The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower (8 page)

It wasn't the only place, either, she thought, stepping resolutely into the well-lit blankness of the empty hall. The garage where they kept the fork lifts and electric trucks was accessible from a door near the supply offices. With a pocketful of change, you could live indefinitely from the junk machines—until malnutrition caught up with you, anyway, she added with an inner grin, in spite of her fears. And in the teeth of the much-vaunted security system, thefts had, as the guard said, proceeded regularly—everything from paper clips to computer components to telephone equipment by the metric ton. It would be easy to hide out there and wait . . . .

For what?
Joanna demanded sensibly of herself and, with some effort, prevented her step from quickening. If the man was a thief, he'd have gotten himself out the same way he got in—never mind what it was—and be long gone. Nobody in his right mind would hide out in San Serano for a week just to jump out and strangle people.

But nobody in his right mind would climb to the top of a University bell tower to take potshots with a scope-sighted rifle at passers-by, either, her mind retorted, or murder perfectly innocent, semiretired rock'n'roll stars just to say they'd done it, or do any of the other gruesome things that had made the headlines within her memory.

You're paranoid, Joanna.

Who told you I was, and why?
she retorted jokingly, and glanced once again over her shoulder.

It was like scratching a mosquito bite, she thought—something that didn't help, that you shouldn't do, but you couldn't stop.

Uneasiness stalked her, like the faint sound of her sneakers on the carpet. She found herself increasingly loath to pass the darkened openings of rooms and hallways on both sides of the lighted corridor, though she was not certain what it was that she feared to see.

At the junction of the main corridor she stopped, hiking her heavy purse up onto her shoulder and pushing her soft, unruly hair out of her face. Around her, the plain pastel walls were decorated with walnutframed blowups of some of the more scenic photographs of the San Serano plant, dramatic in its barren backdrop of chaparral hills and clumps of twisted live oak, the grass either the white-champagne of summer or the exquisite emerald velvet of winter rains. The shots, Joanna was always amused to notice, were carefully set up to exclude the parking lots, the barbed wire, and the bluish blanket of Los Angeles smog in the background.

Down the dim hallway to her right was the main computer room.

The lights there were still on, though she could hear no voices. No shadow moved across them to blot the sheen of them on the metal of the doorframe. She'd been in the room almost daily since the assault, but there had always been people at the monitors and graphics printers connected to the enormous mainframe, and she had had deadlines prodding at her back. A half-memory from that night tugged at the back of her mind like a temptation she could not quite define—some unchecked incongruity that she had not spoken of to the guards because it was too absurd, and she had feared their laughter, but she wanted to verify it in her own mind.

It took more determination than she thought it would to make herself walk down the unlit hall toward the glow of the doorway. Knowing herself to be timid and passive by nature, her very reluctance made her go on.

The trouble is,
she thought wryly, stepping up the slight ramp and into the clean-lit, cold vastness of the room, you
can't always tell what fears are irrational and what are only improbable. It would certainly help if this were a movie—I could listen for the creepy music on the sound-track to warn me whether I'm making a stupid mistake or not.

The computer was still up. In good lighting it was beautiful, its tricolored bulk looming like the Great Wall of China amid a tasteful selection of add-ons, which included four input desks, several banks of additional memory, and two six-by-six-foot color monitors capable of forming the most exacting of projections. Digby Clayton assured her that Pac-Man played on such a monitor was a truly visceral experience.

A blue-gray polyester blazer hung neatly over the back one of the chairs, and Joanna identified it, with a slight sinking of the stomach, as Gary Fairchild's. Better, she thought, to get this over quickly before he returned and asked her what she was doing here. She did not precisely know herself and she was never good at explaining things to people, particularly to Gary.

She walked a little ways into the room, and knelt on the floor in approximately the place she'd been thrown. Her memory of what she was seeking was a little clearer from down here, as if she'd left it like a contact lens on the carpet. She'd seen the candle in its anachronistic holder, the candle of which the guards had found no sign, sitting in front of the nearest monitor. A precaution, they'd said, against turning on the lights and possibly alerting a passing guard—but a flashlight would have served better, she thought, as she had thought then. There had been a black shadow descending upon her as her own mind darkened and, at the last moment, that glimpse of something on the wall.

