If Looks Could Kill (17 page)

He'd changed the office old L. J. had kept. Instead of a twelve-by-sixteen picture of L.J.'s horse Tony on the K-Mart-paneled wall, there was a collection of diplomas, obviously to reassure the town that their new chief knew his business. FBI training, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms camp, bachelor's in law enforcement, and several medals for sharpshooting.

Nothing about his medals of valor, Chris noted, or his commendations from the Chicago police, which she'd heard about from L. J. An efficient display rather than a self-serving one.

In the bookcases that now sported many of the same forensic and judicial tomes that graced Chris's shelves, L.J.'s bowling trophies had been replaced by collections of pictures, the varying resemblances betraying relationships, the comfortable poses implying closeness. Mac's desk was as orderly as his uniform and his coatrack carried a Cubs cap along with his uniform cap and rain poncho. He'd even added a tape deck to the radio system. At the moment, Joe Cocker was inviting some sweet young thing to leave her hat on.

It made Chris smile as she paced the tile room, her heels clicking in time to the funky, bluesy beat. Her hips even took on that saucy sway that had always gone with it in her mind. "That's what I always wanted to do."

"What?"

Chris turned, surprised. Evidently she'd taken to thinking out loud. Her smile was abashed, but she kept on moving, still in rhythm with the raucous music.

"Sing backup for Joe Cocker."

"You sing?" Mac asked from where he was seated in his office, his chair tilted back, his posture relaxed. Chris had noticed, though, that his hands had that funny tremor to them again, and that there had been a couple of cigarettes in the Windy City ashtray on his desk when she'd shown up.

She laughed. "God, no. But I could sure strut when I was fifteen. I figured I could get by."

"Was that when you were out in L. A.?" he asked.

Chris stumbled to a halt, suddenly, irrationally afraid. She refused to look at him, knowing that if she did, he'd know. Embarrassed more than unnerved. Instead, she examined the aerial map that took up the wall behind Sue's desk.

"Luella said you lived out there," he elaborated from behind her.

"Yep," she admitted, her voice as carefully passive as his as she headed off on another tour of the front room.

"She said you didn't like it."

"Not much."

It wasn't that Chris couldn't discuss Los Angeles. She didn't want to. She didn't want to really have to relive anything that had brought her to her life in Pyrite, any of the mistakes she'd made, the sins she'd committed, the absurdities she'd survived. Those were things best locked away behind their separate doors, building blocks in her life that belonged deep underground, story after story beneath the one she now inhabited.

Mac must have been a hell of a detective. It didn't take him a heartbeat to catch on.

"You want to come in and sit down?" he asked easily, still not moving, except to pick up a big paperweight with a tarantula caught inside a bubble of Plexiglas.

Chris just shook her head. "Not till I have to, thanks. I'm not overly fond of small spaces."

She stopped at the front window to look out across at Eloise checking the window display at the How Do. The little woman moved like a small bird, in fits and starts, her hands patting at the silk flowers like favored children, then dipping to chastise a cat or sweeping up to pat at her hair. Born and bred in Pyrite, her expectations limited by the horizon, her transgressions meager, her conscience clear. Chris envied her.

"Is that why you decided to go riding?" Mac asked. "Your house too small?"

Chris had been concentrating so hard on Eloise that the sound of Mac's voice startled her. She didn't bother to turn. "I had to have a little time to deal with those pictures."

Behind her, there was silence. She was glad that Sue had taken Shelly out for pizza, that the rest of the city hall denizens wouldn't show up until one for afternoon hours. She needed to show a calm face to them about this, and so far she wasn't really managing it.

"I thought they were a little too close for comfort, too," Mac finally said, his voice still perfectly calm. Chris wondered if he'd moved at all yet, or whether he was still just watching her with those deceptive gray eyes of his, that horrible, fat spider suspended between his hands.

She shook her head, wondering why she was giving this man more than she'd ever given anybody. Wondering what there was in his demeanor, in his background, that should elicit such trust.

"Not a little too close. Picture perfect." She laughed then, a sharp, brittle sound that betrayed the hot turmoil in her chest. "This really is a personal thing, isn't it?"

Again, a measured silence, as if he wouldn't think to ask her an unconsidered question. "Any ideas why?"

That brought her around from the window. "No," she insisted, her voice more strident than she'd intended. With an effort, she backed down. "The letters are ambiguous and anonymous. I can't think of anyone I've ever met who could possibly want to do this."

Still not quite the truth. This was the portion of the truth she could give now. The truth she thought would suffice. Because, of course, the truth was, she couldn't
remember
anyone who would want to do that. But she couldn't remember a lot.

"How 'bout any other kind of contact? Phone calls, that kind of thing."

"Nothing. I've had a lot of hang-ups on the answering machine recently, but that could be anything."

Mac righted his chair. "Nothing said?"

Chris shook her head, but his careful response incited a new disquiet in her. Was this something else she'd deliberately ignored, like the letters? Was the killer trying another way to get hold of her? It more than crossed her mind to just rip the whole damn phone from the wall and give it back to Ma Bell.

She rubbed at the weariness in her eyes. "I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised Lawson called."

"But you still don't have any idea who could be doing it."

