'You think there's a connection?' he said.
'Why ask me?' I said.
'I didn't even think there was a stalker.'
DeSpain nodded again.
'You got the packaging this came in?' he said.
I had it in a big manila envelope. I put the envelope on his desk.
'We'll let the scientists take a look,' DeSpain said.
'They'll study it and tell me it was mailed in Boston. But that's what we do.
We let the fucking crime lab study things.' DeSpain shrugged.
'Spreads the blame around.'
'I was out on Brant Island the other night,' I said.
'Yeah?'
'Saw about a hundred Chinese come ashore in a small boat from a big boat.'
'You got a subcontract with INS?' DeSpain said.
'Know anything about that?' I said.
'Nope.'
We looked at each other. Neither of us spoke. There were no lights on in DeSpain's office. The gray afternoon light came weakly through the rain-streaked window.
Finally I said, 'You were a good cop, DeSpain. What the hell happened to you?'
The lines in DeSpain's face got deeper. The eyes got tireder.
'How about you, Sherlock? How good a cop are you? What have you done since you showed up here, except fuck up.'
We were silent again. DeSpain didn't seem angry. He seemed sad. There seemed no power left in him, only tiredness.
'So far,' I said, 'we're about even. Maybe we can recoup by finding this woman.'
'I'll find the woman,' DeSpain said. Suddenly there was force in his voice as if a switch had been turned on.
'You just stay the fuck out of my way.'
I stood.
'Sure,' I said.
But I didn't mean it. And he knew I didn't, but the force was gone from him as quickly as it had come.
I left and drove over to the theater in my car with Hawk and Vinnie trailing along behind in Hawk's car. There was a light mist coming down, perfect fall weather in Port City. I had the wipers on slow intermittent. I was thinking about Hawk's reaction when I'd told him about Jocelyn. There was no one following that broad, he had said. I felt the same way, and it bothered me. I was wrong sometimes, and Hawk was wrong sometimes, but we weren't usually both wrong about this kind of thing. Something else bothered me, and I couldn't find exactly what it was. There was simply something nibbling at the far corner of my consciousness. If I turned toward it, I lost it. If I thought of other things, it was back nibbling. DeSpain was a puzzle too. His reaction was all off.
DeSpain was a straight-ahead guy. He wasn't a remembrances-of things-past kind of guy. He was a get-out- of-my-way-or-I'llthrow-you-in-the-street kind of guy. And then there was the matter if we'd been wrong about Jocelyn's stalker, had we been wrong about Christopholous' stalker. And maybe I hadn't seen illegal Chinese immigrants being smuggled ashore, and maybe this was not Port City I saw but only Asbury Park.
I parked on a hydrant in front of the theater and got out with my duplicate tape and went in. Christopholous didn't have a VCR in his office. He took me to the conference room to view the tape.
The VCR and monitor were on a two-level wheeled deal table pushed against the far wall. We sat on a couple of folding chairs in the big empty room under the bright ceiling fixtures with the stylized theater posters marching in endless gallery around the walls and watched, me for about the fifteenth time, as Jocelyn sat helpless in her chair.
'For God sake,' Christopholous said when the tape went blank.
'What is this?'
'You now know what I know,' I said.
'Where'd you get this?'
'Came in the mail this morning,' I said.
'Postmarked Boston.'
'Well, is she what, a hostage? Do they want a ransom? What?'
I shrugged.
'Got any thoughts?' I said.
'Thoughts? Jesus Christ, Spenser, this is your work, not mine.
