“First, I’ll be going to Western alone. I see no reason to expose you to a psych ward.” Jo must be in butch protective mode, as well as relentless. She was also a bit deluded if she thought she could make sweeping decisions about Becca’s welfare without her input. “Second, Voakes is a psychopath. I have no idea how revealing his expressions will be. I’m not sure what I can learn from him, but it’s worth a try.”
Jo nudged her subtly and nodded down a side street. Becca realized she remembered the necessity of avoiding the windows of the Quest Bookshop as well. She felt oddly touched by this and wished she could make up her mind whether Jo’s protectiveness comforted her or chapped her butt.
They walked down the tree-shaded sidewalk toward Jo’s office. Becca felt more awake and alert than the single tall latte she had consumed could account for. Nightmare aside, she had slept several hours surprisingly well on that sofa, in the company of her best friends, with Jo sitting nearby. She remembered the low music of Jo’s voice, telling her she was safe. She thought of a question, wanting to hear that music again.
“Why wouldn’t you let me drive us down here? All my car would have had to do was creak to a stop at intersections. It can still do that.”
“Perhaps, but it’s almost fifty miles to Western State.” Jo fished a set of keys out of her back pocket. “We’re picking up my car. I’m hoping to drive to the hospital later today, if Rachel Perry ever answers her—”
Jo broke off abruptly and touched Becca’s arm. She was staring at the locked gate of her building with a fierce intensity, and Becca followed her gaze. The stinging smell hit her the next moment, a light but acrid chemical stink.
Becca claimed no great understanding of criminal trespass, but she could quote entire Law & Order: SVU episodes by heart, and she recognized acid poured over a lock when she gaped at it. Not some half-assed acid, either. The thick steel plate of the barred gate was gouged, not just scratched.
Jo nudged Becca back gently and grasped a high steel bar on the gate. One tug opened it a few inches, the lock rattling and useless.
“Jo, we need to call the police.” Becca reached in her pocket for her cell. “Whoever broke in might still be in there.”
“By all means, call them.” Jo guided Becca farther back. She pulled open the barred gate and slipped through it. “Wait for them out here.”
“Joanne!” Becca was exasperated. “Would you wait one macha minute? This will take all of two—”
“I doubt there’s any danger, but I’ll be careful.” Jo’s shoes cracked on the broken glass of the entry. The inner door swung open with ease, and she went through it.
Becca’s cell crackled in her ear as the 911 dispatcher answered, and she snapped out information tersely, stepping back to the curb to read the house number. “Great. Thank you.” She snapped her phone shut, muttering to herself. “All right. Capitol Hill cop response time, without reports of bazookas going off, at least fifteen minutes. If we had driven my car, Dr. Call, at least I would have the chobos in my trunk!”
She decided her nerves couldn’t take this. Becca was reasonably certain no one was going to shoot Joanne Call with a bazooka in the next fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t willing to risk it. She blew out a disgusted breath and stepped gingerly past the iron gate and into Jo’s inner room.
“It’s all right.” Jo’s distant voice was lifeless. “Whoever it was is long gone.”
The room was utter destruction. Becca came to a dead halt and looked around in appalled silence. Every single radio that had sat on high shelves on the walls was now shattered on the hardwood floor in a jumble of broken pieces and wiring. Every tape recorder and record player had suffered the same violent fate. Half the shelves were torn down, wrenched out of their brackets by what seemed a titanic rage.
“Jo.” Becca felt like she had the breath punched out of her. “Jesus Christ.”
“Try not to touch anything.” Jo stood across the room with her back to Becca, her hands clasped behind her, studying a smashed case on the wall. She glanced over her shoulder as Becca came toward her. “And watch the glass. It’s everywhere.”
Becca picked her way carefully across the floor. She glanced at Jo’s large desk in the corner and wished she hadn’t. The expensive computer was a shattered ruin across its oak surface. “Police are on their way.”
Jo stood very still, her gaze diamond-sharp on the devices that lay in mangled pieces in the broken case. The muscles in her jaw stood out in stark relief.
“These were special to you.” Becca touched her wrist tentatively. “Were they communicators — Spiricoms, like the one at the house?”
Jo nodded. “Later versions, yes. It doesn’t matter. They were just…machines. Toys.” She looked down at the keys in her hand. “But I have to check my quarters.”
“Your what?” Jo moved toward her desk and pressed a button in the far wall. To Becca’s astonishment, a recessed door slid open, so shadowed she hadn’t realized it was there.
“I live on the upper level. It’s doubtful they could have broken in there.” Jo stepped into a small elevator. “But I need to see something.”
“May I come?” Her own quivering nerves aside, Becca didn’t want Jo to be alone just now. She was concerned about her eyes, which seemed eerily remote. “I’m coming,” she decided, and followed Jo into a small elevator. An elevator, for heaven’s sake, thoroughly sleek and modern; a twist of Jo’s key sent it gliding soundlessly upward. Becca had sensations of both swift travel and an inordinately long distance. “Do you live on the roof of this thing?”
“The top floor. It’s six stories up.”
Becca hoped a mundane topic might coax that alien distance out of Jo. “You rent the entire upper floor of a building this size, right off Broadway, on Capitol Hill? In this economy? How rich are you?”
“I own the building. I’m quite rich.” Jo glanced down at her impassively and stepped out as the elevator door slid open.
Becca followed, not trying to close her mouth. It was the most subtly opulent space she had ever seen, and she thought she’d seen opulent. Her uncle and aunt were pretty wealthy. Jo’s “quarters” were a large, sunny expanse of blond wood floor and glass walls entirely windowing two sides. Becca was knocked dead by the view — the rolling green hills of Volunteer Park looking north, the distant crags of the Olympic range to the west — before the rest of the room registered.
The lack of technology struck Becca at once. For a woman so professionally immersed in electronic gadgetry, Jo’s home seemed remarkably free of digital connections to the world. Except for one wide plasma TV, the better to watch Xena upon, her floor-to-ceiling oak shelves held books, print books, rather than smartphones or laptops. There was art on the walls, sparely but beautifully framed oils and watercolors, mostly unique landscapes. The impersonal aura of Jo’s office was completely reversed by the understated, tasteful comfort she had created here.
Jo had walked directly to a large and lushly cushioned bed, neatly made with satin sheets, that rested in one corner. Becca shifted her eyes from it quickly. “It looks like they didn’t make it this far. Jo, this place is beautiful.”
Jo didn’t reply. She picked up a small box from a table beside the bed. She cradled it in her hands, and only then did the rigid lines of her body begin to relax. It was a small oblong shape, the size of a book, and looked covered in velvet. Jo lifted the lid, and Becca heard a faint, tinkling music issue from the box. It played no song she recognized, a pleasing, antique melody with a Spanish lilt. This music box was what Jo had wanted to check. Its safety was important to her.