Valentine (18 page)

The words swam away from her, and everything began to fade. Mother? she wondered as the pain and the fear were replaced by the last phase, hallucination. Did he say Mother? . . . whose mother? Oh,
Mother!
Daddy! . . . Help me . . . help me . . . please, God, somebody . . . help me. . . .

It took a long time for Sharon Williams to die: he made sure of that. When it was finally over he knelt
above her, smiling down, allowing the exquisite, unutterable sense of victory to surge through him. Then he raised his arms above his head and howled his triumph to the sun.

One down, he told himself. Three to go.

Afterward, he carried her body into the trees, dumped it in the makeshift grave, threw the screenplay in after it, and filled the hole. He covered the turned earth with leaves and a large dead branch. He collected the shovel and the picnic things and the candy box and made his way back down to the car. An hour later, the picnic things were in a dumpster across town.

Two hours later, Victor Dimorta was on a plane to Pittsburgh.

Jill had to write again. The need had been building up in her for days now, ever since she’d discontinued work on the novel. It was most apparent to her now, in the early morning, when she had conditioned herself through long custom to go into the office and turn on the computer. Within an hour after breakfast, she was usually well into the day’s output.

She hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning. The queasiness in her stomach was really what had awakened her in the first place, a full half hour before her alarm went off. She sat on the couch in the living room clutching a throw pillow to her body, feeling the chills of nausea course slowly through her. This made her think of Dr. Chang, her obstetrician, and the pills she concealed in the drawer of her night table. If she kept them in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, Nate might see them. . . .

Dumb, she told herself. This is the worst time to
be so up in the air. The worst time not to have something to write, some regimen in the mornings, when work would be the best thing. For several reasons.

She tossed the pillow aside and stood up. Enough, she told herself. Take the medicine and go into the office. Write something. Write
anything
.

Barney Fleck’s first telephone call was placed at ten in the morning. He sat at his cluttered desk with a cheese Danish and a large plastic cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, courtesy of Verna in the outer office, who had a cinnamon donut and tea with lemon. Just like every morning in their eight years together. He lit one of the Viceroys he sometimes smoked when nobody was around and dialed the number Verna had magically produced for him from Vermont information.

“Hartley College,” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Barney Fleck. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking for one of your former students. Whom do I talk to about that?”

“Well, let’s see . . . you want admissions, down the hall. Let me connect you.”

“Thanks.” There was a click, followed by a second ring.

“Admissions. Ms. Cooper speaking. May I help you?”

He smiled. Everybody in places like Vermont was so polite! Try getting a greeting like that from a New York college. . . .

But she couldn’t help him. Not yet, anyway. It seems Hartley was a very small school, and they’d only introduced computers there about eight years ago. All records of students before that were in some file room somewhere. He gave her the name and the date of admission, and—when she asked what this was about—a cock-and-bull story about a recently deceased distant relative who’d mentioned the student in his will. She promised to call him back just as soon as she could get out of the office and find the file. He gave his phone number, hung up, and inhaled half the Danish in one bite.

Ms. Cooper called back an hour later. By this time, he was wadding notepaper from his desk drawer into balls and shooting at the wastepaper basket he’d placed on the other side of the room. This was his favorite timekiller when waiting for important information. And he had every intention of solving Jillian Talbot’s problem as soon as possible.

“Mr. Fleck? I found the file, but there’s not much here. The student was only here for one full semester and a month of the second. Then he—well, it appears he was expelled.”

“Oh? Why?” he asked. Because he tried to rape three co-eds, he thought.

“I don’t have that information. There’s just a stamp across the record,
TERMINATED.
That usually means expulsion . . . oh, well, here’s the address and phone number we had for him sixteen years ago. . . .”

Jill stared at the computer screen. It stared back.

She’d been sitting here for a full hour now, ever since staggering from the bathroom, where she’d been sick. Physically, she now felt better. The prescription medicine the obstetrician had given her was doing its job. But she wasn’t; the screen was still blank.

How about the rape thing? she thought. A vague story was in her mind, based on an actual recent incident involving a jogger in Central Park. What if they hadn’t caught the gang of teenage boys? What if they were still at large, knowing that their victim had managed to retain some incriminating evidence? What if they were tormenting her . . .?

No. That was too close to her own situation.

Okay, how about the haunted house thing? Again, a story she’d heard once, about a house in upstate New York that seemed to have a mind of its own. No fewer than three sets of tenants had hastily vacated the place after about a month. . . .

No. She’d never dealt with the out-and-out supernatural, and she’d probably end up attaching some prosaic, earthbound solution to it. Dull, dull, dull.
She admired Stephen King and Anne Rice and Dean Koontz enormously, but she knew she didn’t think like them.

Oh, come
on
, she told herself, grateful that her stomach was feeling better but frustrated by her own lack of concentration. Come
on
. . . .

When the phone rang, Dr. Philbin almost didn’t answer it. Then, remembering that she hadn’t switched on the answering machine, she glanced at her watch, found that she had five minutes before her first client of the day was due to arrive, and picked up the receiver on her desk.

“Dr. Dorothy Philbin,” she murmured.

“Umm, doctor? Umm . . .”

She leaned forward in her chair, immediately curious. A male voice, youngish, clearly nervous, or upset, or both. Now she heard ragged breathing.

“This is Dr. Philbin,” she said. “Can I help you?” Dumb, she thought. What a dumb thing for an analyst to say. . . .

