“Suspiciously clean?”
“Maybe. But he was gone. I talked to one of the guys who was in the house, and he said it was like the Mary Celeste. Uncorked bottle of wine on the table, a cigar cut and ready to smoke, the whole deal. The file is still open, but it’s full of dust, and I should stress that nothing ever got tied to him. So what’s he to you, Jack?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m not sure I believe that,” Blanchard said, sounding tired. “The guy I spoke to said someone else was asking about Fox, a few weeks back. This other person said he was a lawyer. Do I need to spell it out?”
“No,” I said.
I called a final number.
“You’ve been lying to me,” I said, before Fisher had a chance to speak. “I’m coming to Seattle. You’re going to meet with me or I’m going to come and find you. If I wind up doing that, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
I cut the connection and walked across the road to hail a cab to the airport or a motel or bar, somewhere I could camp out for the night before flying north.
chapter
THIRTY-TWO
Rachel stood at the corner, mouth open. She looked up the street, then down again. Turned in a melodramatic circle, as if it might help. It didn’t. Son of a bitch.
She’d really gone.
Oh, beautiful.
Thanks, Lori. A perfect end to another stellar night.
Naturally, it was agreed that if either woman met someone five-star, then she was authorized to take off with him without having to track down the other to explain. The arrangement was more pertinent to Rachel, though, because Lori always insisted on driving and so was never the one who got abandoned outside Seattle’s hottest bar (this week only), facing a walk home that would get longer and longer as the last glass of wine wore off. A walk in a skirt not designed for locomotion. And without a sensible coat.
“Fuck,” Rachel said, wearily. But no use crying over spilt milk. Or split girlfriends. Ha. Was that funny, or just clever? Was it even clever?
Given that the exchange was happening inside her own head, did it even fucking matter?
She glanced indecisively back at Wanna: Be. She guessed she could go into the bar again and see if they knew any special cab-summoning spells, but there was no telling how long she’d have to wait. Nor did she relish trying to talk her way back past the doorman, a tall, smooth black dude flushed with self-importance and clearly unaware that a month from now he’d be on the streets again, handing out passes to drunks just to keep the background hubbub up to marketable levels.
“Fuck,” she muttered, again. She arranged her wispy coat around her neck like a scarf and sent up a prayer that Lori’s new best friend would turn out to have major issues and a dick the size of a cashew nut. Said “fuck” a final time, quietly.
And started walking home.
“Twenty-seven,” Rachel said under her breath.
She was keeping careful count. She didn’t want to be ballpark about it. She wanted the exact number to insert between the phrases “I had to walk…” and “…fucking blocks” in the e-mail she was sending Lori first thing in the morning.
She took the opportunity to rest for a minute. Another couple blocks would get her to the correct cross street, and then it would be fifteen minutes before she got to her house, a dinky place in a semimarginal neighborhood. Her house, where she kept her things, and slept, and ate in front of the television. Home, she guessed, and she knew she was lucky to have it and that without help from her dad she’d be sharing some dope- reeking dive with three other people drifting through their early twenties.
Eventually she started walking again, more slowly now. The streets were deserted but for an occasional car rocketing up or down or across, other people doing whatever it was they did. Rows of decent houses were set behind small and well-tended yards, every window dark. Nobody stayed up late around here. They’d already gotten what they needed and didn’t need to pretend that it could be found in cool-for-this-night-only bars full of light and chatter, which still felt like the insides of empty closets. Who needs that crap when you’ve got a two-car garage? Everybody here was tucked in happy and warm. Everyone except for…
…whoever was making that noise.
Rachel stopped, turned. The noise was footsteps. It pissed her off that the sound affected her this way—so there were footsteps, what ever—but it was dark and late, and she couldn’t help it.
There was no one behind her. The steps sounded like they must be a little distance away, they were so quiet and light. Rachel flipped open her purse, got out her phone.
“Right,” she mumbled into it. “But penguins are always like that, you know? Most of them can’t even drive a car. Except those ones with the big crests. The CIA bred them for cross-country rally competition.”
She paused a moment—faking conversation in the hope of putting off a stalker made her feel dumb, but a friend of Lori’s claimed it had saved her butt more than once—then listened again.
Silence now. Whoever walked alone had gone some other way. Cool. She kept the phone in place, however, as she turned the corner that put her just six blocks from home. Then her hand slowly drifted down from her ear.
Someone was standing twenty yards up the street.
It wasn’t a very tall someone, but Rachel couldn’t determine much more than that because there was a streetlamp behind them.
She walked a little farther, slowing down, squinting.
The silhouette resolved into the shape of a little girl, standing neatly in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I’m lost,” the girl said.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Rachel asked.
“Somewhere else.”
“Okay, then. How…um, how come you’re out this late anyway?”
The girl ignored the question. Rachel didn’t blame her. She knew she was crap at relating to kids, with the exception of her baby sis. No children worked in her office or went to her gym. Or hung out in bars, much. So the only other shorties she encountered belonged to her older sister, who never left them alone with her but always hovered in the background, as if she suspected that Rachel might try to borrow money off her brood or try teaching them to smoke.
Nonetheless, she tried bending down, to seem more friendly. “Does your mom know where you are?”
“No.”
“Where do you live, honey?”
“I just want to be indoors. I don’t want to go home.”
Uh-oh, Rachel thought. Suddenly this was looking more complicated. A lost kid was one thing. Chance to be a good neighbor. A runaway was different. Problems at home. Weird Uncle Bob. The whole nine yards.
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s late. And cold. Be nicer to be home, don’t you think?”
The girl waited patiently for her to stop talking. “Where is your home?”
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Where is it?”
“It’s not far,” Rachel said. “But—”
“Take me to your home.”
“Look,” Rachel said firmly, “I’ll help you find your own house. Your folks must be flipping out. But—”
Suddenly the child flew at her.
Rachel wasn’t ready. She threw a hand out to break her fall but crashed awkwardly anyway, the momentum
