As she raced through traffic on the Palmetto Expressway, Hannah called Lieutenant Dan Romano from her cell phone. She had to bully her way through three layers of secretaries before she finally got him on the line.
“Hey, stranger,” he said. “Long time, no hear.”
“Randall’s been kidnapped, Dan. I’m on my way to her apartment right now.”
“Whoa, whoa, Hannah. You’re on your way to what apartment?”
“The woman who kidnapped my son. I recognized her voice. I know where she lives.”
“Hey, back up a second, tell me what the hell’s going on.”
She gave him a quick rundown of the situation, a little garbled maybe, but the best she could manage. When she was finished Dan Romano was silent.
“Did you hear me, Dan? Are you there?”
“Hey, look, I’m sorry, Hannah. But I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”
“Nothing you can do? Dan, you need to send a SWAT team over here right now. Seventeenth and Flagler. They’ve got Randall. This girl and a man named Hal Bonner, a professional killer.”
“I can’t interfere,” Dan said. “We’ve been briefed on this.”
“Briefed on what!”
“I’m sorry, Hannah. I’ll pass the word on to the right people, but our hands are tied on this one.”
“You mean the FBI? They told you to disregard me if I called?”
“Something like that. I can’t go into it, Hannah. I have to work with these people.”
“My son has been kidnapped, Dan. Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry, Hannah. I really am. I’ll call them right away. That’s all I can do.”
She stormed off the exit for Flagler, swerved into the emergency lane to pass a slow-moving truck.
“Jesus, listen to me, Dan. The Bureau’s operation has been shut down. Check with Frank Sheffield. Talk to him, tell him Randall’s been kidnapped. Do that much for me, will you? I need your help. I’ve never needed it more.”
Dan was silent for a moment.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll give Sheffield a call. I’ll do it now.”
Three minutes later she screeched into the parking lot of the Desert Rose apartments. It was a two-story building wedged between a strip club called The Party Girls and a pawnshop with more bars on its windows than Raiford Prison. The apartment building was a cement block rectangle designed in a Santa Fe adobe style. There were low, rounded walls with metal grates, a small, withered cactus garden near the manager’s office.
On Hannah’s first knock the manager jerked open his louvered door, and stepped out of his apartment in a white undershirt and a pair of baggy gray gym shorts. He was a beefy American with a salt-and-pepper military crew cut and marine tattoos on both arms. A ring of keys jingled at the waistband of his shorts. In the apartment behind him, Hannah could see a thin Cuban girl half the man’s age. She was barefoot and wore a white slip and her hand was cradling her jaw as if she had a toothache. In the crook of her other arm she held a white miniature poodle.
“I’m Misty Fielding’s aunt.”
“Well, now isn’t that interesting.”
“You know Misty, right?”
“What do you want, lady? I’m smack in the middle of something.”
There was booze on the man’s breath and the faint trace of cigar smoke clinging to his flesh. Behind him the delicate woman had picked up a phone and was hunched around it, speaking in hushed tones. The dog leaned its snout close to the mouthpiece as if it meant to corroborate her story.
“Misty had to go out of town for a few days,” Hannah said. “She asked me to look after her place, but I’ve mislaid the key she gave me.”
“Look after her place, huh?”
“That’s right. Water her plants, feed her cat.”
“She has a fucking cat up there?”
Hannah said, “I’ll only be a minute. I’m sorry to bother you.”
Behind the man’s back, the slender woman had put the phone down and was standing by a side window, holding an ice cube to her right jaw. The water glistened on her chin. Without moving her shoulders, she wept silently, her tears, bright in the sunshine, were running down her cheek, mingling with the trail of melted ice, a steady drip of water off her chin. The tiny white dog was licking the drops one by one off the point of her chin.
“That little bitch never told me about any fucking cat. We got a pet deposit. One month’s rent, five hundred fifty dollars.”
“I could give you something toward that,” Hannah said. “And Misty will pay you the balance when she gets back. I’m sure she just forgot to tell you about the cat.”
“Oh, sure she did. She forgot.”
