Annie Seymour 01-Sacred Cows (26 page)

“Could you just give me a little respect, the respect I deserve as your colleague?”

He had to be kidding. Maybe he could expect that from Marty, Renee, some of the other people at the paper who weren’t as disagreeable as I was. Maybe he could stop trying to step on my toes and I’d think about it. Maybe he could leave me alone now, right before I was going to have to deal with Mark Torrey and the FBI. If he thought I was really going to tell him anything of any substance, he was as stupid as I thought.

He’d stopped talking and I was lost in my own world, which just emphasized his point. Like I cared.

“All right, so you don’t want to deliver my laundry. Fine. It’s okay with me.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I really try to like you, Annie. I really think you do good work.”

He wanted me to give him a compliment back. But I couldn’t, even if I pretended I wanted to. It was just too much.

“Listen, Dick. This has been a very bad day, a very bad week, in fact. Someone broke into my apartment last night and I just got it cleaned up. I’ve been almost abducted, had hate mail pushed under my door, been chased after by an escort service operator, seen two dead girls, and been told by the publisher I have to take a vacation. And that doesn’t even match having to cover the stupid cows. So I would appreciate it if you would just accept me for the way I am, like everyone else, and leave me alone at the moment.”

It was the most I’d ever said to him at one sitting and it surprised him into walking to the door. “I didn’t realize it was so bad.” Oh, God, now he was trying to offer some sort of weird sympathy.

I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “And my mother’s dating Bill Bennett.” I paused dramatically. “But you can’t tell anyone that. It’s terribly embarrassing.” I knew it would be all over the newsroom within the hour, but throwing him a bone didn’t seem like a bad way to get him to leave.

His eyes grew wide. “Really?”

I nodded, pushing him into the hall. “I’ll see you in a week.”

I closed the door and heard him go down the stairs. I watched from the window as he walked down the sidewalk and disappeared around the block. I went back to the bathroom to finish my grooming.

Noon came quickly, but Vinny didn’t. I started having second thoughts about whether Mark Torrey was just trying to trap me into going to the park. I tried not to think about it. I made myself a sandwich and sat down with a pad and a pen. I started charting out the events of the past days, starting with Melissa Peabody. It was sort of my version of diagramming a sentence, with a lot of arrows and initials and stuff. It got pretty crowded. And just as it started to make sense, just as I was figuring it out, the doorbell rang again.

Tom looked around when I let him in, his eyes taking in how neat everything was. How out of the ordinary that was. “You really did have a break-in, didn’t you? Why didn’t you stick around last night?”

We had never given each other keys to our apartments. We figured we would keep the relationship light that way. I couldn’t let myself into his world, he couldn’t come into mine uninvited.

I shrugged and closed the door behind him. “You were a real shit.”

“Yeah. I know. And Paula called me.”

“So she sent you over here to baby-sit me, to make sure Mark Torrey doesn’t do anything awful, or is it to keep me from disappearing before our allotted meeting time?”

Tom’s eyes were dark, and he caught mine. “You don’t have to be so hostile. I’m not the enemy.”

I sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry about last night. But I just couldn’t deal.”

“Where’d you go?”

I shrugged, remembering something. “My gun got stolen in the break-in.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose. “Your gun?”

“My dad got it for me, made me go to the firing range to learn how to use it. It was in the drawer next to the bed. I think it’s the only thing that’s missing.”

Tom was shaking his head. “Jesus, Annie.” He pulled a pad out of his pocket. “I need to see your permit.”

I went into the bedroom and rummaged around in the file cabinet in the corner, finally finding the permit. Tom was sitting in my rocking chair, incredulity on his face. “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me you had a gun?”

I thought briefly about the gun Vinny had given me that was in my purse, but opted not to tell him I had a replacement. Especially since I didn’t have a permit for that one; who the hell knew where Vinny had gotten it. I handed him my permit.

Tom wrote down all the information he needed and gave it back to me. “If you’re lucky, no one will use it while committing a crime.”

The way he was looking at me, I was sure he wouldn’t mind if someone used it on me.

