Walking Shadow

"You were the one stalking Christopholous, weren't you?" I said.

She buried her face in her hands and cried louder. Now in addition to tears, there was boo-hoo.

"You had a crush on him, and he didn't respond, and so you began to follow him around."

She turned and lay on the bed and buried her face in the pillow and sobbed.

"We got time, Jocelyn. We got nowhere to go. When you're through crying, you can tell me."

She cried louder and buried her head deeper into the pillow. I waited. Hawk was leaning on the wall watching Jocelyn, the way you'd watch an interesting but not very affecting movie. Vi

He was listening to music. Jocelyn's fists were tightly clenched, the unused Kleenex still held in her right fist. She began to pound on the mattress as she cried. Then she kicked her feet. The crying began to wear down after a time. The pounding stopped and the kicking became desultory. She began to moan, "Oh God, oh God" and twist on the bed as if she were in pain. And finally that stopped and she lay still, her face still in the pillow, as her breathing began to normalize. She needed more air so she took her head out of the pillow and turned it away from us, toward the window. The room was quiet.

"So how come you kidnapped yourself?" I said.

I could see Jocelyn thinking about my question and thinking about her answer, and I could see her body go almost limp in a kind of physiological surrender.

"You wouldn't believe me," Jocelyn said. Her voice was shaky.

"I had to convince you that I needed help."

"Help with what?" I said.

"Oh, God," she said.

"We all need help with him," I said.

"What else."

"It's what…" she paused and struggled with her breath.

"… it's what every woman needs."

"The love of a good man," I said. I was falling into her speech patterns.

"Yes," she said. The final sibilant came out in a long hiss.

"You were everything I ever wanted, but you had her!"

The way she said her sounded like she might have been speaking of Vlad the Impaler.

"Susan," I said.

"Yes. Susan. Susan, Susan, Susan. There's always a goddamned Susan."

"What a drag," I said.

"DeSpain have a Susan?"

Her whole body stiffened. She turned her head toward me and rolled over on her side and looked at me as if I had spoken in tongues.

"DeSpain?"

"Yeah. Didn't you and he have a fling in Framingham? About ten years ago? You were with the Metro West Theater Group.

Somebody was stalking you. He was the investigating officer."

Jocelyn sat up on the edge of the tangled bed. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face was lined with the fabric of the bedspread. She patted at her hair, trying to get her appearance back into line.

"I can barely recall the incident," she said.

"Even though the same DeSpain is now Chief of Police in Port City, where you are working and living when not tying yourself up in hotel rooms?"

"It's something I've put behind me. It was a long time ago and it was very distasteful."

"He was married, wasn't he?"

"Yes. To a hideous travesty of womanhood."

"And he left her for you."

"He wanted me, he needed me."

"So what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"How come you and DeSpain aren't cheek by jowl ever after?"

I said.

She frowned.

"I told you," she said.

"It's over."

"He turned out not to be everything you ever wanted? He was a pig?"

I waited. She looked at me and past me and past Hawk and Vi

"I wanted love," she said.

"He wanted sex."

"That combo would never work," I said.

"No."

I waited again. She didn't elaborate.

"So how come you both ended up in Port City?" I said.

"I came here to work," she said.

"And DeSpain?"

"You'll have to ask him."

"Who was stalking you in Framingham?" I said.

"I was working part-time at a child care center," she said.

"My supervisor was stalking me."

"They convict him?"

She laughed. It was a surprising laugh, guttural and humorless.

"The old boy system doesn't convict its kind," she said.

"Must be a glitch somewhere," I said.

"Lots of guys doing time."

"You know what I mean," she said.

"Sure."

We were quiet. The day had dwindled into late afternoon. The motel window, facing east, looked out on a darkening parking lot.

There were no lights on in the room except the lamp by the bed and its small yellow illumination served only to make the rest of the room look grayer.

"Tell me about Christopholous," I said.

"It's not like you think it was," she said.

I didn't say anything. Her voice seemed steady; and, though still quite small, gaining strength. I realized she was begi

"We were mad about each other," she said.

"It was all we could do to keep from falling into each other's arms in public."

"Why shouldn't you fall into each other's arms in public?" I said.

"He wanted me passionately," Jocelyn said.

"And I loved him more than life itself."

"But now you don't?"

She paused for a long time.

"It's over," she said finally.

"Because?"

"Because he found someone else," she said.

"Another Susan," I said.

Jocelyn nodded so slowly, as to be ponderous.

"Exactly," she said.

"Another goddamned Susan."

"You knew her?"

Jocelyn shook her head.

"But it had to be someone else, didn't it?"

"He adored me," she said, "until some bitch got her claws into him."

"So you had to follow him around, see who it was."

Jocelyn nodded vigorously.

"And to be near him. To be able to look at him even if only from afar. To be there for him if he ever needed me."

"Nothing wrong with making him a little uncomfortable, the sonovabitch," I said.

"The bastard," Jocelyn said.

"Ever find out who the Susan was?" I said.

"I never caught them," Jocelyn said.

"But I had my suspicions.

The way they talked together, the way she looked at him. How she'd leave early from a board meeting or come late to a show case.

And he wouldn't be in his office, the way she wasn't always where she said she'd be. I had my suspicions."

My heart felt like a stone in my chest. I saw where we were going.

"Rikki Wu," I said.

"Absolutely," Jocelyn said.

"She had her hooks into him down to the bone."

"So you made an anonymous call," I said.

She looked a little surprised.

"Like the kind you made to Susan about me," I said.

She looked more surprised.

"You called Lo

"She had to be stopped," Jocelyn said.