game they don’t even fully understand. I think they’re being used, that
they might be killed as scapegoats to further the interests of others,
perhaps even the interests of the government. They need help, and I
guess what I’m trying to tell you is that they’ve sort of become another
crusade of mine. Help me to help them, Teddy.”
Julio’s performance was astonishing, and from anyone else it might have
looked like exactly that-a mere performance. But there was no mistaking
his sincerity or the depth of his concern. Though his dark eyes were
watchful, and though there was a shrewdness in his face, his commitment
to justice and his great warmth were unmistakably genuine.
Teddy Bertlesman was smart enough to see that Julio was not shucking and
jiving her, and she was won over.
She swung her long legs off the sofa and slid forward to the edge of it
in a whispery rustle of pink silk, a sound that seemed to pass like a
breeze over Reese, raising the small hairs on the backs of his hands and
sending a pleasant shiver through him. “I knew darn well Ben Shadway
was no threat to national security,” Teddy said. “Those federal agents
came sniffing around with that line, and it was all I could do to keep
from laughing in their faces.
No, in fact, it was all I could do to keep from spitting in their
faces.”
“Where might Ben Shadway have gone, he and Rachael Leben?” Julio asked.
“Sooner or later, the feds are going to find them, and I think that for
their sake Reese and I had better find them first. Do you have any idea
where we should look?”
Rising from the sofa in a brilliant hot-pink whirl, stalking back and
forth across the living room on stiltlike legs that ought to have been
awkward but were the essence of grace, looking incredibly tall to Reese
because he was still sitting on the moire’ chair, pausing now and
standing provocatively hip-shot in thought, then pacing again, Teddy
Bertlesman considered the possibilities and enumerated them, “Well,
okay, he owns propertymostly small houses-all over the county. Right
now …
the only ones not rented. .. let me see.. . One, there’s a little
bungalow in Orange, a place on Pine Street, but I don’t figure he’d be
there because he’s having some work done on it-a new bathroom,
improvements to the kitchen. He wouldn’t hide where there’re going to
be workmen coming and going. Two, there’s half of a duplex in Yorba
Linda…”
Reese listened to her, but for the moment he did not care what she said,
he left that part to Julio. All Reese had the capacity to care about
was the way she looked and moved and sounded, she filled all his senses
to capacity, leaving no room for anything else. At a distance she had
seemed angular, birdlike, but up close she was a gazelle, lean and swift
and not the least angular. Her size was less impressive than her
fluidity, which was like that of a professional dancer, and her fluidity
was less impressive than her suppleness, and her suppleness was less
impressive than her beauty, and her beauty was less impressive than her
intelligence and energy and flair.
Even when her pacing took her away from the window wall, she was
surrounded by a nimbus of light. To Reese, she seemed to glow.
He had felt nothing like this in five years, since his Janet had been
killed by the men in the van who’d tried to snatch little Esther that
day in the park. He wondered if Teddy Bertlesman had taken special
notice of him, too, or whether he was just another lump of a cop to her.
He wondered how he could approach her without making a fool of himself
and without giving offense. He wondered if there could ever be anything
between a woman like her and a man like him. He wondered if he could
live without her. He wondered when he was going to be able to breathe
again. He wondered if his feelings showed. He didn’t care if they
showed.
….. the motel!” Teddy stopped pacing, looked startled for a moment,