William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

“Really? Why?”

“Did you know that when most children run away from home, they have some kind of place in mind where they’re going?”

I slowly rose out of my chair. “Are you saying you think Tiffany was running away from home?”

More shrugging. Staring at the carpet. “Not exactly.” His hands began to pump the air. “But I don’t think she’d leave unless she had someplace she wanted to go.”

He was giving me all the bread crumbs, but I wasn’t following the trail. “We’ve quizzed everyone. They say she had no friends or family around here.”

“She was interested in police work. She wanted to be a policeman.” His chin rose. “Lots of people wish they could be a policeman.”

“So what are you saying? Maybe she decided to visit headquarters?”

“Did you watch the news last night? ’Cause I watched the news last night. It was all about Edgar.”

“Yeah, it has been for-” Wait a minute. Praise God, I was starting to see the glue. “Tiffany would’ve known about the Edgar murders. And she was interested in police work.”

Granger jumped in. “So she might’ve decided to do a little investigating?”

“Come on, Granger, we see it all the time. Whenever a case gets a lot of attention. The rubberneckers turn out at the scene of the crime, at the courthouse, whatever. Some people thrive on this kind of stuff.”

“But where would she go? That shack out by the dam? That strip joint?”

I knew the answer before he’d finished speaking, knew it with a clarity that startled even myself. “Where the first body was found. Where Fara Spencer was killed. The Whitechapel of this whole case.” I paused. “The Transylvania. That’s where he grabbed them. Because that’s where he is.”

The girls were in their respective stalls, performing their nine-thirty poses.

They sat on the cold, bare floor in a confined area with nothing to do, nothing to look at, cold, dirty, naked. Every waking hour he would bring them a picture, usually something torn out of a porn magazine, always a woman in some demeaning pose. He would give them whatever they needed to re-create the scene. And then he would wait.

Not a word need be spoken. They knew what he wanted. And he rarely had to wait long to get it, certainly not after the first day. They knew what disobedience would bring. No food, for starters. No water. Not even a clean pan for their excrement. And quite possibly a return visit to the pendulum. Or the leeches. Or whatever else was required.

There had been no disobedience for a long time.

After they assumed the pose, whatever it was, he snapped their picture with his Polaroid, then posted it on the wall next to them. A little something to remind them who and what they were now. What they had become.

His. They belonged to the Raven, heart and mind and soul.

Judy and JJ had not been in those orangutan suits, of course, although it would’ve been magnificent, their ashes rising in an incandescent blaze, a magnificent incarnation of the prophet’s tale of little Hop-frog’s revenge. But the shock of thinking she had killed them-willingly-had been more than enough to break Tiffany. She had ended up even more deeply subservient than the two who had crumbled first. She was a sock puppet with his hand inside her.

Now the three of them were so compliant, so eager to please him, that a picture was not even necessary. As soon as he entered the room, Tiffany began to assume a variety of poses, running through her repertoire, reenacting the photos on the wall. Anything to please him.

Perfect.

Everything at the hotel was proceeding apace. The Poe room was gone, The Hunchback of Notre Dame tableau was all but complete. It was not one of the prophet’s works, but it would serve his purposes just the same.

All he lacked was the Vessel. Susan. Perhaps he had given her too much time, hoping that the time bomb he’d left ticking in her head would bring her to him of her own accord. One way or the other, once he had secured the Vessel, all his preparations would be complete.

Tiffany slithered up to him and wrapped herself around his feet. She pointed to her mouth, begging for food. Pathetic thing. He shook his head; he had not even brought a cube of sugar. Didn’t matter.

She pulled up his pant leg and began to lick his ankle, purring.

I ripped the information out of the printer just as quickly as it emerged. For once, even my inner Luddite was glad we lived in the computer age. Once I convinced the management of the Transylvania that we should be permitted access to their records-by giving them no choice whatsoever about it-getting what we wanted was a relative snap. Compiling a list of all the guests who had stayed at the Transylvania since the body of Helen Collier was found was a cinch. Then we winnowed it down to a shorter list of all male guests who fit the current profile. I started with the names of men who had been staying at the hotel for a while and were still on the premises. As soon as I had the names and addresses, I transmitted them by fax to headquarters, where Madeline and Patrick ran Internet and FBI checks on them. She could also tap the DMV records and see if they owned a pickup.

We’d been at it for hours, and so far, we didn’t have any suspects who fit all the parameters. But I wasn’t worried. Names were still flying out of the computer. I knew we were on to something. I felt it in my heart, my bones. We were on the right track, finally.

Most importantly, I felt good. Even though I had no right to, not yet. But I did. I felt strong. I felt sober. I hadn’t had a drink for days, and I was dealing with it. The shakiness was fading. I didn’t think about it all the time. I had something more important to occupy my brain.

“Still no match?” Granger asked. He pushed away from the computer terminal and stretched. He’d been at it for hours. Turned out he was pretty good with those evil little machines.

I didn’t look up. I was scanning names, faxing, periodically talking into my cell, and chatting with Granger, all at once. I don’t need a computer to multitask. “Not yet. But he’s in there somewhere. Give me some more names.”

“That’s going to take a while. We’ve covered Tower One, but they keep Tower Two in a separate database. It’ll take a while to load.”

“All right. No point in me standing around while you work.” I grabbed my coat. “I’m going to slip out for a minute. I’ll be back soon.”

“You’re leaving the hotel?”

“Right.”

“There are about a zillion bars out there.”

My buoyancy submerged, but only for a moment. “I’m going to visit my niece. I am not sneaking out to get a drink, Granger.”

“I know,” he said.

That caught me by surprise. He did?

“But-why make life difficult for yourself?”

“You want me to wear a chastity muzzle?”

He smirked. “You’re still a potential target. Take one of the uniforms with you. Take Berman.”

“I outweigh Berman by fifty pounds. How’s he going to stop me from doing anything?”

“He’s Church of Christ. He sees you order a drink, you’ll get a lecture so harsh it might save even your soul.”

Against my will, I found myself smiling. Why did Granger have to display these occasional flashes of human-beingness? It made it so much harder to hate him.

He’d been more than a bit worried when he saw Susan at the hotel. He had followed her discreetly, just to make sure she wasn’t getting too close. Happily, she never came near the ballroom. But after she left the hotel-

He had no idea what an astounding discovery he would make.

How had she managed to keep this from him so long? He had researched everything he could find about her. He’d hacked into her police file, searched the newspaper morgue, performed repeated Internet sweeps, quizzed her when she was barely conscious and unable to resist. But somehow, through it all, she had managed to withhold one detail.