From her angle near the floor she narrowed her eyes, finding the place.

Of course there was nothing there now.

She got to her feet again, feeling a bit silly. Brushing off the knees of her jeans, she walked to the spot. It had been a mark, she remembered, like a Japanese pictograph, but definitely not Japanese, about eight inches about her own eye-level and a foot to the left of the doorframe. It had been clear and sharply defined, but somehow unreal, like a spot of light thrown from a stray reflector rather than anything actually written there. She'd only had a glimpse of it, a sidelong flicker from the corner of her eye as she fell, and the memory of it was fogged by panic and terror. In any case, there was certainly no sign of it now.

She put the side of her face to the wall and peered sidelong at the spot, hoping to see something from the different angle, as sometimes could be seen with glass.

Still nothing.

Mentally she shook herself. The janitors would have washed the wall since then, if nothing else, she told herself, or—did the janitors wash the walls here? Probably—the computer room was a favorite showplace of the front-office boys. Or maybe there had never been anything in the first place.

Alfred Hitchcock's profile? she wondered frivolously. George Lucas' signature of THX1138? The footprint of a giant hound?

When someone yelled “Boo!” behind her, she nearly jumped out of her skin. A week of the jitters had, however, schooled her reflexes—her hand was in her purse and gripping the handle of the hammer before she had completely swung around enough to recognize Gary Fairchild.

“Hey, calm down,” he said, with his deprecating smile. “Did I scare you?”

She was trembling all over, but, rather to her surprise, her voice came out level and very angry. “Why? Wasn't that the idea?”

He looked confused and taken aback. “I-uh-Don't get mad. I mean -you know.” That explained, he hastily changed the subject. “Were you looking for me?”

It was in her mind to say, Why would I
look for someone who'd play juvenile tricks like that? but there was no point in getting into a fight with Gary. He'd only hang onto her, apologizing like hell for days, until she got tired enough to forgive him. Instead she said, “No, I came back in the hopes of catching the criminal when he returned to the scene of the crime.”

Nonplussed, Gary said, “But that was days ago, babe. You don't think he's lurked around here all this time?”

With a mental Oi,
veh, Joanna said, “Joke, Gary.”

Obediently, he gave a hearty laugh. Regarding him—white jeans, Hawaiian shirt bulging just slightly over conscientiously built-up muscles and an equally conscientious tan—Joanna wondered if she'd even like him, if she met him for the first time now.

In spite of two years of dating him, she had her own suspicions about that.

“Besides,” she added, surreptitiously sliding the handle of her hammer back into her purse under the heavy wads of printouts, a brush, a mirror, pens, notebooks, screw-cap boxes, and a collapsible cup, “he might have come back. Whatever he was out to steal . . .”

“Babe,” said Gary patiently, “what could he have stolen from here that he couldn't have gotten easier from the storage bays? Computer stuff is easier to rip off from there, before it's been dedicated—safer, too, because if it hasn't been logged in, nobody would even know it's gone.”

This, Joanna knew, was true. She had her own theories about how Gary would know it. In her idle moments she had a habit of thumbing through the mainframe, breaking into files which the management of San Serano confidently assumed were hidden under their secret passwords; and she knew that, as a result of switching over to a new computerized system, the invoices were in a hopeless tangle. It was one of the things that had troubled her from the first about the guard's glib theory that she'd surprised and been surprised by a thief.

Her own alternative theories weren't particularly pleasant ones.

“I'll be done here in a few minutes, Joanna,” Gary said after a few moments. “I can walk you out. Maybe we can stop someplace . . .”

She shook her head. “Thank you, but that's okay.” She might be nervous about walking those empty corridors alone; but in her present uneasy mood, she knew Gary would be no improvement on imaginary maniacs. “I'll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He stepped forward and put his hands on her waist in the confident expectation of a kiss which, after a microsecond's hesitation for no particular reason other than that she simply didn't feel like kissing him, she gave him. As usual, he overdid it. “You are coming out to my place this weekend, aren't you?” he asked. “Everybody from the department will be there.”