A red pickup truck roared into the parking lot and lurched to a stop in the handicapped space at the head of the sidewalk.
The old marine lifted his head and looked at the truck and smirked. He took a quick glance back into the shadowy apartment and shook his head sadly.
Hannah got out her wallet and slid out five twenties and handed it to the man. He counted the cash, then counted it again.
“How do I know you’re the bitch’s aunt? You could be some thief.”
The door of the pickup slammed and a tall Latin man jumped down from the cab then reached back inside and came out with a baseball bat. He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of soiled white jeans.
“Is that what thieves do in this part of town, they pay the landlord a hundred dollars before they break in?”
“Now that you mention it, sounds like a decent idea.”
The marine turned and watched the young man stalk down the sidewalk. His smirk mutated into a grin of joyous malevolence. He stepped away from Hannah and set his bare feet against the cement walkway, raised his open hands. Bring it on, asshole.
The young Latin man spit into the grass and kept on coming.
“I told you, man, what I gonna do, you mess with her again. Hijo de puta.”
Hannah stood nearby, waiting till the young man got within ten feet, cocking the bat over his shoulder, the marine’s full attention focused on his skinny adversary. She waited another second, the batter coming to a stop now, then inching forward into range, the marine’s body nonchalant, but his eyes figuring the angles, zeroing in on the guy, his arms, his shoulders.
Hannah picked her moment, ducked in, snatched the keys from the marine’s waistband, and hopped back out of range.
The distraction turned the apartment manager’s head just long enough for him to miss the first whistling shot. The meat of the bat cracked against his heavy shoulder and sent him lurching sideways. But he recovered quickly and squared off, and it was instantly clear that the young man with the Louisville slugger had wasted his one good shot.
Hannah didn’t stay around for the final chapter.
She turned and bolted for the main building. At the row of aluminum mailboxes, she found the name M. A. Fielding next to number 206.
Hannah took the steps two at a time, then had to circle the entire building before she located 206. Outside the door, she drew the .357 from her purse, held it in her hand while she used the other to slip the master key into Misty Fielding’s lock. She turned it, felt the mechanism open.
She flattened her back against the wall beside the door, turned the knob slowly. When it was open, Hannah took a long breath, reset her feet, then threw her shoulder against the door and lunged inside.
In a squat she swung her pistol in an arc back and forth across the room. No one there.
The air in the apartment reeked of patchouli oil with a faint undertone of marijuana. Hannah shut the door and patted the wall for the light switch, but could find none. The heavy orange drapes were drawn solidly against the sun—only a fuzzy haze lightened the air around them.
Moving deeper into the room, Hannah bumped the leg of a chair and almost went down but caught herself at the last second on what felt like the back of a couch. Pistol outstretched, she edged toward the window. A few feet away out on the landing a toddler bawled, and another one screamed for its mama, and down on Flagler an unmuffled motorcycle rumbled past.
She made it to the far wall, slid her hands around the curtain edge till she found the draw cord, then yanked open the thick orange drapes.
She whirled around. But the room was empty.
It was an efficiency, slightly larger than a cheap motel room. A sleeper couch was opened in the center of the room. A knotty pine counter sectioned off a third of the room. Two mismatched bamboo stools were tucked under the outer rim of the counter. Behind it an ancient refrigerator chugged and fretted, and next to that was a gas stove covered with unwashed pots and skillets. A philodendron vine sprouted from a mason jar filled with water.
In the living area there was a small red card table with spindly fold-down legs. Centered on it was an older model computer and keyboard. On the walls hung several mangled Barbie dolls, grotesque creations that looked like hobby-time projects from the psycho ward.
Hannah checked the bathroom, threw aside the shower curtain. She poked in both closets, looked under the bed. But the place was empty. She lowered the pistol, but still kept her finger against the trigger.
Retracing her steps, she went slower this time, prowling through drawers. A pine dresser filled with underwear and T-shirts and an assortment of socks and cotton tops. A small wall unit that housed the television and on the dusty shelf above it a collection of desiccated beetles and moths. The trash cans were empty and the kitchen drawers held nothing but standard fare. A set of flimsy silverware, a random collection of plates and saucers and glasses.
