Taylor’s eyes went dark and she felt a murderous fury of her own welling up inside her.
“Catch the bastard,” she said. “Catch the bastard and send him to hell.”
CHAPTER 36
God, it felt good to be home.
At first, Taylor was nervous, anxious. She’d been gone for over a month. The housekeeper had been in once a week to water the plants and check on things, but the place still felt stale, musty, in need of a good airing out.
It was cold as well, the heat turned down to sixty-five degrees so long that the apartment was frigid to its bones. She got the maintenance man to come up with her, to go into her apartment alongside her just in case. But no one was there; the place was deserted. The maintenance man set her bags down in the living room, walked through once with her, turning on every light in the house, then left. The moment he closed the door behind him, Taylor felt a chill.
And then, without warning, it went away. She was home, finally, and she was blissfully, sweetly alone behind locked doors. Suddenly the stress of the past month or so melted away and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a glass of wine. She turned up the thermostat to seventy-five, then walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
There were two unopened bottles of Chardonnay on the top shelf.
As she was twisting the corkscrew into the top of the bottle, she glanced over at the answering machine and was surprised the message light wasn’t blinking. Then she remembered: She’d turned the machine off and muted the ringer on the phone. Anyone she wanted to talk to knew to call her cell phone; to hell with the rest.
As she was pouring a glass of wine, she heard the faint chirping of her cell phone buried deep inside her purse. She walked quickly back into the living room and dug through her bag. She flipped the phone open, didn’t recognize the number, but decided to answer anyway.
“Yes?” she said.
“Taylor?”
Taylor smiled. “Oh, hi. How are you?”
“I’m fine. The question is, how are you?”
“I made it in just fine, Hank. No problems. The place was well-tended, although a bit stuffy and cold. There was no sign of anyone having been here but the cleaning lady.”
“Good. I meant to ask you last night, what are you going to do with all his things?”
“God,” she said, sighing. “I haven’t gotten that far. What should I do?”
“I’d like to have one of my guys from the New York Field Office go through them. NYPD Homicide might want a shot as well. After that, it really doesn’t matter. You can trash it all, give it to the Salvation Army.”
Taylor walked back into the kitchen and picked up the wineglass. She held it up, staring through the buttery, almost golden liquid into the kitchen. The kitchen light diffused into a series of brilliant yellow circular halos.
“I guess he won’t have any need for it, will he?” Taylor asked.
“Was he working out of your apartment?” Powell asked.
“Yes, he was working on another book,” Taylor said offhandedly. Then her voice caught in her throat. “I guess that means he was reliving another-”
There was a long moment of silence broken only by the static on the cell phone. “Yeah,” Hank said, breaking the quiet. “I guess he was.”
“You know, I can’t think about that right now,” Taylor said brightly. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t. I’ve got too much else on my mind.”
“I understand,” Hank answered. “But I want you to do something for me. Seal off the room he worked in and hold it for my guys. I want to go through his computer hard drive, any archived material, all his papers and correspondence, bills and bank statements. Anything that might give us a clue as to what he’s up to.”
Taylor nodded. “Sure, I can do that. I don’t want to touch any of it, anyway.”
“Great, thanks. I can have my team at your place tomorrow morning.”
“Not too early. If I can sleep, I’m going to as long as I can.”
“You need it. So how was the flight?”
Taylor took a sip of the wine. It tasted like heaven in her mouth. “Good,” she said after a second or two. “Any flight that got me out of there would be good. How was yours?”
“We were an hour and a half late into Reagan, but all that meant was that I missed rush hour.”
“So,” Taylor said cheerily, “you got home in time to have a late dinner with Mrs. Powell.”
Hank cleared his throat. “There, uh, there isn’t a Mrs.
Powell,” he said.
“Oh, divorced or never married?”
“I’m a widower.”
Taylor felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you? Besides, it was a while ago. Life goes on.”
“Kids?”
“Yeah,” Hank said. She could feel his voice brighten over the phone. “Daughter. She’s seventeen, goes to the same boarding school her mother went to.”
“I’ll bet she’s beautiful,” Taylor offered.
“Gorgeous. Looks just like her mother.”
“Wow,” Taylor said softly.
“Look, Taylor, there’s something else. I debated whether or not to tell you, but for all I know it’s already on the evening news.”
Taylor felt her throat tighten. “What? What now?”
“We know he’s got a car,” Hank said.
She could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “How?
How do you know that?”
“There was a homicide in Nashville last night,” Hank said. When the words came across the phone, Taylor felt her head swim. “This time it was a guy, mid-thirties, dark hair.
Height and weight about the same as Michael’s. Dressed in a nice suit. They found him stuffed in a dark corner of the top floor of a multistory parking lot. When they found him, he had Michael’s driver’s license on him and no other ID.”
Taylor leaned against the counter, trying to keep her balance. “Which means Michael’s got his driver’s license and his ID,” she said.
“And his registration and his car.”
“So go after the guy’s car,” Taylor said.
“We will,” Hank said. “Just as soon as we get a positive ID
on the victim. Right now, we still don’t know who he is.”
“God,” Taylor said, her voice breaking. “That means some poor woman is sitting home with her kids wondering why her husband hasn’t come home from work yet. Is he out messing around? Has he disappeared? Has he-”
“Taylor, stop,” Hank interrupted. “Don’t. It won’t help anything.”
She slammed the wineglass down on the counter. The stem snapped in two; the glass fell and shattered, splattering wine everywhere.
“I can’t stand this, Hank! Damn it, I can’t take any more!”
“We’ll stop him,” Hank insisted. “I promise you. We’ll get him.”
“Please,” she said. “Before he does any more.”
“You’ve got my number?” Hank said.
“Yes.”
