Laura Lippman - The Last Place

Someone who didn’t lose a lot of sleep over traffic tickets.

Funny-even as Tess had embraced Carl Dewitt’s contention that the killer they sought might still be alive, she had not recalibrated her thoughts about his other conspiracy theories. She had assumed, after the fact, that their close encounters on the highway had been nothing but Carl’s paranoia-fueled imagination. Besides, the man they wanted had no need to follow them. He not only knew where Tess had been, he often knew where she was going.

Yet here was a dark van, hanging back a few car lengths on the expressway but keeping steady with her speed, no matter how erratically she drove. And she had begun to drive quite erratically, doing her best impersonation of the archetypal Baltimore driver. Local drivers were not so much aggressive as absentminded, seemingly indifferent to reaching a destination. The average Baltimore driver gave the impression of a sleepwalker who had regained consciousness behind the wheel, baffled and disoriented.

Tess clicked her turn signal, then didn’t budge from the right lane for two miles. She turned off the signal, only to drift into the middle lane, then the left. At the Cold Spring Lane exit, she abruptly veered into the far right lane at the last possible moment, which forced her to brake so hard at the top of the exit ramp that her wheels squealed and the Toyota sent up a cloud of brown smoke.

Still, the van managed to hang with her, lurking in the pack of vehicles stuck at the first light on Cold Spring. Tess still could not make out much of the driver’s face and features. He wore dark glasses and a baseball cap. He also had on a windbreaker, suspicious on such a warm day, and he dipped his chin into its collar so the lower part of his face was obscured.

The light had changed, time to make a decision. Tess didn’t want to lead her stalker to her home. Yet if he had been following her all this time, he already knew where her home was. If she tried to lead him to a different, neutral location-the Northern District police precinct, for example-he might decide to wait for her at the house. Crow could be in the house, possibly lost in one of the endless renovation projects the bungalow kept demanding, like some possessed house in a Stephen King novel. She felt for her gun and looked around for her cell phone, peeking out of the knapsack on the passenger seat. Time to break my own rules, she decided, steering with one hand and dialing with the other.

Shit. The voice mail engaged after three rings, which meant Crow was out. If he had been on the phone, or on-line, the machine would have picked up on the first ring. He was probably walking the dogs. Which meant he could arrive home at any moment, unprepared for their mystery guest.

“You think you know me? You think you want me?” She still had the cell phone cradled to her mouth, so if any other driver glanced at her, it would appear as if she were speaking to someone. “Okay, let’s see if you do know where I live.”

She shot through the intersection, then dawdled up the hill to the next intersection, knowing it was a relatively long light. Perfect-she had timed it right, reaching the light just as it turned amber. She bolted even as it turned red and, Baltimore being Baltimore, one more car sneaked through the light as well. But the van was stuck several cars back. She would reach her house with at least a five-minute head start.

Home. Normally, she exulted in the semi-isolation of East Lane, which was more alley than street. But in the greenish-gray twilight, her block was too private. The neighbors’ houses were dark and quiet behind the evergreens that screened them from the street, and the informal dog play group that met in the park behind her house must have dispersed, for she did not hear the usual barks and yips. She let herself in, calling for Crow and the dogs, but no one came out to greet her. On a walk, she told herself, it has to be a walk. No single person could overcome that trio. Not with Crow’s common sense and Miata’s Doberman instincts. Esskay’s breath alone could fell an attacker.

But if Crow and the dogs came back in the next few minutes, and the man in the van had found his way here, things could get dangerously out of control. She had to figure out a way to keep everyone safe.

Leaving her front door standing open, she went to the rear of the house, unlocking the dead bolt on the French doors that led to the deck off the bedroom, then locking them from outside with her key. Now what? The house was built into a hill, so the ground was a half-story down-less, when one slid from the deck and hung from it before dropping to the ground below. Still, the landing was harder than she expected, sending shocks through both knees.

Tess crawled under the deck until she was as close as she could get to the house while still able to see a slice of the gravel driveway. The ground here never saw the sun, and it was cool where it rubbed into the white shirt she had worn with her linen funeral suit. Her black skirt was hiked up almost to her hips, her low-heeled shoes had slipped from her feet while she was hanging from the deck. At least she had thought to leave the jacket back in the house, flung over a chair in the dining room to help create the illusion that she was inside.

Of course, this meant her gun was no longer concealed. She didn’t want it to be. The Smith amp; Wesson was out of the holster. She held it in two hands, arms extended on the ground, and waited.

And waited. Then waited some more, feeling increasingly ridiculous with each passing second, which seemed to be ticked off by the blood that pounded in her ears. If the van’s driver had been intent on following her, he surely would be here by now. She remembered a game she had played growing up, German tanks. They had stretched out on the ground just like this, pretending to shoot the cars moving along the streets of Ten Hills. But then the guns had been fingers and sticks, nothing more. God, she felt like an idiot. Her neighbors already thought she was a strange and somewhat outré addition to the Roland Park zip code. If the local swim club got wind of this, they would never let her join.

Then she thought of Julie Carter and Lucy Fancher and Tiffani Gunts, and she didn’t feel quite so ridiculous. If someone had given them a chance, if they had known what or who was coming for them in the final hours of their lives, they would have fought back. Despite her self-destructive habits, Julie was scrappy and tough. Lucy Fancher was beginning to find her place in the world, she had told her ex-boyfriend as much. Tiffani was a mother. She would have done anything to keep Darby from growing up without her. Given the chance, these women wouldn’t have worried about whether they seemed strange or odd. They would have tried to live.

Someone’s vehicle was pulling up front. It was a dark van, its wheels crunching on the gravel.

Tess heard the door slam, saw a pair of sneakered feet approach her front door. She glanced over her shoulder, making sure Crow and the dogs weren’t coming up the path through the woods. If they arrived now, she would have to shout and warn him away and risk losing her quarry. But the woods were quiet. Everything was quiet. She listened for footsteps, but the rock foundation of her house was too solid. Had he crossed her threshold, ventured deep enough into the house? Was he in the bedroom yet, looking for her-throwing open her closet and bathroom doors, trying the locked French doors? She needed him to get as far inside as possible.

Her plan was to lock him in her house by racing to the front door and turning the dead bolt with her key from the outside. She then would call the police from her cell, reporting an intruder. He would be stuck inside and she would be safe outside, keeping a watch for the police and Crow, whoever arrived first.