Daughter of Darkness (25 page)

    Not hers either. But they fit well. She then put her feet into the black flats by the bed. Capezios. Not a brand she favored. Too expensive. Flats were flats. Why pay for a brand name?

    On the bureau, she found the gun. The gun took her back to her small-town days. Growing up. Her father and brother had been gun nuts. When they weren't hunting, they were cleaning their guns, or hanging out at the gun store downtown where the owner was a member of the KKK and didn't care who knew it.

    The gun felt good in her hand. She wondered who had left it behind, and why.

    She had an easy time with the weapon, checking it for ammunition. She'd picked up a lot of pointers from the men in her family. She wasn't a gun nut exactly, but she liked the feel of a gun in her hand. No doubt about it.

    The dark house would usually have scared her. But for some reason, tonight she liked the darkness.

    She left the bedroom, groped her way along a dark hallway, and then came out into a living room. She kept a firm grip on the gun as she entered this new part of the house. She had no idea what she'd find.

    After the living room came the tiny dining room and then the kitchen. No sign of anybody, anything. How the hell had she
gotten
here? She didn't panic too much because she'd had other nights like this. Had a little too much to drink-or, occasionally, a little too much dope to smoke-and would then find herself in some stranger's house, with said stranger gone.

    But that was usually in the morning.

    At night when she woke up in a strange house, the stranger was usually next to her in bed. Snoring drunkenly.

    So where was the stranger who'd brought her here, anyway?

    

    

    The Ford van was now fixing its infrared homing device on the house. The information it received: the sole inhabitant of the house was up and moving about.

    

    

    Linda Fleming even went to the bathroom in the dark. She still felt comforted somehow by the shadows, a dark womb.

    She realized, washing her hands and wanting some lotion to put on them, that she hadn't seen her purse since waking up.

    She found a purse on the kitchen table. A small, black leather Gucci bag, which probably belonged to the woman whose clothes she was wearing. She opened it up and found three crisp hundred dollar bills inside.

    She smiled and then shrugged. Since she had borrowed the woman's clothes, she might as well borrow her money, too.

    In fact, she thought, she might as well take the
purse
while she was at it. She left the money in the purse and then slipped the small weapon in there, too.

    She started out of the kitchen but then remembered that she'd forgotten something. The thought came so abruptly that it stirred her headache again. A bolt of pain struck her right eye as she stood there.

    There was something she needed in this kitchen…

    Twenty minutes later, a Yellow Cab pulled up ahead of the Ford van.

    Linda Fleming came running out of the house and up to the cab. When she opened the door, a blast of gangsta rap music assaulted her. The driver was a shrunken old man in his late sixties. A
white
man. Go figure.

    Linda got in the cab. The gangsta geeza drove them away.

    

    

    Margie Ryan started scratching herself almost right away.

    She liked to think of herself as a tough-ass cop, and in most respects she certainly was. She'd seen-and effectively dealt with-every kind of bloodshed and carnage imaginable. She had been shot at, stabbed, and nearly drowned. One time when she was working undercover, she'd nearly been gang-raped by three men who looked as if they belonged at the Abominable Snowman's family reunion. She never had a single nightmare about any of this. Not once.

    But put her in a room where somebody was sneezing…

    Margie had always wondered where her hypochondria came from. Her parents were sane and sensible Irishers who felt ill only when they truly
were
ill. Nor had this psychological malady possessed any of her five brothers and sisters. Indeed, they used to take great delight in sneezing and coughing in little Margie's face just so they could watch her go crazy with hypochondrical symptoms.

    So tonight at dinner, nine-year-old Brian said, "Sister Mary Ellen said that we should tell our parents there's a lot of measles going around the school."

    At which, the dinner table noise came to a halt. No serving plates were passed. No silverware clanked against china. Nine-year-old Sam didn't make any of his armpit-farting noises (if armpit-farting was an Olympic event, Sam would win at least a half dozen gold medals). Neither of the twins exchanged one of their whispered private jokes. And Mike, Margie's stout insurance salesman husband, seemed to hold his breath. He looked at his beloved wife (sixteen years next month) and said, "You don't have the measles."

    "Who said I have the measles?" Margie said defensively.

    "Mommy's a handcriac," five-year-old Jason said.

    All the other kids giggled.

    "That's 'hypochondriac,' Jason," Mike said helpfully. "And yes, she is."

    "Used to be," Margie said. "No more."

    Mike loved to tease her. "Then you won't have measles by the time we go to bed tonight?"

    "I read an article," she said.

    "An article?" Mike said.

    "In
Reader's Digest
."

    "I thought our subscription expired."

    "It did. I happened to read this in the dentist's office the other day."

    "Good old Dr. Fitzpatrick," Mike said, "he still reminds me of the dentist in
The Marathon Man
."

    "We were talking about
Reader's Digest
."

    "Oh, yeah, right. Sorry."

    "There was an article in there about hypchondria and it really helped me."

    Mike shoveled food into his face, a half pound of mashed potatoes all mooshed up with green peas. "So what's it say?" His mouth was so full, Margie could barely understand him.

    "It
said
, as if you're really listening anyway, that hypochondria is just a form of stress and depression that you develop when you're young, usually as the result of a trauma."

    "Isn't that what they said about Ted Bundy, too?"

    "Very funny. Anyway, it's pretty clear that I started in on hypochondria when my dad died. You know, when I was six, I mean. That's how I dealt with it… every time I got really lonely for him, I'd start feeling sick."

    The phone rang.

