"Goddamn it!" Her voice rang out equally loudly, bouncing off the mirror, the tile, and the tub.
She felt foolish. Idiotic. The bath was a bust. The whole evening felt like a bust.
Where a certain personality might have left the mess to enjoy the bath while the water remained hot, Matthews felt obligated to clean it up immediately, martyring herself in the process.
Using the toilet seat as a stepping-stone, she climbed out of the tub, forgoing a towel for the robe and the sense of privacy, and inched her bottom along the countertop and finally leapt out the door and into the hall. She slipped her feet into a pair of rubber boots at the back door, grabbed a broom and dustpan, and went about cleaning up.
As she accounted for the last of it, she felt another wave of anxiety steal into her chest. Stewing in self-pity, she saw her life as her stalker must see it: jam-packed and yet empty. She thought it too bad she couldn't clean up the pieces of her recent past the way she had this shattered wineglass. Two broken engagements, still partly reserving herself for an unavailable married man who showed less interest now than ever before. She'd made a career of repairing other lives but had proved unable to mend her own.
She looked around to see a virtual cocoon, the windows covered, the doors locked and dead-bolted. Afraid of her own shadow, she was the person to whom others turned to be rescued from their fears.
She decided against the wine-it was only making things worse-and tried some Mahler instead. Nice and loud, like sitting in the second row of Benaroya Hall. She sought refuge in a mindless television show but found it unsatisfying, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Back to the wine, and another deep glass; she now felt warm to the core but still worried.
Feeling pathetic and childish, Matthews nonetheless took the commercial breaks to patrol the houseboat. On one such foray, she grabbed a pair of flannel pajamas and returned to the bathroom and changed into them, electing to continue to wear the robe. In the process she missed a crucial part of the television show and turned off the set on the verge of tears. Another glass of wine, and she was feeling drunk.
Unable to lose the feeling of being watched, a few too many glasses of wine in her, she determined that Walker or Prair or someone had hidden cameras in the house, and she made it her mission to find them. What was so unreasonable about that? There were "spy stores" in town that sold fiber-optic cameras that fit into smoke detectors, electric switch plates, bathroom fans, and heating ducts.
She started out methodically, but within minutes found herself frantically pulling books from shelves, yanking artwork off the walls, and uprooting potted plants. Had she looked behind herself she would have seen a path littered in destruction and might have stopped herself. But it wasn't until she'd come full circle that she saw her downstairs in ruins-books scattered, plants and lamps tipped over, the walls bare and crawling with unfamiliar shadows from lamps on their sides.
Hurricane Daphne.
Actions did in fact speak louder than words. She saw her rampage as a sustained scream, a cry for help of epic proportions.
Her mobile phone chirped from somewhere on the kitchen counter. She searched for it contemptuously, as if it, too, might be watching her.
"Matthews."
"Daphne? It's Ferrell."
Her breath caught. He'd called again. With impeccable timing.
And on her cell phone, a number he simply could not possess.
"You let me down, Daphne."
She felt as if he'd poured ice water down her back. "I asked you not to contact me." Could he sense her terror? Did she dare hang up on him?
"You said it was a process, a system. That it worked. I don't see it working, Daphne, and I don't see you doing anything to fix it."
"It's a process that takes time, Mr. Walker. Believe me, we're doing everything-"
"Don't hand me that crap! If you were doing everything you could, he'd be locked up, not free to do what he wants."
"You and I talking about it is not going to help. I'm going to hang up now."
"I brought you her sweatshirt!"
"Get this straight: The more you try to help, the more you hurt our chances of putting away your sister's killer. Tampered evidence is inadmissible."
"Since when can't an informant supply evidence?"
"Since the informant held a knife to the suspect's neck. Since the informant is related to the victim. Since the informant has repeatedly been asked to stay out of it. Since the informant is not an informant in the first place! Police informants are recruited and managed, and records are kept of their activities. You are not a police informant, Mr. Walker. You are not helping things."
"Okay, okay. Cards on the table?" Walker asked.
"Mr. Walker, you are not listening."
"I can help you, Daphne."
"Mr.-"
"The two missing women."
The sudden silence in the room and over the phone was replaced by a pounding in her ears as a slide show of recent events flashed through her consciousness. Hebringer and Randolf had stolen away Boldt and his CAP team for months. She had personally worked up profiles, interviewed family members, and torn open the lives of these two women to where secrets no longer existed-sex toys, family turmoil, medications, and past lives included. As a resident of the city, Ferrell Walker certainly knew of the department's dedication to the investigations-so was this tease of his an act of desperation or a legitimate offer? If the latter, did she dare refuse him?
"I'm listening," she said, her heart continuing to race as adrenaline coursed through her. She reached for the wine bottle and upended it.
"I'll help you find those women if you'll get Lanny Neal behind bars for good."
"We've been looking for those two women for a long time, Mr. Walker. What makes you think-?"
"Because I know things you don't."
"And how am I to believe that?"
"Let's just say I've had a vision. The two of them strung up like marlins. Maybe you've been looking in the wrong place."
She didn't consider herself easily rattled-"strung up like marlins "--and yet this homeless, bereaved street person had her shrinking and shaking as she took yet another swig of wine in an attempt to settle herself. "A dream, or something more concrete?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Childish. Toying with her.
"Yes, I would, Mr. Walker."
"You're scared because I know more than you," he said. "I can understand that. But there's no reason to be. We're friends, the two of us. I wouldn't hurt you. You wouldn't hurt me. I can help you; you can help me. Tell me you'll help me."
The psychologist pushed aside the frightened woman in what she considered a moment of personal triumph. "The arrest and conviction of Lanny Neal isn't about you, Mr. Walker. It's about us doing our jobs. As for your contributing to our ongoing investigation into the disappearances-"
"Then do your job," he complained.
"We are. We're doing just that."
"By letting him go? By buying a bottle of red wine and taking the night off?"
Oh God: He'd followed her, watched her. He knew her cell number. She fought to hold herself together, to place the psychologist ahead of the victim.
"How'd you get this phone number?" She blurted it out without thinking, her internal wiring a mess from the unwanted cocktail of wine and adrenaline. She realized that the phone would reveal to her the caller-ID information once she disconnected. She had to know where he was calling from, and she had to hang up on him to get the information. But with Walker dangling information about Hebringer and Randolf, she knew she couldn't hang up. Not yet.
"Why cover the windows like that? It spoils the view."