Another pause. Then the man said, “Umm, I’m having a little trouble, and I was wondering . . .”

She waited. “Yes?”

“Well, I—I’d like to talk to you if—”

“Excuse me, did someone refer you to me, Mr. —?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Umm, you see, I live
near you, and I pass your building every day, and I noticed that brass thing on your door, and—well, I think I’d like to talk to someone. I’ve never done this, but . . .”

Oh, she thought. An immediate, pressing problem. Someone who has no experience with analysts.

“I see,” she said. “Would you call this an emergency, Mr.—?”

Pause. Then, “I guess so.” After that, she thought she heard the soft sound of weeping.

She glanced down at her schedule for today, noting the red line she’d drawn through Mrs. Schwartz, who was entertaining relatives. “It happens that I have an opening at four o’clock this afternoon. Could you be here then?”

No pause this time, but the distinct sound of relief. “Oh, yes! Yes, that would be fine, Dr. Philbin.”

She picked up her pen, “Okay. I need your name, address, and telephone number.”

“Of course. It’s Miller. Franklin Miller. 147 East Tenth Street, apartment 3B.” He added a phone number.

This street, she thought, about two blocks east of here. “Very well. I’ll see you at four, Mr. Miller.”

“Thank you,” the man said, and he hung up.

The computer screen was still blank.

With a long sigh, Jill switched off the machine,
picked up a yellow legal pad and a pen, and went out into the living room. She threw herself down on the couch and began to scribble every idea she had in her head.

Jogger rape victim. No.

Haunted house. No.

Policewoman blackmail victim. No.

Prostitute/Mafia don/presidential assassination conspiracy. NO!!!

Oh, God! What the hell was she going to write?!

Staring down at the coffee table, she slowly became aware of the manila envelope. Oh, yes, she remembered: the magazine interview. She dropped the pad and pen, picked up the envelope, and opened it. As she read the double-spaced, typewritten transcript, she shook her head in wonder, nearly laughing at the irony of it.

The projected title of the piece was “Ms. Mystery,” and the subheading that would accompany the first, full-page photo read, “With her fourth novel,
The Mind of Alice Lanyon
,
JILLIAN TALBOT
renews her claim to the throne as America’s Queen of Suspense.” The article that followed was similarly gushing.

“So, where does a nice New York girl come up with such violent ideas?”

“Well, I start by reading the New York newspapers. . . .”

“How does it feel to win an Edgar Award?”

“Very nice, thank you. . . .”

“
Tell me about Nathaniel Levin, the hot new artist who is the current man in your life
. . . .”

“
Oh, he’s wonderful
. . .
great artist
. . .
we both love to dance
. . .
we both love the Mets
. . .
and we both hate giving interviews
. . . .”

(
Laughter
.)

“Oh, that’s marvelous, Jill! Now. Your home is lovely. What made you choose Greenwich Village
. . .
?”

She stared down at the words, wondering whom they were discussing. Who was this charming, carefree, talented woman the journalist so obviously admired, with the wonderful home and the wonderful lover and the marvelous sense of humor? Now it all seemed so macabre. She knew, even as she read the article, that her life would now be forever separated in her mind into two distinct categories:
B.V.
and
A.V.
Before Valentine and . . .

After. Oh, God, was there going to
be
an After Valentine? What if he’s more than a nuisance? What if he’s—

The dead rat, staring up from the carpet.

—dangerous?

“I love Greenwich Village. I think so many creative people live here because . . .”

With a little cry of disgust, she tossed the article onto the coffee table. Enough of that, she thought. I
will
get through this! This creep—Victor Dimorta, or
whoever the hell it is—will
not
prevail. I’m going to—

Then, unheralded, Mary’s suggestion from last night crept into her mind.

Yes, she thought. Yesss . . .

With a sudden, overwhelming sense of confidence, and of relief, Jill went back into the office and picked up the phone.

Barney slammed down the phone in sheer frustration. Verna, in the adjacent office, probably winced at the sound before returning to her perusal of today’s
New York Times
.

Damn! he thought. Now what?

He leaned down to the phone and pressed the intercom button. Ignoring the fact that the door between them was wide open, that they were separated by a mere twelve feet, he whispered, “Mrs. Poole, would you come in here, please? Bring your notebook.”

He smiled, his frustration dissipating into wicked delight as he heard the rustle of the newspaper being slammed down, the creak as she vacated her chair, and the tapping of her shoes as she came into the room and stood on the other side of his desk, smiling. She did not have her notebook: the intercom was an old joke between them, and neither could remember now how it had begun.

“Yes, Barney?” she said.

He grinned. “Verna, I need the benefit of your excellent advice.”

She returned the grin. “Shoot.”

“It seems Victor Dimorta no longer resides at 7 Franklin Street, Mill City, Pennsylvania. All I get at the number the college gave me is a recording. ‘The number you have dialed has been disconnected. . . .’ So I called Information for the area, and there are no Dimortas listed. Period. What should I do now?”

Verna straightened up, stared indulgently down at him for a moment, and reached down to pick up the paper with the Dimorta information.

“
You
are gonna go down and have lunch,” she said in her most maternal tone. “The Argonaut. Take your time. Bring me back a turkey and Swiss on rye, lettuce, no tomato, Thousand Island dressing but not too much, and tea with lemon. You’re buying. I’ll get on this right away.”

With a smile, she turned and went back into the outer office. When he passed her moments later on his way to the door, she was already speaking into her phone.