The Incumbent (12 page)

“I talked with Celeste and Michele, waited for them to change clothes, drove Michele home, and then drove to my parents’.”

“This is insulting,” Jerry said. “Maddy is the mayor. That makes her your boss. How can you even think that she might be a party to all this?”

“It’s fine, Jerry,” I said, cutting West off. “He wouldn’t be much of a detective if he didn’t ask these questions.”

“It’s just that—”

“I know, I know. I appreciate it, but I’m not offended.”

West showed no sign that Jerry’s objections irritated him. I imagined West had seen and heard it all.

“I’m concerned about you,” West said to me.

“Why?” Jerry asked. Good ol’ Jerry, always eager to help. There was no reining him in.

West said what had already crossed my mind. “Two people closely associated with Mayor Glenn have disappeared. We discovered blood at both sites. Small amount that it is, it is still blood. In each case, at the scene we found something associated with Mayor Glenn. In Lisa Truccoli’s case, it was the mayor’s business card; here it’s a picture of her. This isn’t a simple string of break-ins; someone is delivering a message and they don’t want it overlooked.”

“What message?” Jerry asked.

“That’s what we need to find out—and soon.” West turned to me. “Do you use an alarm service for your home?” I said I did. “Be sure and turn it on. I’m going to talk to the watch commanders and request that officers patrol your street more often. It’s important that you be as careful as possible.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious. As I said before, you need to develop a healthy paranoia for a while.”

A motion behind West caught my eye. I looked over his shoulder and noticed someone walking from the house. It took a moment in the dim light to see that it was Leo. He had something in his hand. He walked stiffly, in a way that made me think of old zombie movies. I motioned toward him and West turned around.

“Mr. Stout,” West said. “That’s evidence; you can’t be carrying it around.”

Leo ignored him and held up the picture from the kitchen. Streetlights helped me see the three drops of blood smeared across the photo. Leo must have been rubbing the image of his wife’s face. Tears ran down his cheeks.

“Are you responsible for this?” Leo shouted. He shook the picture at me. “Are you, Maddy? Are you responsible for my wife being taken from our home?” His voice was loud and his words hot.

“No, Leo. Of course not. I’m as concerned as you—”

“Why Lizzy?” His voice was breaking. “Why my Lizzy?”

“Let me have the picture, Mr. Stout,” West said. He stepped between me and Leo, blocking the grieving husband’s advance. “Give it to me.” The words were soft but firm.

“I want my wife back. I want her back, do you hear?”

I heard. My heart ached and my eyes were awash in tears. “Leo . . .” It was a sentence with no destination. I didn’t know what to say. He was a frightened, sorrowful man, helpless in the face of the horrible facts. I felt sick again.

“Come with me, sir.” West took him by the elbow and turned him around. “Let’s you and me talk.” He walked Leo away from us, and then a few steps later turned. “Take her home, Doc.”

Jerry did, but a big part of me stayed behind.

chapter 8

H
e didn’t mean it, you know.” Jerry’s words found me gazing out the side window of the Excursion, not seeing anything, wishing I didn’t feel anything.

“What?” I asked, reeling in my attention from the dark distance.

“Your friend, Mr. Stint. He didn’t mean what he said.” We were back on the 101, headed south.

“Stout,” I corrected. “Leo Stout. And I know he didn’t mean it.”

“He’s hurt and scared. A man is likely to say anything in that state of mind. I see it all the time.”

Jerry was trying to take the sting out of the confrontation, short as it was. I looked at him, his face lit by the dashboard lights. “Pediatrics is a rewarding profession but it isn’t all colds and flu. Occasionally, too often for my liking, I have to deliver bad news. Last week I told the parents of a six-year-old boy that he has leukemia. In med school they teach us not to get emotionally involved. Death is the irreducible part of life. It comes to everyone sometime; to some it comes early, and some live a century.”

“Leukemia? That’s horrible.”

“There are treatments that will probably help, but that’s not my point. When I sat the parents down in my office and gave them the news, they got mad at me, as if I had given the child the disease. It’s called transference and it’s common; kill the messenger and all that. The father ripped me up one side and down the other.”

