Daughter of Darkness (23 page)

    "Hell, yes, I'd have doubts. Somebody told me something as far-fetched as all this seems, I'd have
plenty
of doubts. But since I'm the investigator here, and since this is my work, I'm in the position of knowing it's true. Every word of it."

    "Wow."

    "Some more bourbon?"

    "Please."

    Cummings picked up the cut-glass decanter and poured them more bourbon. Then he settled back and said, "You're going to need some help figuring out how to handle this."

    "I sure am."

    "I can help you with that, too."

    "Really?" He felt like a child in the presence of a wise man.

    "But we'll have to be very careful."

    "I know it," Foster said. "That's what scares me. I could lose everything here."

    "Everything and
everybody
," Cummings said.

    "God, yes,
everybody
for sure."

    Cummings said, "What was that?"

    "What was what?"

    Cummings touched a finger to his lips. He reached over carefully and eased open the top right-hand drawer of the desk. He took out a small, silver-plated hand gun. Foster knew nothing about guns. This one looked fierce, a little angry bulldog of a weapon.

    Cummings pushed back soundlessly from the desk. Stood up. He moved around the desk with grace and speed but absolute quiet. Not a sound.

    He walked on tiptoe to the door leading to the reception room.

    He put his ear to the door, listened. Then he waved for Foster to stand up, to move away from his direct line in front of the door.

    Foster, starting to get scared now, did as Cummings wanted. He went over and stood by the window.

    Cummings continued to listen with his ear to the door. Foster still couldn't hear anything more than the usual sounds of an office building at night, the whine of a distant elevator, a toilet flushing several offices away, a vacuum cleaner far down the hall.

    Cummings reached over and clicked the lights off. Except for moonlight and some residual light from the office buildings surrounding this one, Cummings' office was completely dark.

    Foster decided that standing next to the window probably wasn't a good idea. He tiptoed over to where a bank of three new four-door filing cabinets stood. He crouched down beside them.

    He considered the possibility that Cummings was paranoid. Paranoia was probably an occupational hazard among private investigators. He could simply have gone to the door and said, "Who's out there?" couldn't he?

    Foster was starting to feel ridiculous. It was like a child's game. Bad Guys vs. Good Guys. Crouch behind a tree and shoot Timmy or Billy or Bobby with your cap gun. As a kid, Foster had played shoot-'em-up a million times. You developed a fondness for it. Maybe Cummings had developed a fondness for it he couldn't shake. Maybe he took every opportunity to play it he saw. Such as tonight.

    Maybe it was nobody more sinister in the outer office than a cleaning woman.

    The lights came back on.

    "What happened?" Foster said.

    "He left."

    "Who left?"

    "The guy who came here to hurt us."

    "The guy?"

    "It could be a chick, I suppose. There are more and more hit chicks these days."

    "Hit chicks?" Foster said.

    All the care Cummings had taken to buff his image as a serious, honest, credible private investigator-the nice office, the expensive suits, the laid-back manner-had lost its luster over the past few minutes.

    The guy was a nut case. At least that's how Foster saw things now. There hadn't
been
anybody in the outer office, at least not as far as Foster was concerned. And taking a gun. And hiding by the door. And turning out the lights. And talking about a "hit chick." Wow. The guy was a fruitcake.

    Now, Foster didn't believe anything Cummings had told him tonight. Not a word. Cummings' tale was nothing more than the paranoid little-boy fantasies of a self-deluded Good Guy.

    "Let's get out of here," Cummings said. The edge was still in his manner, in his speech. "He'll try for us again."

    "I thought you said it was a chick."

    "I said
maybe
it was a chick."

    "I see."

    "I know you're skeptical, Foster. But believe me, I know what I'm doing." He dropped the gun in the pocket of his suit coat. "Let's go."

    Three minutes later, they were stepping aboard an elevator car. Seven minutes later, they were taking the walkway to the garage where their vehicles were parked. Ten minutes later, Cummings had reached his new Mercedes Benz sedan and was starting to say good night to Foster.

    "You still look a little skeptical about this, my friend," Cummings said, as he put his hand on the door handle of his new Benz. "Believe me, given what we know now, both our lives are in danger. Both of them."

    That's when the first shot was fired. It was explosive and loud in the echoing walls of the parking garage. One moment, Cummings was a composed if frightened businessman. The next, he was a frantic animal. When the bullet ripped into his head, he jerked to the right, eyes already rolling back into his head, and sent forth a pathetic little cry that was almost completely lost in the echoing gunshot. Then he spun around, and collapsed on his car, sliding down the door slowly, leaving a smear of blood in his wake.

    Foster found himself processing a great deal of information over the next three seconds: so Cummings hadn't been paranoid, so everything Cummings had told him was true, so now there was a hit man-or a hit chick, in Cummings' ludicrous parlance-who meant to do Foster harm, too.

    Should he run? Should he pitch himself under a car? Should he throw his arms up and shout that he'd cooperate?

    The bullet made the decision for him.

    The gun was raised, aimed, fired.

    The bullet entered Foster's head a quarter-inch below the cerebral cortex and continued on from there, exploding silken tissue, cracking white bone.

    Foster fell only a foot or so from where Cummings was sprawled, facedown, on the oil-stained concrete floor of the parking garage.

    

    

    

    Coffey knew right away something was wrong.

    He'd been sitting there watching the staff put the restaurant back in order, remembering now that he'd promised his sister Jan he'd check out her house, when Jenny came back from calling her folks. She looked pale and shaken.

    "The police found my car where I'd parked it near the motel. They took fingerprints off it and then compared them to the prints on the knife and in the room. Now, they want to talk to me. A homicide detective named Ryan."

    "Good old Detective Ryan," Coffey said sourly.

