The Debt Collector (31 page)

Not even an option, she told herself, and laughed just a little. Imagine getting into one of those things. Imagine getting stuck. No one would ever find her. And considering her state of mind these days, she'd last maybe fifteen minutes tops before she went totally insane.

She didn't even like watching movies where the hero went through the top of the elevator and climbed up the black oily cables. The staircase was a wonderful invention, and she intended to make full use of it. Provided she could find it.

Not easy in the dark. She opened doors, found empty storerooms, a weird sort of utility room. Then, at long last, the stairwell.

She could go up or down.

There seemed to be no reason to go into the dark basement, and she didn't think she had the courage, anyway. She headed up the stairs, counting two landings for every floor, and made her way to the light on floor seven.

She went steadily and methodically and was a little winded, but not a lot. Her clothes were loose; not eating could have that effect. But the lack of sleep lately gave her a fuzzy, tired feeling.

She opened a door to a pitch-dark hallway. Did she have the wrong floor? Had the light been turned off? Was there anybody there?

She stood for a minute, listening. It was so bloody dark.

She took a step forward, keeping the door to the stairwell open with her left foot—maybe not logical, but it sure made her feel better. Shone her light on a door that had a brass number nine. Nine? She hadn't come up that far. Had she?

Then she realized it was a six, swinging upside down. She wasn't up far enough. One more floor.

She went back into the stairwell, pulled the door quietly closed behind her. Headed up another flight of stairs.

Her gun was tucked in the back of her jeans. Other cops might creep through the building gun in hand, but she knew her limitations. Knew she was likely to trip or shoot at shadows. Never would have admitted it to anyone.

But she had lost enough weight that there was a real danger of the gun sliding down the back of her pants. Talk about embarrassing. Cop injured in the line of duty. Gun in her pants.

Make that killed in the line of duty. That way she wouldn't have to endure the teasing.

She kept hold of the railing, feeling the dust accumulate on her fingertips. Thinking that the best and worst part about death was that you died. It jarred her to know that she no longer viewed death as the worst possible thing that could happen. It was the comfort and it was the curse. The beauty of death was that the struggle was over; Hopefully.

She ought to have expected it eventually, this thing within her, this darkness. She'd been depressed before, plenty depressed, plenty of times. Despair was not unfamiliar to anyone at some time in life.

But this was different.

Maybe it was best, Sam not being with her.

The door to the seventh-floor stairwell was locked. Twisting the knob, meeting its resistance, made her heart jump. It made the fear definite. It made it real. Someone was up here. Someone who did not want to be disturbed. Sonora tried the keys on the ring. Dammit, she did not want to walk back down those damn dark stairs.

Key number three fit just fine and popped a lock she could have picked with a bobby pin, if she had a bobby pin, which she did not. She shut the flashlight off.

The door creaked when she opened it, and she kept hold of it, easing it shut softly, holding her breath and fighting the hinge.

And she heard music. Light shone from an open door like a beacon in the dark dirty hallway. The music came from the open door.

She knew the voice. Jimmy Durante, singing “As Time Goes By.” Had she landed in some episode of
The Twilight Zone?

The music covered her footsteps. Her gun started to slide, and she rescued it from the back of her pants and held it, with palms growing wet and slick. She wished her breath were not coming so quickly, her heart not beating so hard.

It was a long walk down that corridor; God knew she wasn't moving very fast. She did not like being alone. Not here, not tonight.

Sonora took a breath and moved to the edge of the doorway.

From her narrow field of vision, she couldn't see a soul. She peered around the corner—it was an office, thrown together with an old, overlarge oak desk and an old-fashioned wood swivel chair with a leather seat, wooden slats like a birdcage. She wanted to sit in that chair and spin around and around.

A freestanding old mahogany coat hanger supported a tan windbreaker and a black wool coat, towering over two oak file cabinets, legal size, and a brass umbrella holder that held, naturally, a large black umbrella. Which looked dry, from where she stood.