Reason enough to avoid it,
she thought and vacillated, “I don't know, Gary . . .”

“I've got four new games for the computer, some good beer—even wine if you like that stuff—plus the new jet system in the jacuzzi, and some real nice . . .” He mimed blowing smoke in an elaborately silly euphemism for smoking pot.

Joanna sighed. So in addition to the boring middle-management types Gary hung around with, there would be drunk, stoned, boring middle-management types. On the other hand, she never went to parties, but she knew parties were the sort of thing people were supposed to enjoy. “It's a long drive,” she began.

“Only ten minutes past here,” he pointed out. “Most of the folks are coming up in the afternoon. We can sit by the pool, catch some rays, turn the speakers up full-blast . . . . What's the point of living clear the hell out here if you can't make a little noise now and then?” He repeated what Joanna had always guessed was the line fed to him by the real estate man who'd sold him the place. Since she knew Gary's taste in music ran to heavy-metal bands like Havoc and Fallen Angel, the prospect was getting less and less appealing all the time.

“The new graphics system I've got on the games computer is fabulous,” he urged. “Please,” he added, seeing her unmoved even by this. He flashed her a nervous grin that she had never liked and that had increasingly begun to irritate her. “Hey, you're my sweetheart, remember? The love of my life . . .” He drew her to him for another kiss. “I just wish we could be together . . . .”

“Gary.” With sudden firmness that was less determination than simple weariness, she wriggled free of his indecisive embrace. “If you ask me to live with you one more time I really will quit speaking to you. I told you I don't know . . .”

“But why not, babe?” he asked, reproach in his big brown eyes and a suspicion of a whine creeping into his voice. “It isn't like your apartment is great or anything. You'd be closer to work here and not have to drive all that way; and you'd save on rent money. You know I'll always love you, babe . . .” She suspected he'd heard that line on TV. “Come Saturday, anyhow—see the place now that I've got the new computer stuff in. Are you doing anything else on Saturday?”

She wasn't, but hemmed, not sure how she should be reacting. “I don't know, Gary. I may be going out with some friends . . .”

“Invite 'em along,” he offered. “Who are they? Anyone from here?”

Not feeling up to more flights of invention, Joanna sighed, “All right, I'll be there.” His brown eyes warmed and his smile returned full-wattage.

“That's great, babe,” he beamed. “Hey, are you doing anything else right now? I'll be done with this program in about fifteen minutes . . . .”

Joanna hesitated for a moment, wondering if she'd indulged in enough selfish behavior and ought to keep him company, even though it would probably involve dinner afterwards . . . and dinner at some coffee shop, at that. For all the money he made, Gary didn't believe in spending more than he had to on anyone but himself. But there was no guaranteeing how long any program would take to run—she was used to playing “Another five minutes” for up to an hour and a half at a time. “I don't think so,” she said. “I'm going to go home, take a very long bath, and go to bed. I'll see you tomorrow.” Ignoring his protesting, “Aw, babe . . .” she hiked her monstrous purse up over her shoulder and reciprocated his rather wet and amorous farewell kiss, more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment. Duty, she reflected later, walking down the dim hallway toward the bright rectangle of the main corridor ahead, not so much to Gary as to all those years of being pointed at as the School Nerd. She was conscious, as she walked, of a feeling of relief and wondered how she could ever have been in love with Gary Fairchild.

If it had been love, she thought, and not just the sexual glitter that surrounds the passage from virgin to nonvirgin. He had been, almost literally, the first man who had ever taken notice of her in her shy and bookish life. When she had first come to work at San Serano two years ago, Gary had asked her out, first to lunch and later to dinner, and had taken her home one night to the high tech Westwood apartment he'd been staying in that year.

He had always wanted her to live with him. Lately, he had begun to pester her about it, Joanna suspected, because he was thirty-four and reaching the age when he felt he ought to be living with somebody. He had bought the house in the expectation of it—or anyway, that was what he'd told her. But then, Gary was seldom completely honest, particularly if he thought he could drum up pity.