    "I'll bet it's Amy's boy friend, Brian," Sam said. He thought it was real, real weird that anybody would find anything appealing about his ten-year-old sister Amy. To him, she was just this skinny, gawky girl with no breasts (given the men's magazine Margie had found in his drawer, it was clear Sam was already and hopelessly a boob man), braces and a shy manner that was easy to make fun of. He didn't see any of the classic beauty or the gentle wisdom that Margie saw in her eldest-and that boys in Amy's class were also starting to see. Lately, a public school boy named Brian Stoller had been calling her. Amy clearly liked the kid, though she was tongue-tied whenever he phoned.

    Sam hopped up from the dinner table and plucked the receiver from the yellow wall phone. He looked instantly disappointed. It wasn't for Amy, after all. It was for Mom.

    Margie took it in what they called "the den" but which was actually a room with an old couch, an old armchair, a twenty-year-old Zenith color TV console, and a bookcase filled with Mike's Louis L'Amour paperbacks.

    "Hello," she said.

    "Hello," said the voice. Male. Unfriendly. "I'm told you're a good officer."

    "May I ask who this is?" All she knew for sure was that it was somebody official. That voice, it
had
to be official.

    "Commissioner Scott."

    "Commissioner
Ted
Scott?"

    "One and the same. Detective Ryan."

    My God, why would the police commissioner be calling
her
? The thing was, when Scott wanted to chew you out, he called your Commander and
he
chewed you out.

    Scott was one of the first commissioners who had ever actually been a cop, though not a very good one according to locker room scuttlebutt. And even though he'd been a cop for a few years, he was still very much of the upper classes. Not many beat cops drove back and forth to work in a new Porsche. Nor did many beat cops number among their guests at Christmas time, the mayor and his wife. Scott was the son of a prominent architect and city planner. He clearly had political ambitions. First a cop, then a police commissioner, could the governor's mansion be far behind? He was mostly seen as ineffectual, which was fine with the rank-and-file. They'd had cop lovers, who invariably got in trouble with the press for excusing any kind of scum-bag police behavior; and they'd had cop-haters, who'd gotten in trouble with the cops themselves because they generally took the side of the citizens in any dispute. Scott spent most of his time at his country club, which seemed to make just about everybody happy. That's where police commissioners
should
spend most of their time.

    "I understand," the Commissioner went on, "that you met some friends of mine."

    "Friends of yours?"

    "The Staffords."

    "Oh, yes. I mean, yes, sir, I did." She sounded as nervous as poor Amy when she talked to Brian Stoller.

    "And I further understand that you suggested that they might be impeding the police investigation to find their daughter."

    "No, sir, I didn't."

    "Well, that was the impression you gave Molly Stafford anyway. And she didn't like it."

    "I was just doing my job, sir. Just asking the questions I'd ask anybody."

    "These people aren't 'anybody,' Detective Ryan."

    "I see, sir."

    "They're friends of mine."

    "Yes, sir."

    "And they don't impede police investigations."

    "No, sir."

    "Not even when their own daughter is involved."

    "I see, sir."

    "I was in Los Angeles-there was a conference for police commissioners-when you started running Jenny Stafford's photo on the tube. This is ridiculous."

    "What is, sir?"

    "Jenny Stafford a murderer. Why in the hell are you looking for her, anyway? I've known her all her life. She isn't a killer. And she sure as hell doesn't spend her nights at the Econo-Nite Motel, I can tell you that."

    "Sir?"

    "Yes."

    "We found her car parked half a block away. We took prints off the steering wheel, the dashboard, and the interior of the glove compartment. We compared them to the prints found on several surfaces at the crime scene."

    "And you're telling me you got a match?"

    "Yes, sir, we did. But that's not all."

    "Oh?"

    "We also got a match from the handle of the knife itself. The one in the dead man."

    "Do you have any idea who Jenny Stafford
is.
Detective Ryan?"

    "She's the daughter of Tom and Molly-"

    "She's
my goddaughter
."

    "
Oh
."

    "
Now
am I making myself clear?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "I want you to prosecute this just as hard as you can. But I want you to make it
fast
. You understand?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "There's got to be some kind of logical explanation for how her fingerprints got all over that motel room."

    "Yessir."

    "And I want you to find out what that explanation is."

    "I understand, sir."

    "And I don't want you hinting to the Staffords that they're not cooperating."

    "I'll make sure there's no misunderstanding, sir."

    "Good."

    "I'm sorry to bother you at home."

    "That's quite all right."

    "Now, I'll let you get back to your family."

    

    

    Later. The kids finally asleep. Mike lying next to her.

    "Honey?" he whispered.

    "Huh?"

    "You think you could quit doing that?"

    "Doing what?"

    "You know, the scratching."

    "I'm scratching?"

    "Uh-huh. And it's pretty loud. I can't sleep."

    "I must have dry skin or something."

    "It must be the measles," he said.

    "Very funny."

    "It's subconscious. Why you're scratching, I mean. Deep down, you think you've got the measles."

    She brought her hands up, prayerlike, and tucked them under her face as she lay on her side. She couldn't scratch with her hands in this position.

    Then she said, "He really pisses me off."

    Mike groaned. He just wanted to sleep. "Who?"

    "The Commissioner."

    "He's an asshole. Forget about him and just get to sleep."

    "I just keep hearing his voice. Prep school."

    "He went to prep school?"

    "Uh-huh. Exeter."

    "Well, if you gotta go to prep school, that's a pretty good place."

    "Yeah, I suppose. He just sounds so-snotty."

    "Night."

    "You don't give a damn."

    "Honey, I'm
tired
. The regional manager's coming in tomorrow. It's not easy kissing somebody's ass all day long. It takes a lot of strength."