Girl Missing (22 page)

“The decision could’ve been made on a number of levels.”

“We want to know the street level,” said Kat. “The name of the cop.”

“Yeah? What else do you want?”

“We want to know if Esterhaus might have offered this cop a bribe. Whether this particular
cop suddenly found some new … prosperity. Check with Internal Affairs, see if there’s a file.”

“There may not be.”

“Then just the name, Ed. Get me that.”

Ed shook his head. “You’re fishing, Kat. You’ve got nothing.”

“I’ve got an empty lot where my house used to be.”

“And I’ve got a dead researcher,” said Adam.

Ed leaned back. “So you’re
both
fishing, huh?”

“You should be, too,” said Adam. “It’s part of your job, Mr. DA.”

“And he’s a terrific one, too,” said a voice from the doorway. They turned to see Mayor Sampson, looking dapper in a three-piece suit. He strolled into the office and, like any good politician, reached out to pump Adam’s hand. “Mr. Quantrell, good to see you again. Coming to the bicentennial ball, aren’t you?”

“I hadn’t made plans.”

“But I thought Isabel reserved two inner-circle tickets.”

“She didn’t mention them to me.”

Sampson glanced at Kat and she saw the look
of dislike on his face, quickly smothered by a smile. “Keeping busy, Dr. Novak?” he asked.

“Too busy,” grumbled Ed.

“Oh Lord. Not those junkies again?” Sampson gave Kat an indulgent pat on the shoulder, the sort of gesture she resented. “You are taking this case entirely too personally.”

“Yeah. It got
real
personal when my house blew up.”

“But Ed is right on top of things,” said Sampson. “Aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Now, isn’t it time we got moving?” asked Sampson.

“Huh?” Ed glanced at his watch. “Oh yeah. Gotta go, Kat. Parade committee.”

They all walked out of the office together. In the hall, Ed raised an arm, a gesture that could’ve meant either good-bye or good riddance, and headed off with the mayor. Kat watched the two men disappear around the corner and then snorted in disgust. “Our tax dollars, hard at work. I’ll be glad when this damn bicentennial is over.”

They got into the elevator, joining a City Hall clerk, her arms loaded down with a pile of
gaudy flyers. “Take one!” she said in a cheery voice.

Kat snatched one up and read it:
Mayor Sampson’s Bicentennial Ball. General Tickets: $500. Contributor: $2,500. Inner Circle: $10,000
.

“Do you think Ed will help us out?” asked Adam.

“I’ll hound him to the grave if he doesn’t.”

Adam laughed. “I’d say that’s a pretty potent threat, coming from you.”

They stepped off the elevator. “Hardly,” said Kat, still gazing down at the flyer.

Inner-circle tickets were ten thousand dollars each, and Isabel had two of them.

“I’m not a threat to anyone,” she muttered. Then she tossed the flyer into a trash can.

The cook had laid out a lovely dinner for them: Cornish hens glazed with raspberry sauce, wild rice, a bottle of wine chilling in the bucket. And candlelight, naturally. Everything, thought Adam, was perfect. Or
should
have been perfect.

But it wasn’t.

Kat was chasing a sliver of carrot around
her plate now. Where
was
her appetite? With a sigh, she put down her fork and looked at him.

“Thinking about Esterhaus again?” he asked.

“And … everything, I guess.”

“Including us?”

After a pause, she nodded.

He picked up his wineglass and took a sip. She watched him, waiting for him to say something. It was unlike her to hold back words.
Are we so uncomfortable with each other?
he wondered.

“It’s not healthy for me,” she said. “Staying here.”

He glanced at her scarcely touched meal. “At least you’d eat properly.”

“I mean, emotionally. I’m not used to counting on a man. It makes me feel like I’m up on stilts, tottering around. Waiting to fall. I mean,
look
at this.” She waved at the elegant table setting, the flickering candles. “It’s just not
real
to me.”

“Am I?”

She looked directly at him. “I don’t know.”