“What did you do?”

“I let him vent.” He was driving slower than the rest of traffic, something I appreciated. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. “He uttered a lot of nonsense, then broke down. I let him cry for a few moments, and then I discussed the referrals I would need to make and what they needed to do next. Your friend was doing the same thing as that father. He doesn’t really blame you, but you’re the closest one at hand.”

“I know. Still, it was hard to hear.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Run over—run over by something big.”

“That’s how I usually feel when I get chewed out like that.” He glanced at me. “You look pale.”

That didn’t surprise me. I struggled with my next step. I didn’t want to go back to my folks’ home. Mom was already worried. She would have lots of questions and then would begin to worry more. She was an Olympic-class worrier. If they gave gold medals for anxiety, she would have a drawer full. But there was Celeste to think about. I had promised to pick her up.

“I’m going to make a call.” I pulled my cell phone from my purse and punched “memory dial,” selected my parents’ number, and pushed “send.” Two rings later Mom answered. I asked about Celeste.

“She’s sleeping on the couch. We turned the television on for her. I did the dishes and came out to find her fast asleep. Poor thing is exhausted. Worry is hard work.”

I agreed with her, then asked, “Since she’s already asleep, can she spend the night there?”

“Of course. Are you all right?”

“I’m feeling a little worn out myself. Maybe you should put a note on the coffee table for Celeste. That way if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she’ll know what happened.” Then I switched gears. “Can I talk to Dad?” I had a few things to explain and I wanted to say them to him. He would worry but not to the degree Mom would. A moment later Dad was on the phone. I told him about Lizzy and then said I had decided to go home for the evening. “I’ll arrange to pick up my car tomorrow.”

“Do you want to stay here? The guest room is available.” The guest room was my old bedroom.

“Thanks, but no. I need to sleep in my own bed tonight. I’ll be all right.” I hesitated, then added, “Be sure to lock things up tight and be careful answering the door. If you have the slimmest doubts about anyone, call the police.” I had new fears that my parents might be on the short list for abduction. I couldn’t live with the knowledge that something had happened to them because of me.

“I don’t think you should stay alone,” Dad whispered. I assumed Mom was in earshot.

“I’ll be fine, Dad. I don’t mind being alone.”

“Let me have the phone,” Jerry said and held out his hand.

“What?”

He wiggled his finger in a hand-it-over motion. I complied. “Greg, this is Jerry. I’ll stay with her tonight.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said quickly. He ignored me.

“No, it’s no trouble. It’s my honor. I’ll bring her by bright and early in the morning.” He listened for a moment. “Don’t worry about anything; I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

I smiled, trying to picture gentle Dr. Jerry Thomas fighting off attackers with his rectal thermometers of death. He handed the phone back. “Here, tell your father good night.”

I did and then returned the phone to my purse. “You didn’t ask to stay at my house.”

“What would you have said if I’d asked?”

“I probably would have said no.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask.”

“It’s unnecessary, you know.”

“Is it? If I dropped you off on your doorstep and drove off into the dark, I would spend the rest of the night worrying about you. It’s okay, you can trust me. I am a man of old-world gentility.”

“You get the couch.”

“That’s fine with me.”

Truth was, I’d put him in the room where Celeste had slept the previous night, but for the moment the threat was all I had. “And you have to make your own coffee in the morning.”

“I am man of exquisite education. I can handle coffee making. Just point me at the percolator.”

“Percolator? When was the last time you saw a percolator?”

“Okay then, show me the drippy coffeemaker thing.”

“I’ll make the coffee; you’ll break something.” I was grateful for the humorous give-and-take. It gave my mind a breather from the darkness that swirled in it. I let a few moments pass before saying, “Thanks for going with me, Jerry. I’m glad you were there.”

“I’m afraid I got a little testy with the detective. I tend to be overprotective.”

“You were just being gallant.”

Jerry laughed loudly, then snorted. “Sir Jerry the Gallant!”

It was good to have company.

