Eddie felt his heart patter as he watched. It seemed like her caffe mocha was taking forever to make, and he figured the guy behind the counter was taking his time on purpose so that he could flirt with her. She didn’t look like she minded. In fact, it seemed pretty clear she was flirting back.
Eddie finished off his coffee, poised for his role in the scenario to begin. As she took her drink in hand and turned away from the counter, he heard the voice inside his head cue him and so he stood. He met her at the door and opened it for her, his timing perfect. Then he followed her outside, skipping the line he’d planned because he felt nervous all of a sudden. Instead, he ad-libbed a simple nod.
She’d given him a funny look, which he didn’t understand. She may have been twenty, but he was only thirty. As he analyzed the moment, he thought he’d been polite and that they were ready to become friends.
She hurried off without saying anything. Eddie concentrated on the sweet scent of her body lotion riding her wake as he began following her. He popped a Hershey’s Kiss into his mouth, savoring the chocolaty taste and smoothing it around his tongue. When she turned the corner and started up the alley, she still thought she was alone. Eddie looked around, trying not to laugh. Although the streets were clear of last night’s snow, it had gotten cold again and not many people ventured out.
He turned back as she headed toward her car. Her pace quickened a little, then even more. He noticed her head cocked back, the corner of her eye watching him. She was digging into her purse for her keys. Digging deep and fast. She reached her car just as he did. Then she dropped her caffe mocha into the snow and turned, spraying Eddie with a canister of mace that she kept attached to her key ring.
Eddie took it in the face, the mace streaming down his cheeks like rain. He could hear her grunt and grown, and imagined she made the same animal noises toward the end of all her workouts. Mace had never bothered Eddie particularly. For the life of him, he didn’t know why.
“Say,” he said through the spray, “you don’t have any tattoos, do ya?”
She seemed horrified by the question, too afraid to scream. This threw him because the question seemed so reasonable. It had been part of the script, part of the play. When she didn’t answer, he struck her on the side of her head with a closed fist. The mace stopped and he heard her keys drop onto the street. He couldn’t tell if he’d knocked her out, or maybe she just fainted. Pressing her limp body against the car so that she wouldn’t fall and possibly bruise her clear skin, he glanced about for the keys and grabbed them. Then he shoved her into the backseat, tossed the gym bag in, and slammed the door closed.
He checked the alley again, the street. No one had seen him. Sliding in behind the wheel, he felt for the lever on the floor and pushed the seat back. The script had been well written, he decided, the scenario thoughtfully done.
Eddie settled into the driver’s seat, wiping his face off with a handkerchief as he adjusted the mirrors and reviewed the dash. The car started on the first try. Then he switched on the heat, idling down the alley and turning at the corner. As he passed Benny’s Cafe Blue, he glanced in the window and saw everyone laughing again. He knew they were laughing at him, but ignored it as he always did. They could laugh all they wanted, but he had the goods.
He popped another piece of chocolate into his mouth as a reward. At the light, he made another turn. When he checked the rearview mirror, he saw the girl lying against the backseat with her eyes closed. She looked like she was sleeping. By the time she woke up, they’d already be home.
SEVENTEEN
Teddy opened the letter and began reading. The words were printed on the page by hand in cumbersome letters blocked out with a felt-tip pen.
Dear Asshole:
You motherfucking piece of shit lawyers are all alike. Fuck you for defending that mailman killer. He deserves to die just like what he did to those pretty girls. You do, too, you dirty creep. I’m watching you. I’m staying close. I know where you are.
Locked and loaded and truly yours,
Colt 45
Teddy dropped the letter on his desk, wishing he hadn’t touched it. Grabbing a pen, he flipped the envelope over and examined the return address: 45 Somebody Street. He didn’t need to check, but he did. His street guide was on the credenza beside his dictionary and almanac. Paging through the index, he searched for Somebody Street, but couldn’t find it because it didn’t exist.
It was only seven-thirty, and the new day was off to a good start.
He leaned back in his chair, watching one of the kids from the mail room push the cart down the hall and wondering if the death threat he’d just received had anything to do with being led to the boathouse. His first thought was that the note had been written by an angry crank, but the words I’m watching you stood out. It seemed like a lot of people he didn’t know were watching him.
Jill walked through the door, wrapped up in a ski jacket with her face still glazed from the cold. Her briefcase was slung over her shoulder, and she held a cup of take-out coffee in her gloved hands.
“You’re in early,” she said.
Teddy nodded, even tried to smile. “I’ve got to leave in a half hour, but I’ll be back.”
He didn’t want her to worry by showing her the note or envelope. As she got out of her jacket, he slid them into the murder book with his pen, closed the binder and placed it in his briefcase.
“You got ten minutes?” he asked.
She nodded, prying the lid off the coffee and taking a tentative first sip.
“Valerie Kram,” he said. “I need to go up on the net and see what’s out there.”
“The woman they found in the river?”
He nodded. She paused a moment, taking it in like her day was off to a good start, too. Then she lowered her coffee to the table and sat down before the computer, ready and willing. As she typed in her password, Teddy rolled his desk chair over and took a seat beside her.
“Do you want a global search,” she asked. “Or should we just check the newspaper’s archives?”
“I want everything,” he said.
Jill typed Valerie Kram’s name into the search window and hit ENTER. After a moment, thirty or more listings appeared on the screen. Jill scrolled down the page, weeding out entries about another woman with the same name working as an environmentalist in Oregon. When she was done, only five listings remained. The first three links sent them to missing persons organizations, offering help and guidance to families trying to cope with their loss. But the fourth link led to a newspaper article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, dated October 29, three days after Valerie Kram’s disappearance. Teddy gazed at the girl’s picture, then read the story. Valerie Kram of Manayunk, twenty years old and a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, was officially missing. Kram shared an apartment with a roommate, who became alarmed when Kram didn’t return from her daily jog on the bike path along the Schuylkill River. The roommate called Kram’s parents, and the police were notified. End of story.
Jill printed the article, then clicked back to the search list. Teddy didn’t recognize the remaining entry and asked about it.
“It looks like a newsgroup,” Jill said. “Someone probably set it up under Valerie Kram’s name.”
“Let’s take a look,” he said.
Jill clicked on the link and several hundred entries appeared. Fifteen minutes later, they’d read them all. The entries amounted to notes sent back and forth between Kram’s mother and her daughter’s friends over the course of the past six weeks. As time passed, Teddy could sense the level of panic rising in the mother’s tone until just two weeks ago when the notes dwindled off and hopelessness set in.