Lucas nodded: “Unless she's with a friend. But she was so intent on getting to the bottom of this, her relationship seemed to be breaking up, this is what she wanted to do. I don't think she would have simply dropped it. I think we have to be ready for… the worst.”
“What do you mean 'we,'“ Coombs sobbed. “This is your fuck-ing job. She's not your daughter.”
“Miz Coombs… Ah, jeez, Gabriella got me going on this,” Lucas said. “She probably was the key person who'll bring all these killers down-and they've killed more people than you know.”
“My mother and my daughter,” Coombs said, her voice drying out and going shrill.
“More than that-maybe three elderly people, they may have attacked a teenager, there may be people who we don't have any idea about,” Lucas said.
“You know who they are?”
“We're beginning to get some ideas.”
“What if they've just kidnapped her? What if they're just keeping her for… for…” She couldn't think of why they might be keeping her. Neither could Lucas.
He said, “That's always a possibility. That's what we hope for. We hope to make some kind of a move tomorrow-and I hope you'll keep that under your hat. Maybe we'll find out something fairly soon. One way or another.”
“Oh, shit,” Coombs said. She looked around the kitchen, then snatched a ceramic plate from where it was hanging on the wall, a plate with two crossed-fish, artsy-craftsy, and hurled it at the side wall, where it shattered.
“Miz Coombs…”
“Where is she… Where's my baby?”
Out ON the street, he exhaled, looked back at Coombs's house, and shook his head.
In her place, he thought, he wouldn't be screaming, or crying-and maybe that was bad. Maybe he should behave that way, but he knew he wouldn't. He could see Weather grieving as Coombs did; he could see most normal people behaving that way.
What Lucas would feel, instead, would be a murderous anger, an iceberg of hate. He would kill anyone who hurt Weather, Sam, or Letty. He'd be cold about it, he'd plan it, but the anger would never go away, and sooner or later, he would find them and kill them.
Bucher's house was dark as a tomb. Lucas let himself in, flipped on lights by the door, and headed for the office. This time, he spent two hours, looking at virtually every piece of paper in the place. Nothing. He moved to the third-floor storage room, with the file cabinets. A small, narrow room, cool; only one light, hanging bare from the ceiling, and no place to sit. Dusty…
He went down the hall, found a chair, and carried it back across the creaking plank floor. As he put the chair down, he thought he heard footsteps, down below, someplace distant, trailing off to silence. The hair rose on the back of his neck. He stepped to the doorway, called, “Hello? Hello?”
Nothing but the air moving through the air conditioners. A light seemed to flicker in the stairway, and he waited, but nothing else moved. The hair was still prickling on the back of his neck, when he went back to the paper.
An amazing amount of junk that people kept: old school papers, newspaper clippings, recipes, warranties and instruction books, notebooks, sketchpads, Christmas, Easter, and birthday cards, postcards from everywhere, old letters, theater programs, maps, remodeling contracts, property-tax notices. An ocean of it.
A current of cold air touched the back of his neck and he shivered; as though somebody had passed in the hallway. He stepped to the door again, looked down the silent hall.
Ghosts. The thought trickled through his mind and he didn't laugh. He didn't believe in them, but he didn't laugh, either, and had never been attracted to the idea of screwing around in a cemetery at night. Two people killed here, their killers not found, blood still drying in the old woodwork… the silence seemed to grow from the hallway walls; except for the soft flowing sound of the air conditioner.
He went back to the paper, feeling his skin crawl. There was nobody else in the house: he knew it, and still…
The phone buzzed, and almost gave him his second heart attack of the day.
He took it out of his pocket, looked at it: out-of-area. He said, “Hello?”
There was a pause and then a vaguely metallic man's voice said, “Hi! This is Tom Drake! We'll be doing some work in your neighborhood next week, sealing driveways. As a homeowner…”
“Fuck you,” Lucas said, slamming the phone shut. Almost killed by a computer voice.
He found a file, two inches thick, of receipts for furniture purchases. Began to go through it, but all the furniture had been bought through decorators, none of them the Widdlers. Still, he was in the right neighborhood, the furniture neighborhood.
The phone took a third shot at his heart: it buzzed again, he jumped again, swore, looked at the screen: out-of-area. He clicked it open: “Hello?”
“Lucas? Ah, Agent Davenport? This is…”
“Sandy. What's up?” Lucas thought he heard something in the hallway, and peeked out.
Nobody but the spirits. He turned back into the room.
Sandy said, “I got your Widdlers. The Toms cousin had a file of purchases, and Mr.
Toms, the dead man, bought three paintings from them, over about five years. He spent a total of sixteen thousand dollars. There's also a check for five thousand dollars that just says “Appraisals,' but doesn't say what was appraised.”
The thrill shook through him. Gotcha. “Okay! Sandy! This is great! That's exactly what we need-we don't have to figure out what the appraisals were, all we have to do is show contact. Now, the originals on those papers, can you get them copied?”
“Yes. They have a Xerox machine right here,” she said.
“Copy them,” Lucas said. “Leave the originals with your guy there, tell him that the local cops will come get them tomorrow, or maybe somebody from the DO.”
“The who?”
“The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation,” Lucas said. “I got a friend down there, he can tell us how to deal with the documents. But bring the copies back with you.
When can you get here?”
“Tonight. I can leave in twenty minutes,” she said. “I'd like to get a sandwich or something.”
“Do what you've got to,” Lucas said. “Call me when you get back.”
He slapped the phone shut. This was just exactly…
A man spoke from six inches behind his ear. “So what's up?”
Lucas lurched across the narrow room, nearly falling over the chair, catching himself on the file cabinet with one hand, the other flailing for his gun, his heart trying to bore through his rib cage.
John Smith, smile fading, stood in the doorway, looked at Lucas's face, and asked, “What?”
“Jesus Christ, I almost shot you,” Lucas rasped.
“Sorry… I heard you talking and came on up,” Smith said. “I thought you might appreciate some help.”
“Yeah.” Lucas ran his hands through his hair, shook himself out. His heart was still rattling off his ribs. “It's just so damn quiet in here.”
Smith nodded, and looked both ways down the halclass="underline" “I spent a couple of evenings by myself. You can hear the ghosts creeping around.”
“Glad I'm not the only one,” Lucas said. He turned back to the file cabinets. “I've done two of them, I'm halfway down the third.”
“I'll take the bottom drawer and work up,” Smith said. He went down the hall, got another chair, pulled open the bottom drawer. “You been here the whole time?”
Lucas glanced at his watch. “Three hours. Did the office, started up here. Went over and talked to Miz Coombs, before I came over. She's all messed up. Oh, and by the way-we put the Widdlers with Toms.”
Smith, just settling in his chair, looked up, a light on his face, and said, “You're kidding.”
“Nope.”
Smith scratched under an arm. “This might not look good-you know, calling in the killers to appraise the estate. If they're the killers.”
“I'm not gonna worry about it,” Lucas said. “For one thing, there was no way to know.