Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Louis Markowitz’s smile made him the most charming man on the planet, even though he had also been crying on this particular occasion. Charles had taken the policeman home to keep him off the street and out of further trouble. He had cooked dinner for the man and stayed up all night listening to favorite stories about the remarkable Helen Markowitz. “We were friends for years, but Louis never told me about the FBI agent who lied to him and led him down false trails… and cost him all the days he had left with his wife.”

No, Louis had let go of that baggage early on, a wise choice, but not suitable for the likes of Kathy Mallory, who so loved revenge. Charles planned to help her savor what she had won. “Louis told me he only had a few hours with Helen before they wheeled her into the operating room. Poor man, he was expecting a surgical cure.”

“That’s what all the doctors told him.” Mallory dropped a tube of toothpaste into her duffel bag. “That’s why the old man didn’t walk away from the kidnapping case.”

Charles nodded. “That last day, Louis still believed that he was going to grow old with Helen.”

“And then she died on the operating table.” Mallory stared at the items laid out on the bed, as if the order in which she packed them might need all of her attention.

“And you blamed Dale Berman for dragging out that old case, for deceiving Louis and stealing all his precious time with Helen.”

Mallory carefully folded another T-shirt, as if she had never loved Helen beyond all reason, as if she had never felt the loss of this good and gentle woman who had fostered her and loved her back.

No reaction at all-not from her.

It was Charles who balled his hands into fists, Charles who hated Dale Berman-hate enough for two, himself and Mallory. He turned his tell-all face away from her and made a show of searching the room for overlooked items that she might want.

The flowers were gone. Once, this room had smelled like a florist shop-or a mortuary. She had also thrown away her press clippings collected for her by Detective Kronewald. And gone were all the cards sent by high-ranking politicians and police officials. The only one she had saved was a card handmade by Dodie Finn, and this was added to the duffel bag-Mallory’s only trophy.

“I love that one.” Charles looked down at the card in the open bag. He smiled at the childish rendering of the Finns’ farmhouse and the happy-face stick figures of a small family. “The drawing is perfectly awful. Shows no artistic talent whatever-so utterly normal.”

According to the companion letter from Joe Finn, his daughter had ceased to hum, and now she talked to him, and he could not shut her up. This had been followed with a phrase that came awkwardly to the boxer: He had wished Mallory the same wondrous recovery.

A bit optimistic in Charles’s view.

The great injury done to Mallory had no single cause, nor was there a cure. In the best foreseeable outcome, her malady could only be survived. And, in the best of all possible worlds, she would have no name for the man she had killed that night on the Seligman loop.

The packet of old letters fell from the bed. The enclosing ribbon came undone, and the pages scattered across the floor. Mallory continued to fold her clothes, failing to care. She was letting go of the evidence for Peyton’s betrayal of her mother, Cassandra-these love letters written to another woman. He knelt at Mallory’s feet to retrieve them, handling them carefully. And now, for the first time, he saw the puzzling salutation and read it aloud. “ ‘For O.B.’ Well, that’s odd.” All the letters in his hand began in this same way. “Is it some sort of pet name for Savannah Sirus?”

At the mention of her late houseguest, Mallory looked down at him, only mildly distracted from the packing. “Why would my father write letters to her ?”

Oh, bloody hell.

Ray Adler entered the hospital room and ended the conversation. He never noticed the odd expression on the face of Charles Butler, a man left wondering how many times his head could be twisted round before he lost it.

An hour later, smiling and waving good-bye, the man from Kansas was a reflection in the rearview mirror. The silver convertible’s top was down, and the warmth of the summer sun lulled Mallory to sleep in the passenger seat. Charles, a lapsed Luddite, had worked out the mechanics of her iPod and its connection to the radio, but he found no music to fit well with fear.

If the letters had not been written to Savannah Sirus, what else might he have gotten wrong?

He was still pondering his failings as he drove across the state line of Arizona, leaving the grasslands behind. The California terrain was sandy and spotted with clumps of green. No mountain peaks or mesas, only long tedious tracts of desert stretched out before them. Finally, Mallory awakened, and he leaned toward her, prompting her with the puzzle that began each letter from Peyton Hale. “For O.B.?”

But she closed her eyes again and left him clueless for all the miles to Barstow, California, where they sat in the parking lot of a landmark hotel that had gone to seed. He watched her cross this place off her list of road- side attractions. Other tourists, no doubt following guidebooks, also stopped here for the length of time it took them to turn around and run. Charles put the car in gear and followed suit.

“On to Los Angeles?” He took her silence for yes and handed her the California map. “Care to play navigator?”

She unfolded it and stared at the familiar markings, Horace Kayhill’s arcs and lines to define a serial killer’s territory and the crosses that stood for graves. “What are you doing with this?” Unmistakable was her implication that he had stolen it.

“Riker gave it to me-the whole collection. He thought the California map might come in handy. And I must say it’s superior to the average-”

Mallory was not listening to him. She was foraging in the back seat, and now she retrieved the small canvas tote bag with the rest of the Route 66 maps. She pulled one out and spread it across the dashboard. “How did Riker get this away from the New Mexico cops?”

“Well, a state trooper gave it to him. I was there.” And for that matter, Mallory had also been present at the table on the day when it was handed over. Ah, but she had only seen the covering plastic bag. And, as he recalled, Riker had made a cursory inspection, just a glance inside to identify the contents as belongings of the little Pattern Man-poor Horace.

“Why didn’t he turn the bag over to Kronewald?”

“Why would he?” asked Charles.

“And why is Kronewald calling his serial killer a John Doe?”

Apparently, she had been reading the daily newspapers he had brought to her hospital room. This continuing interest of hers promised upsides and down. “There’s a lack of physical evidence,” he said. “No solid tie to Adrian Egram, and I doubt that he’s used that name since he stole his first car. I suppose we’ll never know what persona he adopted.” Charles had intended this as reassurance, a kind of promise.

“Riker knows,” she said.

“Well, he might have a theory. ” Was she looking at him now? Did she catch a give-away blush? Could he afford to play a game with her that involved deceit on any level? “There’s certainly no way to prove it-no DNA link, no fingerprints or pictures on file, nothing to-”

“Riker’s not working a theory,” said Mallory. “He knows.”

Her eyes closed.

Though California’s desert landscape was rather dull, tedious in fact, Charles Butler was in dangerous country within and without. The subject of a serial killer’s identity was off limits to him now. She made that clear. Mallory might be sleeping or feigning it. Either way, she was hiding out, a time-out from her life. And Peyton Hale’s letters were all he had left, the only materials with which to build a bridge to Mallory. However, when she awakened, every word on the matter of Savannah Sirus and the letters was met with cold silence.