If Looks Could Kill (14 page)

"Is that a problem?"

"I didn't know you were a woman. How did he?"

Chris got to her feet, ostensibly to refill her coffee cup. "My initials, probably. Most of the early women mystery and suspense writers used initials instead of their names because it was thought that women didn't sell as well. Anyone familiar with the genre knows that."

"Or he could know you."

Chris stopped, coffeepot in hand, ready to pour. "You're not making me feel any better, Chief."

"I'm not paid to overlook any of the angles. Where's the letter now?"

With an effort, Chris went on pouring. She even poured a cup for him. "I told my editor to enclose the letter and envelope in a plastic baggie and keep it with him until somebody told him what to do with it. I tried to call Sergeant Lawson, but she wasn't there."

He nodded, still stroking that upper lip. It must have been a great mustache. "We'll work something out. When's she supposed to show up?"

Chris's footsteps echoed all the way up to the rafters as she returned with the cups. Her pace always increased when she was upset, her heels hitting the floor with a distinctive clack. Right now they ricocheted like an AK-47. "About two hours ago. I guess she got caught up at work or something."

He accepted his mug of coffee and took a moment to consider the pile of letters before him. "Don't you throw anything away?"

"I should at least get a thank you," she protested. "If there is something going on, think of how much tougher it would be to track down without this stuff."

MacNamara gave her a considered look, still not moving to take advantage of the coffee. "I'm afraid 'if' just isn't an operative word anymore." He gave the paper in his hand a brief wave. "I have a feeling about this."

Chris had actually managed to swallow a good, hot mouthful of coffee. With MacNamara's words, it stuck right in the back of her throat. "I don't suppose those feelings of yours are ever wrong."

That actually won her a measured smile. "Could be worse. You could really be psychic."

"Don't count anything out yet. I could find out I'm the killer and I'm writing myself these notes."

She wanted a laugh out of that. She was expecting it from the wrong person.

"Have you found anything in the letters that might mean something?" he asked.

"If I had," she countered just a bit testily, "I'd be holding them out to you right now."

He nodded and set his coffee cup down on the table beside the bigger pile of cards. "Well, then, let's get started."

* * *

Mac was amazed at the things people told a perfect stranger in a letter. Dreams, frustrations, family crises. He'd been through about half his pile, and he felt as if he'd been caught peeping through suburban windows.

He'd expected fan mail to be about books. About the skill of an author, the theme of a work. These were about loneliness and connection, and not a little about obsession. And Chris Jackson considered them perfectly normal.

"People feel they can talk to me," she explained when he mentioned it. "They think they know me somehow."

"But to tell you about their divorces?"

"I got those after the
Fury
book. There's a lot of anger out there I didn't know about."

Mac shook his head, amazed. Disconcerted. He knew how screwed up the world was. Hell, he'd earned a post-grad degree in it. The bad guys were taking over, and on a good day all you could hope to do was stem the tide. But somehow, he'd always depended on the normal people to be out there balancing the scales a little.

Maybe he didn't see them, maybe he'd never participated, but he'd believed in them like his mother did the Trinity. But if these letters were any indication, if people were so distanced and disconnected that they had no one to tell their problems to but an anonymous author, the scales were tipping a little farther to the negative side than he'd thought.

Somewhere out there, there had to be normal, healthy people who had regular jobs, paid their bills, and managed to stay married until natural death they did part. He guessed they just didn't write letters like these.

"All your mail's like this?" he asked.

They were seated across from each other on the facing couches, the mail piled on a brass-and-glass table between them, cups half empty and the ashtray half full. Mac thought he saw a couple of pillow feathers in the crease of the chintz couch cushion, but it wasn't something he would ask about.

Chris Jackson, her long legs tucked up under her in a curiously defensive position, gave off a little shrug. "You probably have an intense pile," she allowed, glancing up briefly from the letter she was holding.

Mac saw her gaze skitter away, the way a perp's does when he's hiding a stash just on the other side of a door, or his partner's waiting in the dark with a sawed-off to save him. Furtive, guilty, the sure sign of concealment.

"Problems?"

Her head snapped back so fast, her hair swung a little. Her quick grin was sheepish and amazingly shy. "No. I was just... thinking."

Without another word, she bent back to her task. Mac watched her a moment longer, a pretty, bright-eyed woman with mahogany hair and a set of legs that would have provoked a riot in the squad room back home. A square face, the kind that makes determination look good, and eyes the color of old whiskey. Mac knew why he was alone. He wondered why she was.

And what it was she was hiding back up in that loft of hers.

"Do you know Billy Trumbel?" he asked suddenly.

That set her back again. "Pardon?"

Mac lit another cigarette and picked up a white envelope addressed in purple ink. "Billy Rae Trumbel. I think he's a high school junior. Parents run the Sleep Well. Do you know him?"

Mac didn't have to look up to know she smiled. "You mean the founding member of Junior Sociopaths of America? Sure. What'd he set fire to now?"

Mac took the time to savor the harsh sear of unfiltered smoke in his lungs before answering. "Fire, huh? I'll keep an eye out."

Those sharp eyes were on him now, and Mac knew she was trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.

"So, what am I now?" she asked. "The impartial sounding board for local impressions?"

"I didn't figure you'd mind that much," he said, lifting the envelope in his hand. "After all, I
am
helping you find your mad killer."

"Please don't call him
my
mad killer. I claim no ownership whatsoever. I'd rather not even be mentioned in the same breath as he."

Mac set the envelope back down, the letter inside nothing more than a request for back titles. "I'm also helping your grammar."

"Don't push it."

