Walking Shadow

CHAPTER 40

It was late in the afternoon. I was in my office with about an inch of Irish whisky in the bottom of a water glass and my feet up on the window ledge, looking out. I had searched Jocelyn's apartment and found nothing, except that she appeared to be a neat housekeeper. I had read her folder and learned that she had been born in 1961 in Rochester, New York. I learned that she had studied theater at Emerson College, in Boston. I learned that she had once played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, at the Williamstown Theater Festival, that she had done some commercials for a local tire dealer, and that she had been with a theater company in Framingham before she came to Port City. I was closing in fast.

Hawk and Vinnie had gone home. I was willing to risk an ambush by the Death Dragons in exchange for a little solitude. I was sick of being guarded. I was also sick of not knowing what I was doing. It was a common condition for me, but I never got used to it. I sipped my whisky.

Around me in the other offices in the building briefcases were snapping shut, papers were being filed, drawers were being closed, computers were turning off, copy machines were shutting down.

The twenty-three-year-old women who filled the building were restoring makeup, reorganizing hair, reapplying lipstick. The young guys that worked with them were in the men's room checking the haircut, washing up, straightening ties, spraying a little Binaca. Daisy Buchanan's. The Ritz Bar. The Lounge at the Four Seasons. Thank God it's Friday. Children still, most of them, everything ahead of them. Career, sex, love, disaster. All of it still to come, all of it waiting for them while they straightened their ties and smoothed their pantyhose and thought about the first cocktail, and who knew what beyond that. The light dwindled. The street lights along Boylston Street came on. The interior lights of the new building gleamed in repetitious squares across Boylston Street.

Once, a while ago, through another window when a different building was there, I used to watch a woman named Linda Thomas lean across her drawing board in the advertising agency that used to be housed there. I swallowed a little more whisky.

It bothered me that whoever had Jocelyn had sent me the tape and nothing else. Why? What did he want? No ransom demand.

No threat to do something if I didn't do something. Just a kind of notification. See, I've got her. Maybe it was an orchestrated effort.

Let me sweat the picture for a day or so, then send me a letter. Give me a million dollars if you wish to see her alive. Why me? Would I ransom her? The kidnapper had no reason to think I would or that I could. Why kidnap her at all? I had no reason to think she was wealthy. There was nothing in her apartment to make me think that she was wealthy.

I leaned back and got the phone from my desk and called information in Rochester, New York. There were thirty-two Colbys listed. I said thank you and hung up. My glass was empty.

I poured another inch or so into it. In one of the offices across the street a young woman was putting on her coat to go home. She shrugged into the coat and then tossed her hair with both hands so that it would fall outside the coat collar. Officially my position was nonsexist. Unofficially, good-looking women were the most interesting thing in the world. I loved the way they moved, the way they canted their head when they put on lipstick, the way they tried on clothes and looked in the mirror, the way they patted their hair, the way their hips swayed when they walked in high-heeled shoes. The young woman across the street looked at herself in the window reflection for a moment, bending forward from the waist, unaffectedly interested in how she looked. Then she stood and turned away, and in a moment the window square went dark.

I picked up my phone again and dialed State Police Headquarters at Ten-Ten Commonwealth Avenue. I asked for Captain Healy and in a moment he came on.

"Spenser," I said.

"I need help."

"Glad you finally realize that," Healy said.

"Whaddya need?"

"Remember I called you the other day? About an ex-Static named DeSpain?" I said.

"I remember," Healy said.

"I want you to talk to me about him," I said.

"What's in it for me," Healy said.

"The pleasure of my company," I said.

"And a steak at the Capital Grill."

"Steak sounds good," Healy said.

"When?"

"Now."

"You're in luck," Healy said.

"My wife's going to a movie with her sister, and there's no basketball on."

"So you're desperate."

"Yeah," Healy said.

"See you there in an hour."

We hung up. I drank some whisky. Most of the office lights were out across the street. Lights were still on in the corridors, and the offices that the janitors were starting. The desultory lighting made the building seem somehow emptier. My own building was quiet now. There were tequila sunrises being drunk now. Seductions were underway. Healthy Choice frozen entrees were popping into microwaves. The local news people were in paroxysms of jolliness at the anchor desks. Dogs were being walked. I called Susan. She wasn't there. I left an off-color message on her answering machine.

I finished my drink and corked the bottle and put it away in my desk. I got up and washed the glass and put it away. Then I took the Browning off my desk and put it back in its holster on my hip.

I put on my coat and turned off the lights and went out of my office, and locked my door.

It was a ten-minute walk from my office to the Capital Grill. I thought about Susan the entire walk and felt much better by the time I got there.