“So you’re really going to do this? Meet Torrey?”

I nodded.

“You have to be a hero?”

“He says he’s got Vinny,” I said softly.

Tom turned away, but not quickly enough so I didn’t see the sadness in his face. I’d spent a year with Tom, more time than that fantasizing about him, and I was hurting him. And it hurt like hell. But I couldn’t dismiss how I felt about Vinny; if Torrey did have him, I had to help.

Tom’s beeper went off, and he picked up the phone, spoke softly a few minutes, and then said, “I have to go.”

“What?”

“I’ll be back.” He opened the door and disappeared down the stairwell.

I needed to stay busy until four o’clock, and I wasn’t in the mood to watch
General Hospital.
I thought about my laundry in the car. The Laundromat was just around the corner. Doing my laundry couldn’t be a threat to Mark Torrey, and if his lackeys wanted to watch my clothes go around in the dryer, well, that was their problem. But I wasn’t going to let myself be a sitting duck. I opened my bag, to make sure the gun was still there. There it lay, gleaming silver next to my wallet and tampon container. I closed the bag, picked up my keys, and let myself out.

I waved off the woman behind the counter, anxious to lose myself in actually doing my laundry. I almost fell asleep listening to the gentle whishing of the washing machines and the loud whirring of the dryers. The noises soothed me, the normalcy of doing laundry lulling me into a major daydream about how Vinny’s fiancée meets some guy on a business trip and tells Vinny she’s found the real true love of her life and she’ll have to break up with him. Vinny comes to my door, disheveled, unshaven with that sexy Don Johnson thing happening, and takes me to bed for three days.

I can’t say any more because it was definitely X-rated and definitely more interesting than doing laundry.

The hand on my shoulder made my heart stop for a second.

“Come with me.” The voice was rough. I was at a distinct disadvantage, especially since my gun was in my bag on the floor and I couldn’t reach it. I tried to lean over, but the hand on my shoulder nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.

“Let’s get going.”

I stood up as quickly as allowed. I looked around the Laundromat: an exhausted mother with twins, no, she wouldn’t notice this; an old man with his back to me, folding laundry, I could see the hearing aid sitting on the chair next to him. The woman behind the counter looked like she was sleeping. This truly sucked.

I was shoved into the back seat of a car. A white Toyota. With a dent in the passenger side, like the one I’d seen at the Peabody Museum. The guy at the wheel started the engine and we began to move. I turned to get a good look at who was abducting me.

It was that lawyer, the one at my mother’s dinner party, the one who hooked me up with Torrey. What the hell was his name?

“You called the cops.” He said it simply.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name. My mother’s dinner guests all start to look alike after a while.”

He made a rude snorting noise and I noticed the gun in his hand.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Mark said you shouldn’t call the cops.” Christ, he was a broken record. Maybe he was stupid. I could deal with stupid. Certainly Mark Torrey was the brains behind the operation. He picked morons to do his dirty work. He’s in Europe, this guy’s here, watching me. Yeah, he was stupid.

Letting my brain do all this conjecturing allowed me to ignore, for the moment, how deep the shit was that I was in. No one had a clue I went out to do my laundry, so they wouldn’t have a clue where to look first. Much less find me.

Albert Webber. That was his name. I glanced at the guy at the wheel. I recognized him. He’d also been at my mother’s party. Christ, if she only knew. It must be Nicholas Curtin, the other guy Hickey had told me about.

“Listen, Al, I’m sure whatever this is about we can clear it up. I didn’t call the cops, like you think. Since you’ve been privy to things in my life, you must know I’ve been dating a cop for a year. He came over this afternoon to see how I was doing, since he knew my apartment was trashed last night.”

He seemed a little startled at my speech, but recovered quickly. “You’re going to get those tapes. Where are they?”

Seemed like as good a time as any to go to the bank. I told him where we needed to go, and the car maneuvered its way around the city streets. I eyed the back of Nick Curtin’s head as we pulled into the parking lot.

