Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"Ron Kray."

Nina checked the printout Armitage had given them. "He's here," she said, and read off his home address.

"That's a phony. Kray told me. He's very private."

Jack wondered why the name seemed familiar to him. He racked his brain, but the answer remained frustratingly out of reach. "So where does Mr. Kray live?" he said.

"He never told me and I never asked," Tolkan answered. "But he said he works at Sibley Memorial Hospital."

"I've heard of it," Jack said. "It's a rehab place for the elderly. Physical and psychiatric."

Tolkan nodded. "Ron's a nurse there. A psychiatric nurse."

THE MODERN layer cake of Sibley Memorial occupied a wide swath of real estate on Sleepy Hollow Road outside of Falls Church. Nina suggested they call to see if Kray was on duty, but Jack disagreed.

"First off, I don't want to take any chance of him being tipped off we're coming. Secondly, even if he's not there, the HR department is bound to have a current photo of him."

As it turned out, Kray wasn't on duty. In fact, the head of the psychiatric department told them he hadn't worked there for over two years.

They were directed to the HR department, where they obtained Kray's last known address, which matched the one on the list Chris Armitage had given them. Kray's photo ID, however, had been destroyed.

KRAY LIVED on Tyler Avenue, not more than six minutes away. Nina was silent during most of the drive. At length, she turned to Jack.

"You must think I'm quite the neurotic."

Jack concentrated on his driving. This was somewhat of a new area for him, and he wanted to make sure he read every road sign.

Nina took his silence for assent. "Yeah, you do."

"What do you care what I think?"

"For one thing, we're working together. For another, I like you. Your mind doesn't work like anyone else's I've ever met."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

She offered a nod of assent. "In a very short time, I've come to trust what you call your hunches."

"Would you call them something else?"

She nodded. "I would, yes, if I had a word to describe them. Whatever they are, they're far more than hunches, though." She put her head back. "You know, if I spend any more time with you, I'll start to doubt everything I thought was true."

She put a hand over his. "We had a moment there under the old oaks where Emma escaped from school at night." Her forefinger curled, the nail scratched lightly, erotically along his palm. "Why don't we take it from there?"

He braked until he could decipher a street sign. Also, to clear the air between them.

"Listen, Nina, I'm flattered. But just so there's no misunderstanding, I'm not into on-the-job screwing."

"Too many complications?"

The image of Sharon was beside him, with her long tanned legs, hair swept across her face, that mysterious look in her eyes he loved because he never quite knew what it meant or foretold. "Among other things."

"What if we weren't partners? I could arrange-"

"It wouldn't matter."

"Well, that's candor for you." Nina removed her hand. "Your ex still under your skin?"

He swung onto Tyler, slowed to a crawl.

"Okay, forget it. Privacy's something I respect. There is, in any case, a kind of privilege in loneliness. It makes you feel alive, introduces you to yourself."

Jack felt annoyed. "I didn't mean that."

"You just didn't say it." She took out a clove cigarette, lit up. "I have a question. D'you have any idea who Emma met underneath the oaks?"

"My daughter's life was a closed book to me. It was as well hidden as a spy's dead drop."

"You never followed up on it?"

"With who?" A nerve she had nicked flared up. "My daughter's dead."

JACK WENT up the flagstone path, knocked on the door. Immediately, a dog began to bark. He heard a scuffling inside, then the patter of feet. The door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman in a housecoat. A cigarette was dangling from her mouth.

"Yeah?" She looked Jack square in the eye without a trace of apprehension.

Jack cleared his throat. "I'm wondering if Ron Kray is home."

The dog continued barking inside the house. The woman squinted through the smoke trailing up from her cigarette. "Who?"

"Ron Kray, ma'am." Nina stepped up.

"Oh, him." The woman expelled a phlegmy cough. "He used to live here. Moved out about, oh, six months ago."

"Do you know where he went?"

"Nah." The dog's barking had become hysterical. The woman ducked her head back inside. "For God's sake, Mickey, shut the fuck up!" She turned back. "Sorry about that. People make him nervous. He's probably gonna leave a deposit on the kitchen linoleum." She grunted. "At least the carpet'll be spared."

"You wouldn't happen to still get any of Kray's mail," Jack said.

"Not a one." The woman took a mighty drag on her cigarette, let out a plume of smoke like Mount Saint Helens. "Sorry I can't be of more help."

"You did fine," Jack said. "Can you tell me the address of the local post office?"

"I'll do better than that." The woman pointed the way, giving him detailed directions.

Jack thanked her, and they picked their way back down the flagstone walk.

"The post office?" Nina said as they climbed back into the car.

Jack glanced at his watch. "We just have time to get there." He pulled out, drove down the street. "Tolkan said that Kray was a private man. He wouldn't have wanted anyone else getting his mail. I'm betting he filed a change-of-address form before he left."

They headed east on Tyler, while Nina finished her cigarette, turned right onto Graham Road, right again on Arlington Boulevard, then a left onto Chain Bridge Road. The post office occupied a one-story pale brick building. It looked like every other post office Jack had been to, outside and in.

He walked up to the counter, asked to see the postmistress. Ten minutes later, a hefty woman in her mid-fifties appeared, walking none too quickly. It seemed to Jack that all postal employees were constitutionally incapable of moving at anything but a sluggish pace. Then again, maybe they learned it at some secret government academy.

Jack and Nina showed their credentials, asked for a forwarding address for Ron Kray. The postmistress, who had a face like a boxing glove, told them to wait. She disappeared into the mysterious bowels of the building. Time passed, people walked in, got on line, waited, inched forward. Forms were filled out, packages were rubber-stamped, more forms were filled out, letters and more packages were rubber-stamped. People who failed to fill out the proper forms were sent to the corner stand to correct their mistakes. Jack was at the point of risking a federal offense by hurdling the counter to go after the postmistress, when she reappeared, inching snail-like toward them.

"No Ron Kray," she said in her laconic manner. She spoke like a character straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel.

Jack took a pad and a pen, laboriously wrote down Kray's last known address, the house they'd just come from. Tearing off the top sheet, he handed it to the postmistress, who looked as if her recent labors had tired her out. "How about a forwarding from this address?"

The postmistress peered down at the slip of paper as if it might possibly do her harm. "I don't think I can-"

"From six months ago, give or take a week."

The postmistress looked at him bleakly. "Gonna take some time, this."

Jack smiled. "We'll be waiting."

"I get off work in twelve minutes," she pointed out.

"Not today, you don't," Nina said.

The postmistress glared at her, as if to say, Et tu, Brute? Then, in a huff, she shuffled off.

More time passed. The line gradually dwindled down, the last customer finally dealt with. A collective sigh of relief could be felt as the postal workers totaled up, locked their drawers, and followed their leader into the rear of the building.