Inside a sugar jar she found a Ziploc baggie of marijuana along with a small pipe and a packet of cigarette papers. Except for the Barbies, the room was curiously bland. No mail, no check stubs or receipts, no notes on the refrigerator, no corkboard, no sign in the whole room that the occupant had any but the most tenuous connection with the world outside these cramped walls. A life that could be packed easily into the trunk of a compact car.
Her clothes closet was filled mostly with jeans and T-shirts, a couple of dresses, black and blacker, and on the top shelf there was a collection of baseball caps and a short stack of sweaters.
On the bathroom sink Hannah found a toothbrush, a twisted tube of Crest and a stick of deodorant, and a silver tube of lipstick, Passionate Plum. The narrow room smelled of Lysol and mildew and on the rim of a green plastic water glass there was a two-inch palmetto bug waving its feelers. The shower curtain was glossy black with red tulips printed on it.
She went back into the living room and sat down at the computer and jiggled the mouse. The computer came alive sluggishly, grinding its gears and straining. When the opening screen finally winked into view, Hannah settled back in the chair and sighed with relief to find that Misty Fielding used the same operating system she did, thus requiring only a few familiar clicks of the mouse to locate the girl’s personal files.
A simple double-click opened Misty Fielding’s daily journal. Hannah scanned the files quickly and found her diary entries were mostly about the men she’d met at the bar where she worked, men who called or didn’t call, men she slept with, other men she lusted for. Men who hit her. Men she hit back.
It was the last folder she came to that made her draw a slow gasp. A collection of Misty’s E-mails for the last several months. All of them addressed to Randall. She read the first one, dated back in August. Then the second, a few days later. By the third and fourth, Hannah was getting the picture, that from the very first this girl had been beguiling Randall, taking a big-sister tone, flattering him, asking him about, himself, his likes and dislikes, approving of what he approved, mocking what he clearly disliked, easing the exchange toward increasingly personal territory. No prying questions. Just that delicate dance, that swelling coo of intimacy.
Randall’s E-mail notes were there too, filled with his daydreams, his worries, his feeble jokes, his detailed renderings of his days at school. After reading a half dozen of their exchanges, Hannah’s heart was floundering. It was wrenching to see how vulnerable her boy was, how lonely. With aching clarity, Hannah saw his sadness, the torment that still burdened his heart. All through the summer and fall he’d been tapping out these melancholy confessions to a complete stranger while rooms away Hannah worked on her latest novel in ruthless silence.
It galled her. How she’d let this happen. How little she truly knew her own son. Because the chat that flowed between Misty and Randall was not simply more intimate and more frank, but she was certain that it far surpassed in volume all the accumulated conversations she and Randall had managed in the last six months.
Her fault. Totally her fault for letting the artificial world she was incessantly creating so totally distract her, preoccupy her thoughts, control her moods even in the hours she was away from the keyboard. Her fault for not paying more attention to Randall’s silences, asking more questions, and the hundred other obvious acts that would have kept their bond strong enough to deflect the seductive charms of an angry lunatic like Misty Fielding.
Hannah clicked through a few more random files, saw nothing that might direct her next move, then decided she’d stayed long enough and began exiting. She was almost done, guiding the pointer to its last click, when she heard the scuff of feet behind her and before she could turn, a cylinder of warm steel jammed against the base of her neck.
Her right hand froze on the mouse. In the reflection off the computer screen she made out the ghostly outline of a woman standing behind her. A thin face, straight hair.
“Hello, Misty.”
“Look, bitch, you just sit very still now. I don’t want to see you so much as take a deep breath. There’s two people in body bags because of you already.”
Ever so slightly Hannah tipped her head to the right for a view of Misty in the framed poster that hung on the wall just to the right of the screen. In the glass she appeared taller than Hannah, maybe five-ten, with a sharp nose and pencil-thin eyebrows, darkened lips and a ghastly pale complexion, the slutty chic of her generation. She had a long, thin neck and blunt-cut hair that she wore to her shoulders. Wearing what looked like denim overalls over a sleeveless T-shirt.