A
lthough the clock on the desk in my home office read twenty past midnight, I was wide awake. I had fixed the bed in the guest room, shown Jerry where the bathroom was, laid out some clean towels, and left him to his own purposes. He chose to forego the guest room. “I’ll just snooze on the sofa. I don’t think anything is going to happen, but I’ll be in a better position to hear it down here than I would in the guest room.”

It made no difference to me. I had changed into silk pajamas and donned my robe. Despite following my usual evening ritual, I was too keyed up to sleep, so I went into my office. I tried to avoid any thoughts of Lizzy and Lisa. Instead I threw myself into the “Glenn for Congress” file. I read the material again, this time allowing myself to pause and make notes, something I didn’t have time to do earlier.

Randi had pulled together a variety of information. The packet contained demographics, district breakdowns, and Republican versus Democratic versus third-party also-rans. Paperclipped together were “Key Issue Concerns,” a summary of issues likely to come up in a campaign. There were also financial reports of previous contestants, revealing how much money they spent seeking the congressional seat. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I would need to spend three times what I had to win the office of mayor—maybe four times as much. And if there was a strong contender to challenge my run, I could spend far more than that. It would take a lot of fund-raising.

The thought of fund-raising made me think of Lizzy again, and guilt swarmed over me like locusts. Here I was, thinking of my future, when Lizzy and Lisa were . . . who knows where? The guilt was misplaced, I knew, but that made no difference. Emotion, especially negative emotion, is immune to logic.

I placed the file aside and turned the page of a yellow legal pad I was using to jot down notes. My mind was spinning like cogs in a sewing machine. A compulsive doodler, I began drawing little meaningless images: swirls, stars, and arrows. That gave way to words. I tore off the doodle-tattooed page and stared at a fresh, blank page.

At the top I wrote, “Lisa and Lizzy.” Underneath that I penned, “Similarities.” I paused and waited for an epiphany, an inspiration that would give form to the mess of thoughts heaped up in my mind. None came. “Start with the obvious,” I told myself. “What do they have in common?”

The only light in the room was the soft glow that poured from the green-shaded banker’s light on my desk. The rest of the room was as dark as a sepulcher. The blue ink seemed pale in the light as I wrote the first and most obvious connection: “Me.” Under that I wrote, “Campaign.” Other ideas came easier: “Professional Women,” “Married,” “Santa Rita.” I even wrote, “Initials.” Both had first names that began with the letter
L.
It was a stupid connection, but it was a connection nonetheless. I immediately thought of Superman comics. When I was eight, I developed a short-lived interest in the comic book hero. Truth was, I thought he was dreamy. My father, who as a child had read uncountable issues of comics, told me that the initials L. L. played an important role in the superhero’s life. Even his girlfriends had names like Lana Lang and Lois Lane. One of his arch enemies was Lex Luthor, and so on. I asked Dad why that was and he said, “One does not question the wisdom of the comic gods.” Then he winked. He didn’t know and neither did my husband, who confessed to a love for the adventures of the Man of Steel.

I stopped, then drew a horizontal line across the middle of the page, scribbling, “Differences” just below it. Maybe there was some revelation in what they didn’t have in common. The list was small: “Children,” “Age,” “Neighborhood.” I ended up with an orderly but anemic list. The only meaningful connections I could make were the most obvious: both were women, both were married (although Lisa was divorced), and both were connected to me through my campaigns, specifically the money side of them. The differences were no more revealing.

I fell back to doodling—circles, stars, spirals, boxes. Lost in thought, I let my mind percolate on its own. After a few moments I set the pen down, frustrated that I had made no progress. I looked at the pad of paper and saw that my doodles had new neighbors: a box defined by four dots and a triangle formed by three. The picture of Lizzy with the spots of blood over her eyes and mouth flashed like sheet lighting in my mind. Ice water flowed down my spine. Why geometric shapes? Why make them with blood? What would the next one be?

The last thought made my brain seize. The next one? The
next
one! Would there be another abduction? I looked at the dots again. A square and a triangle. Was the answer in their shape or in the number of dots?

I rubbed my eyes. I felt as if I were looking at a handful of jigsaw pieces. How could I put together the puzzle if I didn’t have all the pieces? But so far, the pieces came with an abduction. That was a lousy way to get information.