Her eyes opened wide. She had not for a moment believed it would be this simple. She was speechless, literally so, but speechless beyond that — as if her mind had suddenly gone blank, her ability to communicate frozen somewhere inside her head.
“You do want the job, don’t you?” he said, and smiled again.
Oh, yes, she thought, oh God, yes! She nodded, her eyes flashing happiness, her hands unconsciously starting to convey her appreciation, and then falling empty of words into her lap when she realized he could not possibly read them.
“Will Monday morning be all right?” he asked.
She nodded yes.
“Good then,” he said, “I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
He leaned toward her.
“I’m sure we’ll get along fine,” he said, and suddenly, without warning, he slid his hand under her skirt. She sat bolt upright, her eyes opening wide, too shocked to move for an instant. His fingers tightened on her thigh.
“Don’t you think so, Miss Car...?”
She slapped him hard, as hard as she could, and then rose at once from her chair, and moved toward him, her teeth bared, her hand drawn back to hit him again. He was nursing his jaw, his blue eyes looking hurt and a trifle bewildered. Words welled up inside her, words she could not speak. She stood there trembling with fury, her hand still poised to strike.
“That’s it, you know,” he said, and smiled.
She was turning away from him, tears welling into her eyes, when she saw more words forming on his lips.
“You just blew it, dummy.”
And the last word pained her more than he possibly could have known, the last word went through her like a knife.
She was still crying when she came out of the building into the falling rain.
Annie had been unable to reach three of the victims by telephone, but the five she did manage to contact told her they had been contributors to A.I.M. She spent the rest of the afternoon trying the addresses she had for the remaining three victims. Two of them were still out when she got there, but Angela Ferrari informed her that she was a pro-life supporter and had contributed not only to A.I.M. but to Right to Life as well. It was almost six when she rang Janet Reilly’s doorbell. Janet was the most recent of the serial rape victims, and — at only nineteen — the youngest of them. A college student, she lived at home with her parents, and had just got there from a meeting of the Newman Club when Annie arrived.
Her parents were not happy to see Annie. They were both working people, and they’d got home just before their daughter, only to answer the door a few minutes later on the Rape Squad again. Their daughter had been raped for the first time on September 13. They thought she’d gone through enough horror then to have lasted her a lifetime, but it had happened to her again on October 11, the horror escalating, the terror a constant thing now. They did not want her to answer any further questions from the police. All they wanted was to be left alone. They all but closed the door in Annie’s face until she promised this would be the very last question.
Janet Reilly answered the question positively.
She had indeed made a small contribution to a pro-life organization called A.I.M.
Annie left the apartment at ten minutes past six. From a pay phone on the corner, she tried to reach Vivienne Chabrun, the only victim she had not yet spoken to. Again, there was no answer at her apartment. She now knew for certain, however, that eight of the nine victims had made contributions in varying amounts to A.I.M., and it seemed to her that this information would be valuable to Eileen. She deposited the coin again, and dialed the number at Mary Hollings’s apartment. She let the phone ring ten times. There was no answer.
Eileen was already on her way to dinner.
A musician roamed from table to table, strumming his guitar and singing Mexican songs. When he got to Eileen’s table, he played “Cielito Lindo” for her, optimistically, she thought; the sky outside had been bloated with threatening black clouds when she’d entered the restaurant. The rain had stopped entirely at about four in the afternoon, but the clouds had begun building again at dusk, piling up massively and ominously overhead. By six-fifteen, when she’d left the apartment to walk here, she could already hear the sound of distant thunder in the next state, beyond the river.
She was having her coffee — the wall clock read twenty minutes past seven — when the first lightning flash came, illuminating the curtained window facing the street. The following boom of thunder was ear-shattering; she hunched her shoulders in anticipation, and even so its volume shocked her. The rain came then, unleashed in fury, enforced by a keening wind, battering the window and pelting the sidewalk outside. She lighted a cigarette and smoked it while she finished her coffee. It was almost seven-thirty when she paid her bill and went to the checkroom for the raincoat and umbrella she’d left there.
The raincoat was Mary’s. It fit her a bit too snugly, but she thought it might be recognizable to him, and if the rain came — as it most certainly had — visibility might be poor; she did not want to lose him because he couldn’t see her. The umbrella was Mary’s, too, a delicate little red plaid thing that was more stylish than protective, especially against what was raging outside just now. The rain boots were Eileen’s. Rubber with floppy tops. She had chosen them exactly because the tops were floppy. Strapped to her ankle inside the right boot was a holster containing a lightweight Browning .380 automatic pistol, her spare. Her regulation pistol was a .38 Detective’s Special, and she was carrying that in a shoulder bag slung over her left shoulder for an easy cross-body draw.
She tipped the checkroom girl a dollar (wondering if this was too much), put on the raincoat, reslung the shoulder bag, and then walked out into the small entry alcove. A pair of glass doors, with the word Ocho engraved on one and Rios on the other, faced the street outside, lashed with rain now. Lightning flashed as she pushed open one of the doors. She backed inside again, waited for the boom of thunder to fade, and then stepped out into the rain, opening the umbrella.
A gust of wind almost tore the umbrella from her grasp. She turned into the wind, fighting it, refusing to allow it to turn the umbrella inside it. Angling it over her face and shoulders, using it as a shield to bully her way through the driving rain, she started for the corner. The route she had traced out this afternoon would take her one block west on a brightly lighted avenue — deserted now because of the storm — and then two blocks north on less well-lighted streets to Mary’s apartment. She did not expect him to make his move while she was on the avenue. But on that two-block walk to the apartment—
She suddenly wished she’d asked for a backup.
Stupid, playing it this way.
And yet, if she’d planted her backups, say, on the other side of the street, one walking fifty feet ahead of her, the other fifty feet behind, he’d be sure to spot them, wouldn’t he? Three woman walking out here in the rain in the classic triangle pattern? Sure to spot them. Or suppose she’d planted them in any one of the darkened doorways or alleyways along the route she’d walked this afternoon, and suppose he checked out that same route, saw two ladies lurking in doorways — not many hookers up here, and certainly none on the side streets where there wasn’t any business — no, he’d tip, he’d run, they’d lose him. Better without any backups. And still, she wished she had one.
She took a deep breath as she turned the corner off the avenue.