I was too furious to speak.
“Tell you what,” he said, putting his hands behind his head and tipping his chair back on its legs as if he were relaxing on his own back porch. “Give me a couple of chapters, I’ll give you another body, how’s that?”
“How many are there, Darren?”
He smiled. “How many chapters do you have in your books... Marie?”
“No.” I drew back, appalled, and unable to keep from showing it. “There aren’t that many, are there?”
He brought the legs of his chair back down with a crack that made the whole room go silent. Behind us I heard the guard jump to his feet; I imagined a rifle leveled toward us. Darren gave a casual wave, to indicate there was nothing going on. After a tense couple of moments, I heard the guard sit back down again.
“No,” Darren told me, with his infuriating little smirk, “don’t worry, there aren’t that many. Hell, you must have thirty chapters in most of your books; what do you think I am, some kind of monster?” One more time, the smirk changed into a grin. “Just bring me those first two chapters. How fast can you write?”
How fast could I write?
That was the question, all right, and now the location of all three young women’s bodies depended on it, not just two of them. It was a good question. It was a terrible question. Luis Cannistre had asked me, too. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the maid at the motel stopped making beds long enough to pop her head in my room and inquire.
“Nothing makes me stop writing faster than pressure,” I warned Cannistre. “You’ve got to understand, I’m not a journalist. What I do, it only looks like journalism. I’m a storyteller, like a novelist, only what I write just happens to be true. Stories take their own time to develop, or mine do. I’ve taken six months to do a book, and I’ve taken three years.”
“But what about those books that get put out so fast?” he wanted to know. “Like, there’s a disaster somewhere in the world and two weeks later there’s a book about it. How do they do those?”
And why can’t you? was his unspoken query.
“Those are special cases, with writers who specialize in the quick and dirty.”
“But he wants you.”
I nearly smiled, he sounded so regretful.
“And I’m going to hire one of them.”
“You are? Who’s going to pay for that?”
“I am, Luis.”
He didn’t say anything but I saw from the way his jaw began to work that he was either gritting his teeth or feeling touched by my offer.
But I didn’t want any credit for doing it. I couldn’t finish my other book obligations — on which several million dollars of my publisher’s money hung — and also research and write this one, all at the same time. I needed professional help, a hired gun of a writer. If a book actually resulted, it would pay the freight. And if it didn’t, well, I already had more money than was good for me.
In Luis’s car, miles before we reached the prison to confront our game-playing killer, I was already on my cell phone to my agent to get her to find me a two-week wonder. Then I called my assistant to tell her to get her rear to North Dakota.
My hired gun, Markie Lentz, wasn’t any taller than me, but he had twice the energy in his compact frame. Just watching him arrive cheered me up a little, made me feel encouraged instead of overwhelmed. Maybe we could get this done fast so we didn’t have to prolong the families’ suffering any more than could be helped. Coming down the ramp, he stood out in the North Dakota crowd: a small, broad-featured man in his forties, nearly bald, walking so fast he was almost jogging, dressed in a pink golf shirt, pressed blue jeans, and red running shoes. He was talking on a cell phone when he came down to Baggage, where I waited to pick him up. He recognized me and came over, saying, “Later,” into his phone and flipping it shut.
“You do great books,” he told me, the first words out of his mouth. “They’re a little long, but very compelling. How fast do we need to do this thing? How do you want to divvy up the load? You write some, I write some?”
“As fast as we can work,” I said, and then stuck out my hand to the young man behind him whom he had not introduced. “Hi. I’m Marie.”
The young man grinned and shook my hand. “Peter Nussert.”
“Yadda, yadda,” said his boss with a dismissive wave of one small hand. “Say, three weeks. That quick enough for you?”
I stared at him. “Really? You do books in three weeks?”
“Isn’t that why I’m here?” He smiled, sharklike. “God knows, as thick as your books are, you could never do it.”
I burst out laughing, a release of emotion that I must have really needed, so loud that a few people passing by with their luggage turned and looked at us. When I stopped, I grinned at him and said, “What’s the matter? I thought you were supposed to be fast. You can’t write it overnight?”
“Not with you to slow me down,” he said, and grinned back at me. “Peter, why are you standing there? Get the bags.”
In my rental car, with me at the wheel, hyperactive Markie Lentz in the front passenger seat and Peter Nussert behind us, I returned to one of his first questions. “I take Darren Betch, because he can’t know about you, and I take the cops, lawyers, judges. I take everything about him up to the time he goes to prison. You take the victims and their families.”
“You trust me with the victims?”
I glanced over at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You start most of your books with a sentimental glimpse of a victim. Builds suspense. Makes us care about them before they get whacked. It’s one of your hallmarks. I’m surprised you’d turn that over to anybody else.”
“Don’t you do that, too?” I said. “Open with the happy vacationing family just before the typhoon hits the beach?”
“You do, boss,” Peter chimed in.
“Oh yeah!” He sounded pleased with himself. “That’s right, I do.”
“How could you forget that?” I asked, amused.
He shrugged. “My books, they’re like cramming for a test. While I’m doing it I don’t know anything else, but a month later...” He snapped his fingers. “...Gone. Anyway, who cares? Our last books are so yesterday. This book! Facts. Load me up. Tell me everything you know.”
I told him.
“You’re not taking any notes,” I said at one point.
“Short-term photographic memory,” he boasted.
“Ah,” I said. “That explains it.”
“Also, I’m a genius.”
“Also, I’m taking notes,” Peter said from in back.
“All right, genius.” I pulled into a parking spot and turned off the engine. “I have six rooms for our little group. One each for you, Peter, me, my assistant. Plus a double suite for our campaign headquarters. Questions?”
“Is your assistant cute?”
I gave him a look.
“Not for me!” he said scornfully, and then jerked his head toward the backseat.
“Cut it out, boss.”
I smiled, thinking of my rather eccentric young assistant. “She’s cute.”
“All right,” Lentz said approvingly. “Come on, let’s get to it. Hell, I could write the whole damn book from nothing but what you just told me. What do we need another nine days for anyway?” He was halfway out of the car before Peter or I had moved. I glanced over the backseat and asked his assistant, “Cocaine and speed?”