“They might not like you having a gun on me in there,” I said matter-of-factly, surprised that I wasn’t peeing in my pants. I recognized the gun, too. It was mine. It had a little piece of pink ribbon tied around it; my dad had thought it would be funny to wrap it, but the knot was so tight I couldn’t get the damned ribbon off.

He looked down at his hand, this time seeming startled that a gun was there.

“You don’t really like this much, do you?” I asked.

His grip tightened on the gun. I could see the veins rise in his hand. “Shut up. I’m going in with you.”

He shoved the gun under his jacket and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me out of the car. It hurt, but after all the other physical abuse I’d taken lately it wasn’t too bad.

“If you try anything, I’ll start shooting. I don’t care who I hit, and I hope I hit you.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him, and he sensed that.

“We’ve got the private dick. If I don’t come out of there with you and the tapes, he’s not going to make it, either.”

Nick Curtin turned his head a little, and I could see his eyes were dark. While Webber seemed a little nervous, Nick looked much more likely to actually harm me. Anyway, I didn’t have any reason not to believe they’d carry out their threat. Two girls were already dead. Two girls they both knew intimately. Why would they hesitate about killing me or Vinny or both of us?

I had to go through all the rigmarole to get to my safe deposit box. I vaguely referred to Albert as a “friend” when the bank clerk frowned at him. “He has to stay out here,” she said firmly.

I shrugged and glanced at Albert, who patted his jacket to remind me to behave.

I went into the vault and opened my box. There it was, the envelope that Albert wanted. And underneath it was the envelope that held my will, the one my mother insisted on drawing up for me after she became a lawyer. It basically said I left all my worldly belongings, aka my travel mug collection and some jewelry given to me in a long-ago ruined relationship, to my mother. She had a copy of it in her safe, just in case I lost this one, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, since I would be giving it to Albert.

I also had some cassette tapes in the box. They were recordings of interviews I’d done with an accused murderer a few years ago. The thing was, he’d turned out to be innocent. I harbored thoughts of writing a book about it, which is why I’d kept the tapes. But since it seemed like they’d do more for my future right now than a book would, I scooped them up without feeling nostalgic and put them in the envelope with my will and sealed it. I convinced myself it was the right thing to do; at the very least it could buy me and Vinny some more time. I grabbed it and went back out into the bank lobby.

Albert smiled. Actually smiled. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he whispered as he held my arm back to the car.

I stopped at the door, his grip firmer. “Listen, you’ve got it now, can I go? I don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know where Torrey is. I’m in the dark. This is all I know, and if you’re never caught, it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? Can I go back and put my laundry in the dryer?”

For a minute I thought I was going to get away with it. His eyes wavered, his mouth moved in a chewing motion. Then he shoved me back into the car.

This wasn’t good.

“So are you going to get rid of me like you got rid of Melissa and Allison?” I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I had nothing to lose.

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Oh, come on. You’re obviously the muscle behind the brain.” I was thinking “musclehead.” “Torrey must have told you how to handle those girls.”

He’d get double vision if he kept shaking his head like that. “They were nice girls. I’d like to get my hands on whoever killed them.”

He seemed sincere, so sincere that I believed him. I wasn’t sure why, it was my reporter’s instinct. I could smell a rat a mile away, but on the flip side, I could also tell when someone was telling the truth. These were skills Dick Whitfield often got confused.

“So you don’t have much experience with killing people, then,” I said flatly, a bubble of hope rising.

He jabbed me with the gun. “Don’t think I can’t.” But he didn’t look me in the eye. I held on to that.

“You know that if you turn yourself in and testify against Torrey, you’d probably get some sort of good deal.” God, I sounded like my mother.

It didn’t sway him, the lawyer talk. “I wish you’d shut up,” he said. “I thought reporters were supposed to be seen and not heard.”

“That’s children.” Although reporters were not unlike children in many ways.

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

We were on State Street, near the Mexican place where I’d met Allison. It seemed like a million years ago. A cow stood in the small patch of grass in the intersection. It was painted like a car, spokes on its legs, a steering wheel glued to its horns, a huge rearview mirror facing the street. I saw the reflection of the car in it as we moved past. We got onto the highway going north.