Now or Never (9 page)

“Go on, do it,” she would urge him, thrusting her giant brown nipple into his reluctant mouth. “Relieve me of the burden of all this milk. It’s all your fault anyway—you caused me to swell up like this. And it’s your fault your father no longer wants me.”

The musky female scent of her would envelop him as he felt her fumbling under her nightdress. She moaned and trembled.

“What are you doing,” he’d demanded, terrified, taking his mouth from her, but she simply forced his head back again.

“Do it, just do it,” she ordered. And when he pulled away, she smacked him viciously across the face. “Do as I say, or I’ll have the hide off you,” she hissed, shuddering with excitement when he obeyed. And then she had put her hands on him too.

But he didn’t want to think about that.

His bedroom was as immaculate as the rest of his house: a plain beige carpet, a plain wooden headboard, and glass-topped wooden night tables. The bed was a single—the very idea of sleeping next to someone nauseated him. This room was his alone.

He removed his tweed jacket and hung it neatly in the closet. He took off his gray flannel pants and hung them up too. He removed his shirt and his jockey shorts and tossed them into the laundry basket. Then he took a long shower.

Afterward, he dried off and inspected himself, naked, in the mirror. He was short and stocky, with big shoulders from early years of weight training. Unlike the thick hair on his head, which was toned to a blackish-brown at a downtown Boston salon every month, his chest hair was gray. And when he needed a shave, so was the stubble on
his chin. When he had first started graying at the age of twenty-six, he had thought it looked quite attractive.
Distinguished
was the word he had used about himself. But he had soon been forced to the conclusion that premature grayness meant premature aging. He had been coloring it ever since.

He looked nothing like the photo-fit. He smiled at the irony of it. Except for the eyes, of course—but then, he always wore contacts when he was “hunting.”

Picking up his heavy-rimmed glasses, he put them on, then brushed his hair, parting it precisely on the left. Naturally, when he had pulled off the ski mask, his thick coarse hair had stood on end, which was how it looked in the photo-fit. Not smooth and sleek the way he always wore it, glossy with just a touch of old-fashioned pomade.

The rest of the picture had been meaningless except for the broad strokes: the narrow face, the heavy brows. But the mouth was all wrong, and so was the jaw. He laughed out loud, just thinking about it. And about how much cleverer he was than the cops. They would never catch him—not in a million years.

Hunting
was the word he preferred to
stalking
, which was what the police called it. He was a huntsman seeking a worthy prey. It took him a while because he was picky, and besides he enjoyed the search. He knew exactly what he was looking for. Then came the “chase,” and the perverse excitement in the fact that the woman was unaware that he knew her almost as intimately as she knew herself. And that was the time he struck. The perfect moment.

He pulled on a pair of black cotton sweatpants and a white polo shirt and sneakers, then strolled back down the hall. He stopped outside the locked door. He stared consideringly at it for a long time, but he would not go in there tonight. There was no need.

Back downstairs in the kitchen he opened the refrigerator. He had already eaten dinner at a small bistro in town,
one of several he enjoyed. They had come to know him because he was a regular, and they never minded that he was always alone rather than a couple, which would have meant more money in their cash register. He always drank one glass of red wine, always ordered mashed potatoes, and always overtipped, guaranteeing himself good service on his next visit.

He inspected the refrigerator’s contents. There was a large bottle of Smirnoff, a couple of bottles of soda and three lemons. And a small narrow steel knife in a plastic case.

He took out the Smirnoff and poured himself a tumblerful. He cut a slice of lemon and put it in the vodka. Taking a sip, he walked back into his study and sat down at the desk.

Taking a framed photograph from the top drawer, he set it in front of him. The glass was shattered, but it was still possible to see the woman’s face: fleshy, stern, unsmiling. He lifted his glass in a toast.

He said, “To the mother. Who made all this possible.” Then he drank the vodka in one go.

Unclipping the fastener on the box-file, he took out the papers. They were press reports on the rape and killing of Summer Young. He read each one avidly, spending a long time on those that gave details of the discovery, smiling again at the useless photo-fit.

