Written Off (7 page)

I almost deleted the last e-mail without reading it. The return address, [email protected], certainly didn’t ring any bells. But the “mystery” part was definitely in my wheelhouse; it was possible this was another reader who’d just discovered the Duffy books, which is always nice, or someone in the mystery community with a request for something (an appearance, maybe, or a signed something or other for charity, things that are easy to do and make the author feel like a good person). It was worth checking. I opened the e-mail.

Immediately, I was sorry I’d done that. Sprawled across the screen, as if taken from random publications for a ransom note, were words in various fonts, colors, and sizes. The message read,

And then at the bottom . . .

Even as the word left my mouth, I felt stupid for shouting it: “Duffy!”

Duffy, who had to be a good many miles away by now, did not appear at my door, which was distressing. I stared at the e-mail for a while longer, felt my stomach tighten, and picked up my phone.

I could have called Brian Coltrane. I could have called Paula. I could have called Marty in the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office, although I’m not sure I have a number other than his office phone. I could have called my father, which definitely crossed my mind, but he was hours from here and would only have told me to call the police.

I didn’t. I called Duffy Madison.

There is no way to explain that. I’d met the man who claimed to be my fictional creation only hours before. I was certain he had severe emotional problems or a mental illness that created his delusions. I didn’t know his real name, his background, his intentions, or his reliability. I had no reason to trust him. But he had struck me as so much the character I’d been writing, who always comes to the rescue and
always knows just what to do, that my first (and second, truth be known) impulse was to cry to him and make him help me.

It was a simple stroke of luck that Petrosky had given me Duffy’s cell phone number, because I certainly wouldn’t have asked for it, but he wanted me to talk to his consultant and work on the Sunny Maugham case. Now it appeared I would have no choice.

Besides, I was scared shitless.

Duffy answered the phone on the first ring. “Ms. Goldman,” he said. “I’m glad you have changed your mind about coming to Ms. Bledsoe’s home. I can pick you up in a half hour.”

I’d rehearsed what I was going to say after I got finished hyperventilating, which had taken some minutes. “Duffy, I think the kidnapper knows that you contacted me. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

In my mind, I could see his eyebrows drop into a concerned expression through the momentary pause on the line. “What makes you certain?” he asked.

I told Duffy about the e-mail and he did not waste any time. “I’m on my way out the door,” he said. “Make sure yours are locked, and don’t let anyone in until I’m there. Understood?”

I did, in fact, grasp the meaning of his words and told him so. I disconnected the call and sat looking at the threatening message my computer seemed eager to send me.

For half an hour.

How could Sunny’s kidnapper (since there now seemed to be no doubt that was what had happened) have discovered that I was involved in the investigation? I wasn’t that puzzled
over his finding my e-mail address; it’s listed on my website with a link (under “Contact” on the home page). Authors have to promote their work.

I mentally counted the people who would know I had spent the day with Duffy Madison as a consultant to the consultant, working to find Sunny Maugham. I started with Petrosky, who had suggested it initially, and moved on to the sergeant and a few uniformed officers in Ocean Grove. They knew I was there.

But Rita and Brian knew I was planning on finding out who this “Duffy” character was from the night before. Naturally, there was no reason to think either one of them had anything to do with whatever Sunny was going through; I wasn’t sure Brian had even
heard
of Sunny Maugham. But they could have talked to other people, and those people could have mentioned it to someone who ended up being the wrong person. The world is a random place.

Marty Dugan knew I’d been asking about Duffy Madison. It would have been easy for him to find out what case Duffy was consulting on for Bergen County. I couldn’t possibly see Marty as Sunny’s kidnapper, but again, how could I know to whom he was telling his story about the crazy author in his spare time?

The kidnapper, of course,
could
have been watching the house at Ocean Grove. He
could
have been one of the uniform cops, although that seemed unlikely (the other three abductions took place outside New Jersey). He
could
have been in the Bergen County offices and seen me with Duffy.

In fact, this person could be anyone on the street, anyone at any book convention I’d ever met, any fan, any critic, anyone who had ever attended one of my book signings.

And then there was Duffy.

