Dangerous Games (10 page)

“How did you sneak up on me, anyhow? I was watching the entrance, and you weren’t here when I came in.”

“Sure I was. Over there.”

Tess looked and saw the pinball machine in the corner. She remembered the kid in the baseball cap. When she glanced back at Abby, the cap was on her head, her hair bunched up underneath.

“The front of the machine is all glass,” she said. “I could see the front door reflected in it.” She pulled off the cap again, letting her hair fall back to her shoulders.

“Why the subterfuge?”

Abby shrugged. “Why did you choose a seat that lets you scope out the entrance? Habit, right? Well, I have my habits, too. I like to size up who I’m dealing with.”

“How could you possibly size me up when all I did was come in and sit down?”

“You did a lot more than that. You panned and scanned the room. You were edgy. Still are. Your hand keeps drifting toward the right side pocket of your coat, which is obviously where you’re carrying your firearm.”

“It’s not supposed to print against the coat.” The special pocket had been sewn in by her tailor and carefully reinforced, with a matching, weighted pocket on the opposite side to counterbalance the gun.

“It doesn’t print,” Abby said. “But what else would you be reaching for?”

“I take it you’re armed also.”

“Snub-nosed Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. You’re carrying a SIG Sauer nine, I bet.”

“How’d you know?”

“Standard Bureau issue. The two-two-six?”

“Two-two-eight.”

“That’s out of production now. Good gun, though.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“What do you shoot, Federal Hydra-Shok JHPs?”

“Right.”

“I like that ammo. Nice stopping power.”

“How would you know? It’s sold only to law enforcement agents.”

“I have my sources. Guns are a vice of mine. They’re sexy, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never found firearms sexy.”

“Not even when you’re shooting a load of Hydra-Shoks?” Abby showed a lascivious smile. “We’re talking rapid expansion and deep, satisfying penetration. I mean, come
on
.”

“Where do you carry your Smith?” Tess asked, trying to change the conversation’s focus.

Abby patted her purse. “Right here.”

Tess felt a little bit superior. “I used to carry mine in a purse. But it takes longer to draw and fire.”

“My purse has a special compartment that allows me to grab the gun without undoing the clasp.”

“Even so, it’s less secure. Someone could snatch the purse out of your hands.”

“The strap’s reinforced with wire to prevent a tearaway.”

Now Tess was irritated. She could not seem to get the upper hand in this conversation. “It still will take you an extra second to get your finger on the trigger.”

“True. But in my line, I can’t afford to carry a piece in my coat. Some guy might give me a hug and feel a bulge where there shouldn’t be a bulge.”

“Do you get hugged often?”

“It could happen. Anyway, we weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you. We’ve established that you checked out your environment, you’re tense, you chose a seat with a view of the entrance so you wouldn’t be taken by surprise.”

“Lot of good it did me,” Tess murmured.

“We also know you were expecting Madeleine, and you don’t quite trust her.”

“What makes you think I don’t trust her?”

“Why would you be so edgy otherwise?”

“Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

“No. I deal with a lot of paranoid people. Mostly stalkers, but sometimes the victims, too. Or alleged victims. Occasionally you get somebody who’s not being stalked at all. They just think they are. They’re the hardest ones to handle. They’ll never believe they’re safe. Anyway, you’re not paranoid.”

“How can you be sure? You don’t know me.”

“You’re sitting there with your hands on the table. If you were defensive, your arms would be crossed. And you’re looking right at me. A paranoid person would avert her gaze.”

Tess was suddenly self-conscious. She felt the same way she had when a psycholinguistics consultant had started telling her where she’d grown up just from hearing traces of her Midwestern dialect. “You’re big on body language, is that it?”

“It’s a major part of what I do.”

“I wouldn’t want you doing threat assessment based on inferences like that. It’s too subjective.”

“Everything is subjective.”

“The law isn’t. And it sounds as if this work of yours is skirting the edges of it.”

“In a good cause.”

“Then you
are
a vigilante.”

“I’m somebody people call when the authorities fail in their responsibility to protect the public.”

“How exactly did you protect Madeleine Grant?”

The food came. They were silent until the waitress had departed.