She took a step inside. A phone, a computer, a wooden trash basket discreetly by the file cabinet. A fresh white orchid floating in a bowl of water on the desk.

A boom box sat in the corner, the CD light glowing red. The music. And photos on the wall—maybe ten or twelve. Tammy Stinnet, bloody on the pink canopy bed. Carl Stinnet turned sideways in the chair. Crime-scene photos of the Stinnet home invasion.

Sonora heard the flush of a toilet and the creak of a door, and she looked behind her to see Jack Van Owen stepping out of a small room closed off by a door with a frosted-glass window, still wiping his hands on a hand towel, hunter green and fluffy.

She gasped and so did he.

Van Owen put a hand to his heart. “For God's sake, Detective. And why are you jumping three feet, you're the one sneaking up on me?”

As usual, she could not resist that smile. Dammit, she was glad to see him. Any human contact at this time of night in this part of town. He passed ahead of her and went into the office.

“Come on in and sit down. Cup of coffee?”

She did not smell coffee but she said yes, and he went to the top of a file cabinet, opened a foil packet, and went about the business of brewing a fresh pot.

He inclined his head toward a khaki, overstuffed love seat that sat in a corner in front of the battered oak desk. “Go on and sit. You take cream but no sugar, and if there's chocolate, I should add that too?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Won't be a minute.” He tossed the towel on top of the file cabinet. “Let me go wash this mug.”

Sonora, in the act of sitting, got back up again.

He tilted his head sideways. “Or not. I guess it's clean enough. I take it you don't want me out of your sight?”

Sonora put the gun away. “Sorry.”

Van Owen bent to the boom box and turned it off, then sat in the wood and leather chair, rocking it back and forth.

“I thought you might come.”

She didn't say anything.

He turned away, looking out into the corridor. “You alone, or should I expect some of your buddies? I just need to know if I should wash another mug or two.”

“Just me,” Sonora said.

He put his fingertips together. “If I had to guess, I'd say you're not supposed to be here.”

“Good guess.” The coffeemaker sizzled and spurted and the smell of coffee wound its way into the room. Sonora sat back on the love seat. Resisted the urge to tuck her feet up beside her. She liked his office. She liked it very much.

He turned the chair and faced her. “Well, my dear, and what am I going to do with you? Which is not to say that I'm not glad to see you. I'm just not sure
why
I see you.”

“I like it better when you're blunt with me,” Sonora said. “When we talk in shorthand. You know what's on my mind, and I know what's on yours.”

“Go on.”

“You could confess. Tell me everything. Spend the rest of your life in jail.”

He nodded good-naturedly, eyes alive and full of humor. “We'll call that option one.”

Although she knew better, Sonora began to relax. He had a gentleness with her, a sort of grave sense of good manners that smoothed all of the awkward angles. Her mother had been right, manners did make the man.

“Do you know who you are?” he asked her. The coffee bubbled.

“Weird question.”

“Rhetorical question. You weren't supposed to respond.”

Sam would have laughed if he'd been here, Sonora thought. She could not sit still; she could not keep quiet.

“Yes, I know who I am.”

He stood up and poured coffee in two mugs. Doctored hers with cream and a packet of instant hot chocolate. Took his black. Went on talking as if she had not said a word.

“You are me, eleven years ago.” He glanced at her over his left shoulder. “Okay, a female version. Prettier and softer, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. But you are me, Detective, me before …” He stirred her coffee and handed her a mug, his fingers lightly brushing hers. “You don't have the smallest idea how much I envy you.” He took his coffee mug and sat on the edge of his desk, swinging one leg. “I was a good cop, Sonora. A good Homicide cop. I didn't even grow up wanting to go into police work; I thought I'd be an actor. Don't look surprised. But when I became a cop—it was right. You know what I mean, don't you? It's the same way for you.” He slid his chair backward, came out from behind the desk, leaned against the edge. “Don't let go, Sonora. Don't blow your career; you don't know how much it means till it's gone.”

She looked at her mug. Tiny white marshmallows floated on the top, melting slowly in the heat. Sonora thought of the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
, when Dorothy threw water and melted her. The hourglass had been running.

