Hope to Die

"Do you have it with you now?"

She fished in her purse, brought out a ring of keys, identified one as being the key to the Hollander house. "So even if somebody took it when I wasn't looking," she said, "which wouldn't make sense because nobody even knew I had it, but if somebody did, and he took it, well, he couldn't have, because here it is."

"That just means he gave it back."

"Don't you think I would remember? Especially after what happened, don't you think it would get my attention if someone gave back a key to the house where my aunt and uncle were murdered?"

T J pointed out that he could have returned the key the same way he took it, without her knowledge. "And it wouldn't have had to be after the break-in," I added. "He wouldn't have kept the key for long, wouldn't have wanted to chance your missing it. He'd just need it long enough to have a copy made. It's not a hard key to duplicate. Any neighborhood locksmith could do it in five minutes."

She was silent for a long moment, then a

"She 'fraid we might look through it," T J said.

"And didn't want to let us know she was thinking that, but didn't want to leave the purse, either."

"Hidin' something."

"Feels that way to me, too."

When she came back to the table I fed her a few easy questions, ones it wouldn't disturb her to answer. They were designed to make our relationship feel a little less adversarial. Then I asked her if there was anything else she could think of, something she might feel reluctant to mention. I could feel her wrestling with the question, deciding whether or not to give it up.

"No," she said at length. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing."

Back on Broadway, T J said he didn't suppose I felt like walking all the way home again. I didn't, and we headed for the subway.

"Thought you'd keep at her," he said as we walked. "Thought you'd get her to open up."

"I thought about it."

"Just handed her a card. 'Call me if you think of anything, however far-fetched or unimportant it might seem.' "

"When you go fishing," I said, "and you get a bite, you have to know when to give line and when to reel in."

"I didn't know you liked to go fishing."

"I don't," I said. "It bores me to death."

"So you gave Lia some line."

"I gave her an easy way to change her mind," I said. "She knows something, or thinks she does, or is afraid she does. Now she'll go home and think about it, and she'll feel guilty, because she lied to me and I acted as though I believed her. And maybe she'll pick up the phone." I was silent for a moment, and then I added, "But it's all guesswork, you know. If she makes the call, then I guessed right."

Not exactly, as it turned out. She made the call, but that didn't mean I'd played it right.

TWENTY-FOUR

Lia!

He is on the street in front of the coffee shop, squinting through the plate glass window, and they are in a booth with their backs to him. He wouldn't be able to pick out either of them, just seeing the backs of their heads from this distance, but the combination, black and white, makes it easy to spot them. And, across from them, a blond girl sits, and she is instantly recognizable.

And what business do these two have with Lia Parkman? How do they even know she exists?

Kristin Hollander, of course. They went to Kristin Hollander's house, she let them in, they stayed for the better part of an hour, and they left, made a phone call, and here they are, sitting across a table from Lia Parkman, Kristin's cousin.

What are they talking about?

What is she telling them?

She can't tell them too much. She doesn't really know anything. But she knows him, and she could conceivably put them on his track.

He doesn't want that. Whoever they are, whatever they're after, he doesn't want that.

His hand goes to his throat. He's not wearing a tie today, nor a jacket, just a blue shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up for comfort. He lifts out the rhodochrosite disc, feels its smoothness, tucks it away beneath his shirt.

His own fault. He knew she was a loose end, dangling invitingly, waiting for someone to grab hold and give a tug. But, because everything went so smoothly, he let himself believe it was all right to leave a loose end.

He mustn't stand here, staring in the window. They can't see him, but what's the point of drawing attention from anyone? He walks fifty yards south on Broadway, where there's a bus stop. No one thinks you're loitering when you do so at a bus stop.

And it provides a fine view of the coffee shop entrance.

His own fault, but it wasn't just simple carelessness. Because he'd found himself itching to tie off that loose end, and he'd been suspicious of his motives. His hand remembers the way the gun had bucked in it, remembers gripping the knife, cutting that throat with surgical precision. And his whole being remembers the way it felt.

Thrilling?

Well, perhaps. But he doesn't much care for the word. Roller-coaster rides are thrilling. Drugs are thrilling. Breaking rules is thrilling.

What he'd done was… what?

Satisfying?

Whatever you called it, he had wanted more of it. And so he'd overruled the impulse to tie off this loose end, talked himself out of it on the grounds that he'd be ru

Instead, he'd run a greater risk by leaving the deed undone.

There is a lesson here, he thinks, if one can but find it. There is almost certainly an important underlying principle. He will have to think about it.

What's the best that can happen?

She's in there, sitting with them (whoever they are, Mr. Salt and Mr. Pepper, whatever it is they really want). Well, the best thing that can happen is that the only questions they think to ask lead to answers that have nothing to do with him. In which case the only harm done by this meeting in this dubious restaurant will be to their respective digestive tracts.

Conversely, what's the worst that can happen?

The worst that can happen is not that dire. She can tell them she met with a man named Arden Brill. That's the name he gave her, and it is manifestly not his own. If they look for Arden Brill, they will search in vain.

Still, it was incredibly stupid to give her that name. Why not John Smith, for God's sake? Why not John Doe or Richard Roe, or, hell, anything properly anonymous and uninformative? He was being cute, calling himself Arden Brill, and to what purpose? Making little jokes only he himself could appreciate? That was ego in action, setting traps into which he alone could fall.

Stupid.

God, he loathes and detests stupidity! He finds it a

She can tell them his name, Arden Brill's name. She can furnish a description of Arden Brill. She can't provide a photograph of him, can't supply anything his fingertips have touched. He never spilled any DNA anywhere near her- though, he has to admit, she's physically attractive, and that aching vulnerability adds to the strength of the attraction.

Not that it should make any difference. He's not going to make love to her. He doesn't want to, and even if he did, it's not something he would permit himself to do. He would not be quite that stupid, thanks all the same.

What he is going to do- and the sooner the better- is kill her. And why on earth should it be any more satisfying to kill a pretty woman than a plain one?

But it is. He knows it, knows it in his tingling hands, knows it in his surging blood.

Knows it in his bones.

The two men are first to leave. Side by side, youth and age, black and white, they walk uptown on Broadway, headed away from him, looking like a poster for National Brotherhood Week. Well? Shall he follow them?