    "You know her?"

    "I've talked to her a few times." He didn't elaborate.

    Desperation had given her face taut angles. "They're going to arrest me, aren't they?"

    "Possibly."

    "My mother wants me to come home and have a talk with the family lawyer."

    "That's something you should think about. Being on the run when the police are looking for you-"

    She reached across the table and took his hand. "If I killed him, I'm willing to take my punishment. I won't have much choice. But what if I didn't kill him? The police'll convict me anyway. That's what's so scary about this."

    "You need a place to hide," he said.

    She nodded. "Maybe I could check into a motel someplace."

    He shook his head. "This is a big news story. The police have probably issued a statement saying they'd like to talk to you as a material witness."

    "What's a material witness?"

    "It's usually a ruse. They use that term when they're looking for a suspect. They make it sound as friendly as possible, hoping he'll turn himself in."

    Then he said, "Jan's."

    "What?"

    "My sister's. I told her on the phone the other day that I'd swing by her house. It's partially furnished. They had to move to Omaha. My brother-in-law got a better job there, and they had to leave in a hurry. They've been planning to have the rest of the furniture shipped to them, but they haven't gotten around to it yet. There's a bed and a couch, and the heat and lights are still on."

    "That sounds great. I'd really appreciate it." She paused, then asked, "But how am I ever going to find out about what happened in the motel that night?"

    "I'm going to help you."

    She touched his hand again. "Oh, God, Coffey. I don't want to drag you into this. It's not fair to you."

    "I'll get a novel out of it."

    "You will, really?"

    He smiled. "Sure. So this is kind of like doing research. Plus which, I get to see what life is like from the point of view of a hardened criminal."

    He'd made a joke. All it produced was a wan and nervous expression in the tired eyes of Jenny Stafford.

    "I guess that wasn't very funny," he said.

    "I'm afraid I'm not very receptive right now." She made sudden fists of her hands. "After I saw Hal, I thought about just giving up. That's sort of what I've done all my life. Just given up-or given in. But this pisses me off. I want to find out what's going on here. I'm not going to give up this time."

    She slid into his arms, and they held each other silently for several minutes. He liked her new resolve. He liked the side of Jenny he was seeing now.

    Five minutes later, they were driving toward Kenwood, the neighborhood next to Hyde Park. In the old days, the mansions that lined several of the streets had been the bane of all Chicago society. Then affluence found other places to settle and the Kenwood area became less fashionable-or at least less sought after. But fifteen years ago, a measured urban renewal plan had been set in motion and today the old neighborhood was once again fresh, vital, and dignified. Jan had lived in one of the middle-class enclaves on the edges of Kenwood, a forty-year-old cottage-style house that she'd taken great pride in. She'd fixed it up beautifully.

    And Jenny noted this fact as Coffey pulled into the driveway, headlights giving the small, tidy house a moment of snapshot illumination. He cut the headlights immediately.

    The sound of the season's last crickets; the scent of newly mown grass from next door; the faint, throbbing pulse of a bass line in a rock and roll record from far down the block-all this data Coffey took in as he stood at the side door, inserting key into lock.

    The house smelled fresh and clean. Moonlight painted the kitchen in deep, moon-shifting shadows. A faucet dripped, the sound hollow.

    Coffey, feeling Jenny next to him, remembered what it was like to get home after a night at the movies, wife and daughter in tow, and that wonderful feeling of
belonging
to someone. He felt a little of that now. He wanted to hold Jenny, just hold her-he sensed that kissing her would spook her for now-just hold her, feel her warmth. But this wasn't the time. He showed her around the house. He'd brought a flashlight in from the car and, after his tour of Jan's place, handed the long, silver-handled flashlight over to her.

    "The biggest problem is that the phone doesn't work," he said, "and you don't have a car. If you absolutely have to have a phone, go next door to the Carstairs. They're very nice people. Tell them you're doing a little housesitting for Jan. Tell them you knew her in college."

    "You're not going to stay here?"

    "I'll be back later. I want to talk to a reporter I know who did some stories on your guru friend. See what he's been up to lately-this reporter I know keeps pretty good track of him."

    She looked around the house. "This is really a nice place."

    "Jan loved it."

    She surprised him not only by moving closer but by sliding her arms around his middle and hugging him. "I have a feeling we both need this right now."

    "I charge by the hour."

    "For hugging?"

    "Yeah, but they're very reasonable rates."

    They held each other, and it was wonderful.

    They heard the car before they saw it. In the driveway. Pulling almost equal with the side door. Headlights ablaze.

    Coffey, with great reluctance, moved from Jenny's arms to the kitchen window.

    Just as he reached it, the car pulled out again. But it wasn't a car. It was a van. A dark green Ford van.

    "Damn," he said.

    "What?"

    He told her who'd been in the drive. He stayed at the window until they backed out of the drive and pulled away from the house, disappearing into the night.

    "Any word from the Traffic Bureau on the van?" she said.

    "Only that it's a leased van. He's checking into who the lease was signed by." Coffey checked his watch. "I'm going to call him at home."

    "This late?"

    "It's just ten. That should be all right."

    He reached behind his back and took the gun from his belt. "You keep this."

    "God, Coffey, I don't know anything about guns."

    "You will."

    He gave her a good five-minute crash course on how to use this particular weapon. The lecture and demonstration were almost as simple as point and shoot. After he finished with the gun, he put on the alarm system he'd disarmed when they'd come in. He showed her how to activate it and told her to put it on the moment he left.

    At the door, after finishing up with the alarm system, he found himself standing very close to her. He could no longer resist the impulse. He took her into his arms and kissed her. He felt her instant response, the open mouth, the soft fingers on his neck, the warm and supple feeling of her body pressed against his.