Chapter 11
“There’s nothing,” I said, my disappointment—and a tinge of fear—clear in my voice. “Wait, there is something.” In the bottom right corner printed in very small letters was a date and time: Tuesday, December 15, 5:00 P.M. I showed it to Mal and then told Duncan what it said.
“No trace this time?” Duncan asked.
“No anything,” I told him. “Just a folded sheet of paper that’s completely blank except for that deadline.”
Several seconds of silence ticked by as the three of us contemplated the meaning of the essentially blank page.
“Wait a minute . . .” I said, staring at the sheet and sorting through my senses. “There’s something off about the paper. The color and texture are both wrong. And there’s a smell, an odd out-of-place smell. I think the paper was soaked in something because it looks slightly rippled, as if it might have been wet at one time.”
Mal looked at the paper, then at me. I held the paper close to my nose and inhaled. I heard faint strains of classical string music and knew what the odor was—or rather what the odors were, because there were two of them. The music I heard was a mix of high-pitched violin and the deep base sounds of a cello.
“It’s champagne . . . and beer,” I said. “This paper has been soaked in champagne and beer.”
“Are you sure?” Duncan said. Then, without waiting for me to answer, he added, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Mal, who had also gloved up, reached over, took the paper from me, and repeated my actions by holding it under his own nose.
“I don’t know what it means,” I said, watching as Mal sniffed, shrugged, and then shook his head. He handed the sheet back to me, eyeing me with a curious expression.
My body felt as if it was vibrating all over, a common thing that happens when I’m frightened. “I’m certain of the beer and champagne thing, but I don’t have any idea what it means. With no other clues, how am I supposed to figure this out?” I said to no one in particular, feeling panicky. “This is getting out of hand.”
“Take a deep breath,” Duncan said. “Let’s give it some thought and regroup on it in the morning.”
I didn’t want to wait until morning. Lives literally hung in the balance. But at the moment I didn’t have any choice. “I have to tell you, this whole thing has me more than a little spooked,” I said. “Everywhere I go, everything I do, I can’t help but wonder if this sicko is somewhere nearby, watching me.” I could feel the panic growing inside me and heard it in my voice. Normally, my own voice has no taste for me, but when I experience strong emotions, it sometimes does. The taste it had now, the taste of panic and fear, was cold and bitter, like sucking on a Popsicle made from unsweetened chocolate.
“This whole thing is twisted,” Mal said, placing a reassuring hand on my arm. “But don’t let it get the better of you. We need to keep our heads on straight to make sure we’re thinking clearly. It appears that whoever is behind this wants to play a mental game, so we have to stay mentally tough.” He paused, frowned, and then added, “Though to be on the safe side, I don’t think you should be staying here alone at night.”
Duncan agreed. “Mal is right, Mack. You should have someone there with you, just in case. I don’t think this psycho is trying to come after you in any physical sense, at least not yet, but we can’t be sure.” My heart leapt with anticipation, thinking Duncan intended to come and spend the night with me, but his next words were a cold shock of reality. “I wish I could be there with you tonight, Mack,” he said. “But this case Jimmy and I are working on is sucking up every spare minute I have.”
“That’s okay,” I said, feeling my heart sink. “I’m always careful to make sure I lock everything up tight at night. I’ll be okay.”
“Even so, I’d feel better if there was someone there with you,” Duncan insisted. “Mal, is there any chance you can stay there for a night or two and keep an eye on her?”
Mal and I glanced at one another but he quickly looked away. “I don’t see why not,” he said with a shrug. “After all, we are supposed to be dating.”
I didn’t know how to feel about this latest development. On the one hand, I was relieved to have someone stay with me, though I was disappointed it wasn’t going to be Duncan. On the other hand, I was happy to have Mal there, and I felt comfortable with the idea for the most part, though after our earlier discussion, I feared things might get awkward.
I finally decided to just go with the flow, though I felt a need to clarify things up front. “Thanks, Mal. You can sleep in my dad’s bedroom if you want.”
“I’ll be fine on the couch,” he said. “It’s a more central location.”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
Duncan thanked Mal and then I picked up my phone, took it off speaker, and meandered into my kitchen for some privacy. “It’s just you and me now,” I said to Duncan. “Am I ever going to get to see you again?”
I heard him sigh and it saddened me. “Of course you will,” he said. “I’m just not sure when. Between this case I’m working and the need to be so secretive . . .”
“It isn’t always going to be like this though, right?”
“Man, I hope not. But in the meantime, watch your back, even with the people you think you can trust. And that reminds me, have you made any progress with Tiny’s sister’s case?”
