“That’s good,” said Catherine. “I think like my grandmother too, and we have an agreement.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said. “It’s been kind of hard to be away from you.”
She could foresee that he was going to bring up the idea of living together again, so she diverted his attention back to the briefcase. “Are you using that thing as an overnight bag?”
“No. I dropped my suitcase off at the hotel while I was waiting for you to get home from work.” He reached into the briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of manila file folders. “These are just a few odds and ends I dug up for you. I stopped by Jim Spengler’s office and picked up copies of interview transcripts from people who saw Nancy Mills in L.A. He also had some stills made up from security tapes at the Promenade Mall. One of them places her there at the same time as Rachel Sturbridge’s bank manager from San Francisco, who got picked up there and killed. There’s an analysis from a profiler, some reports from a blood-spatter expert and a ballistics expert.”
Catherine looked at the thick stack of files, then picked up the profiler’s file and looked at the first page. “This isn’t from the LAPD. It says ‘Property of Pitt Investigations.’ You paid a profiler? This one says ‘Pitt’ too. And this one.”
Joe waved his hand to dismiss it. “I had a few people I’ve used on cases before take a look at what we had, that’s all. There isn’t much there that you haven’t already figured out on your own, and there isn’t anything to tell you where Tanya is, but sometimes one little item in a report can give you an idea.”
Catherine looked up at him. “Flowers and case files? What could be more romantic?”
He shrugged. “It’s what we do, Cath. There’s no use pretending you’re somebody else, or that I am. We hunt down killers. I hope something here helps you get her.”
“You’re worried about me.”
“Of course I am.”
“Joe, this is my fault, and I’m sorry. I’ve been whining to you about the case, and about my house, and I’m sure I’ve played the whole episode for all the sympathy I could get. I guess I’ve felt so close to you intellectually and so far from you in miles that I didn’t remember to use restraint. You were too far away to do anything about my troubles except listen. I talked my head off, but not so you would come and solve my problems for me. I just wanted to talk about them. You understand?”
“Sure I do. I was reacting to what happened, not to what you said about it. She’s tried to get you killed in two different ways. I want her caught now.”
“Me too.” Catherine picked up the roses, took them into the kitchen, and started searching the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?”
“I just realized I don’t own a vase anymore.” She opened the refrigerator, took out a large jar that had a little Italian sauce in the bottom, rinsed it in the sink, filled it with fresh water, snipped the stems of the roses, and arranged them in it.
Joe watched her. “Very beautiful.”
She looked at him for a moment. “I really am glad to see you, Joe. I mean anytime. I just didn’t want to drag you all the way up here to be my caretaker.”
“That wasn’t why I came. I just grabbed any excuse I could get to see you.”
“How long do you plan to devote to that?”
“I have a return ticket for Monday. I’ve got to meet with a guy who knows something about a case I’m working on.”
“Three days. That’s probably enough time.”
“For what?”
She took his hand. “I’m going to your hotel with you now, and I’m going to do my best to make you really, really glad you brought those roses in person.”
Catherine and Joe spent the next three days in isolation. It was really Catherine’s isolation, but she had opened herself to let Joe into it. During the sunlit hours they went over the outside experts’ reports together, compiling and evaluating possible avenues of investigation. In the evenings they ate late dinners at restaurants along the river and talked about their families, beliefs about love, theories of witness behavior and forensic evidence. Then they walked back to Joe’s hotel holding hands and made love until they could hear the footsteps of the hotel’s early-morning staff in the hallways.
On the last morning, Catherine drove Joe to the airport. As they stood beside Catherine’s small gray rental car outside the terminal, he said, “Well? When is the next time going to be?”
“Whenever either one of us gets a chance,” she said. “The second I can leave here, I’ll be on your doorstep.”
While she was driving to her apartment to get ready for work, she found that she was crying. She drove around the block while she dried her eyes, then left her rental car on the street in front of her building, took her overnight bag inside, and opened her apartment door. The first thing she saw was the jar of roses. The weekend with Joe had begun and ended so quickly that the petals were still fresh and a few buds were not fully open. If it had not been for the roses, she might have thought she had imagined it.
Catherine spent the next few days working more intensely than before, following the most promising leads and theories that she and Joe had developed, and then, when those failed, moving to the less promising leads. All of them served to verify evidence she already had. None of them seemed to take her to the next step, finding the place where Tanya Starling was right now.
One night about two weeks after the fire, she called the number of her bank and listened to the long menu: “For check orders, press four. For credit card billing inquiries, press five.” She supposed that what she wanted was probably closest to five. After a pause, a woman answered. “This is Nan. How can I help you?”
“My house burned down about two weeks ago, and I called the next day and asked that my credit card be replaced. I haven’t received it yet, and I thought I’d check to be sure that there’s no problem.”
“Your name please?”
“Catherine Hobbes, H-O-B-B-E-S.”
“And your card was destroyed in the fire?”
“Yes. I ordered a new one right after the fire, and so it’s been almost two weeks.”
“Two weeks? That doesn’t sound right. Let me check. Do you have your account number?”
“No. When my house burned, so did all the old bills and records.”
“Social security number?”
Catherine recited the number, listened to the clicking of computer keys.
“I’m not sure what happened. It looks as though they tried to call you and verify your information before they mailed you a new card, and couldn’t reach you. Do you have a new phone number and address to give me?”
“Yes.” Catherine gave it to her. Then she added, “When I called before, I gave them my work number and address. I’m a police officer.”
“I suppose it’s possible somebody there answered the phone and said, ‘Police,’ and our person figured it was a hoax. Let’s try to get this expedited so your new card goes out as soon as possible. It will have a new number on it. We always do that when the other one isn’t in your possession.”
“When should I expect it?”
“Tomorrow or the next day, if we can get it done without another glitch, and they’re pretty rare. I’m very sorry about the mix-up. Have you ordered new checks and so on?”
“Yes, but if you have a way of verifying that that’s being done, I’d appreciate it.”
“Happy to do it. And one more thing. If you’re a police officer, you’ve probably already thought of this, but I usually advise people to order reports from the three credit services to be sure all your cards really were destroyed and nobody picked one up. I can tell you that nothing has been charged to your account at this bank during that time, but you should still run the credit check.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ll do that.”
She let a day go by, and then another. Her replacement card came, and she forgot about the credit reports. But at the end of the week she remembered while she was in the office and called the three phone numbers to order her credit reports.
When Catherine came home from work two days later, the reports were in her mailbox in the lobby of the apartment building. She took them to her apartment, sat at the kitchen table, and opened them warily. For the past