My Duffy, the one I’ve been writing for years, was beyond reproach. There was no chance, zero, none that he would ever under any circumstances consider something cruel or illegal. He was not violent. He was not angry by nature. He was not at all unhinged. True, he could be excitable in the name of good, and he was not always the most polite person you’d ever met (especially when dealing with those he considered unintelligent), but kidnappings and murders? Never.

But
this
Duffy? The one who had clearly appropriated the identity of a fictional character, wormed his way into the favor of the chief investigator for the Bergen County prosecutor, and then found an excuse to confront me with the tale of a fellow mystery author who by coincidence had been helpful to my career and now needed help in the most desperate fashion? The one who had wanted very badly to take me from a small house filled with police officers to another, more than two hours away, where it was a fair bet there would be no one but the two of us in an empty building? The one who had thought I needed a break to
freshen up
? That Duffy? He could be anyone, literally. He could have all sorts of mental issues besides the obvious ones. He could have aligned himself with a law enforcement agency to have better access to public records and crime files. For all I knew, he was not “consulting” with the prosecutor during the times the other three authors were taken and therefore could have been anywhere.

Why had I called this guy for help, again?

It was just then I had that thought that I heard Duffy’s car pull into my driveway. Now having convinced myself that the man was a deranged kidnapper and murderer, I went to the door and let him in out of a ridiculous sense of propriety: how could I turn him away when I was the one who had called him in the first place?

“Let me see the e-mail,” he said the second his foot hit the threshold of my entrance hall (okay, it was a tiny space with ceramic tile floors leading to the living room—you have to call it
something
).

“Nice to see you, too,” I said, ushering him into the house and pointing him toward my office. He strode purposefully, just like in the books, through what he must now have been thinking of as “the crime scene” and kept going until he realized he had to wait for me because he didn’t know which room was the office.

“This way,” I said in what I hoped was a dry voice.

But if my tone had the desired message in it, Duffy hadn’t noticed it. He walked through the office door and went straight for the desktop computer whose screen was still glowing brightly in the room. (I hadn’t actually turned on the lights when I walked in because it wasn’t dark yet and had neglected to turn them on afterward.) The offending message was still vividly displayed in all its gruesome glory.

“Aha,” Duffy said, as if that actually meant something. He sat down in my work chair without an invitation or permission but did not touch the keyboard. He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a pair of purple latex gloves, which he snapped onto his hands.

“Does my computer have some illness I should be concerned about?” Apparently getting a virus was more than a metaphor.

“It wasn’t a virus that caused this,” Duffy said. I had always thought I’d given him a sense of humor, but it’s so subjective. “This came from Ms. Bledsoe’s abductor, almost certainly.”

That was not good news. He seemed to be jumping to conclusions after a quick glance. “How do you know?” I asked, and even as I said it, I knew I’d regret doing so.

“All the crime fiction authors in this pattern have gotten e-mails like this one,” Duffy answered. “They were found on the hard drives of the three before and then Ms. Bledsoe. It is the perpetrator’s calling card, his way of introducing himself before the game actually begins.”

Yeah, I’d been right. I regretted asking.

“You’re not making me feel better, Duffy,” I said.

He didn’t turn away from the screen but had not yet touched the mouse or the keyboard. “I’m not trying to alarm you, Ms. Goldman,” he said. “I’m merely stating the facts of the case.”

“The facts of the case are alarming me,” I admitted.

“Facts are facts.” The man was a virtual wellspring of reassurance.

“What does the message mean? How can this guy know I was involved in the investigation? I wasn’t before I met you.” Duffy would analyze the situation dispassionately, clearly, and intelligently. Why wasn’t that making me feel any better?

“That is an excellent question,” he said, eyes never leaving the screen. It was like he wanted that message—which I never wanted to lay eyes upon again—burned into his retinas so that he could analyze it endlessly for as long as he wanted until it told him something useful. “It is destructive to speculate without sufficient data.”

“We have data. There are a finite number of people who had the information that this person now has. We can assume, then, that one of them told him, no?” When I’m writing Duffy, the hard part for me is finding a puzzle that will be difficult to solve, because he’s written as such an observant and analytical character. Now, I was hoping this was the easiest case he’d ever have to solve.

