Nightlife: A Novel Page 28

  “No,” said Cerino. “There weren’t any keys. No wallet either.”

  “Where are your car keys, Mr. Olson?”

  “I don’t know.” His face looked angry, spiteful.

  She marveled at it. He was caught, trussed up and about to be exposed, and yet he was taking some last bit of sadistic pleasure out of frustrating her. Catherine remembered the direction he had been running after he had hit her, and extended his trajectory.

  She entered the kitchen, checking the counters and opening drawers. As she searched, she took out her cell phone and called the emergency number. “This is Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes. I need an ambulance at 59422 Vancouver. We have an injured victim here. Thank you.” She kept going to the back door. There were some jackets hanging on pegs beside it. She patted the pockets of a jacket, then felt the hard shape of the wallet and heard the clinking. She reached in and pulled out the key ring.

  She dashed out to the garage. First she tried the wrong key, and then found the right one. The springs of the lid made it pop up a few inches, and instantly the smell of fear—urine and sweat—came to Catherine in a wave. She raised the lid the rest of the way.

  The woman rose to the light like a drowned body rising from the depths to break a calm surface. She had streaks of dark dried blood that had run from her nose and lips, and from a cut at her hairline. All of them had run in stripes on both sides of her face as she lay there in the dark. The bleeding seemed to have stopped a long time ago, so the blood was cracked like old paint. She was naked, and Catherine could see purple bruises on her arms, ribs, hips. Her wrists had been tied behind her. A separate strand of cord had been tied to keep her elbows back and make it harder for her to move. Catherine helped her sit up, and untied the cords. “Are you Myra?”

  The woman nodded and her chin began to tremble.

  “I’m Sergeant Hobbes. It’s over now, and you’re going to be all right.”

  “Did he kill my parents? He said he had already killed them. He had insurance on all of us.”

  “No. They’re fine. They’re the ones who called us.”

  “He said he had already killed them, and that he was going to kill me today.” She began to sob.

  “Don’t worry, Myra. They’re just fine, and you’ll see them later. Don’t worry. He can’t hurt anybody again. You don’t have to worry about anything. Let’s get you out of there.” She helped Myra ease one foot out of the trunk to the floor of the garage, then the other. She opened the Escalade, snatched the blanket, and wrapped it around her.

  “You’re safe,” she said. “It’s all over now.” She held her in a gentle embrace and rocked her back and forth. In the distance there was a siren.

  37

  When Catherine got home and picked up her telephone, there was a message tone. She dialed her code and listened. “Catherine, this is Joe Pitt. You said you would go out with me if I came up to Portland. Well, I’m here. Meaning Portland. I’d like to see you tonight, and I’m making reservations for every half hour from eight until ten at different restaurants. Give me a call whenever you come in. I’m at the Westin hotel.” He recited the telephone number, but Catherine was not ready to write it down.

  She replayed the message, wrote down the telephone number, and then dialed it. When Pitt answered, she said, “Hi. You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “No. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in our history together that would give me the least bit of confidence,” he said. “I just haven’t been able to pin you down on when I could come, so I figured I would come now and wait until you have time to go to dinner with me.”

  “What a speech. I’d have to be a fool not to go. What should I wear and how much time have I got?”

  “Dress up—really fancy. You have five minutes.”

  “I might be able to make it to your hotel at eight, so keep the eight-thirty reservation.”

  “See you then.”

  When she arrived at the hotel, Joe Pitt was standing inside the entrance in a dark suit. Catherine was glad that she had taken him seriously and worn her only recently purchased fancy outfit, a black cocktail dress. She had also put on her white-gold necklace that had been her grandmother’s. Pitt walked outside as soon as he saw her, and told the valet, “Take her car, please, and bring mine.” He handed him a ticket.

  She got out and watched her car disappear down the ramp to the garage, and said, “What—you don’t want to be seen in a working woman’s unpretentious Acura?”

  “No. I just like driving when I’m on a date, so I rented a car.”

  The valet returned with a Cadillac, and she smirked at Joe Pitt. “You can’t impress me with that. I used to pull those things over all the time with a crummy Crown Victoria Interceptor.”

  “Me too,” he said. “But I always wished I had one.”

  They drove to the restaurant, and the maître d’ conducted them to a table. They ordered their dinners, and ate while they talked about Catherine’s near miss in catching up to Tanya in Flagstaff, and then her failure to head her off in Albuquerque. Joe Pitt said, “I’m sort of surprised you haven’t told me about your day.”

  She frowned. “You know about that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’d be delighted to listen to the story again if you’d like to tell it.”

  “How?” she said. “How do you know already?”

  “I called your office at around noon, trying to reach you. I talked to Mike Farber, and he told me about it.”

  She looked crestfallen. “That’s why you came? Because you heard about the Olson thing and felt sorry for me?”

  “Sorry for you?” he said. “I came because I thought you’d be in a good mood and let me celebrate with you. You’re a hero,” said Joe Pitt. “In the next couple of days the wire services will pick up the newspaper stories, and the networks will pick up the television news.” He sat back to let the waiter clear their plates.

