The list came crawling off her office fax machine the next day. Tull had wanted to bring it by in person-“The numbers are so small, you might not be able to read them from a fax”-but Tess had told him her eyesight was still pretty good.
A day in the life of a city pay phone was more interesting than she would have guessed. There were dozens of outgoing calls, and most were made with some sort of calling card. Tess focused on the local ones first, checking each number against the bound crisscross directory, then using a reverse directory on the Internet if that failed to turn up the number. She ended up calling most of them anyway, just to be sure. It was slow, tedious work, and she found herself wishing that Sukey could see her now. Heigh-ho, the glamorous life.
She concentrated on the local calls, the 410 ones, ignoring the 301s, 202s, 302s, and 215s scattered among the listings. Gene Fulton’s number was not among those she checked. Neither was Domenick’s. Nor was Eric Collins one of the listings she checked. If there was another name, another number, that Tess thought she might find, she didn’t admit it, not even to herself. At any rate, if that number came up, she wouldn’t need a directory to identify it.
But so many of the numbers fell outside the listings. She called blind, using different stories to cajole names from the skeptical, harried women who snatched up the phones on the fifth or sixth ring. It was slow going, but by midday, she had hit most of the local numbers on the list.
And she had nothing. Except for a reddened left ear.
She moved on to the 301 numbers, which covered the Washington suburbs and the western part of the state. The Schillers lived in that area code. More nothing. She had not contemplated this much nothingness since she tried taking a philosophy course in her freshman year at Washington College, and discovered it made her head hurt. All these numbers, all these codes, all these calls. How could so much life emanate from three pay phones in Locust Point? Drug dealers preferred the illegal pay phones around the city, which actually outnumbered the legal ones. The calls made here were probably much more mundane. Car trouble, what was the name of that guy, again, and I’m stopping at the market, do you need anything? All those calls and one of them, just one of them, was Gwen Schiller’s call for help.
A call for help.
Damn, she was stupid sometimes. Why would Gwen, alone and scared, reach out to the very people she presumably was running from? Why would she call Gene Fulton, or Domenick’s, or anyone in the DeSanti family? Tess had been so intent on finding a link that she had not thought this through properly. Gwen was waiting for someone, someone who had to come to her and find her in a very public, accessible place, Fort McHenry, a place that any out-of-towner could find, a place where no one could sneak up on you. She checked the long distance calls again: There were seven to the D.C. suburbs, four to 202, which was D.C. proper. Two to Delaware, 302. And one to 215, which was Philadelphia.
Philadelphia. Where, as Tess knew, Gwen did have a contact. A contact who said she hadn’t heard from her since leaving Persephone’s Place.
Tess dialed the number. It rang five times before Devon Whittaker’s cool, dry voice assured her that she was so sorry she had missed her call, but please leave a message and she would get right back to you.
Tess wondered if Gwen Schiller had listened to the same message, a little over a year ago.
It was not a day for trains, to bend her schedule to anyone else’s. Tess was in her car within five minutes, stopping only to drop Esskay at Kitty’s store.
“Do you think this is what it would be like if we had a baby?” Crow wondered. “You handing it off to me in a Snugli, while you strap on your gun and head out into the world?”
“I’m not strapping on my gun,” she said. “I’m just carrying it in my knapsack. And don’t talk about babies, okay? One day at a time.”
“As long as there’s a tomorrow,” Crow said, watching Esskay as she climbed into one of the store’s easy chairs and made herself at home. Tess was already out the door, her mind racing ahead of her as she sped across Eastern Avenue and then up I-95.
Devon had said she didn’t know Gwen that well, but she had known she had left. At the time, she said she had heard it from one of the other girls, but the clinic maintained no one else who was there knew Gwen had escaped. They had kept it quiet.
Besides, why would Gwen call someone who was in? Only someone who was out, and on her own, could help her. Devon was out by then, starting her freshman year at Penn, living off campus. Perhaps Gwen, not knowing about Devon’s watchful bodyguard, had expected her to take her in, or at least come to Baltimore to bail her out of whatever trouble she was in. She was waiting for someone, Sukey had told her. The someone never came, so Gwen was still in the park the next day, ready for fate when it arrived in the shape of Henry Dembrow.
It took a solid two hours to make the 100-mile trip to Philadelphia. Tess burned up another 45 minutes in wrong turns before she found her way back to Devon’s apartment. She found a space halfway down the street, rang the apartment from the foyer. No answer. She bought a pretzel from a street vendor and took it back to the car. She couldn’t remember when she had eaten last.
It was almost dusk when Devon turned down the street. She moved self-consciously-shoulders hunched beneath the weight of her knapsack, eyes on the pavement, her body hidden in the voluminous folds of a man’s vintage cashmere coat.
Tess stopped her just outside the apartment building.
“Devon.”
She needed a second. Maybe it was the dim light. “The private detective. The one who was looking for Gwen.”
“She called you, didn’t she? The day before she was killed, she called you.”
Devon’s eyes returned to the sidewalk, then slid to the right. “I wasn’t home. She left a message, but I wasn’t home, and I didn’t know what time she called. There wasn’t anything I could do. Until you came here, I thought she was alive.”
“We need to talk about this. Can I come inside?”
Devon nodded, then shook her head. “Hilde’s there.”
“Are you saying you can’t talk about this in front of Hilde? We can go sit in my car if you like.”
“No. She’ll give us privacy, if I ask.”
“Then ask,” Tess said. She shouldered her own knapsack, followed Devon into the small vestibule of her building, watched her fumble with the keys at the inside door, which was even balkier than the last time. Tess noticed the veneer around the lock was scratched, which struck her as a seedy note in such a nice building. The stairwell was dark, too, as if the landlord were too cheap to turn on the lights one minute before dusk was complete.
Later, forced to recount the events that followed-and Tess was forced to recount them several times-she remembered feeling as if she had left her body, that she was standing outside herself and what she was seeing. “That’s funny,” Devon was saying, “the lock doesn’t want to-oh, there it goes.” Devon flipped a switch, but the stairwell light didn’t come on. “Burned out,” Devon said matter-of-factly, and began climbing the stairs.
It was then that Tess grabbed her arm and dragged her into the street. She wasn’t sure how her gun came to be in her hand, safety off, but she must have opened her knapsack because Devon was holding her cell phone. She heard a voice, her own voice, above the dull roaring in her ears. Call 911. Call 911. Even as Devon was trying to make the call, Tess was dragging her across the street, looking for someplace safe, untouchable.
She settled for the Philly cheesesteak cart, stationed behind someone’s very nice and very white BMW. Time was out of sequence for Tess. It seemed to her that she threw Devon to the ground before the shots were fired, but that didn’t make any sense. The phone bounced from Devon’s hand, even as the call was going through. Tess could hear the operator’s voice buzzing from the sidewalk, increasingly impatient. “911, may I help you? May I help you? Are you there?” She hoped the 911 operator could hear them, could hear the panicked screams on the street around them.