We reached 208. Hawk put the key in the lock.
'She got the chain on, we'll hit it together,' I said.
Hawk nodded, turned the key, and pushed. The door opened five inches and held against the chain.
'Who is it,' a woman said.
Hawk straightened and stepped back.
'On three,' I said.
'One, two, three.'
We hit the door together. Hawk with his left shoulder, me with my right, and the chain lock tore out of the door jamb, and the door flew open, and slammed against the wall, and we were in the room with Jocelyn.
I closed the door behind us.
Jocelyn Colby, wearing jeans and an oversized tee shirt, was sitting on the bed propped against the pillows with the television on and a copy of Elk magazine open on her lap. She stared at us with her mouth open. I walked past the bed to the windows and looked down and waved Vinnie up from the back parking lot.
Then I turned and rested my hips against the window sill and crossed my arms and looked at Jocelyn.
'We've come to your rescue,' I said.
Jocelyn continued to stare with her mouth open. Then she closed it, and swung her feet to the floor.
'Oh, thank God you're here,' she said.
She stood and pressed herself against me and wrapped her arms around my waist. I looked at Hawk. He grinned.
'Want me to step outside?' he said.
The door opened as Vinnie came in. He had his Walkman earphones around his neck. When he looked at me, he seemed even more amused than Hawk.
'You getting laid?' he said.
'Vinnie,' I said.
'You got the soul of a poet.'
'Longfellow,' Vinnie said, and chuckled to himself. Hawk liked it.
'Longfellow,' he said. And he and Vinnie both laughed.
Jocelyn appeared not to notice. She pressed against me with her head on my chest and her arms tight around me.
She kept murmuring, 'Thank God, thank God, you've found me.'
I assumed she was stalling while she tried to think up a story.
I looked past her around the room. It was motel standard: beige walls, double bed with a beige spread, bureau with television on it, bathroom and closet in an alcove, bedside table with a beige phone, straight chair.
'One of you poets mind checking the closet and the bureau,' I said, 'see if you can find a clue?'
Still happy with the Longfellow remark, both of them looked.
Hawk went into the bath closet alcove, and came out with a video camera on a tripod. Vinnie searched the bureau and came up with a black slip, a white silk scarf, and about twenty-five feet of clothesline. Hawk picked up the straight chair, placed it before the blank wall next to the doorway, opposite the window. He put the video camera on its tripod a few feet in front of it. Vinnie draped the black slip and the white scarf over the back of the chair, and put the coiled rope on the seat.
'Jocelyn,' I said.
She buried her face harder against my chest. I took hold of her upper arms and separated myself from her and held her away from me at arm's length.
'Jocelyn,' I said.
'Cut the crap.'
She started to cry.
'Okay,' I said.
'Good. Now raise your tear-stained face and gaze beseechingly into my eyes.'
She stepped away from me and looked at all three of us. I took the opportunity to get my butt off the window ledge and stand upright.
'One woman,' she said, 'and three men. And the men standing around laughing. Isn't that typical?'
I didn't know how typical it was, so I let it slide.
'Don't you realize I've been through hell,' she said.
'You may have gone through hell, Jocelyn, but you weren't kidnapped.'
'I was,' she said. She was crying harder now, though it didn't seem to impede her speech.
Hawk went into the bathroom.