“Not necessarily,” he answered, tearing down any hope I might have been trying to build. “The perpetrator in this case might have been watching at any of the points we were visible to the public, which is virtually any time since we met that we were not alone in the conference room at work or in my car. He might have been following you before you came to see me this morning.”

My god, was that
really
just this morning? This had been the longest day of my life, and I hadn’t even gotten any revisions done.

“So where does that leave us?” I asked.

“With only a few facts.” Duffy looked up because the doorbell rang.

I think I might have stopped breathing. Could the kidnapper be so confident that he’d ring my bell and walk in without any trepidation? Would it help that Duffy was here?

“I hope you don’t mind,” Duffy said. “I called the investigator after I spoke to you. Would you let him in?” He gestured toward the door as the bell rang again.

“The investigator?” Wasn’t Duffy investigating?

“Of course. You know I’m just a consultant. You wrote that for me. Mr. Preston is the investigator assigned to Ms. Bledsoe’s case.”

Of course. If there was one thing you had to love about Duffy, it was the matter-of-fact way he condescended to you. Without anything else to do, I got up and went to the front door.

I looked through the peephole, which was entirely unhelpful. A man was standing there. He might have been the Mr. Preston Duffy was speaking about. He might have been the kidnapper. He might have been a Jehovah’s Witness on the graveyard shift. I had no idea what any of those people might look like.

I took my chances and opened the door.

“Ben Preston, Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office,” said the man, who looked much better than the squashed version of himself I’d seen in the peephole. He held up identification in a folding case. For the first time in my life, I examined such a thing closely. It looked like it was real, and so did he. I opened the door wider.

“I’m Rachel Goldman.” I held out my hand, and Preston (if that’s who he
really
was) took it.

“Is Duffy Madison here?” he asked. “I hate to bother you at this hour, but I got a call from him and it seemed urgent.”

“Oh, he’s here,” I assured Preston. “Follow me.” If this man
was
the criminal, he was doing a great job of concealing it. I locked the door behind him, then decided I would walk very quickly to the office. If Duffy knew the guy, he was Preston. If not, I would be walking in front of a deranged killer and kidnapper.

Maybe that wasn’t the best plan. “Duffy!” I shouted. “Mr. Preston is here!”

Duffy’s voice came back sounding slightly irritated and a little puzzled. “Yes, I know. Lead him back here, please.”

Big help, Duffy. We’d have to go through a narrow corridor. I’d have preferred to have Duffy meet his “colleague” out here.

Ben Preston looked at me a moment. He had nice blue eyes and dark hair. If he was planning on kidnapping me, I was probably being abducted above my pay grade. Then Preston seemed to pick up on my vibe. “Would you like me to walk ahead?” he asked.

There is no greater sign of idiocy than the impulse to give up one’s life rather than risk seeming rude. “Oh no,” I said. “There’s no need.”

“Yes, there is,” he answered. “Which room is it?”

I pointed down the hallway. “Third on the left. You’ll see.”

Preston headed in that direction without hesitating. Because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I followed him. When he reached the fork in the hallway—one way toward my office, the other way toward Paula’s—I said, “Left,” and he followed the direction.

Inside the office, I saw Duffy Madison get up and walk toward Preston. “Thank you for coming, Ben,” he said. “We’ve got another one.”

Duffy showed Ben the e-mail message and sat back down in the swivel chair. He reached into his pocket again and produced another pair of latex gloves, which he offered to Preston. Preston waved his hands to decline.

“If there’s been a crime committed, it wasn’t committed here,” he said to Duffy.

“True. I like to be thorough.”

There was a long-suffering quality in Preston’s voice when he answered, “I know.”

I sat down on the sofa and considered very strongly the option of breathing into a paper bag. “Okay, fellas,” I said. “Exactly how petrified should I be?”

Preston said, “Not very,” at the very same time that Duffy said, “You should be very concerned.”

I pointed at Preston. “I like your answer better.”

He smiled, and it was a nice smile. “There’s not much reason to be worried,” he said. “This is just an e-mail. It’s made to look scary, but it really doesn’t say anything that can be considered criminal. And you don’t fit the profile of the other women this person has targeted.”