Later, he took half a dozen Polaroids from a locked drawer and spread them out on the desk. Then he returned to the kitchen and refilled his glass.

Back at the desk, he stared at the photographs. They were all of young women. He glanced quickly up at the mother’s picture, feeling her eyes on him. He reached up and slammed it facedown onto the desk, cursing as a shard of glass cut into his thumb. Sweeping the mother’s image into the drawer, he put his bloody thumb into his mouth and sucked on it.

The Polaroids had been taken from the car and the girls were unaware they were being photographed. In some, they were walking toward him along the street; in others, they were walking away.

He sat for a long time, picking them up, studying the details of each one, comparing them. Finally he took a red marker and made an X on the girl of his choice.

He put the papers and the Polaroids back into the drawer and locked it. Then he put the file away, next to two others, in the wooden cabinet in the corner.
Along with the files of those who had gone before
.

Whistling, he got a pair of pruning shears from the garage and walked out into his back garden. It was as immaculate as the house: every plant was neatly in its space, everything was weeded and cared for. He bent over his roses, snipping a stem here and there.

He was just like any other suburban man on a fine early May evening. Except for the locked room in his house. And the slight bulk of Summer Young’s underpants in his pocket. Every now and then he stopped what he was doing and slid his hand in there. Just to touch them, remembering. For the moment, it was enough.

M
ALMAR
P
RODUCTIONS’
M
ADISON
A
VENUE OFFICES
were awake and bustling with activity at eight thirty the following Monday morning, when Mal breezed in wearing black biker’s shorts, a black baseball cap and a white sweatshirt with a Tucson logo on the front.

Beth Hardy was on the phone. She swung her chair around and looked Mal up and down, her eyebrows raised. “What happened to you? You look radiant!”

Mal laughed. “Twelve hundred calories a day. A four-mile walk at six every morning. Abs, buns, and thighs workout at nine. Funky aerobics at eleven. A little yoga stretching at noon”—she paused and struck an athletic pose—“and you too can look like this.”

Beth sighed regretfully. She was petite and rounded, with long dark hair and an ample bosom. “Not even starvation and twelve-mile hikes would change these boobs,” she said gloomily. “The hell with them. All I want is to look good in clothes.”

“Most women want to look good
out
of their clothes.”

“Yeah, well not this one. I’d settle for being a
Vogue
waif.”

Mal laughed. “Your husband would miss you if you changed.”

Beth rolled her expressive brown eyes. “Husbands.” Then she laughed too. “I guess you get what God gives you, and you just have to make the most of it.”

“Meanwhile you look great. I love the suit.”

Beth was wearing a cream fitted jacket and skirt that enhanced her curves. “Calvin. Bloomie’s sale last year. It’s our anniversary. Rob’s taking me out on the town—dinner, champagne, all that romantic stuff.” She laughed again, and Mal could see how happy she was.

“How many years is it now?”

“Seven and counting. We got married right out of college. I guess we’re going for the record.”

“Lucky you,” Mal said quietly, meaning it.

“I’ve called a staff meeting at nine,” Beth said. “But I’ll get my stuff together and bring you up to date on Tuesday’s program first. Then if you have any problems with it, we can hash them out at the meeting. As you know, the next six weeks are set. We can go through them, and research can update you on their progress.”

“Okay.” Mal turned and headed toward her own office.

“Oh, by the way—Detective Harry Jordan called. Several times. He didn’t seem to believe me when I told him you’d gone away. I guess he didn’t think you’re entitled to a vacation. I told him you’d be back today. I also had Research find out his life story—the report’s on your computer.”

Mal paused, her hand on her office door. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Yeah. Your home phone number.” Beth looked curiously at her. “So? Are you going to tell me what happened at that meeting in Boston?”

Mal shrugged and turned away. “A wild-goose chase. That’s all it was. Detective Jordan didn’t have his act together.”

Beth nodded speculatively. “Then this is a personal matter? Just between you and the detective, huh?”

Mal popped her head back around the door. “Of
course not,” she said indignantly. “I have absolutely nothing to say to the man.”