“You killed Gisela, didn’t you?”
“Shut up, bitch.”
“You murdered her. You couldn’t have gotten Randall away from her without killing her.”
“I’m warning you. Just shut the hell up, let me think.”
Hannah planted her feet flat beneath the table. Picturing the sweep of her hands as she turned and pushed the gun aside. Getting that image clear in her head, trimming away the rough edges, stifling the uncertainty. She’d choreographed dozens of scenes like this, laid them out neatly, each time Erin Barkley used her wits and her quickness and her martial arts skills to slither out of danger. But none of that was any help. Hannah could fabricate fictional worlds till the end of time and it wouldn’t make her any better at controlling the flow of real events. And what cop skills she’d once had, those fierce, unblinking reflexes, were long gone. Ancient muscle memories, unexercised except in imagination.
“Where’s Randall, Misty? What’ve you done with him?”
The pistol twitched.
“I’m not telling you a goddamn thing, bitch. I should shoot you right now.”
Hannah was looking in the shiny glass of the poster, seeing a man’s body fill the illuminated doorway. Something in his hand, holding it by his right leg.
“Listen to me,” Hannah said. “The police are on the way here. There isn’t much time left, Misty, if you want to make a deal.”
She felt the pressure of the pistol barrel slacken against her neck. The man in the picture frame was holding a baseball bat. He was raising it slowly above his shoulders, coming closer.
“That’s all you people ever think of when you’re in trouble, making deals. Well, let me tell you, bitch, you’re not negotiating your way out of this.”
She could feel the barrel of the gun drift across her skin, lose its hold. And in the picture frame, Hannah saw Misty’s eyes meet her own, then shift their focus slightly to the right so she too was looking at the man approaching from behind, the Marine Corps flattop, the thick neck, the white undershirt.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “What the fuck’s going on in here?”
There was no hesitation in Misty’s movements, spontaneous and precise. A short chop with the pistol against Hannah’s skull which flashed a strobe of yellow light through the room and made the chair sink beneath her as if she were coming over the top of a Ferris wheel. She felt her chair wobble and the tumble sideways, felt the dull floor rise to meet her, the coarse fabric of the rug burning against her cheek. Eyes open, watching, but dazed, she lay still, her body gone. Watching the legs of the two antagonists. The stumpy marine dancing to the side, twisting as he took a swing. Misty’s baggy jeans fluttering in the opposite direction. Hannah felt her stomach swim. Her body anchored to the floor, a useless sack of flesh. Her meat and muscles heavy beyond the pull of gravity, eyes watching from deep inside her skull through a narrow peephole. The two fighters, from their knees down to the floor. She could hear their grunts and pants and curses. Hear the man’s warning, the girl’s shrill reply. And then the shot of a pistol, then two seconds later, a second shot. Not loud, not deafening, more like the pop of a balloon. A large red balloon at a birthday party for Randall with all the neighborhood kids over at the house. Randall glum but trying hard to join in. Trying for his mother’s sake, when a boy Randall’s age grabbed a balloon and screamed and ran toward Randall and squeezed the balloon and it exploded right behind him, and her son who’d just turned eight years old, cringed at the noise, a wince so awful to see, she almost wept. And then Randall, her young son, blond and freckled and perfectly made, turned away from his birthday party and marched into the house, straight into Hannah’s bedroom and into her closet and tunneled into the pile of laundry, her clothes, her scent, and stayed there, ignoring her pleas, ignoring everything until all the parents came, two hours early, and carted their baffled children home.
Hannah lay on the carpet, sleeping and awake. Watching as the stumpy legs of the marine sagged, and the man tottered briefly and dropped like a thick tree in the open forest, slamming into the rug, rolling a half turn till he came face-to-face with Hannah. Neither of them able to move. Neither able to speak. A half foot from her face, the marine’s eyes were open but they were losing hold. Losing the light, the gloss.
Hannah lay there and watched the meanness leak from his eyes until they were calm, then more than calm—utterly, completely neutral.