“Chow down,” Abby said. “The grub’s good here. I wouldn’t have ordered that burger well-done, though. Cooks all the juice out of it.”

“You’re eating a soyburger. What do you know?”

“I eat meat, too. Just not a lot of it. I’m not a fanatic, but you know, gotta watch your diet. Cholesterol, triglycerides, all that stuff.”

“Given the nature of your occupation, I would think cholesterol rates pretty low on your list of risk factors.” Not to mention, Tess added silently, the fact that Abby seemed to have less than 2 percent body fat on her lean frame.

“Point taken. The truth is, meat slows my reflexes. The effects are marginal, but why compromise my alertness at all? Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me alive.”

Tess wondered if this last remark were just bravado. She didn’t think so. Abby didn’t seem like the type to boast.

“How’s the hamburg?” Abby asked.

“Very good,” Tess admitted.

“Told ya.”

“But what you haven’t told me is exactly what went on with Madeleine Grant.”

“Right, the sordid details. She gave you the lowdown on the e-mails, right? Speaking of which, I have them in my car. I’ll give them to you when we leave.”

“Why didn’t you bring them in?”

“If you’d seen me carrying a package, you would’ve known I wasn’t just some kid playing pinball, correct? Besides, I didn’t want to get ketchup on ’em.”

“All right. The answer to your question is, yes, I know about the e-mails.”

“Madeleine suspected that Kolb was sending them. She knew the police wouldn’t help, so she got hold of me.”

“How?”

“Conventional way—telephone.”

“Somehow I doubt you’re listed in the Yellow Pages.”

“It happens that I’d been of service to one of Madeleine’s friends, who discreetly recommended me.”

“So Madeleine hired you to…what, spy on Kolb?”

“She hired me to determine if Kolb was in fact her harasser, and if not, who was. But we never had to get to the ‘if not’ part because Kolb was the guy. Her instincts were right. They usually are.”

“Madeleine’s instincts?”

“Anybody’s. That stuff’ll kill you, by the way.”

Tess realized Abby was referring to the Coca-Cola she was sipping. “Coke?”

“Caffeine. You may think it enhances your alertness, but all it really does is make you jittery.”

“Look, you stick to your diet, and I’ll stick to mine.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

“I honestly don’t need your help.”

“If that were true, you would’ve already walked out of here. Anyway, instincts. People could learn a lot just by trusting their feelings. You have a bad vibe about going into a certain restaurant—don’t go. Maybe that’s the night the baked Alaska is going to set the place on fire. Or maybe you’re going to choke on your roast duck.”

“Or maybe you’re just imagining things.”

“Come on. You rely on instincts, too. You’ve got to.”

Tess remembered the impression of being watched at Madeleine’s house. The sense of another presence in the storm line, before she saw or heard the vagrant. “Sometimes.”

“You ever work undercover?”

“A long time ago.”

“Heightens the senses, doesn’t it?”

Tess couldn’t deny it. “I always felt hyperalert.”

“Welcome to my world.” Abby grinned.

“We seem to keep getting off track.”

“A conversation with me is a journey, not a destination.”

“I’d like to make some progress toward the finish line.”

“Fair enough.” She surveyed Tess’s plate with interest. “You gonna eat those fries?”

“No.” Abby snatched a handful. Tess couldn’t resist warning, “Careful. They could slow down your metabolism, make you vulnerable to predators at the water hole.”

“Even with one or two fries in me, this gazelle can still outrun the lions.” Abby popped a french fry in her mouth. “So where was I? Right, Kolb was the guy.”

“How did you know?”

“Pillow talk. Guys tell you all kinds of stuff after sex.”

Tess hesitated, unsure what to say, and Abby laughed.

“Gotcha. The look on your face—I wish I had a camera.”

“Are you saying you did or didn’t sleep with Kolb?”

“Bit of the mother superior in you, isn’t there?”

“I just want an answer.”

“I thought you Catholic girls were cool about sex. That’s your rep, anyhow.”

“I am cool about it. I mean, I…” She wondered how the hell Abby knew she was Catholic. A guess based on her last name, probably. “Did you sleep with Kolb or not?”