  “I hope they run my picture,” said Catherine. “I’ll be able to cash a check at my bank branch without having to show my ID anymore.”

  “Probably not. But next time the promotions get handed out, there might be something in the goody bag. They need people like you, and they know it.”

  “Why say ‘like you’? I’m me, other people are other people, and we’re not alike.”

  “ ‘Like you’ means cops who actually got to a murder victim before the guy killed her. When the brass see a young, beautiful homicide detective who saves an abused victim—probably by minutes—they want to throw a party. You’re the proof that what they’re doing makes sense. With that bandage on your forehead that you’re bravely trying to hide under your hair, you’re a photo op they couldn’t buy for anything.”

  “It’s a Band-Aid, and I put it on myself.” She smiled. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You certainly do bring a better brand of malarkey than you used to.”

  “Malarkey? I don’t think I’ve heard that word in about thirty years.”

  “Ladies don’t say ‘horseshit.’ ”

  “Oh?”

  “At least not to somebody who flies a long way and takes them to a nice restaurant.”

  “If compliments embarrass you, I’ll stop talking about it.” He lifted his wineglass. “I’ll just drink to your courage and sagacity.”

  She lifted her glass of water. “And I to your discerning taste.”

  They sipped, and put down their glasses. Pitt looked at her closely. “You never drink. Did you ever?”

  “Sure,” she said. “When I was young. Not for a few years, though.”

  “Are you an alcoholic?”

  She was taken aback. “What?”

  “A lot of friends of mine who will never touch a drink are alcoholics. A lot of them are cops. I wondered if you were.”

  She felt defensive and angry for a second, but as she looked at him, she detected nothing but honest sympathy. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just say th
at alcohol does things to me that I don’t particularly want done, so I stopped drinking.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “But bad for me. I’ll just have to try to seduce you with my wit and charm alone.”

  She smiled. “I guess your strategy doesn’t include surprise. I did like the flattery, though.”

  “It was admiration,” he said. “And I really meant it.”

  “Now that I know your intentions, I’ll have to be a bit skeptical.”

  He looked at her with a serious, contemplative expression. “My intentions have been on the surface since the beginning. I’m not here just to confer with an esteemed colleague. I asked you out on a date.”

  “Asking for a date is kind of ambiguous,” she said.

  “Maybe to you.”

  “To everybody. To the world.”

  “It isn’t to me, and only I can say what I meant. When somebody asks you out on a date, you can accept or not, and your acceptance means whatever you want it to mean.”

  “And what does your asking mean?”

  “It means that I’ve already watched and listened to you and thought about you enough to have made my decision about you. I’m not window-shopping.”

  She picked up her glass of water and took a deep swallow. Then she put it down and said, “That’s what it meant when I accepted.”

  He looked into her eyes for a few seconds before the smile reappeared on his face. His eyes focused on the waiter and he nodded, and the waiter approached. “Check, please?”

  Hours later, Joe Pitt rolled onto his side, leaned on his elbow, and looked down at her on the pillow beside him. “What made you change your mind about me?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind about you. You’re exactly the way I always thought you were.”

  “You always acted as though you didn’t approve of me, but here you are.”

  “Yep. Here I am. I’m lying naked in a hotel bed with a man on a first date. I guess that means I’m pathetic.”

  “If you’re fishing for compliments, I can give you a few thousand new ones now. I’ve been holding back.”

  “Spare me.”

  “You can’t really feel bad about this.”

  “No, I’m glad we’re here. I was just afraid you’d want to talk about it.”

  “You don’t believe in talking about sex?”

  “No, I don’t. There’s nothing anybody can say about it that isn’t embarrassing and stupid. Yes, it was as good for me as it was for you. Yes, you’re the best ever. As if you didn’t know. If I didn’t say that, you’d kill yourself, after all those years of practice.”

  “I just want you to be happy—about tonight, about me, about you. No regrets.”

  “There is one part I regret. It’s that the minute I let you look at the Poole crime scene, all the old boys were thinking, ‘Hmmm. She’s not bad. I wonder how long it’ll take good old Joe to get her in the sack.’ And here I am. They were right, and I hate that.”

  “What old boys?”

  “Jim Spengler and the homicide guys in Los Angeles, your buddy Doug Crowley in San Francisco. My own friends up here.”

  “Do you think it’s possible to be too conscious about what other people might or might not be thinking?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. So I take it you don’t do this kind of thing often.”

  “Practically never.”

  “I hope that will change.”

  “If you want it to, it will.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I make big decisions carefully, and with both eyes open. I wouldn’t have done this once if I didn’t think I might be interested in something more lasting.”

  “Would you consider having an exclusive relationship with me?”

  “That’s pretty quick,” she said.

  “I make big decisions with both eyes open too. Will you?”

  “Only if you’re willing to do it sincerely,” said Catherine. “If it isn’t working out, we’ll see it right away.”

  “Then what?”

  “Catch and release.”

  “Sounds humane.”

  “Practical too. Neither of us has to bury a corpse.”