She shook her head, picking at the hem of her brightly colored blouse.

"Do me a favor, if you will," he suggested diffidently, as if it really weren't that important. "When you go home, try and think of all the people you've known well, especially anyone who might know you have a pseudonym. Here, St. Louis, wherever you've lived in the last few years. I know it probably won't amount to anything. This character is probably just a fruitball needing to get his rocks off to your prose, but it can't hurt. Will you do that for me?"

Chris kept pacing, names and dates and places already curling past her imaginary viewfinder like the credits on a film. Each one more innocuous than the next. Safe, quiet people she'd deliberately chosen to help defray the isolation. To begin building the confidence that could eventually lead her to this spot.

Chris knew she would only give him part of what he wanted. Because she could only manage part of it, even now.

"Another thing you might want to think about," he said, "is what you were doing sixteen months ago. Usually a pattern like this is set off by something important to the perp. A disappointment, a trauma, that kind of thing. If it had to do with you, you might remember."

Chris refused to turn her answering grin to him. It was wry and dark. "Like not answering mail, or writing a book someone swears they've already written and I stole from their attic?"

"That happened?"

"A couple of times. But those same people also accused four other authors."

"I'd like to know anyway."

She nodded again, wishing for respite, for at least the small relief of finding out that whoever this was had never touched her. Had never shaken hands and smiled or sat down to a meal with her.

Let it be some stranger with disconnected problems, who had never relied on her or been disappointed by her, so she didn't have to bear the weight of that, too.

She walked back by the front window just in time to see her possibility of respite end. Climbing out of a Chevy sedan was Sergeant Lawson. Instinctively Chris straightened, ran a quick hand through her hair and resettled her attitude into calm consideration before having to face the detective.

"It looks like it's show time," she said.

Behind her, Mac's chair scraped back as he stood to join her. "You'll do fine."

"No I won't." She turned a wry grin on him. "But I'm not going to let her know that."

He still had that spider in his hands, cradled gently, as if the venom inside could still reach him if he weren't careful. His attention was on the detective as she pulled her briefcase from the car. "Well, I hope she got some answers while she was out."

Chris turned to see that the tremor had stopped. His hands were perfectly still, his expression quiet. And she, she thought, had stopped moving. Had pulled her own protection back over her.

"Answers?" she asked. "I thought she was going to find someplace to stay."

He turned to Chris, then, and she saw how delicately he thought he needed to approach her. It was just a hint, just a smell of caution on him, but Chris caught it and was almost amused all over again.

"She was also going to try and get a name from the post office box on the return address on your letters."

The amusement almost died stillborn. They were back to business. Settling down to the task of peeling away the layers of protection between her and the venom that she held between her hands.

The bell over the city hall door sounded just as cheery as the one at the How Do. It made Chris's teeth grate.

Mac made an attempt at greetings. Lawson never gave him a chance. Spinning right to Chris, she leveled her flat brown gaze. "I have a name on the post office box," she announced, her feet planted squarely beneath her in shoes that didn't match her suit, her voice gravelly and her eyes red-rimmed with the allergies she'd brought with her.

Chris wasn't sure how to answer. Lawson looked as if she expected congratulations. Chris figured she'd leave that to Mac. She was having trouble enough staying inside walls that were beginning to make her sweat. She was having trouble keeping her place when Lawson came so close she made Chris's stomach heave.

That smell. It was the smell Lawson carried with her. Chris hadn't even identified it until just now. Pine cleaner. Chris had often heard that the sense of smell was the most primal, inciting raw emotion even beyond memory. Chris smelled pine cleaner and fought the urge to vomit. To run. To cower in a corner where she'd be safe. Chris was sure it was just a faint trace, but it seemed like a miasma, and the memories it culled were of hours on her knees, the smell of old cooking grease, the words of Revelations, the ache of exhausted shoulders and holy vengeance.

"And?" Mac prodded.

And. And what? With an effort, Chris pulled herself back to the present. Not grease and mold, but fresh coffee and old cigars. Lawson's feral eyes glued to Chris like lasers. Mac poised for intervention.

He didn't look excited. Maybe Lawson pissed him off, too. Maybe he didn't like a policewoman with no fashion sense. Chris couldn't pull her attention away from Lawson long enough to find out.

Lawson never acknowledged him. Clearing her throat for the fiftieth time since showing up that morning, she directed herself to Chris as if it were just the two of them involved. "The box is at the Brentwood post office in St. Louis County. 63144. You know the area?"

Chris nodded, hating the suspense, hating the bearer of bad news. "That's where most of
That Scottish Play
is set."

Lawson nodded back, so briskly that her mussy brown hair bobbed. "Does the name Jacqueline Christ mean anything to you?"

Chris fought hard to hold still. She struggled to breathe as the room tilted before her.

God, what kind of joke was this?

Lawson didn't miss an inflection. "You know her," she stated immediately.

Chris opened her mouth. She closed it. She broke through her own paralysis to try an offhand gesture. "Yeah," she admitted, waving an ineffectual hand and then shoving both hands into her pants' pockets. "I do."

Mac turned to her then, his own attention sharp.

"Who is she?"

Chris could only manage a shrug, desperate to pull some sense out of this. "Me."

Chapter 7