Mary Clark - Nighttime Is My Time

The same thoughts kept racing through her mind. In all these years I've never mentioned her to a soul. The adoption was private. Dr. Connors is dead, and his records were destroyed. Who could have found out about her? Is it possible that her adoptive parents know my name and have kept track of me? Maybe they told someone else, and that person is the one contacting me now. But why ?

The window facing the back of the hotel was open, and the room was getting cold. After a moment's debate Jean sighed and pushed back the covers. If I have any hope of getting some sleep, I'd better close it, she thought. She got out of bed and padded across the room. Shivering as she cranked in the open panel, she happened to glance down. A car without its lights on was pulling into the self-parking area of the hotel parking lot. Curious, she watched as the figure of a man stepped out and began walking quickly toward the back entrance of the hotel.

His coat collar was up, but when he opened the door to the lobby, his face was clearly visible. Turning away from the window, Jean thought, I wonder what in the name of God one of our distinguished dinner partners found to do until this hour of the night.

The call came into police headquarters in Goshen at 3:00 A.M. Helen Whelan of Surrey Meadows was missing. A single woman in her early forties, she had last been seen by a neighbor. Whelan had been walking her German shepherd, Brutus, at or about midnight. At 3:00 a.m. a couple living a few blocks away at the edge of the county park were awakened by the howling and barking of a dog. They investigated and found a German shepherd trying to struggle to its feet. It had been savagely beaten on the head and back with a heavy instrument. A woman's size seven shoe was found on the road nearby.

At 4:00 a.m., Sam Deegan had been called in and assigned to the team of detectives investigating the disappearance. He stopped first to talk to Dr. Siegel, the veterinarian who had treated the wounded animal. "My guess is that he was knocked out for a couple of hours by the blows to his head," Siegel told Deegan. "They came from something about the size and weight of a tire iron."

Sam could visualize the scenario. Helen Whelan had let her dog off the leash for a run in the park. Someone seeing her standing alone in the road had tried to drag her into a car. The German shepherd had rushed to protect her and had been beaten senseless.

He drove to the street where the animal had been found and began ringing doorbells. At the fourth house an elderly man claimed he heard a dog barking frantically at about 12:30 a.m.

Helen Whelan was, or had been, a popular physical education teacher at Surrey Meadows High. Sam learned from several fellow teachers that her habit of walking her dog late at night was well known. "She was never nervous about it. She'd tell us that Brutus would be dead before he'd let anyone hurt her," the principal of her school said sadly.

"She was right," Sam told him. "The vet had to put Brutus down."

By ten o'clock that morning he could see that this case was not going to be an easy one to solve. According to her distraught sister who lived in nearby Newburgh, Helen had no enemies. She had been seeing a fellow teacher for several years, but he was on a sabbatical in Spain this semester.

Missing or dead? Sam was sure that anyone who had so savagely injured a dog would have no mercy on a woman. The difficult investigation would begin, and he would commence his share of it in Helen's neighborhood and at her school. There was always the chance that one of the weirdo teenagers the schools were spitting out today held a grudge against her. From her picture he could tell that she was a very attractive woman. Maybe some neighbor had fallen in love and been rejected.

He only hoped it wouldn't turn out to be one of those random crimes, committed by a stranger on a stranger, whose only fault was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That kind of crime was the hardest to investigate, and often went unsolved, something he hated.

That train of thought inevitably brought him to Karen Sommers.

But her death wasn't hard to solve , Sam thought; it was only hard to prove .

Karen's killer was Cyrus Lindstrom, the boyfriend she dumped twenty years ago-of that he was sure. But as of next week, when I turn in my papers, I'll be off that case, Sam reminded himself.

And I'll be off yours, too, he thought, as with compassionate eyes he studied a recent picture of blue-eyed, auburn-haired Helen Whelan, who was now officially listed as "missing, presumed dead."

Laura had been tempted to sleep in and save her energy for the pre-game luncheon at West Point, but when she awoke on Saturday morning, she changed her mind. Her goal of romancing Gordie Amory had achieved only middling success at the dinner after the cocktail party. The honorees had sat together, and Jack Emerson had joined them. At first Gordie was quiet, but eventually he had warmed up some and even paid her a compliment. "I think every guy in our class had a crush on you at some point, Laura," he said.

"Why past tense?" she had teased.

His answer had been promising: "Why indeed?"

And then the evening provided an unexpected bonus. Robby Brent told the group that he'd been asked to do a situation comedy on HBO and he liked the script. "The public is finally getting sick of all the reality shows," he said, "and is ready to laugh. Think about the classic comedies: J Love Lucy, All in the Family, The Honeymooners, The Mary Tyler Moore Show . They had real humor, and, trust me, real humor is about to make a comeback." Then he'd looked at her. "You know, Laura, you really ought to read for the part of my wife. I have a feeling you'd be good."

She wasn't sure if he was kidding, since Robby made his living as a comic. On the other hand, if he wasn't kidding and if she didn't get to first base with Gordie, it might be yet another chance at grabbing the golden ring-perhaps her last chance.

"Last chance." Unintentionally, she whispered the words aloud. They gave her a funny, queasy feeling. All night she'd had troubled dreams. She'd dreamt of Jake Perkins, that pushy kid reporter who'd handed out the list of the girls who used to sit at their lunch table at Stonecroft and who had died since then. Catherine and Debra and Cindy and Gloria and Alison. Five of them. She'd dreamt that, one by one, he was crossing their names off the list, until now only she and Jeannie were still alive.

Separately we both stayed close to Alison, she thought, and now we're the only two left. Even though we lived next door to each other in school, Jeannie and I weren't enough alike to ever be really close. She's too nice. She never made fun of the guys the way the rest of us did.

Stop it! Laura warned herself. Don't think about a jinx or a curse. You have today and tomorrow to catch the golden ring. With one word from his newly sculpted lips, Gordie Amory could keep her on the series for Maximum. And suddenly Robby Brent was another one of the group who could make things happen. If he wasn't just pulling her leg about the series and if he decided he wanted her in his show, she'd have a real chance at the part. And I'm good at comedy, Laura told herself. Darn good.

And then there was Howie -no, Carter. He could open doors for her as well if he wanted to. Not in his plays, of course. God, they were all not only depressing but impossible to figure out. His artistic obscurity, however, didn't make him less powerful when it came to helping her career.

I wouldn't mind being in a hit play, she thought wistfully. Although, now that Alison was dead, she needed a new agent, too.

She glanced at her watch. It was time to get dressed. She knew she had lucked out with her choice of an outfit to wear for the day at West Point -the blue Armani suede with a Gucci scarf would be perfect for the chilly day that was forecast. According to the weather report, the temperature would only reach the low fifties.