There were ranches in the desert southeast of town, where she had lost Gund’s trail. Perhaps he was at one of them at this moment, with the original set of keys.
Perhaps Erin was there, too.
Annie hesitated, then slipped the keys into the pocket of her skirt, supplementing her original crime of illegal entry with a new offense, burglary.
Shutting off the fluorescent, she retraced her steps to the hall. The hall closet, overlooked earlier, was opposite the bathroom. A bare bulb illuminated shelves of cardboard cartons, apparently stuff from Wisconsin that Gund had never unpacked.
Nearly all of the apartment had been covered by now. There remained only the far end of the hall.
She slipped past the bathroom and found an open door to a small study-desk and swivel chair, file cabinet, wastebasket. The window faced the building across the passageway-safe to use a light. She fumbled for the desk lamp’s pull chain, and the bulb snapped on.
Erin’s stationery was not in the desk drawers. Disappointed, Annie knelt by the file cabinet, trying the lower drawer first. She thumbed through a row of manila folders, scanning the gummed labels.
TAXES. BILLS. AUTO. MEDICAL.
All marked with years ranging from 1985 to 1991. Old records, of no interest now.
Standing, she opened the upper drawer. It contained the same sorts of records, but from more recent years, with the current files foremost in line.
Nothing there, either.
Well, what had she expected to find? A file marked REILLY KIDNAPPING? Containing a helpful map to the site of Erin’s imprisonment?
Angrily she shook her head. This whole venture had been a waste of time.
Her hand was pushing the drawer shut when she noticed a slim folder at the extreme rear of the cabinet, the only one that was unlabeled.
Funny how it was stuffed all the way in the back, unmarked, as if hidden.
She reached for the folder, opened it.
Its entire contents consisted of a single sheet of heavy, unlined paper, approximately eight by ten inches.
As she lifted the paper into the light, she realized that what she held was a glossy color photo, its back to her.
She turned it over, and suddenly she was shaking, shaking uncontrollably, her heart racing in her chest.
“How?” she whispered to the room, to the night. “How can he have this?”
Two smiling faces. Green eyes and gray. Red hair lustrous on bare shoulders.
The eight-by-ten studio portrait of Erin and herself.
48
The van’s dashboard clock read 8:25 when Gund parked at a red curb, alongside a hydrant, yards from his apartment’s front door. He didn’t give a damn about a parking ticket.
The photo. That was his sole concern. He had to get the photo.
Before tonight he had never grasped its full significance. Now he knew why it had transfixed him, how he’d lost himself in the picture for hours at a time. He knew, and the knowledge sickened him.
Staring at their faces, their beautiful faces, staring hour after hour, night after night…
When the dream would wake him, when he found himself getting hard, then he would take out the picture and study it. He had found it soothing, or so he’d told himself.
The truth was uglier. The picture had not soothed, but stimulated.
He wondered if he had even…
While staring at it, had he…?
No. He couldn’t have.
And yet…
Suppose, while gazing at the photograph, lost in contemplation, oblivious to everything around him and within him… he had touched himself.
He had no memory of it. But he had blanked out his awareness of so much else that mattered. He had shut his inner eyes to so many truths. Why not to one more?
A shudder racked him. He threw open the van door. Crossed a strip of weedy grass to the paved walkway. Keys jingling nervously in his fingers, the flap of his jacket swirling, the gun in his pocket thumping against his hip.
Even if he was right in his supposition, even if the photo had served that ugly purpose for him, it would serve a very different purpose now.
He would destroy it. Touch a lighter to it and set it aflame. And by burning the photograph, symbolically burn the two women whose images it captured.
That might be enough-just enough-to suppress the impulses threatening to overwhelm him.
It would have to be.
He fumbled the key into the keyhole. The door swung open, and he lunged into his living room, flicking on the lights.
Annie gazed, frozen, at the photograph.
Did he take it from Erin’s apartment? she wondered blankly. Go back for it when he returned for the Tegretol?
No, that couldn’t be the answer. This photo had not spent the past six months in a frame, under glass. It had been handled, roughly and repeatedly. The edges were worn, the corners dog-eared.
She thought back to the day last November when she’d picked up her order from the portrait studio-multiple copies of the photo in different sizes. She’d returned to her shop with the envelope, but she hadn’t had time to count the prints until that night, when she’d found only three eight-by-tens, not four as requested. The studio, apologizing for the oversight, had supplied an additional print at no cost.
But it hadn’t been the studio’s error. Sometime during the afternoon, when the envelope was in her office at the rear of the shop, Gund must have taken one of the prints. Hidden it, and carried it home with him that evening.
He’s had it ever since, she thought as a wave of cold seeped slowly into her bones. And he’s been… looking at it. Holding it. He’s From the living room, the groan of a door.
The floorboards trembled.
Gund was back.
And coming this way. Coming fast.
She pushed the cabinet drawer shut, grabbed the desk lamp’s pull chain, yanked it savagely. The room went dark.
Footsteps in the hall. Closer.
Under the desk. Get under the desk.
Groping blindly, she shoved the swivel chair out of the way, went down on all fours, crawled into the kneehole between the desk legs. Seized the chair and wheeled it back into position, then huddled behind it.
Sudden harsh glare from above. The ceiling light had come on with a flick of a wall switch.
Gund’s pants brushed past the desk as he hurried to the file cabinet. She heard the slide of a drawer.
Instantly she guessed what he was looking for. The photo, of course.
The photo still clutched in her left hand.
Gund found the manila folder at the rear of the drawer, plucked it out of the cabinet, flipped it open.
Empty.
All the breath hissed out of him, and he stared at it, just stared.
It couldn’t be gone. He always kept it in this folder. Always.
Unless this morning he’d forgotten. Left it in the bathroom or the bedroom…
No. He remembered returning it to its hiding place. Would never leave it in plain sight. After all, what if someone were to break in and find it Break in.
Annie.
The skin at the base of his spine tightened. The muscles of his shoulders bunched up with new tension.
She’d followed him earlier tonight. Had she come here afterward? Had she gotten in somehow and gone through his things? His most private, most personal things?
His gaze, ticking restlessly, stopped on the desk lamp.
The pull chain shivered, as if still vibrating from a violent tug.
Slowly he reached out, touched the unlit bulb.
His finger jerked away.
Hot.
That lamp had been on just seconds ago.
He shut his eyes, his last tissuey strand of self-control shredding, unraveling under irresistible pressure.
His hand dipped into the side pocket of his jacket, closed over the grip of the Taurus 9mm pistol.