a stop.

His mind raced. If it was her, she’d be in the house before he could let himself out of it. He would have to lurk in one room and wait for a chance to slip past her, but how could he realistically expect to get out without being seen?

And, Jesus, his flash drive was still plugged into her Mac, where she couldn’t miss seeing it.

So he didn’t have much choice, did he? He’d plant himself behind the bedroom door, waiting for her to come upstairs, hoping she’d walk right past the computer, either not noticing it was turned on or thinking she must have left it like that. She’d come into the bedroom and he’d take her from behind.

And what? Hit her in the head, hard enough to knock her out? No, safer and more certain to clap one hand over her mouth and wrap his other arm around her neck, putting her gently to sleep with a choke hold.

He let himself visualize it all, her body struggling in his grasp, then relaxing as she lost consciousness. And pushed the image aside to listen for her key in the lock, for the door opening.

When he didn’t hear it he went to the window. The car at the curb was not Ashley Hannon’s Hyundai but a Dodge minivan, from which a black woman was lifting a sack of groceries while two of her children made a run for the swing set.

Jesus.

He left the bedroom as he’d found it, went downstairs, retrieved his flash drive and shut down her computer, then let himself out of the house. The neighbor woman was putting away her groceries, he could hear her through the screen door. Her son was pushing his sister on the swing, and they were too involved in what they were doing to pay attention to a middle-aged white man carrying a clipboard.

He got in his car and drove around the corner, stopped in front of a house not all that different from the one he’d just left. He breathed deeply, in and out, and thought how relieved he’d felt at the sight of the minivan.

Relief touched with disappointment.

Because, the fear and tension notwithstanding, he’d wanted her to come up the stairs and into the bedroom, wanted to clap a hand over her little mouth before she knew what was happening, wanted to choke her until she blacked out and went limp in his arms.

“Choke me, will you? Come on, how tricky is that? Use both hands, put ’em around my throat, and choke me a little. Not too hard. Oh, that’s nice. A little harder, just a little bit. Oh, yeah.” And then what? Lower her to the floor, slip a hand under that skimpy white skirt, touch her through her panties. Maybe reach inside her panties, give her a little finger wave.

He was hard thinking about it.

Well, he could do something about that. He didn’t even have to go home for the clipboard.