Norman’s palms were covered with a faint lacework of semicircular white scars. They had been made by his fingernails, but their real source was deep inside his head, an oven which had been running at broil for most of his life.
‘You better be scared,’ he murmured. ‘And if you’re not now, I guarantee you will be soon.’
Yes. He had to have her. Without Rose, everything that had happened this spring — the glamor bust, the good press, the reporters who had stunned him by asking respectful questions for a change, even the promotion — meant nothing. The women he had slept with since Rose had left meant nothing, either. What mattered was she had left him. What mattered more was he hadn’t had the slightest clue she meant to do it. And what mattered most was she had taken his bank card. She had only used it once, and for a paltry three hundred and fifty dollars, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she had taken what was his, she had forgotten who was the meanest motherfucker in the jungle, and for that she would have to pay. The price would be high, too.
High.
He’d strangled one of the women he’d been with since Rose had left. Choked her, then dumped her behind a grain-storage tower on the west side of the lake. Was he supposed to blame that one on his temper, too? He didn’t know, how was that for nuts? For right out to lunch? All he knew was he had picked the woman out of the strolling meat-market down on Fremont Street, a little brunette honey in fawn-colored hotpants with these big Daisy Mae tits poking out the front of her halter. He didn’t really see how much she looked like Rose (or so he told himself now, and so he perhaps really believed) until he was shagging her in the back of his current duty -car, an anonymous four-year-old Chevy. What had happened was she turned her head and the lights around the top of the nearest grain storage tower had shone on her face for a moment, shone on it in a certain way, and in that moment the whore was Rose, the bitch who had walked out on him without even leaving a note, without leaving so much as one fucking word, and before he knew what he was doing he had the halter wrapped around the whore’s neck and the whore’s tongue was sticking out of her mouth and the whore’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets like glass marbles. And the worst thing about it was that once she was dead, the whore hadn’t looked like Rose at all.
Well, he hadn’t panicked . . . but then, why would he? It hadn’t been the first time, after all.
Had Rose known that? Sensed that?
Was that why she had run? Because she was afraid he might—
‘Don’t be an asshole,’ he muttered, and closed his eyes.
A bad idea. What he saw was what he all too often saw in his dreams lately: the green ATM card from Merchant’s Bank, grown to an enormous size and floating in the blackness like a currency-colored dirigible. He opened his eyes again in a hurry. His hands hurt. He unrolled his fingers and observed the welling cuts in his palms with no surprise. He was accustomed to the stigmata of his temper, and he knew how to deal with it: by reestablishing control. That meant thinking and planning, and those things began with review.
He had called the police in the closer of the two cities, had identified himself, and then had identified Rose as the prime suspect in a big-money bank-card scam (the card was the worst thing of all, and it never really left his mind anymore. He gave her name as Rose McClendon, feeling sure she would have gone back to her maiden name. If it turned out she hadn’t, he would simply pass off as coincidence the fact that the suspect and the investigating officer shared the same name. It had been known to happen. And it was Daniels they were talking about, not Trzewski or Beauschatz.
He had also faxed the cops side-by-side pictures of Rose. One was a photo of her sitting on the back steps, taken by Roy Foster, a cop friend of his, last August. It wasn’t very good — it showed how much lard she’d put on since hitting the big three-oh, for one thing — but it was black and white and showed her facial features with reasonable clarity. The other was a police artist’s conception (Al Kelly, one talented sonofabitch, had done it on his own time, at Norman’s request) of the same woman, only with a scarf over her head.
The cops in that other city, the closer city, had asked all the right questions and gone to all
the right places — the homeless shelters, the transient hotels, the halfway houses where you could sometimes get a look at the current guest-list, if you knew who and how to ask — with no result. Norman himself had made as many calls as he’d had time for, hunting with ever-increasing frustration for some sort of paper trail. He even paid for a faxed list of the city’s newest driver’s license applicants, with no result.
The idea that she might escape him entirely, escape her just punishment for what she had done (especially for daring to take the bank card), still hadn’t crossed his mind, but he now reluctantly came to the conclusion that she could have gone to that other city after all, that she could have been so afraid of him that two hundred and fifty miles just wasn’t far enough.
Not that eight hundred miles would be, a fact she would soon learn.
In the meantime, he had been sitting here long enough. It was time to find a dolly or a janitor’s cart and start moving his crap into his new office two floors up. He swung his feet off the desk, and as he did, the telephone rang. He picked it up.
‘Is this Inspector Daniels?’ the voice on the other end asked.
‘Yes it is,’ he replied, thinking (with no great pleasure) Detective Inspector First Grade Daniels, as a matter of fact.
‘Oliver Robbins here.’
Robbins. Robbins. The name was familiar, but—
‘From Continental Express? I sold a bus ticket to a woman you’re looking for.’
Daniels sat up straighter in his seat. ‘Yes, Mr Robbins, I remember you very well.’
‘I saw you on television,’ Robbins said. ‘It’s wonderful that you caught those people. That crack is awful stuff. We see people using it in the bus station all the time, you know.’
‘Yes,’ Daniels said, allowing no trace of impatience to show in his voice. ‘I’m sure you do.’
‘Will those people actually go to jail?’
‘I think most of them will. How can I help you today?’
‘Actually I’m hoping that I can help you,’ Robbins said. ‘Do you remember telling me to call you if I remembered anything else? About the woman in the dark glasses and red scarf, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ Norman said. His voice was still calm and friendly, but the hand not holding the phone had rolled into a tight fist again, and the nails were digging, digging.
‘Well, I didn’t think I would, but something came to me this morning while I was in the shower. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I’m sure I’m right. She really did say it that way.’
‘Say what what way?’ he asked. His voice was still reasonable, calm — pleasant, even —
but now blood was brightly visible in the creases of his closed fist. Norman opened one of the drawers of his empty desk and hung the fist over it. A little baptism on behalf of the next man to use this shitty little closet.
‘You see, she didn’t tell me where she wanted to go; I told her. That’s probably why I couldn’t remember when you asked me, Inspector Daniels, although my head for that sort of thing is usually quite good.’
‘I’m not getting you.’
‘People buying tickets usually give you their destination,’ Robbins said. ‘ “Give me a round trip to Nashville,” or “One way to Lansing, please.” Follow me?’
‘Yes.’
‘This woman didn’t do it that way. She didn’t say the name of the place; she said the time she wanted to go. That’s what I remembered this morning in the shower. She said, “I want to buy a ticket on the eleven-oh-five bus. Are there still some seats on that one?” As if the place she was going didn’t matter, as if it only mattered that— ‘
‘— that she go as quick as she could and get as far away as she could!’ Norman exclaimed.
‘Yes! Yes, of course! Thanks, Mr Robbins!’
‘I’m glad I could help.’ Robbins sounded a bit taken aback by the burst of emotion from the other end of the line. ‘This woman, you guys must really want her.’