rushing to the bedroom. It was only twelve-fifteen. There were probably day-shift people in the building who had not even gone to bed, and some of the night-shift people might leave late for the hospital.
She stood at the window and looked down at the street. She could see a white van down there that must belong to Dewey. It had steel screens in the back windows, probably to keep thieves from breaking in and taking Dewey’s tools while he was inside some apartment building fixing a hot-water heater or something.
Judith knew that when this was over, Dewey’s description of her would not be of much use to the police. It would make them lose a day finding all the female tenants Dewey didn’t know and letting him see them, then showing him the identification photographs of the female employees of the hospital, and then probably interviewing the clerks at the stores where a person could buy hospital scrubs. It would all be a waste of time.
She wanted to wait until Dewey had left the building. She didn’t see any need to harm him, and she knew that she would have to if he returned. She watched for several minutes, and then several more. Cars went by. The neighborhood had reached the hour of night when there were no pedestrians out, everyone’s dog had been walked, and the hospital’s visiting hours were long over.
Dewey’s foreshortened, wide body appeared below the front window, coming down the front steps in a little dance. She watched him reach the bottom, walk down the sidewalk, step off the curb, and cross the street to his van. When he got inside she saw the van shake a little as though he were walking around in it, but then the taillights came on. The van slid forward, away from the curb, moved up the street, and disappeared. Dewey was gone.
She stared down at the street for another minute. Dewey did not return, and no one came to take his place. She looked at her watch. It was still well before one. She turned away from the window and studied the darker parts of the apartment.
It was sparsely furnished, just like the one Judith had rented on the west side, across the river. Catherine had not even added any pictures. She was treating her apartment like a hotel room, just a place where she came to sleep. Catherine was undoubtedly planning to rebuild her house very soon, and she would save her decorating ideas for that. Judith hated the thought of it—an insurance company paying to build Catherine a better, newer place. Judith had risked her life for that.
She walked slowly from the window across the room to a narrow hall. Her eyes were now accustomed to the dark. Every shape, every line was clear to her, but it had been cleaned of its color. Time had changed for her too: if she took a single step and did not take another for fifteen seconds, it made no difference. There was no need to risk making a succession of rapid sounds that did not fit with the slow current of the night. Soon enough she was standing in the doorway of Catherine’s bedroom.
She could see Catherine curled up in the middle of a queen bed. She was smaller than Judith had thought from the television shots. Or maybe it had been the telephone conversations. She had always sounded big, authoritative, like a strict teacher. But Catherine was one of those people who looked like children when they were asleep, the closed eyes pressing the eyelashes against the cheeks, making them look longer, the skin on the forehead and around the eyes smooth and relaxed, the body curled on its side with the covers pulled to the chin.
Judith spotted Catherine’s purse on the dresser. She drifted silently to it and reached inside. Her hands felt Catherine’s wallet, a small leather case that seemed to be filled with business cards, a thin leather identification folder. She would go through all of that later. She didn’t want to let her eyes stray from Catherine.
From this angle, she could tell that Catherine had left some things under the bed on the side where she slept, away from the door. She could see a long, black four-battery flashlight, a pair of slippers, and Catherine’s gun, stuck in a tight little holster that barely covered the trigger guard and two inches of the barrel.
Judith drifted quietly to the bed, bent her knees, and picked up the gun and flashlight, then rose and stepped backward two paces. The pistol was a semiautomatic, and Judith had to get to know it by touch. There was a safety catch, so she clicked it off, then raised the pistol to aim at Catherine’s head. “Catherine,” she whispered.
She watched Catherine’s face as the whisper reached her brain. Her body flinched involuntarily, her eyes snapped open, and her head gave a quick side-to-side motion that was like a shudder while she found the shadow near her bed. She started to sit up.
Judith turned on the powerful flashlight to blind her. “Sit still, Catherine,” she said. “Don’t move.”
Catherine said, “Hello, Tanya.” Her voice was a bit raspy from sleep, but she was making an effort to keep it artificially calm.
Judith knew Catherine was afraid. She could see Catherine’s heart beating, making the thin pajama top quiver
“Who are you now?”
“Lie down again, this time on your stomach.”
“You don’t really want to do this.”
“You really don’t want to make me angry. You know that I wouldn’t mind pulling the trigger.”
Catherine lay down again and rolled onto her stomach. “You don’t get anything for doing this. That’s what I meant. I’ve been trying to help you come in safely for a long time. Breaking in here doesn’t help your cause, and it’s dangerous.”
“Hands behind your back. Cross your wrists.”
She watched Catherine do as she had ordered, then leaned over and pulled up the blankets, keeping Catherine’s arms and hands on the outside. Catherine said, “You came here to talk to me, didn’t you? Well, I’m happy to listen, and I’ll try to do what I can for you.”
There was silence. Catherine was beginning to feel heaviness coming on her. There had been a few seconds of hot panic, when she had heard the whisper in the dark, and then seen the shape that proved it had not been just a nightmare. But now the heat and the urgency were gone, and the cold fear had begun. Fear was bleeding her muscles of strength and making her nerves slow to transfer signals. Fear made her arms and legs weak and heavy. She concentrated on controlling her voice. She knew she had to keep talking. “What can I call you?”
“Nothing.” The voice came from behind her now, beyond the foot of the bed. That was a very bad sign. Dennis Poole had been shot in the back of the head. The banker in Los Angeles had been shot in the back of the head. Gregory McDonald had been blindfolded in bed and shot in the head.
Catherine tried again. It was easy to kill someone who was lying facedown and silent. She had to keep talking to stay alive. “If you were just planning to kill me, you wouldn’t have needed to wake me up. You took a risk, so you must have wanted my help. That was a wise decision. Coming in to the bureau with me voluntarily to answer questions is the best thing you could do.”
“Answer questions?” The voice was bitter, angry. “Are you still pretending that you just want me to answer a few questions?”
Catherine knew she had fallen into a way of speaking that could get her killed. She had to be extremely careful now not to offend her, and not to appear to be lying. She had to keep the same tone, not retreat. “I’m a police officer. What I say and do have to reflect what the law says. You haven’t been charged with anything. You’re still wanted for questioning—here and in Arizona and California—so that’s what I have to call it.”
“And when I’m done, I’ll be able to walk out, right?”
Catherine spoke as carefully as possible. “I think that you almost certainly won’t. You’re a suspect, and so you’ll probably be detained. You can wait to answer questions until a lawyer is with you.”
“I’m not here for questions.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“I’m here for you. I’m what you asked for.”
“I asked you to come in to save yourself.”
There was a small, voiceless laugh, like a quiet cough that Catherine heard coming from the foot of the bed. She waited for the shot, the pain. But instead, it was only the voice. “If I came in to the office with you tonight, the way you asked, you’re saying you wouldn’t get any benefit out of it?”
“Of course I would.”
“What kind of benefit?”
“Some people I respect would be proud of me.”
“Who?”