“I forget things.” Van Owen plucked the orchid from the clear glass bowl and pointed to his temple. “If you ever take a bullet, try not to catch it in the head.”

He leaned close and Sonora saw for the first time a dimple in his left cheek. He looked at her so very directly, taking in her face, her hair, her neck and shoulders, and if she did not know better she would have thought he was moving in for a kiss.

He was humming under his breath, just, and he tucked the flower behind her ear and moved her hair off that shoulder, and she felt her face go hot.

Van Owen took a step backward, cocked his head to study the effect, smiled again, just a little bit, and said not a word.

And then he was gone. One moment he was there, and the next, vanished—not in body, of course, the shell of the man was still there, going through the motions, but the essence was gone. He could have been a ghost.

Where did he go? she wondered.

But she knew. She knew because, just lately, she was going there herself. And she understood now the distance she felt with everyone, Sam, the kids, Gillane. Because where she was headed—that was a place most people knew better than to go.

65

It was a rare thing for Sonora, not to be hurried. She leaned back into the love seat and sipped her coffee, and Van Owen settled back behind his desk and sipped his. They were both quiet. They were both thinking.

“One question,” he said.

She looked up.

“You
have
been called off this case?”

“Yes. You talk to Crick. You know.”

“Yes, I know.” He ran a finger along the edge of the desk. “Everyone downtown is satisfied. Crick. The Lieutenant. The Chief of Police.”

“Everyone except me.”

“Any chance you might just go away?”

“You say we're just alike. What do you think?”

He was thinking, making a decision. “I think you need to know, at least in your head. Even if you have to fade away afterward. And you will, Detective, you will. Are you wearing a wire?”

“No.”

“Show me?”

She stood up. Unbuttoned the white cotton shirt, hesitated a moment, then took it off and stood in loose jeans and demibra. She was not sure what she would do if he asked her to go any further.

But he did not ask. Jack Van Owen, the gentleman, Jack Van Owen, the man with style and panache.

She put the shirt back on, fingers a little shaky, pleased to be spared any lewd commentary.

“Are you cold?” Van Owen asked. He stood up and handed her the tan windbreaker.

She put it on, thinking she was less mobile now, with the cuffs hanging a good six inches below her wrists. She folded them back, inhaling the stimulating essence of Jack Van Owen that was embedded in the cloth. She could only just catch the scent of the orchid, tucked wetly behind her ear.

“Once upon a time, Sonora Blair.” Van Owen leaned back in his chair. “Let's say that I am an actor, playing the part of a very dedicated Homicide cop named Jack Van Owen.”

Sonora sat back to listen. Clara Bonnet would have a field day with this dissociation. An actor, playing a part.

“If Jack Van Owen is such a nice guy, why, when he gets pensioned off from the force—a tragedy, that, but things happen—does he become a loan shark? Because that's what it is, Detective Blair, this check-cashing service. We're both cops and we ain't stupid, and we know bad when we smell it. Most of the guys run places like this. Sooner or later, the law's going to catch up with them, but until then? It's wide open.”

“I've looked into this, Jack, and there are plenty of laws that apply.”

“Yeah, but the wiseguys don't think so, and half the Commonwealth attorneys haven't figured it out either. I'm not arguing with you, Detective. No point in you and me going over the fine points. If nothing else, you've got the moral high ground.”

“Then what are you doing in this line of work?” She was slipping, letting the disapproval show. My God, she had her arms folded, she knew better. She was letting her guard down.

He swiveled his chair, crossed his legs in a manner that was oddly effete. “I used to have a wife and a son, and I loved them very much. That much I remember. But I got hurt. And I lost my … grief for them. It was my companion, my twin, for so long. Grief is an odd thing to miss, don't you think? But it was all I had left of them.”

He looked at her expectantly.

She heard Joy Stinnet's voice in the back of her mind.
Hail Mary, full of grace
. “Why the sidetrack, Van Owen? Looking for the sympathy vote?”