He pinched his own arm and said with a smile, “I seem real enough to myself.”

She didn’t appreciate his humor. In fact, he
couldn’t get even the glimmer of a smile out of her. He leaned forward. “Kat,” he said. “If you always expect to be hurt, then that’s what will happen.”

“No, it’s the other way around. If you’re ready for it, then you can’t be hurt.”

Resignedly he sat back. “Well, that pretty much wraps up the future.”

She laughed—a sad, hollow sound. “See, Adam, I take one day at a time. Enjoy things while I can. I can enjoy this, being with you. But I’m going to ask you to promise something: When it’s over, tell me. No BS, just the straight scoop. If I’m not what you want, if it’s not working, tell me. I’m not crystal. I don’t break.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.” She picked up her wine and took a nonchalant sip. The truth was, he thought, that she had a heart as fragile as that wineglass, and she wouldn’t let it show. It was beneath her dignity to be weak. To be human. She was convinced that one of these days he would hurt her.

And maybe she’s right
.

He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. “Come on,” he said.

“Where?”

“Upstairs. If this is a doomed affair, then we should make the most of it. While we can.”

She gave him a careless laugh and stood up. “While the sun shines,” she said.

“And if it doesn’t work—”

“We’ll both be fine,” she finished for him.

They headed up the stairs, to his bedroom, and closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world.
One day at a time
, he thought as he watched her unbutton her clothes, watched the garments slide to the floor,
one moment at a time
.

And what comes after is for tomorrow to decide
.

He took her in his arms, kissed her. He wanted to be gentle; she wanted to be fierce. As though, in making love, she was battling some inner demon, struggling against it and him, against even herself. Love and war, delight and despair, was what he felt that night, making love to her.

When it was over, when she’d fallen asleep in pure exhaustion, he lay awake beside her. He gazed around his darkened bedroom, saw the gleam of antique furniture, the vaulted ceiling.
It comes between us
, he thought.
My wealth. My name. It scares her
.

Clark was back from vacation, sporting a red sunburn and even redder mosquito bites. While the mosquitoes had found the pickings good, Clark, it seemed, had not.

“One lousy fish,” he said. “The poorest excuse for a trout I ever saw. I didn’t know whether to cook it or put it in a bag of water for my kid’s goldfish bowl. Practically a whole damn week, and that’s what I had to show for it. Lost three of my best flies, too. I tell you, the rivers up there are fished out. Totally fished out.”

“So how many did Beth catch?” asked Kat.

“Beth?”

“You know. Your wife.”

Clark coughed. “Six,” he mumbled. “Maybe seven.”

“Only seven?”

“Okay, maybe it was more like eight. A statistical fluke.”

“Yeah, she’s good at those flukes, isn’t she?”

Clark yanked his lab coat off the door hook

and thrust his arms into the sleeves. “So how’s it been here? Anything exciting happen?”

“Not a thing.”

“Why do I bother asking?” Clark muttered. He went over to the in-box and fished out a pile of papers. “Look at all this stuff.”

“All yours,” said Kat. “We left ’em for you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And you’ve got two dozen files on your desk, waiting for signatures.”

“Okay, okay. It’s enough to keep a guy from ever going on vacation.” He sighed and headed down the hall to his office.

Kat sat at her desk, listening to the familiar squeak of his tennis shoes moving down the hall. It was back to business as usual, she thought. The same old routine she’d had for years. So why was she so depressed?

She rose and poured another cup of coffee—her third this morning. She was turning into a caffeine junkie, a sugar junkie. A love junkie. Hopeless relationships—that was her specialty. She dropped back into her chair. If she could just stop thinking about Adam for a day, an hour, maybe she’d regain some control over her life. But he had become an obsession for her. Even
now, she wondered what he was doing, whether he was sitting at
his
desk, missing
her
.

She grabbed a file from the stack on her desk, signed her name, and slapped the file shut again. She almost groaned when she heard those tennis shoes come squeaking back down the hall toward her office.

Clark reappeared in her doorway. “Hey, Kat,” he said.

