Her forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. “Hospital?”
He laughed. “What kind of hospital looks like this?”
She groaned. “My head.” She shivered. “Where are my clothes?”
“I guess I’ve changed a lot since you saw me last.” He was wearing his leather jacket. The one like the guy in the movie had. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“I can’t … move.”
A jet thundered over the house. She looked up at the skylight. “What’s …?”
“Maybe I wasn’t so hot then, but I’ve come a long way.” He squatted next to her on his heels, ignoring her confusion. “You know the Patriot missiles. I built those. And the cruise missiles, too. I’ve done a lot for this country. Won the whole war.”
Emma groaned, frowning some more. “Car crash …”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Tro.”
“My head.”
It upset him that she didn’t seem to know him. He had to get up and walk away in frustration. Maybe she had a stupid concussion. He snapped open his lighter, flicked it on and off, watching the flame spurt and die. That calmed him.
Emma lifted her head and looked down at her naked body. Her hands and feet were tied. Her forehead wrinkled with puzzlement.
In a second he was back. “I’m a whole other guy. I used to have some trouble with my temper, but I got that under control. I’m a terrific guy now.”
Emma closed her eyes. She swallowed. When she opened her eyes again, he was still there, standing over her.
“And I got a better bike. Remember my knucklehead? Rigid, straight-leg frame, with a six-inch springer and a set of full apes?”
“A bike hit me?”
“No, I guess I already had the panhead, right? Yeah. Well, I got a twenty-thousand dollar bike now. You should see it. Nessy engine, everything custom made, custom painted.” He had forgotten he sold the bike.
Another jet thundered over the house. She looked up again. In the dark, the lights of the plane twinkled in the skylight.
“Where am I?” she said thickly.
“A special place.”
“Well, how did I get here?” she mumbled.
“I picked you up off the street and brought you here.”
Emma’s blue eyes closed.
“Wake up,” Troland demanded.
“Bike crash,” she muttered. “Bike crash?”
“No, honey. I picked you up off the street and brought you to a special place for a special reason.”
“What? What reason?” Her voice was still slurred and puzzled.
“My reasons. You’ll see.”
There was a moment of silence, and then she started to cry with her eyes squeezed shut. “My head hurts. I want to go home.”
“Don’t cry,” he snapped. “I don’t like crying.”
Her eyes popped open wide and stared at him, stunned.
“I’m sick. I have to go home.” Her voice came from a long way away.
“No, honey. You’re mine now. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Going home,” she said thickly. There was a pot of glue in her mouth. Cement in her legs.
“No, honey. You’re mine now. You gotta remember that. Just completely mine.”
She shook her head, her whole body trembling uncontrollably. She moved her hands and feet around in the ropes, as if to check if they were attached to something.
“Remember me? I’m Tro. You don’t ever say no to me again. Got it?”
He watched her face change. It went through a lot—deflated, paled, reddened. For a second it almost looked like she was going to choke on fear. He liked that, smiled with encouragement.
“Good, now you know me,” he said with satisfaction. “Keep it up. It’s going to be great.”
He turned around to show her the gun. They liked that kind of thing. He was sorry his bike was in California where she couldn’t see it. Still, he had photographs of it. He could show her those. He headed for the bedroom, needed the switchblade, too. He wanted to show her the switchblade.
45
Sanchez pulled up next to Dr. Frank’s building and parked the car in front of a hydrant. It was eleven-thirty. Their shift ended a half hour ago. The call from California had come just as they were leaving. Sergeant Joyce was already gone.
April took the call and talked to Dr. Frank for a long time. He was still at the San Diego Police Department with Sergeant Grove. He was extremely worried about his wife. He had been out of touch with her for nearly twenty-four hours. She had left a message at noon his time to call her immediately. Now it was almost nine hours later and he still hadn’t heard from her. He had called the apartment, her agent, her friends. No one knew where she was. Grove faxed April the sheet on Troland Grebs.
As the husband talked to her long-distance, April felt sick with anxiety. It was possible that she had not done the right thing from the very beginning with this case. Maybe she had waited too long to call the wife. If she had called earlier, she might have found out the real story then. Why had she accepted the doctor’s request that she not call? And when she did call and the woman didn’t call her back, why didn’t she just go over there and talk to her? Now she, April Woo, would be to blame if she went in there and the woman was dead.
April felt sick, sick all over. People weren’t supposed to just run around on their own, checking things out. There was a system for doing everything. April followed the rules. She always followed the rules. There was a reason for every one. Cases had to have complainants, or they weren’t cases. Cases that came in after eleven had to be referred to Central. If she let it go until tomorrow, then the doctor would come home. If his wife still wasn’t there, he could fill out a Missing Person Report, and Sergeant Joyce would assign the case.
But it was her case. She’d already been assigned this doctor, and she’d messed up. She should have followed through. She should have talked to the wife before. What if she was dead on the floor? April had been trained just for this kind of thing, to look around and underneath what people were telling her for the real story. Why hadn’t she listened more carefully, asked more questions? It seemed to be about letters, but she knew it wasn’t always what it seemed to be.
Every day she tried to remind herself about the robbery call that came in when she was so green the sap was still leaking out of her every pore. She got to the address and climbed three floors to find a hysterical young Chinese woman covered with bruises, dressed only in a robe, hitting herself and wailing in Chinese that it was “My fault, my fault.”
After talking to her for a long time, April finally persuaded the woman to tell her what the crime really was. She had been raped and sodomized by two men for three hours. And the only thing that had been stolen was the woman’s whole life. No way the man who was engaged to her would marry her now.
April never waited until tomorrow for anything. Why had she not gone to see this Chapman woman sooner? My fault, she told herself. She had been intimidated by the husband, the doctor. Now she couldn’t go into an unknown situation by herself. They didn’t exactly have partners in Detective Squads. When big cases came in, they all worked together, each trying to find a tiny piece. In small cases they usually worked on their own. They certainly could work together if they wanted to.
“Mike,” April had said when she hung up, “I need your help.”
The car had stopped, but she wasn’t in a hurry to get out. She looked at Mike.
