Shaw pulled out a notebook and opened his fountain pen. From memory he sketched a map of where Hank Thompson had been killed. His sure hand completed the drawing in five minutes. He signed it with his initials in the lower-right-hand corner, as he always did. He was waiting for the ink to dry when he looked up. Maddie Poole was walking in. Their eyes met. She smiled; he nodded.
“Lookit you,” she said, possibly meaning his posture. He was leaning back in his chair, his feet stretched out in front of him, the Ecco tips pointed ceilingward.
Then the smile faded. She’d scanned his face. The eyes, in particular.
She sat down, took the bottle of beer from him and lifted it to her own lips. Drank a large mouthful.
“I’ll buy you another one.”
“Not a worry,” he said.
“What is it? And you’d better not say ‘Nothing.’”
He hadn’t texted or spoken about Thompson’s murder.
“We lost the second victim.”
“Colt. Jesus. Wait. Was it that murder in the state park? The guy who was shot?”
A nod.
“The Whispering Man thing again?”
“The police still aren’t talking about that in the news — they don’t want the Gamer to know how much they know.”
“Gamer?”
“That’s what they’re calling him.” He sipped the beer. “He took Thompson into the mountains and left him with the five objects. Thompson came to and started a signal fire. That’s how we got onto him. But the Gamer came back to hunt him. That’s part of the game too.”
She looked over the map, then up at his eyes, a frown of curiosity on her face. He explained about his custom of drawing the maps.
“You’re good.”
Shaw happened to be looking at the spot on the map that represented the foot of the cliff where Henry Thompson had died. He closed the notebook and put it away.
Maddie touched his forearm firmly. “I’m sorry. What about Tony Knight? You didn’t tell me what happened. I was worried until I got your text.”
“Things got busy. And Knight? I was wrong. It wasn’t him. He’s been helpful.”
“Do the police have any ideas who it is?”
“No. If I had to guess, a sociopath. Nothing I’ve ever seen before — this elaborate modeling on the game. My mother might have known people like that.”
“You said she was a psychiatrist.”
He nodded.
Mary Dove Shaw had done a lot of research into medications for treating the criminally insane and as a principal investigator had funneled a lot of grant money to Cal and other schools.
That was earlier in her career — before the migration east, of course. In the later years her practice was limited to family medicine and midwifing in and around White Sulphur Springs and the management of paranoid personality and schizophrenia, though the latter practice involved only one patient: Ashton Shaw.
Shaw had yet to share with Maddie much about his father.
She asked, “Are the police offering a reward?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not interested in that. I just want to get him. I—”
The rest of the sentence was never uttered. Maddie had lunged forward and kissed him, her strong hands gripping his jacket, her tongue probing.
He tasted her, a hint of lipstick, though he hadn’t seen any color. Mint. He kissed back, hard.
Shaw’s hand slipped to the back of her head, fingers splayed, entwined in her sumptuous hair. Pulling her closer, closer. Maddie leaned in and he felt her breasts against his chest.
They began to speak simultaneously.
She touched his lips with a finger. “Let me go first. I live three blocks from here. Now what were you going to say?”
“I forgot.”
47
Shaw led a nomadic life and didn’t have a large inventory of possessions. But the Winnebago was downright cluttered compared with Maddie Poole’s rental.
True, it was temporary; she was only in town for C3, had driven up from her home outside L.A. Still...
One aspect exaggerated the emptiness: the ancient place was huge, five bedrooms, possibly more. A cavernous dining room. A living room that could be a wedding venue.
It was occupied by few possessions; her big desktop computer — a twenty-something-inch monitor dominating the table it sat on. On either side of the big Dell were cardboard cartons serving as end tables; they held books and magazines, DVDs and boxes of video game cartridges. An office chair rested before it. Surrounding the workstation were shopping bags from computer companies — giveaways, he guessed, from the conference.
A mountain bike, well-used, sat in the corner. The brand was SANTA CRUZ. Shaw didn’t bike but when hiking or climbing he came across bikers often. He knew this make could go for nine thousand dollars. Also, there were free weights — twenty-five-pounders — and some elastic exercise contraption.
In the bedroom, to the right, was a double-sized mattress and box spring, sitting on the floor. The sheets were atop it, untucked and swirled like a lazy hurricane.
In the living room an unfortunate beige couch rested before a coffee table that made Frank Mulliner’s limb-fractured model look classy. The laminated dark wood top of Maddie’s was curling upward at the ends.
The kitchen was empty of furniture and appliances other than those built in: a range, a fridge, an oven and a microwave. On the counter was a box of cornflakes and two bottles of white wine, a six-pack of Corona beer.
Shaw dated the huge house around the 1930s. It was sorely in need of paint and repair. Water damage was prevalent and the plaster walls cracked in a dozen places.
“Out of The Addams Family, right?” Maddie said, laughing.
“True.”
Last Halloween, Shaw had taken his nieces to an amusement park; it had featured a haunted house that looked a lot like this.
She went on to explain that she’d found it through an Airbnb kind of service. It was available only because its days were numbered; next month it was being demolished, thanks to Siliconville. The stained wallpaper was of tiny, dark flowers on a pale blue background. The dotted effect was oddly disconcerting.
“Wine?”
“Corona.”
She got a cold bottle from the refrigerator and poured herself a tall glass of wine, returned to the couch, handed him the beer and curled up. He sat too; their shoulders touched.
“So...?” From her.
“This is where you ask if there’s anybody in my life.”
“Good-looking and a mind reader.”
“Wouldn’t be here if there was.”
Clinking glasses. “Lot of men say that but I believe you.”
He kissed her hard, his hand around the back of her neck once more, surprised that the tangles of her rust-shaded hair were so soft. He thought they’d be more fibrous. She leaned in and kissed back, her lips playful.
She took a large sip of wine. A splash hit the couch.
“Oops. Good-bye, security deposit.”
He started to take the glass from her. She had one more hit and then relinquished it. The glass and his beer ended up on the wavy coffee table. They were kissing harder yet. Her legs straightened from their near-lotus fold and she eased back onto the cushions. His right hand descended from her hair to her ear to her cheek to her neck.
“Bedroom?” Shaw whispered.
A nod, a smile.
They rose and walked inside. Just past the threshold Shaw kicked off his shoes. Maddie lagged, diverting momentarily, shutting out the living room and kitchen lights. He sat on the bed and tugged his socks off.
“Got something that might be fun,” her voice whispered seductively from the dark space on the other side of the doorway.