Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

She sat for a few moments, and Paine watched many of the fancy parts of her flake away, and when she was finished with her inventory of options and her miniature devolution she said, in a voice that was small and almost private, the voice that was deep inside her behind all the masks, in whatever tiny place she kept things that she really believed, "She's better off with me."

"I bet your mother said that each morning," Paine said.

He took a slim envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the coffee table at her. She looked at it but did not pick it up. Scribbled across the face of it was the name "Mr. Johnson" in Rebecca Meyer's handwriting.

"Inside the envelope is a Los Angeles Times clipping on your daughter's kidnapping," Paine said to her. "Rebecca found it in Les Paterna's brown folder, along with a copy of the birth certificate he falsified for you. He was probably going to use it on you somewhere down the line, when things at Bravura Enterprises got a little tight.

"I've made plenty of copies of it. A policeman friend of mine has one, and he got in touch with a man in the Boston office of the FBI who will come to chat with you after I leave. I heard this morning, before I came over here, that there's a very happy couple in Pasadena who had given up hope that their infant daughter would be found. He's a sanitation worker, and she has to work as a salesgirl in a mall part-time, but they get by. From what I hear, they miss their little girl a lot."

He got up and left. He walked to the door and let himself out into the hallway, then he let himself out the front door, leaving it open for the doorman with the flat stare and black shiny shoes. He went to the elevator and the elevator brought him down to the lobby and he walked toward the desk man.

He felt the bulge of his.38 in his jacket, and he took it out as he went by and put it gently on the desk.

Outside, the day had started cloudy, but there were some breaks in the clouds and it looked like there might be sun.