“What?”

“What the hell’s this supposed to mean?”

He read aloud from a lab slip. “ ‘Results of mass and UV spectrophotometry show following, nonquantitative: Narcotic present, levo-N-cyclobutylmethyl-6, 10 beta-dihydroxy class. Full identification pending.’ ” He looked up at her. “What’s all this?”

“You must have one of my slips. The drug’s Zestron-L.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Here, I’ll take care of the report.”

“But it’s got my name on it.”

A frightening thought suddenly occurred to Kat. “Who’s the subject?”

“Jane Doe.”

“Oh.” Kat sighed with relief. “Then that’s mine.”

“No, it’s
my
Jane Doe.” He held the slip out to her. “See? There’s my name.”

Frowning, Kat took it. On the line next to
AUTHORIZING PHYSICIAN
was typed the name
BERNARD CLARK, MD
. She scanned the Subject ID data. Name: unknown. Sex: female. Race: White. ID #: 372-3-27-B. Processing date: 3/27.

A full week before
her
Jane Doe had rolled in the morgue doors.

“Get me this file,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Get me the file.”

“Whatever you say, mein Führer.” Clark stalked away and returned a moment later to slap a folder on her desk. “There it is.”

Kat opened the file. It was, indeed, one of Clark’s cases. She had seen this file before; she remembered it now. This was the Jane Doe of the glorious red hair, the marble skin. The page from the central ID lab was clipped to the inside front flap, with a notice of a fingerprint match. As Kat now remembered, the corpse’s name was Mandy Barnett. She had a police record: shoplifting, prostitution, public drunkenness. She was twenty-three years old.

“Do we still have the body?” asked Kat.

“No. There’s the release authorization.”

Kat glanced at the form. It was signed by Wheelock the day before, releasing the body to Greenwood Mortuary.

“I called it a probable barbiturate OD,” said Clark. “I mean, it seemed reasonable. There was a bottle of Fiorinal next to her.”

“Were barbs found in her tox screen?”

“Just a trace.”

“No needles found on-site? No tourniquet?”

“Just the pills, according to the police report. That’s why I assumed it was barbs. I guess I was wrong.”

“So was I,” she said quietly.

“What?”

She reached for the telephone and dialed the police. It rang five times, then a voice answered, “Sykes, Homicide.”

“Lou? Kat Novak. We’ve got another one here.”

“Another what?”

“Zestron OD. But this one’s different.”

She heard Sykes sigh. Or was that a yawn? “I’m
real
interested.”

“The victim’s name is Mandy Barnett. She was found in Bellemeade—a week before the
others. And get this—she was set up to look like a barbiturate OD.”

“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” whined Clark.

Kat ignored him. “Lou,” she said. “I’m going to stick my neck out on this one.” She paused. “I’m calling it murder.”

S
YKES TOSSED THE POLICE FILE DOWN ON
his desk and looked across at Kat. “Dead end, Novak. No motive. No witnesses. No signs of violence. Mandy Barnett was a loner. We can’t locate even a single relative or friend.”

“Someone must have known her.”

“No one who’ll come forward.” Sykes leaned back in his chair. “We’re stuck. If it’s murder, then someone’s committed the perfect crime.”

“And chosen the perfect victim,” said Kat. She looked at Ratchet, who was hunched at his desk, making a ham sandwich disappear. “Vince? You talk to Greenwood Mortuary?”

“They’ve had no calls, and the burial’s tomorrow. But someone
did
pay the expenses.”

“Who?”

“Anonymous. Envelope stuffed with cash.”

Kat shook her head in disbelief. “And you guys aren’t chasing that?”

“Why? Not a crime to pay for a woman’s burial.”

“It shows that
someone
knew her. And cared about her. Don’t you guys have anything?”

“We know she lived out in Bellemeade,” said Sykes. “Had an apartment on Flashner and Grove. We asked around the building, and you know what? No one even knew her name. They’d seen her come and go, but that was it. So much for witnesses.”