He frowned, not getting that last reference. “I can understand feeling like that after what you went through, but to let it change your whole life-”
“After what I went through, it was the only thing I could do with my life. I not only saw some things more clearly, I also saw things differently. Too differently to ever go back to being an artist.”
“Hollis, it’s only natural to see a lot of things differently after such a horribly traumatic experience.”
A little laugh escaped her. “No, Caleb, you don’t understand. “I saw things differently. Literally. Colors aren’t the same now. Textures. Depth perception. I don’t see the world the way I used to, the way you do, because I can’t. The connections between my brain and my sight are… man-made. Or at least man-forged. Not organic. The doctors say my brain may never fully adjust.”
“Adjust to what?”
“To these new eyes I’m wearing. They weren’t the ones I was born with, you see. When the rapist left me for dead, he took a couple of souvenirs. He took my eyes.”
By the time Mallory got back to the station, it was nearly eight and she was tired. Tired as hell, if the truth be known. Also queasy, depressed, and not a little anxious.
“Mallory-”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ginny McBrayer said. “I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“These days, everything is making me jump.” Mallory sighed. “What is it, Ginny?”
“You asked me to check with the other women in the department and find out if anybody had the sense of being watched lately.”
“Yeah. And have any of them?”
Ginny shrugged. “It’s sort of hard to say. Everybody’s jumpy. Two or three said they’d gotten the feeling of being watched at least a couple of times in the last few weeks, but even they admitted they weren’t sure of anything. Of course, now that I’ve brought up the subject, everybody’s talking about it, the guys too.”
Mallory sat down at her desk and rubbed her eyes wearily. “Well, hell. Dunno if that helps.”
“We’ll all be alert, anyway. Have you talked to the FBI agents about it?”
“Not yet. Need to, though, I suppose.” She sighed. “The dairy farmer’s wife; she turn up yet? And what is her name, anyway? Helton. What Helton?”
“Rose Helton. Not a sign of her. And we still have two other women reported missing in Hastings during the past month, not counting that news reporter who vanished last night. Sharona Jones and Kate Murphy. Plus the dozen or so missing from the general area outside Hastings in the same time period.”
“I know Sharona-she doesn’t fit the profile, she’s black. She’s missing?”
“Well, her boyfriend claims she is. But her dog is also missing, as well as her car and a lot of her clothes, and her mother says she’s always wanted to see the world, so we’re thinking she might have upped and left.”
“If Ray Mercer was my boyfriend, I’d up and leave too.” Mallory sighed again. “Still, we have to make sure, so keep everybody on it. What about Kate Murphy?”
“More troubling, in that she does fit the profile. Late twenties, blond, successful; she owns one of those new little boutiques on Main Street. Was doing pretty well with it too. Didn’t show up for work on Monday, so her assistant manager has been running the shop.”
“We’ve checked out her house or apartment?”
“Uh-huh. No sign she’s been taken-but no sign she left voluntarily either. Her car is in its slot at her condo, and far as we can tell it’s clean. Haven’t found her purse or keys, though. She didn’t-doesn’t-have any pets, and no family in Hastings. We’re trying to track down relatives now.”
“And still no sign of Cheryl Bayne.”
“No. The station in Columbia has sent another reporter, this one male, to cover this new… angle.”
“How caring of them.”
Ginny nodded. “Yeah, even the other reporters are being pretty scathing about that.”
“While doing their own reports.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mallory shook her head in disgust. “Okay. Let me or the chief know if anything changes.”
“Right.”
When she was alone again, Mallory sat for a moment with her elbows on her desk and her hands cupping her face, fingers absently massaging her temples. She should stay, but Rafe had made it plain she was to go home as soon as the body had been taken from that old building and the forensics team finished.
Both of which had been done.
Mallory was tired but also curiously wide awake. She didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to be alone. She wanted something to get the image of that poor woman out of her head.
With only a slight hesitation, she picked up her phone and called Alan’s cell. “Hey, are you home?” she asked without preamble.
“Headed that way. Pulling into the parking lot now, as a matter of fact.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Nothing you could truthfully define as food,” he replied. “There was something a charitable person might have called a sandwich hours ago, but it may have been just a figment of my imagination. Are you offering?”
“I’m offering takeout Chinese. I’ll even pick it up on my way to your place. Deal?”
“Deal. Stop for wine if you feel like that. My place is dry as a bone. Oh-and I have a splitting headache, so if you could pick up some aspirin as well? I don’t think I have any.”
“Okay. See you in a few minutes.” Mallory hung up, telling herself this wasn’t a bad idea at all. So what if she had spent most of the previous night in his bed? It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to mean anything. Alan could be an amusing and entertaining companion, and he was good in bed.
Very good, in fact. And she couldn’t deceive herself into believing she wasn’t looking forward to a little body-on-body comfort, because she was. Two clean, healthy, sweaty bodies tangled together in the sheets sounded like a dandy way to affirm that both of them were alive.
Alive. Not hanging from a beam like a weeks-old gutted fish. Not lying in a boneless, bloody sprawl in the woods off some highway. Not laced into an impossibly tight leather corset and smothered with a hood while a woman with a whip and chains tortured-
“Christ,” she muttered. “I’ve gotta get out of here.”
It took a few minutes, of course, to do what she had to in order to leave for the night, but she took care of things quickly and bolted before anyone could come up with anything that required her continued presence at the station.
She called and ordered the food on her way to the restaurant, so it’d be ready and waiting for her, and did stop for wine even though she wasn’t usually much of a drinker. She even remembered Alan’s aspirin. Still, it was barely half an hour after she talked to him when Mallory entered his apartment with one bag full of little cardboard cartons and another holding the wine and aspirin.
“You look jumpy as hell,” he commented as soon as she walked through the door.
“It’s a jumpy time.” Mallory knew the way to the kitchen, of course, and lost no time in getting the wine out and hunting through his cupboards for glasses. “Jesus, Alan, not a single wineglass?”
“Housewares aren’t a priority with me. Sue me.”
“My life has come down to drinking wine from jelly glasses. Could this day get any better?”
Alan had swallowed several aspirin dry, then began setting out the cartons on his breakfast bar, where they normally ate. He paused to look at her intently. “I heard. Couldn’t have been much fun, finding that body.”
“No.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.” She poured wine into one of the glasses and immediately took a swallow. “I intend to drink at least half this bottle, part of it while I shower away the assorted smells of today, then choke down some shrimp and vegetables. After that, unless you object, the plan is to adjourn to your bedroom and fuck like bunnies. Possibly all night. Unless you still have your headache, of course. Tell me you won’t.”