Trace

50

Outside, the snow is piled high in the branches of the black spruce and in the crooks of the aspen trees. From her third-story window Lucy hears the crunch of ski boots on the crusty sidewalk below. The St. Regis is a sprawling red brick hotel that reminds her of a dragon crouched at the base of Ajax Mountain. The gondolas have not come to life yet at this early hour but people have. The mountains block the sun, and dawn is a blue-gray shadow with no sound except the cold, crunching steps of skiers on their way to the slopes and the buses.

After their crazy trek up Maroon Creek Road yesterday afternoon, Benton and Lucy got into their separate vehicles and went their separate ways. He did not want her to come to Aspen to begin with, and he certainly never intended for Henri, whom he scarcely knew, to end up here, but that is life. Life brings with it strangeness and surprises and upsets. Henri is here. Now Lucy is here. Benton said Lucy could not stay with him, understandably. He does not want her to cripple the progress he might be making with Henri, what little he might be making, if he has made any progress with her. But today Lucy will see Henri when it suits Henri. Two weeks have passed and Lucy can't stand it anymore, can't stand the guilt and the unanswered questions. Whatever Henri is, Lucy needs to see it for herself.

As the morning becomes lighter, everything Benton did and said is clear. First he wore Lucy out in thin air, where it was hard for her to say too much too soon or give vent to her fear-driven fury. Then, for all practical purposes, he sent her to bed. She isn't a child, even if he seemed to treat her like one yesterday, and she knows he cares. She's always known. He has always been good to her, even when she hated him.

She digs inside a duffel bag for a pair of stretch ski pants, a sweater, long silk underwear, and socks, and lays them on the bed next to her nine-millimeter Clock pistol with tritium sights and magazines that hold seventeen rounds, a gun she chooses when routine indoor self-protection is on her mind, when she wants a close contact gun with firepower, not knockdown power, because she wouldn't want to shoot a.40 or.45 caliber bullet or a high-power rifle round inside a hotel room. She hasn't figured out what she'll say to Henri or how she'll feel at the sight of her.

Don't expect anything good, she thinks. Don't expect her to be happy to see you or to be nice or polite. Lucy sits on the bed and pulls off her sweatpants and grabs her t-shirt, snatching it off over her head. She pauses in front of the full-length mirror, looking at herself and making sure she isn't allowing age and gravity to get the best of her. They haven't and they shouldn't, because she isn't quite thirty.

Her body is muscular and lean but not boyish, and she really has no complaint about her physical self but experiences an odd sensation whenever she studies her reflection. Then her body becomes a stranger, different on the outside from what she is inside. Not less or more attractive, just different from how she feels. And it drifts through her thoughts that no matter how many times she makes love, she will never know how her body feels, how her touch feels to her lover. She wishes she knew and is glad she doesn't.

You look all right, she thinks, walking away from the mirror. You look good enough to get by, she thinks as she steps into the shower. The way you look isn't going to matter today, not one bit. You aren't going to be touching anyone today, she tells herself as she turns on the water. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. God, what am I going to do? she says out loud as hot water blasts against marble and splashes the glass door and drives down hard on her flesh. What have I done, Rudy? What have 1 done? Please don't quit on me. I promise I'll change. She has secretly cried in showers for almost half her life. When she started out in the FBI she was a teenager who got summer jobs and internships because of her influential aunt, and she had no business living in a dormitory at Quantico and shooting guns and running obstacle courses with agents who did not panic or cry, or at least she never saw them panic or cry. She assumed they never did. She believed many myths back then because she was young and gullible and in awe, and now she may know better but her early programming twisted her in a way that can't be straightened. If she cries, and she rarely does, she cries alone. When she hurts, she hides it.

She is almost dressed when she becomes aware of the silence. Quietly swearing and suddenly frantic, she digs in a pocket of her ski jacket and finds her cell phone. The battery is dead. Last night she was too tired and unhappy to think about her phone and she forgot it and left it in her pocket, and that isn't like her, that is so unlike her. Rudy doesn't know where she is staying. Neither does her aunt. Neither of them knows the alias she is using, so even if they tried the St. Regis, they wouldn't find her. Only Benton knows where and who she is, and for her to cut Rudy off like this is unthinkable and unprofessional and he will be furious. Of all times, now was not the time to push him farther away. If he quits, what then? She trusts no one else she works with the way she trusts him. Finding the charger, she plugs in the phone and turns it on, and she has eleven messages, most of them left since six a.m. Eastern Standard Time, most of them from him.

"I thought you'd dropped off the map," Rudy says the instant he answers. "I've been trying to get you for three hours. What are you doing?

Since when don't you answer the phone? Don't tell me it's not working. I don't believe it. That phone works anywhere, and I've been trying you on the radio too. You've had the damn thing turned off, haven't you?"

"Calm down, Rudy," she says. "My battery went dead. The phone, the radio don't work when the battery's dead. I'm sorry."

"You didn't bring a charger?"

"I said I'm sorry, Rudy."

"Well, we have a little bit of intelligence. It would be good if you could get back here ASAP."

"What's going on?" Lucy sits down on the floor near the socket where her phone is plugged in.

"Unfortunately, you're not the only one who got a little present from him. Some poor old woman got one of Pogue's chemical bombs, only she wasn't so lucky."

"Jesus," Lucy says, shutting her eyes.

"A waitress at a sleazy bar in Hollywood that's right across the street from a Shell station where guess what? They sell Big Gulps in Cat in the Hat cups. The victim's burned pretty bad but is going to make it. Apparently he's been coming into the place she works, the Other Way Lounge. Ever heard of it?"

"No," she says almost inaudibly, thinking of the burned woman. "Jesus," she mutters.

"So we're canvassing the area. I've got some of our people out. Not the recruits. They ain't the sharpest knives in the drawer, these ones aren't."

"Jesus," is all she can think to say about it. "Can anything go right?"

"They're going more right than they were. Two other things. Your aunt says Pogue might be wearing a wig. A long black curly wig. A dyed black human-hair wig. I guess the mitochondrial DNA was going to be pretty funny, right? Probably come back to some hooker who sold her hair to a wig company so she could buy crack."

"You just telling me this now? A wig?"

"Edgar Allan Pogue has red hair. Your aunt saw the red hairs in the bed

in his house, in the house where he was staying. A wig could explain the long wavy dyed black hairs recovered from Gilly Paulsson's bed linens and from your bedroom and also the duct tape on the chemical bomb left in your mailbox. A wig would explain a lot of things, according to your aunt. We're also looking for his car. Turns out the old woman who died in the house where he's been staying, Mrs. Arnette, had a white 1991 Buick, and no one knows what happened to it after she died. The family never gave it a thought. Sounds like they never gave her a thought either. We think Pogue might be driving the Buick. It's still registered to Mrs. Arnette. It would be good if you come on back here ASAP. Probably not a good idea for you to stay in your house, though."

"Don't worry," she says. "I won't ever stay in that house again."