Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

She kissed him again. He kissed her back hard.

Which is when her phone rang.

“Uh-uh,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear that.” After four rings, blessed voice mail took over. But a moment later it rang again.

“Could be your mother,” Rhyme pointed out.

Rose Sachs had been undergoing some treatments for a cardiac problem. The prognosis was good but she’d had some recent setbacks.

Sachs grunted and flipped it open, bathing both of their bodies in a blue light. Looking at caller ID, she said, “Pam. I better take it.”

“Of course.”

“Hey, there. What’s up?”

As the one-sided conversation continued, Rhyme deduced that something was wrong.

“Okay…Sure…But I’m at Lincoln’s. You want to come over here?” She glanced at Rhyme, who was nodding agreement. “Okay, honey. We’ll be awake, sure.” She snapped the phone shut.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. She just said Dan and Enid had two emergency placements tonight. So all the older kids had to room together. She had to get out. And she doesn’t want to be at my place alone.”

“It’s fine with me. You know that.”

Sachs lay back down and her mouth explored energetically. She whispered, “I did the math. She’s got to pack a bag, get her car out of the garage…it’ll take her a good forty-five minutes to be here. We’ve got a little time.”

She leaned forward and kissed him again.

Just as the doorbell rang jarringly and the intercom clattered, “Mr. Rhyme? Amelia? Hi, it’s Pam. Can you buzz me in?”

Rhyme laughed. “Or she might’ve called from the front steps.”

They sat in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Pam and Sachs.

The room was the girl’s for whenever she wished to stay. A stuffed animal or two sat neglected on the shelf (when your mother and stepfather are running from the FBI, toys don’t figure much in your childhood) but she had several hundred books and CDs. Thanks to Thom there always were plenty of clean sweats and T-shirts and socks. A Sirius satellite radio set and a disk player. Her running shoes too; Pam loved to speed along the 1.6-mile path surrounding the Central Park reservoir. She ran from love of running and she ran from hungry need.

The girl now sat on the bed, carefully painting gold polish on her toenails, cotton balls separating the canvases. Her mother had forbidden this, as well as makeup (“out of respect for Christ,” however that was supposed to work), and once sprung from the far-right underground she took up small, comforting additions to her persona, like this, some ruddy hair tint and the three ear piercings. Sachs was relieved she didn’t go overboard; if anybody had a reason to slingshot herself into the weird, it was Pamela Willoughby.

Sachs was lounging in a chair, feet up, her own toenails bare. A breeze carried into the small room the complicated mix of spring scents from Central Park: mulch, earth, dew-damp foliage, vehicle exhaust. She sipped her hot chocolate. “Ouch. Blow on it first.”

Pam whistled into her cup and tasted it. “It’s good. Yeah, hot.” She returned to her nails. In contrast to her visage earlier in the day, the girl’s face was troubled.

“You know what those are called?” Sachs was pointing.

“Feet? Toes?”

“No, the bottoms?”

“Sure. The bottoms of feet and the bottoms of toes.” They laughed.

“Plantars. And they have prints too, just like fingerprints. Lincoln convicted somebody once because the perp kicked somebody unconscious with his bare foot. But he missed once and whacked the door. Left a print on it.”

“That’s cool. He should write another book.”

“I’m after him to,” Sachs said. “So what’s up?”

“Stuart.”

“Go on.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t’ve come. It’s stupid.”

“Come on. I’m a cop, remember. I’ll sweat it out of you.”

“Just, Emily called and it was weird her calling on Sunday, like, she never does, and I’m thinking, okay, something’s going on. And it’s like she really doesn’t want to say anything but then she does. And she said she saw Stuart today with somebody else. This girl from school. After the soccer game. Only he told me he was going right home.”

“Well, what are the facts? Were they just talking? Nothing wrong with that.”

“She said she wasn’t sure but it, you know, kind of looked like he was hugging her. And then when he saw somebody looking at him, he kind of walked away real fast with her. Like he was trying to hide.” The toenail project came to a stop, halfway done. “I really, really like him. It’d suck if he didn’t want to see me anymore.”

Sachs and Pam had been to a counselor together-and, with Pam’s agreement, Sachs had spoken to the woman alone. Pam would be undergoing a lengthy period of post-traumatic stress, not only from her lengthy captivity with a sociopath parent but from a particular episode in which her stepfather had nearly sacrificed her life while trying to murder police officers. Incidents like this one with Stuart Everett, small to most people, were amplified in the girl’s mind and could have devastating effects. Sachs had been told not to add to her fears but not to downplay them either. To look at each one carefully and try to analyze it.

“Have you guys talked about seeing other people?”

“He said…well, a month ago he said he wasn’t. I’m not either. I told him that.”

“Any other intelligence?” Sachs asked.

“Intelligence?”

“I mean, have any of your other friends said anything?”

“No.”

“Do you know any of his friends?”

“Kind of. But not like I could ask them anything about it. That’d be way uncool.”

Sachs smiled. “So spies aren’t going to work. Well, what you should do is just ask him. Point-blank.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

“What if he says he is seeing her?”

“Then you should be thankful he’s honest with you. That’s a good sign. And then you convince him to dump the bimbo.” They laughed. “What you do is say that you just want to date one person.” The start-up mother in Sachs added quickly, “We’re not talking about getting married, not moving in. Just dating.”

Pam nodded quickly. “Oh, absolutely.”

Relieved, Sachs continued, “And he’s the one you want to see. But you expect the same thing from him. You have something important, you relate to each other, you can talk, you’ve got a connection and you don’t see that very much.”

“Like you and Mr. Rhyme.”

“Yeah, like that. But if he doesn’t want it, then okay.”

“No, it’s not.” Pam frowned.

“No, I’m just telling you what you say. But then tell him you’re going to be dating other people too. He can’t have it both ways.”

“I guess. But what if he says fine?” Her face was dark at the thought.

A laugh. Sachs shook her head. “Yep, it’s a bummer when they call your bluff. But I don’t think he will.”

“All right. I’m going to see him tomorrow after class. I’ll talk to him.”

“Call me. Let me know.” Sachs rose, lifted away the polish and capped it. “Get some sleep. It’s late.”

“But my nails. I’m not finished.”

“Don’t wear open-toed.”

“Amelia?”

She paused at the doorway.

“Are you and Mr. Rhyme going to get married?”

Sachs smiled and closed the door.