Walking Shadow

Vi

"Fucking barrel's going to rust through, we don't stop going to Port City," Vi

"What's the name of the book," Vi

"On Race," Hawk said.

"Yeah. How come you reading that?"

"The brother's a smart man," Hawk said.

"That racial shit bother you?" Vi

I was done with the throw-away mail and turned to the package.

The envelopes that might have checks, I saved for last.

"You got a problem with me being black, Vi

"No."

"Me either. So at the moment I got no racial shit to be bothered by, you know? I try to work on that level."

I opened the package. It was a videotape cassette. It was labeled "Jocelyn Colby." I turned it over. There was nothing else. I didn't have a videotape player.

"Either of you got a VCR?" I said.

Hawk shook his head.

"Already seen "Debbie Does Dallas,"

" he said.

"I had one," Vi

"Old lady took it with her when she split."

Hawk said, "Didn't know you was married, Vi

Vi

"I didn't either," he said.

"Probably why she split."

I picked up the phone and called Susan.

"I have a video tape that I would like to view on your machine," I said when she answered.

"If I brought an elegant lunch, perhaps you'd like to take a break from healing the loony and watch it with " me.

"It's not one of those disgusting porn thingies, is it?"

"I don't know, it came in the mail and it says Jocelyn Colby on it."

"I have a two-hour break," Susan said.

"One to three."

"You disappointed it's not a disgusting porn thingie?" I said.

"Yes," she said and hung up.

Hawk and Vi

"Is this a submarine sandwich I see before me?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"No onions."

"Elegant."

When she was working she was much less flamboyant in her makeup and clothes.

"I am not the focus of the therapy," she said when I once asked her about it. Today she wore a dark blue pants suit with a white blouse and pearls. Her makeup was discreet."

"Even if I were sane," I said, "I'd spend $100 an hour just to come and look at you."

"It's a hundred and a quarter, but I could get you a rate," she said. She went to the kitchen and came back with two place mats, knives and forks, and cloth napkins. She laid out our lunch on the coffee table.

"There's napkins with the subs," I said.

Susan looked at me pityingly, and then turned to glare at Pearl, who was stalking the sandwiches. Pearl seemed at ease with the glare, but she didn't get closer. I pointed at the cassette in the VCR.

"Do you know what's on it?" Susan said.

"Nope, I was waiting for you."

Susan slipped a sliced pickle out of her sandwich and took a bite of it.

"Roll 'em," she said.

I pressed the play button on the remote control and there was a moment while the VCR cranked up that the tape ran for a while with nothing on it, then suddenly there was Jocelyn Colby tied to a chair with a white scarf over her mouth. She squirmed against the ropes, her eyes, above the scarf, wide with fear. And that was it.

The tape ran for about five minutes. There was no sound except the muffled noise she was able to make through the scarf, no message, merely the picture of Jocelyn struggling in captivity. The screen went blank though the tape continued to roll. After it had rolled blankly far enough to persuade me it contained nothing else, I stopped it, and rewound it.

"There was someone," Susan said.

"We were wrong."

I nodded.

"How will you find her?" Susan said.

"Let's run the tape again," I said and pressed the play button.

Jocelyn was wearing a black slip and black high-heeled shoes, or more accurately one black high-heeled shoe. The other shoe lay on the floor in front of her. The strap of her slip was off her left shoulder. There was no bra strap. Her ankles and knees were bound with clothesline. Several loops of the same rope around her waist held her in the chair. The white scarf appeared to be silk. It covered her face from nose to chin. Her dark hair had fallen forward and covered her right eye. In the background of the picture was the corner of a bed. The light seemed natural and seemed to come from Jocelyn's left. Her hands were out of sight behind her back, but from the way she squirmed in the chair it appeared that they were tied to the chair. The chair itself was a sturdy oak straight chair, the kind you find in libraries. The wall behind her was a sort of neutral beige. It was blank.

I ran the tape maybe five more times while Susan sat forward, her chin on her hands, studying it. There was nothing else to see.

I shut it off.

"What does he want," Susan said.

"If it's a man," I said.

Susan shook her head impatiently.

"He or she. What does the kidnapper want? Why did he send you this tape?"

"I don't know. It lets me know he's got her."

"There was no letter with the tape?"

"No. Maybe we'll hear something in a while."

"I don't get it," Susan said.

"I think that's my mantra," I said.

"Will you notify the police?"

"Have to. I'll get a copy made of this tape and go to Port City and give the original to DeSpain."

"What else will you do?"

"I'll look into Jocelyn's background a little more. Rummage through her apartment."

Pearl came and put her head in Susan's lap. Susan stroked Pearl's head and turned toward me again.

"I know you value restraint," Susan said.

"And I know when you work you try to work with what you know, not what you feel.

But it is human to feel bad about this, and it's okay to."

Susan's eyes seemed bottomless. I always felt when I looked at them that my soul could plunge into hers through those eyes and be in peace forever. I leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, and we held the kiss until Pearl reared her head up from Susan's lap and wedged it in between us.

"I have promises to keep," I said and started for the door.

CHAPTER 39

DeSpain and I looked at the tape of Jocelyn's captivity in his office.

As he watched, the lines around his mouth deepened. He played the tape twice, and then shut it off. When he looked at me there was something around his eyes that made him look tired.

"You came to me earlier," DeSpain said, "maybe this wouldn't have happened."

"Maybe," I said.

"I'm the Chief of Police in this goddamned town," DeSpain said. His voice was flat. He sounded tired.

"I'm supposed to know when a criminal investigation is taking place."

"Didn't want to distract you from your hot pursuit of the theater killer."