Her office was large and light, with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a bird’s-eye view of the traffic surging down Madison. The Italian steel and rosewood desk was empty of papers, though that would change when her staff arrived for the production meeting at nine. Chairs were arranged around the oval rosewood conference table at one end of the room, and juice and coffee and a platter of low-fat brownies waited on the steel console.

She sat at the desk, took off the baseball cap and ran her fingers through her hair, thinking about Harry Jordan. She had behaved stupidly. He must have thought it odd, her walking out on him like that. She poured herself a glass of juice. Jordan had caught her off-guard, that was all.

As the staff straggled in for the meeting, she resolved to put the whole incident and Harry Jordan out of her mind. After all, she would never see him again.

Her day was a busy one. At the meeting she went over the script for tomorrow’s show, plotting out the sequences and making several changes. She added a followup to the previous week’s program about the billionaire, which had received sensational press. They had new film of his grand country house and the infamous Jacobean staircase, plus paparazzi stills of the old boy jumping naked from his yacht into the blue Mediterranean in the company of three naked young women.

Mal grinned at Beth’s comment on the stills: “It’s a good thing he has money, because the rest of his attributes wouldn’t get him anywhere.”

After the meeting Mal changed into a pale gray pantsuit for lunch with the network president at The Four Seasons, where they discussed her future plans. “If it’s working for you, it’s surely working for us,” he told her, thrilled with the ratings, especially for last week’s program.

From there she went to the studio for another production meeting that took longer than she expected, after which she went to the gym to work out for an hour.

It was six o’clock by the time she returned, and except for Beth the office was deserted.

Beth finished applying her lipstick and perfume. She smoothed down her skirt, smiling at Mal. “How do I look?”

“Great. In fact, you look lovely. Rob is a lucky man.”

“I tell him that every morning when he wakes up.”

“And does he tell you that every night before he goes to sleep?”

“Among other things.” She winked, laughing. “Well, I’m out of here. Anything you need before I go?”

Mal shook her head, but she looked wistful.

Beth hesitated. “What are your plans?”

“I just got back. I guess I’ll have an early night, catch up on some sleep.”

Their heads swung around in unison as the telephone rang. Mal glared at it. “Go,” she told Beth. “You’re out of here, remember?”

“I never could resist a ringing phone. I mean, it might be really important; vital; life or death.” She picked it up. “Malmar Productions.”

“Hi, Beth,” Harry Jordan said.

Her eyebrows climbed into her hair, and she mouthed “Harry Jordan” to Mal, who shook her head.

“No,” she mouthed back.

“An A for persistence, detective,” Beth said, smiling.

“Thanks for the grade, but what I’d really like is to speak to Ms. Malone.”

“Hm, well, she’s—she’s busy.” She looked at Mal, who was nodding encouragingly. “I guess,” she added, sounding doubtful.

Mal could hear his laugh booming over the phone. “I’m glad she’s back. Tell her I missed her.”

“He says he missed you,” Beth said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

Mal rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.

“You might also tell her that I’m downstairs in the lobby, and I’d surely like to see her.”

Mal shook her head again.
“Why not?”
Beth whispered, but Mal ran her finger across her throat, frowning.

“Sorry, detective, she’s just too tired. First day back at work and all that.”

“I’ll wait,” he said firmly as Beth hung up.

She looked inquiringly at Mal. “So why not? I mean, the guy’s only doing his job. What would it take just to give him the time of day, let him explain his case? Anyhow, he has a great voice. Sexy, I’d say.”

Mal flung herself into the chair and propped her feet on the desk. She glared at Beth. “He’s old, decrepit, and ugly. And you’re going to be late,” she said firmly. “Go on—don’t keep your man waiting.”

Beth sighed. She thought that, for a top TV personality, Mal looked awfully lonely.

She swung round as the elevator pinged and a man stepped out. Her eyes widened as she took him in. He was tall and lean with dark hair and a day-old stubble. He was wearing a funky black leather jacket and beat-up Levi’s that looked as though he had slept in them, and there was an air of confidence about him. He was very definitely appealing.