“Yes, well,” he said at last, “it could be seen that way.”
Hopelessness swallowed her. “You think I’m a paranoid lunatic, don’t you?”
“I haven’t said that.”
“No, you haven’t. You’re a nice guy. Too nice to tell me how you really feel. But the thing is, I know Erin. I know how her mind works, how she thinks. This SOS signal is exactly what she would do. She must have thought it up on the spur of the moment, and gambled that her kidnapper wouldn’t catch on.”
“Or she may have made a small slip of the pen while she was preoccupied with getting out of town. Evidently she wasn’t thinking very clearly. She addressed the envelope with the intention of mailing it, but there’s no stamp or postmark; she must have hand-delivered it to your home.”
“ Someone delivered it by hand,” Annie said. “I don’t think it was her.”
“We have no reason to suspect otherwise.”
He wasn’t buying it, as she should have known he wouldn’t. Still, there was one more angle of attack she could try. “The Tegretol is missing.”
It took him a second to find a context for the remark. “From the medicine cabinet?”
She nodded. “I stayed at Erin’s apartment yesterday evening, reading her journal-there’s nothing in it that indicates any intention of leaving, by the way-and when I went to get some aspirin, I noticed the Tegretol wasn’t there.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe… whoever kidnapped her went back to the apartment and took the bottle.”
“While you were still there?”
“He could’ve gotten past me. I was preoccupied.”
“Why would he take that kind of risk just for the medicine?”
“Because Erin needs it.”
“You mean her kidnapper is keeping her alive somewhere?”
Annie grasped that this was what she did mean. The realization that Erin very likely was still alive lifted her like a cresting wave.
“Yes,” she said, holding her voice steady. “Yes, that’s right. He abducted her and forced her to write this phony letter, and then later he returned for the Tegretol because, without it, she could die.”
There. She had said it. Even to her it sounded grossly implausible, but she was grimly certain it was true.
Walker shut his eyes. Suddenly he looked tired. “Annie…”
She waited, refusing to make things easier for him by anticipating what he wanted to say.
“How much sleep did you get last night?” he asked finally.
She saw where this was leading. “Five or six hours,” she lied.
“That much?”
Oh, hell. She’d never been a decent fibber. “More like three or four.”
He nodded. “How about the night before? Did you sleep well then?”
“What makes you think I didn’t?”
“You had circles under your eyes yesterday. You seemed kind of wired, as if you were operating on adrenaline.”
“Okay. I had insomnia that night, too. So what?”
“So you’ve been functioning on virtually no rest. You’re distraught. Your imagination is overacting.”
“I hallucinated not seeing the Tegretol. Is that it?”
“Under the same circumstances I might have overlooked it, too.”
Frustration and anger boiled up inside her. She thought about opening her purse, showing him the turquoise wrapped in the tissueDid I hallucinate this, you son of a bitch? — but rationally she knew the stone proved nothing.
She took back the letter, folded it in the envelope, put the envelope in her purse. Her hands were shaking, and her knuckles were white.
“So,” she said stiffly, “that’s it, I guess. Case closed. Nothing more you’re willing to do.”
“I just don’t see any basis on which to proceed.”
“Sure. Of course.” She was on her feet, the chair scraping the short-nap carpet. A detective at a nearby desk glanced up at her, his attention drawn by the implied violence in her body language.
“Annie-”
“I understand.” Tears burned her eyes. “Really.”
He was rising, reaching out to her. She turned away.
“I understand,” she said again, and then she was out of the squad room, fleeing blindly down the hall.
33
Walker hesitated only a moment, long enough to remember Caroline and the other chances he’d missed. Then he went after Annie.
He caught up with her in the visitors’ parking lot, unlocking her Miata.
“Annie, wait.”
He could see from her face that she was tempted to tell him to go to hell. But after a moment her features softened, and her shoulders slumped.
“What is it?” she asked, fatigue in her voice.
“Take a walk with me.”
“I have to get back to my shop.”
“Just for a few minutes.”
She frowned, and he thought she might still refuse; but with a shrug she relocked the car door and pocketed her keys.
Wordlessly he led her down a side street toward the sprawling community center, a short distance from the police station. Sunlight burned on car windshields, on a fire hydrant, on a crumpled cellophane wrapper in the dirt. The day was warming up. Walker defied departmental regulations by loosening his tie.
“I was wrong,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have suggested that you were mistaken about the Tegretol. If you say it’s not there, then it’s not.”
She wasn’t mollified. “And how can you explain that?”
“I’ve been assuming Erin left town. Suppose she didn’t. Suppose she stayed in Tucson and went back to her apartment to get the pills.”
“She wouldn’t have sneaked around while I was there.”
“People in distress do a lot of uncharacteristic things. Look, her car isn’t at the airport, the bus station, or the railroad terminal. She didn’t check into the Phoenix Crown Sterling, the Fairmont, or the Sierra Springs Inn. My guess is she’s hiding out in a local hotel.”
“I don’t believe it,” Annie said firmly.
“It does make sense, though. The only way she could have delivered the letter in person is if she was still in the area. It’s the one explanation that fits all the facts.”
“But it doesn’t fit Erin. Was this all you wanted to say?”
“Walk with me a little farther.”
He escorted her across the street, into the community center, a puzzle of shaded walkways, shops, restaurants, meeting halls, and auditoriums. At noon the center would be crowded, but at this hour few people were in sight.
Walker liked it here. Green trees lined the branching footpaths. The clusters of stores and eateries were dressed in southwestern colors-pink stucco, turquoise molding, red-tile roofs.
He stopped at a fountain, the water foaming over artfully arranged rocks into rectangular blue-tiled pools. Pigeons cluttered the ground, pecking at somebody’s spilled popcorn.
For a long moment he and Annie just stood together and watched the surging carpet of water. Then Walker took a breath and said it.
“I talked to a friend at the Tucson Standard last night. He told me about Lincoln and Oliver Connor. And about the fire.”
Beside him, Annie stiffened. “You mean you had your friend look it up in the morgue, or whatever they call it?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“You’d aroused my curiosity.”
Her startled glance told him that she was wondering, for the first time, if curiosity was all she had aroused. “Did I?” Quickly she looked away. “I would have told you, if you’d asked.”
“I understand now why you’re so worried about Erin.”
“As if I need an excuse.”
“She wrote you a letter. A lot of people would let it go at that. You keep assuming the worst. I think the fire is the reason.”
No answer to that. She moved away, and Walker followed.
He stayed just behind her, watching as she hurried along, aiming at no destination, her head down, arms folded, purse swinging roughly by its shoulder strap. He thought the back of her neck was pretty.
When she slowed her steps, he eased alongside her. She was not crying, but her face was drawn tight in lines of concentration and pain.