“A little.” I told him about the discussion we’d had earlier and how Carter was going to try to get a copy of Anna Hermann’s diary. “I’m thinking I might go and talk to some of the suspects, just to get a feel for what they have to say, to determine if I think they’re telling the truth, and to see if anything unusual jumps out at me. Though given the time span since the crime, I don’t know if my synesthesia will be of much use other than to get a feel for whether or not someone is lying.”
“Mack, you can’t just go around and start chatting up people who might have committed a murder—make that two murders—in the past. Who knows what they’ve done since then and who knows what they’re capable of doing now if they feel like someone is breathing down their neck? Don’t you have enough stress right now with this psycho letter writer?”
“Yes, I do have stress,” I said, my tone a bit more irritable than I intended. I was angry, not with Duncan per se, but with the way our relationship seemed to be evolving . . . or devolving. “That’s why I need something else to focus on. Plus, I can’t help but empathize with Tiny and his situation. I know what it feels like to lose someone you love to murder, and to wonder if the culprit will ever be caught. I feel compelled to help him if I can.”
“It’s not your job, Mack.”
“You didn’t feel that way when I was helping you. Then you were all about making it my job.”
“That was different. You had police protection and processes working with you. Doing this alone isn’t the same.”
“Then I won’t do it alone. I’ll take Tiny along with me. Or maybe Mal. And if neither of them can come along, I’ll take Gary. Now that he’s back at work, I can make good use of him as a bodyguard.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t do this, Mack, not without me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not here, are you? And the fact that I even want to do it is largely your fault.”
“My fault? How do you figure?”
“You’re the one who got me started on this crime-solving stuff. You’re the one who showed me that I can make a difference. You’re the one who made me see that something I once thought was a curse could be put to use to help other people.”
I heard him sigh again, and could see him in my mind’s eye, running his hand through his hair the way he did whenever he got exasperated. He muttered something that sounded like “Frigging hot-tempered redheads,” though I couldn’t be sure. Then he said, “Okay, I know when I’m beat. And I know you well enough to know that when you’re this determined about something, you’re going to do what you want regardless of what I say. So all I’m going to ask is that you be careful and use good sense.”
“I will.”
“I want you to keep me abreast of what’s going on. Call me every day.”
“Is there a time that’s best?”
“Just call me when you can. Any time will do. And please be careful, Mack. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“I need to get back to work, so I’ll say good-bye for now. But if anything else comes up today, tonight, tomorrow, whenever, you call me.”
“I said I will.”
With that I ended the call. I felt annoyed and irritated, and I wasn’t sure why. Duncan’s statement that he didn’t want anything to happen to me might have been his way of saying he cared, but on what level? It was hardly a declaration of love—not that we were at that stage in our relationship yet— and that wasn’t what I was after. I felt a very strong attraction to the man, and as such I wanted to know if we had a potential future together as a couple. Was he romantically interested in me over the long term, or had he been stringing me along so he could use me and my synesthesia to help him in his job?
Then I recalled what both Duncan and Mal had said about Duncan being left at the altar in his last relationship. Certainly that had to have been a crushing blow, not to mention humiliating. Given that, I supposed it made sense that he was being slow and cautious now. But it did give me pause. Was I simply a rebound relationship, someone he could use to bide his time until he recovered from his last one?
Agonizing over it was making me crazy, so I shoved my thoughts to the back of my mind and returned to Mal. “Thanks for offering to stay with me.”
“My pleasure. My place is pretty lonely and, to be honest, it’s also kind of a dump. So this is a move up in the world for me.”
“Do you need to go to your place to get some extra clothes and stuff?”
Mal shook his head. “I always keep an overnight bag in my trunk that has some basic toiletries in it along with a couple of changes of clothes.”
“Duncan does that, too,” I said. “Must be a cop thing.”
“It is. You never know in this business when you’re going to be up all night on a stakeout or something.”
“Okay, then,” I said, seeing that he had bagged the latest letter and envelope. “I was planning on checking in with the Capone Club to see what’s new with Tiny’s case. Want to come along?”
“I’d love to. But only if you promise to treat me to one of those cheese curds you were bragging about.”
“I’ll fix you up something special,” I said. “Cheese curds and one of my famous BLT sandwiches. If that combo doesn’t satisfy your appetite and harden your arteries, nothing will.”
“Hell, we only live once,” he said. With that, he crooked one arm and waved the other toward the stairs. “Shall we?”
I took his proffered arm and let him lead the way.