  “Deal,” he said. “As of some hours ago—I don’t have my watch on—you and I have been seeing each other exclusively, with serious intent.” He lay there for a time, staring at the ceiling. “You’ve always insisted on being professional, so we don’t really know anything about each other. We’ll have to start talking about personal things from the start. How many children were you thinking of?”

  She pushed him over quickly, rolled onto his chest, and kissed him. “Oh, boy. I’ve got to take you to meet my parents before you come to your senses and get away.”

  38

  It was shocking. Judith Nathan could hardly believe what she saw in front of her on the television screen. She stood up and stepped closer to the cabinet where the hotel had secured the television set and squinted to be sure that it wasn’t just someone who looked similar. No, it was Catherine Hobbes, absolutely. She was getting out of an unmarked police car with a tall male cop. Now she came around the front of the car and they both pulled another man out of the back seat. He was a shorter man wearing a short-sleeved pullover shirt that looked tight. He seemed to be a bodybuilder.

  The picture cut to Hobbes and the other cop, standing outside a police station, and it must have been later. Hobbes was saying, “During our visit Mr. Olson became agitated and tried to run. We searched the house and found Mrs. Olson bound and locked in the trunk of Mr. Olson’s car. The hospital says she’s in stable condition and will recover from her injuries.” She listened to a reporter’s virtually inaudible question, then touched a spot on her forehead where there seemed to be a bruise and a scratch. “This? Yes.” She smiled. “It was a lucky punch.” She turned away from the reporters and went inside.

  “Bitch,” said Judith Nathan. “You horrible bitch.” Catherine Hobbes was becoming a celebrity, practically. She was placing herself in front of the television cameras all the time now. Was anybody supposed to believe that it had been just little Catherine Hobbes fighting with that man? What had that big male cop been doing while that was going on? The man they had in handcuffs didn’t even look like a bad person, just some ordinary man the cops had scooped up to use as a fall guy. He would be destroyed to give Catherine Hobbes one more moment of glory. Disgusting.

  Everything had turned into a disaster. She had not been given time to start living. Every time she began to get settled, Catherine Hobbes would start in again, telling lies about her, circulating her picture everywhere she tried to live. Every time she went anywhere, Catherine Hobbes seemed to show up a day later. Maybe Judith should have taken Catherine Hobbes more seriously. She had thought that coming back to Portland was a clever idea, because it was the last place anyone would expect to see her. But the price was that she had to live in the same city as Catherine Hobbes.

  That night she lay in bed, unable to sleep. Staying free could not be that hard. There seemed to be lots of people who had done things but never got found. It all seemed to depend on who was looking. The main one who was looking for her, the one who kept traveling around and convincing everyone that they had to drop everything and search for small, solitary Tanya Starling, was Catherine Hobbes.

  The video clip of Catherine Hobbes on television kept repeating in her memory. It was like one of those dreams she sometimes had that reminded her there was something important that she had forgotten. There was something she was supposed to do that she had not done.

  In the morning Judith Nathan left her hotel room, bought a newspaper in the lobby, and went out to begin searching for an apartment. She found one early, and gave Solara Estates in Denver as her last address. Because she had just arrived in town and had no local bank account yet, the landlady didn’t mind taking her rent and deposit in cash.

  Judith Nathan drove Tyler’s Mazda to see a garage that was for rent about a mile from her new apartment building. The entr
ance was in an alley, and the rent was cheap, so Judith Nathan paid the owner in cash for six months’ rent in advance. Judith stopped at a hardware store and bought a good combination padlock for the bolt on the garage door.

  Over the next few days Judith Nathan drove to stores where she could buy the things she needed to furnish her apartment—unassembled furniture, a few lamps, and a television set. The apartment had a refrigerator and stove, so she bought groceries.

  She was comfortable now, so she filled Tyler’s Mazda with gas, drove it to her rented garage, parked it inside, and locked the garage door. As she walked home, she began to make her next set of plans. It was time to find out what Catherine was doing.

  39

  Hugo Poole sat in his office beside the projection room of the Empire Theater. He was thinking seriously about going out to a club tonight, just for the sake of being seen. Since Dennis had been killed he had virtually shut himself away, and that was not good for business. Just as he stood up, the telephone rang. He picked it up, and said, “Yeah?”

  “Hugo Poole?”

  “You got me.”

  “This is Calvin Dunn.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I called to find out what Joe Pitt is doing in Portland.”

  “Joe Pitt? I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?” said Calvin Dunn. “It’s a relief to me that you don’t know. I would really hate it if you were trying to set up a competition.”

  “A competition? Why? So I could take bets on who bags her?”

  “Sometimes people who are smarter than anybody else think too much. They figure out ways to get themselves twisted around and meet themselves coming back.”

  “Not me, Calvin. I paid him off and thanked him for his efforts before I ever called you. Where did you see him?”

  “He’s at the same hotel where I’m staying,” said Dunn. “If you didn’t send him, then he’s just part of the mix. I’ll change hotels. This girl has popped about four people now, so it’s possible somebody else hired him to find her. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”