Mac allowed a grin and thought how rusty that felt. He was still going to have to face that dismal, empty house tonight. He was cooling down a case of beer to shave off the sharper corners of disillusionment and jacking up on nicotine to survive the sapping monotony. But he'd be eternally grateful to anyone who could give him a reason to get up in the morning.

His next candidate for the ghoul hall of fame was a pink envelope with flowers and a "Save the Dolphins" stamp on the back. He hadn't seen anything like it since his kid sister had written him in Nam.

"It's tough bringing your big-city suspicions to a small town."

Mac looked up, distracted and surprised. "What?"

It was her turn to grin, a small, wry thing that betrayed those ghosts. "I said, it's tough adjusting your view of the world to Pyrite. It seems so outrageous to be quite that suspicious here."

Mac considered her a moment. "You weren't by any chance a cop, too, were you?"

"Cops aren't the only ones privileged enough to see humanity at its finest."

He took another drag and blew the smoke away from her. "You don't see things quite the way the town thinks you do, do you?"

Chris finished stuffing a birthday card back into its envelope and tossed it on the negative pile. "That's my little secret."

"You have a lot of those."

She faced him then, and Mac got a glimpse of her quiet defiance. "Doesn't everybody?"

Not much to argue with there. Mac made a strategic retreat and picked up a new envelope. She did the same.

Another white one, typed this time. Careful, precise spacing, the address situated as perfectly on the front as a painting on a museum wall. Mac absently fingered the carefully positioned "Love" stamp.

"Well," Chris said, sipping at her coffee as she read. "I think your instincts are right on the mark about Billy Rae. But then, I think people are much too trusting with Weird Allen over at the ShopMart, and that L. J. Watson is probably running numbers out of his basement."

Mac looked up, just a little distracted. "I hope you don't expect me to do anything about it."

"Arrest the man who recommended you? Not when the prosecuting attorney's his sister's nephew, I don't." Her smile grew very irreverent, and she reached over to take another sip of coffee. "I just thought you'd want to know to avoid L.J.'s on Tuesday afternoons so you don't catch him. On the other hand, I thought you might like to keep a closer eye on Allen."

Mac conceded both points with a short nod, taking another drag on his cigarette. He'd seen Allen and come to the same conclusions. Definitely overdue for an arraignment for weenie wagging. The kind of disenfranchised person he used to see in video arcades back in Chicago. Already well known at the station, because he was always there asking to join the auxiliary police. Just the kind of help Mac needed.

"Something else you might want to remember," Chris was saying, her gaze flicking over the note in her hand. "If you like your privacy. In a small town, it's hard to keep a secret. Paulie Twill, who does the trash, is also Luella Simpson's nephew. He just loves telling 'what I found in the cans today' stories."

She never looked up, but she didn't need to. Mac thought of the pile of aluminum that had been collecting outside his house for the last week, and bit back an oath. Maybe a small town hadn't been the answer. He'd been used to his anonymity, just one apartment in ten, in one building out of thousands across Chicago. He'd never had to worry about being given an evaluation on what Paulie the trash king pulled out of his driveway.

Mac crushed his cigarette out in the lumpy ashtray, wondering just what else the author with the sharp eyes had seen from that balcony of hers. "You perform this service for everybody who's new to town?"

Her enigmatic little smile nudged again at Mac's instincts. "Once a social worker..."

"How long did you beat the streets?" he asked.

For some reason, he held off opening the envelope in his hands. It intrigued him in ways he couldn't explain. Gut ways that couldn't be set out in a report. His attention had already moved to it, so that he didn't hear the funny little silence across from him. He was pulling out the thin piece of paper that lay nestled in the envelope.

"Oh," she finally said, "not that long. I guess I wasn't made of stern enough stuff."

The folds in the letter were as sharp as the crease in his uniform slacks. The note, short and succinct, was perfectly centered on the cheap paper, the words innocuous and vague. A shiver of prescience snaked down his back.

Already knowing what he'd see, he turned the envelope back over. "St. Louis," he muttered.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I already told you. I worked my way through St. Louis University there."

Mac looked up, disoriented by the answer to a question he hadn't asked. He gave the envelope a little wave in Chris's direction. "That letter at the publishers," he clarified. "It was postmarked from St. Louis, right?"

Chris went so still that Mac couldn't even see her breathe. He had the fleeting impression of a very small animal, caught in a sudden light and seeking protection in silence. "Yeah." There was dread in her voice.

All he could do was nod. Computer printing, probably a twenty-four-pin dot matrix. Cheap, clean paper. Careful, ambiguous words that tickled his instincts like the sight of a gym bag being carried down a street in Cabrini Green. He had an answer she didn't want, and fought the rush of exhilaration.

'"Dear C. J.,'" he read without prompting, instinctively holding the letter by thumb and finger, even though any real evidence had long since been forfeit. '"I just wanted you to know. I recognize what you're doing. I want you to know what I'm doing, because we're so much the same. Answer soon.' It's signed J. C."

Her dismissal was too quick, too nonchalant, and too definite. "It's somebody who wants me to read his manuscript. I get those letters all the time."

"I don't think so. Does the name J. C. ring any bells?"

She scowled. "Yeah, but I doubt he'd bother to write letters. I hear he goes in more for Sermons on the Mount."

The clock ticked in plodding monotone. Outside some girls were jumping rope, their shrill voices dissonant on the rhyming song. A car pulled to a stop and a door slammed.

"Do you go up to St. Louis?"

"Sure."

Her voice was calm, so carefully measured she could have been talking about carpet colors. Mac looked up to see the fallacy of her composure in those telltale eyes of hers. Fleeting, deep, harshly constrained, the terror betrayed her.