Lia had been surprised to hear from me. I'd done such a good job of setting her mind to rest that she'd never have guessed I was following up on the inquiry she'd set in motion. Her first reaction was one of alarm. She didn't want to make trouble for Kristin, that was the last thing she wanted, and now that the initial shock had worn off she couldn't imagine what had ever led her to have such a crazy idea in the first place. She'd seen Kristin since then, and Kristin was completely rocked by the death of her parents, and…
I assured her that Kristin wasn't a suspect. But, I said, there were some unanswered questions in the case, some possibility that the burglary had been arranged, that the killers had had inside help.
"The burglar alarm," she said.
"The burglar alarm code, the front door key, the Hollanders' schedule. I was just wondering if someone could have wormed any pertinent information out of you."
"Out of me?"
"Well, you or your boyfriend."
"Well, I don't have a boyfriend," she said, "so that's not it. And nobody even knew about my aunt and uncle or where they lived or anything. So I can't think how anybody could have gotten any information from me."
There was something she wasn't telling me. I could feel its presence there, parked on the edge of thought. I tried a few approaches, and then I said, "How about the key? Did anybody borrow it?"
"No, of course not."
"But you did have a key, didn't you?"
"Aunt Susan gave it to me."
"You didn't mention it before," I said. "You and your aunt came home one day, and she had her arms full of packages, so she gave you the key and had you open the door. Then she told you the keypad code so you could turn off the alarm."
I hadn't meant to scare her, but I did. She looked like a waif caught in the headlights.
Gently I said, "Isn't that what you said?"
"Yes. That's what happened, but the way you said it just now- "
"If you had your own key, why did your aunt hand you hers?"
"I didn't have a key then. Later on she gave me one. In case I needed to get in when nobody was home, she said. And she reminded me I already knew how to deactivate the alarm. Just be sure to set it again before I left, she said."
"And did you have much occasion to use your key?"
"I don't think I ever used it," she said. "Until you mentioned it just now, I more or less forgot I had it. And nobody else knew I had it, and I certainly never let anybody borrow it."
"Do you have it with you now?"
She fished in her purse, brought out a ring of keys, identified one as being the key to the Hollander house. "So even if somebody took it when I wasn't looking," she said, "which wouldn't make sense because nobody even knew I had it, but if somebody did, and he took it, well, he couldn't have, because here it is."
"That just means he gave it back."
"Don't you think I would remember? Especially after what happened, don't you think it would get my attention if someone gave back a key to the house where my aunt and uncle were murdered?"
T J pointed out that he could have returned the key the same way he took it, without her knowledge. "And it wouldn't have had to be after the break-in," I added. "He wouldn't have kept the key for long, wouldn't have wanted to chance your missing it. He'd just need it long enough to have a copy made. It's not a hard key to duplicate. Any neighborhood locksmith could do it in five minutes."
She was silent for a long moment, then announced she had to go to the bathroom. She took a step away from the table, then came back for her purse.
"She 'fraid we might look through it," T J said.
"And didn't want to let us know she was thinking that, but didn't want to leave the purse, either."
"Hidin' something."
"Feels that way to me, too."
When she came back to the table I fed her a few easy questions, ones it wouldn't disturb her to answer. They were designed to make our relationship feel a little less adversarial. Then I asked her if there was anything else she could think of, something she might feel reluctant to mention. I could feel her wrestling with the question, deciding whether or not to give it up.
"No," she said at length. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing."
Back on Broadway, T J said he didn't suppose I felt like walking all the way home again. I didn't, and we headed for the subway.
"Thought you'd keep at her," he said as we walked. "Thought you'd get her to open up."
"I thought about it."
"Just handed her a card. 'Call me if you think of anything, however far-fetched or unimportant it might seem.' "
"When you go fishing," I said, "and you get a bite, you have to know when to give line and when to reel in."
"I didn't know you liked to go fishing."
"I don't," I said. "It bores me to death."
"So you gave Lia some line."
"I gave her an easy way to change her mind," I said. "She knows something, or thinks she does, or is afraid she does. Now she'll go home and think about it, and she'll feel guilty, because she lied to me and I acted as though I believed her. And maybe she'll pick up the phone." I was silent for a moment, and then I added, "But it's all guesswork, you know. If she makes the call, then I guessed right."
Not exactly, as it turned out. She made the call, but that didn't mean I'd played it right.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lia!
He is on the street in front of the coffee shop, squinting through the plate glass window, and they are in a booth with their backs to him. He wouldn't be able to pick out either of them, just seeing the backs of their heads from this distance, but the combination, black and white, makes it easy to spot them. And, across from them, a blond girl sits, and she is instantly recognizable.
And what business do these two have with Lia Parkman? How do they even know she exists?
Kristin Hollander, of course. They went to Kristin Hollander's house, she let them in, they stayed for the better part of an hour, and they left, made a phone call, and here they are, sitting across a table from Lia Parkman, Kristin's cousin.
What are they talking about?
What is she telling them?
She can't tell them too much. She doesn't really know anything. But she knows him, and she could conceivably put them on his track.
He doesn't want that. Whoever they are, whatever they're after, he doesn't want that.
His hand goes to his throat. He's not wearing a tie today, nor a jacket, just a blue shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up for comfort. He lifts out the rhodochrosite disc, feels its smoothness, tucks it away beneath his shirt.
His own fault. He knew she was a loose end, dangling invitingly, waiting for someone to grab hold and give a tug. But, because everything went so smoothly, he let himself believe it was all right to leave a loose end.
He mustn't stand here, staring in the window. They can't see him, but what's the point of drawing attention from anyone? He walks fifty yards south on Broadway, where there's a bus stop. No one thinks you're loitering when you do so at a bus stop.
And it provides a fine view of the coffee shop entrance.
His own fault, but it wasn't just simple carelessness. Because he'd found himself itching to tie off that loose end, and he'd been suspicious of his motives. His hand remembers the way the gun had bucked in it, remembers gripping the knife, cutting that throat with surgical precision. And his whole being remembers the way it felt.
Thrilling?
Well, perhaps. But he doesn't much care for the word. Roller-coaster rides are thrilling. Drugs are thrilling. Breaking rules is thrilling.
What he'd done was… what?
Satisfying?
Whatever you called it, he had wanted more of it. And so he'd overruled the impulse to tie off this loose end, talked himself out of it on the grounds that he'd be running a risk to no real purpose.