'A boy in your life, honey. It means you won't turn out like me. Some crazed old widow lady who keeps all the toilet bowls sparkling.'
In the phrase about toilet bowls, Marie heard with real sorrow that her mother did indeed know the kind of woman she'd turned into. And didn't want her daughter to turn into. Marie had never liked and loved her mother more than she did right now.
'I was just afraid that with your foot, you'd become like me,' her mother said.
Then she leaned forward and gave her daughter a tearstained kiss on the cheek.
Then her mother turned and started back for the living room. 'I'd better get back there, hon. Who knows? Maybe Oprah herself will get abducted this afternoon.'
Now it was Marie's turn to stand there and cry softly. Crazed as her mother sometimes was, she was still the sweetest person Marie had ever known.
'What the hell're you looking so smug about?'
'Wouldn't you like to know?'
'C'mon, Holland, for Christ's sake tell me. Three hours ago you were sitting in my office crying.'
'Maybe I got a phone call.'
'Oh, yeah? What kind of phone call? A job offer?'
They were in the second-floor coffee room. She liked it up here because now, around five, there was never anybody up here and she could take her heels off and rub her feet and stare out the window at the silver river winding north three blocks away.
'Don't I wish,' she said.
'Then if it wasn't a job offer, what kind of phone call could of made you so happy.'
'Story.'
'News story?'
She enjoyed keeping him in the dark. She liked seeing him sort of beg, like this big shaggy (and, all right, loveable) dog.
'Well if it's a news story phone call, don't you think you should be telling me about it?'
'Not necessarily.'
'I just came up here to see how you were doing-being a pretty nice goddamned guy when you come right down to it-and now look.'
'If it's anything, I'll tell you all about it.'
He took his paper cup of coffee and went to the door. 'Won't you even give me a hint?'
She decided to really get his motor running. 'Let's just say it involves murder.'
'Murder?' He sounded practically exultant. News directors always sounded practically exultant when you dropped the word 'murder.' Murders made great visuals. Great visuals.
'Several of them.'
'Several of them?'
He looked as if he were going to jump on her and start strangling her until she gave him the whole story but just then a TV sales rep came in.
'Hey,' the sleek rep said. 'News guys up here on the second floor.' He seemed stunned that such a thing could happen.
'Yeah,' Chris Holland said to O'Sullivan. 'Better call CBS and tell them all about it. How there are 'news guys' on the second floor.'
Despite himself, O'Sullivan smiled.
And then had the good sense to leave.
Because she sure wasn't going to tell him any more. Not right now anyway.
At the door, O'Sullivan said, 'Oh, yeah, I'm making some dinner tonight. Stop by.'
Then, without waiting for her answer, he left.
She hadn't been in the apartment in eight years, not since the night with her brother.
She stood in the hallway now, the key she'd stolen all those years ago damp and metallic in the soft flesh of her palm.
What if Dobyns was to walk in right now?
What could she do?
How could she escape?
She eased the key into the Yale lock. Turned it gently. Looked again-
And then she pushed at the door and went inside.
The odour was the first thing that struck her. Of dampness, of something hidden in darkness too long, unclean.
She remembered the odour vividly from the night with her brother.
She pushed the door shut behind her.
Even in the afternoon, sunlight still golden and gorgeous outside, the apartment was a place of deep shadows.
She looked around the small rooms, knowing she was afraid to move.
She forced herself to take a single step.
Now-
Down the hall, a door slammed shut and she jumped.
She felt terrified and ridiculous at the same time.
Her heart was loud in her ears.
Sweat like glue covered her flesh.
And then she smiled at herself, just as Rob had always smiled at her for being such a chicken. Remembering Rob's smile, the almost beatific boyishness of it, calmed her.
She took a second step. And then a third.
And then she began, traffic sounds in the background, a baby crying somewhere on the second floor, her search of the apartment.
She spent the next thirty-six minutes going through every closet and every drawer in the place, pausing only once when she had to pee.
She felt stupid, huddled just above the toilet seat (her parents had taught her too well about strange toilet seats) in an apartment she'd just broken into.
And then she was back at work
In one drawer she found a yellowed, brittle newspaper used as lining. She lifted it out and took it over by one of the windows. She held the curtain back with one hand and studied the paper with another. May 23, 1958 was the date. She hadn't even been born then.
But she knew she didn't have time to waste looking at old newspapers and so she put it back in the drawer.
There were rings of dirt in the bathtub and in the kitchen a half eaten sandwich that two cockroaches, antennae flicking, were busy with. And in the hall closet she found an ancient, threadbare London Fog with flecks of what was probably dried blood on the sleeve.
Five minutes later she found the manila envelope.
Memories of the manila envelope Rob had showed her that night came back in jarring, upsetting images.
The girls someone had killed several decades ago… and photographed afterward…
Fingers trembling, stomach tightening, she started to slip the glossy photos from the manila envelope.
And then she heard the key in the lock. She froze, glancing around the room for someplace to hide. But the apartment was so small-
The key turning in the lock now-
