No Witnesses

personal connection to Adler? She moved faster, her imagination explaining the reason for Owen’s call. Had there been an attack? She ran now. Was that why Mackensie was patrolling the woods? The thought of losing Owen terrified her. And this fear of losing him seemed to further define her feelings, to illustrate to her just how committed to him she was. Since the start of their relationship, she had taken on more work, hiding. Afraid to get too close. Her volunteer work at the Shelter, her contact with her girlfriends had suffered as well. She thought about him all the time, and she ran from those thoughts. But now she ran toward him, terrified by the thought of a world without him.

She swung open the cottage door and spotted his distinctive silhouette against the blank pane of a darkened window, hurried across the room, and threw herself into his arms. “Thank God,” she said.

He held to her tightly and said how nothing was worth their separation, how worried he was about losing her-and she laughed that they could be thinking the same thoughts. Perhaps, she thought, she finally knew love.

After several minutes of holding each other, they settled into a comforting stillness and a satisfying warmth. Later they untangled themselves, and she said selfconsciously, “You didn’t call me for this.”

“It’s nice,” he admitted.

“Then what?”

“He called me.” He stated this so matter-of-factly that Daphne nearly missed the content. She studied his face in the ambient light from the main house that penetrated the large window. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“Called you?” Although she had clearly heard his words, the professional in her vied for time, attempting to fit this behavior into something she understood.

“I answered the phone and there was this silence on the other end. It’s funny, because I normally would have hung right up-wrong number, prank call, one of Corky’s friends too bashful to speak, a phone solicitation. But I didn’t hang up. Somehow, I knew. Don’t ask me how.”

She studied his face to measure his state of mind. How far could she dig? He seemed rattled, but okay. This was her chance to hear the truth. His mind would betray him; his memory less clear. Embellishments, omissions. She faced these with all witnesses.

Adler said, “‘It’s me,’ he said, ‘the one you’re after. The faxes.’ And I couldn’t speak. I froze. I’ve been in dozens, maybe hundreds, of complex negotiations and I’ve never frozen like that.” His next words came out with difficulty. “He said that I took everything he loved away from him, that I had ruined everything, that I had lied and cheated long enough. He told me that I could stop it. And that if I failed to, he would take everything away from me. He said something like, ‘How simple it is for you to stop it. And yet you won’t, will you? And you know why, don’t you? We both know why-’” Adler’s voice caught and he looked away. In doing so, his face was blanketed in shadow and she could not make out his features, only the top of his head, which he hung in shame.

“Owen?”

“He called me a coward-which I am, of course-”

“That’s absurd and you know it.”

“He asked if I had heard the late news. He said, ‘It can get much worse. It will get much worse. Time is running out-you know that, don’t you? Tic, tic, tic, tic, tic.’ He made noises like a clock. He said, ‘It will be too late to stop it.’ And he hung up. Strange thing is-I never said one word. He might have been talking to a baby-sitter, for all he knew.”

A cold, penetrating chill started at the back of her scalp. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Never a word.”

She grabbed on to his shirt, slid off the couch, and pulled him to the floor with her. “Daffy!” he protested, but she quieted him with a “Shh!” and led him crawling across the floor and into the windowless bathroom. She pushed the door shut, locked it, and turned on a pale night-light that colored the white walls cream. Her clothes were damp from the exhausting climb up the trail.

“What are you doing?” he asked tenderly, grinning, amused with her, fingering a lock of her hair that hung in her eyes.

She glanced at him hotly, afraid, fumbled through her small purse, and pulled up the antenna on the cellular phone. She questioned, “How did he know it was you on the phone, Owen?” She keyed in the phone number too hastily and made a mistake, forcing her to cancel several digits and reenter them. Angrily she asked, “How did he know?”

Adler’s mouth slacked open.

“Did you come by the tunnel?” she asked. Again, he failed to answer.

Adler had purchased two water-view estates on Loyal and had connected them into one. The former landowner, a product of the paranoia of the early sixties, had installed a bomb shelter in his backyard, at great expense, with an underground tunnel connecting it to the main house. Owen now used the bomb shelter as a wine cellar, and had also connected the guest house to it via a tunnel so that guests could share access to the fine wines and, more important, avoid the miserable rains when going back and forth between the two houses. It was a gimmick, and used rarely, because Owen Adler rarely entertained overnight guests with his busy schedule. Still he loved showing off both the tunnel and his extensive wine collection, and he used the tunnel whenever possible-even in nice weather. “Did you-”

“Yes, the tunnel,” he managed to say.

Boldt was not home. She apologized to Liz for calling late, hung up, and called Boldt’s pager number, keying in her cellular phone number when the recording asked for it. For two minutes she and Owen Adler sat shoulder to shoulder in an awkward silence on the bathroom’s tile floor.

Her cellular phone chirped, and she answered it instantly. “It’s me,” she told Boldt. “I’m at Owen’s. He was here, Lou-Caulfield-he may still be here.”

“What?” Adler exclaimed.

“Right!” she said into the phone. “We’re in the guest house. We’ll wait.”

“Corky!” Adler said, thinking of his daughter. He came to his feet, but Daphne caught hold of his shirt.

She disconnected the call. Still holding him back, she told her lover, “I’ll go.”

Adler’s face contorted. “Here?”

She spoke rapidly. “He knew it was you on the phone, Owen. You said so yourself.” She waited briefly for this to register, but Adler was a mass of confusion. She said impatiently, “He knew because he was looking-he was watching you.”

Adler sprang for the door, but Daphne blocked him with a straight arm and ordered him to lock the doors behind her. “It’s you he wants. I’m going for Corky.”

“To hell with that,” he said, shoving her aside abruptly. He threw open the door and ran for the tunnel.

Daphne followed, but failed to catch him. The concrete tunnel consisted of two long subterranean passages that met outside the wine cellar’s vaultlike steel door. The passage to the main house was noticeably older, its lights more widely spaced and therefore darker.

When she did catch up to him, he was in Corky’s room, his arms wrapped around his eleven-year-old, who was caught halfway between waking and dreaming.

Corky wrestled loose of her father’s constraints, jumped out of bed, and assaulted Daphne, leaping into her arms, “Daffy!” she exclaimed, using Boldt’s nickname for her that followed her everywhere.

Carrying the heavy child, who hung from her neck awkwardly, Daphne edged to the windows and pulled the drapes. Seeing this, Adler helped her, and the darkened room became darker still.

“What now?” he asked her, helping Corky off her.

“You stay right here,” Daphne said defiantly. “I’ll get the lights and lock up.”

This time Adler nodded.

“Are you cooking breakfast?” Corky asked her. This was the euphemism they used when Daphne spent the night.

“No, not tonight,” Daphne answered. She met eyes with Owen. His eyes were filled with tears.

Boldt understood immediately the difficulty he faced. If he descended on Adler’s estate with ten patrol cars and the entire late-shift ID unit, and if the estate were being watched, the involvement of the police would be rather obvious. On the other hand, if the Tin Man were somewhere on the property and Boldt passed up an opportunity to contain him and apprehend him, then he was throwing away innocent lives.