“No. That’s almost never necessary.” Tess noted the word
almost
. It didn’t raise her estimation of Abby Sinclair. “Most of these guys are too inhibited for casual sex—at least with me. They might go to a prostitute, but that’s business; it’s impersonal, a transaction. Anything involving emotional intimacy is scary to them.”

“Does that description fit Kolb?”

“To a T. Even the hookers. When I was working the case, I saw him check out the action south of Hollywood Boulevard. He stopped for a knob job—you know, a little lipstick on his dipstick.”

“I understood the reference. You said you saw him?”

“Followed him. I’m good at tailing people.”

Tess took another swallow of soda. “You seem to be good at everything you do.”

“I’m still breathing, aren’t I? Anyway, Kolb didn’t have to tell me anything. He was careless enough to keep copies of all his e-mails to Madeleine on his computer.”

“He allowed you to look in his computer?”

“The word ‘allowed’ might be overstating it. Let’s say I became familiar with his daily routine, which made it possible for me to gain access to information of a private nature without his direct, written consent.”

“You broke into his residence?”

“There’s that mother superior again.”

“Breaking and entering is a felony.”

“So is stalking, and nobody was doing diddly-squat about that.”

“The end justifies the means?”

“A minor transgression to stop a major injustice. That’s what I call a pragmatic trade-off.”

“And you get to decide which transgressions are acceptable and which aren’t?”

“It goes with the territory.”

“That particular territory is located pretty close to the county jail.”

Abby arched an eyebrow. “You gonna arrest me, Sheriff? Look, Madeleine was in trouble, and I got her out of it.”

Tess let a moment pass. “How exactly did you get her out of it?” she asked finally, already knowing the answer.

“Ah, the scales fall from your eyes. The truth is revealed.”

“You set the fire, didn’t you?”

“I prefer not to answer on the grounds that it would incriminate the hell out of me.”

“You brought the fire department to Kolb’s apartment.”

Abby said nothing. The smile was gone from her face. She watched Tess as if assessing her reaction to this news.

“You could have burned down the whole building,” Tess said after a pause, though they both knew this was not the point.

“Nope. The call to nine-one-one was made very promptly. Actually, before the fire even started. Someone must’ve had a premonition.”

“Weren’t you worried about a trace?”

“I believe the call was made from an untraceable cell phone.”

“So you called from your cell, set the fire, and left. But before you did any of that, you put the evidence of the planned abduction in plain view where the firemen would see it.”

“Maybe Kolb was stupid enough to leave all that stuff sitting around.”

“Was he?”

Abby shook her head slowly. Her husky voice dropped to an even lower register. “He’s not stupid. Very few of them are.”

Tess mentally ran through the menu of felonies that had been committed for the purpose of jailing William Kolb. Breaking and entering, tampering with evidence, arson…“You took the law entirely into your own hands.”

“I go by my own rules,” Abby said.

“Sounds more like
no
rules.”

“I got the job done.”

“You put a man in prison for a year.”

“And prevented him from putting a woman six feet under. He was going to kidnap her. The threat level was high. The risk was immediate. I had to take action.”

“All you did was implement a stopgap measure.”

“As it turned out, maybe. But there was no guarantee Kolb would survive his time in stir. Lots of times, a cop won’t last long in a population of convicts.”

“You were hoping he’d be killed?”

Abby shrugged. “It wouldn’t have broken my heart.”

Cold
, Tess thought. This woman was cold.

“You’re thinking I’m a cold customer,” Abby said. The uncanny accuracy of this statement was unnerving. “Maybe I am. But I prefer to think of myself as practical. I do what has to be done. Anyhow, Kolb is still breathing.”

“And he’s out—which means Madeleine Grant is no better off than she was before.”

“Not necessarily. A lot of times, these guys lose interest in a particular target. They move on to a new obsession.”

“Or maybe they don’t.”

“Madeleine is aware of the risk. But she’s not as helpless as she used to be. I taught her a few things.”

“Self-defense measures?”

“Nothing fancy. Just enough to get her away from the bad guy—I hope.”

“Is that the reason she carries a gun wherever she goes?”

“I may have suggested that.”

“Well, there’s the solution to all our civic problems. Let everybody be armed and dangerous.”