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  “I don’t see why,” Valerie said. “If anyone looks into why I left, they’ll find that I’ve requested a leave of absence from the university. If they talk to Laura Kristoll, they’ll learn that I’ve been unhappy for the past few months about how my dissertation’s going. You try keeping up your enthusiasm for the Scottish Chaucerian poets of the fifteenth century. Then with Tom’s death, and Adrian’s suicide, it was just too much to bear. Sometimes you have to take a break, step back, regain your perspective.”

  “And what about the blackmail?” he said. “Suppose someone investigates that? Suppose they talk to the clerk who rented you a mailbox in Chicago?”

  The faintest of smiles played at the corners of her mouth. “I wish them luck. Sometimes those clerks are careless. I dealt with one once—he didn’t go by the book at all. They’re supposed to check your driver’s license and take down the number, but I had forgotten mine that day. So he did me a favor. He thought I looked like a nice person. Some men are sweet that way. But if he ever had to pick me out of a lineup—well, maybe if he was allowed to look down my blouse. I don’t think he’d remember my face.”

  Her body leaned forward and her fingers rose reflexively to the open collar of her shirt. Loogan watched them touch the hollow at the base of her throat.

  “Look, I think it’s admirable,” she said softly. “You want to find out who killed Tom. I wish he were alive. I wish Adrian were alive. I wish none of this had happened. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I can’t help you.”

  He uncrossed his legs. The muzzle of the shotgun grazed the carpet. 1

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  “That’s not good enough. If you won’t tell me what was in that file box, I’ll have to go looking for it on my own.”

  “You won’t find it,” she said. “Whatever was in that box is long gone.”

  “We’ll see. We can start here, with those.” He pointed to the bags on the floor below the counter. “Then we’ll go down and look in the car. I’m willing to spend all day.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I need to leave.”

  She started to rise from the sofa, but he sprang to his feet, grabbed her shoulder, pushed her back down.

  Her glasses had slipped down her nose, and he saw her eyes clearly for the first time as she looked up at him. They were hard and dark and steady.

  “That’s better,” she said. “You were much too genteel before, but now I can see you’re just a brute.”

  “Stay there.” He retrieved the briefcase from among the other bags and set it on a cardboard box between them.

  “Start with this,” he said. “It needs a key. Where is it?”

  “In my pocket,” she said.

  “Let me have it.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a gun.”

  “You’re not even pointing it at me.”

  Holding the shotgun one-handed, he leveled the barrel at her knees.

  “That’s more like it,” she said, “but you wouldn’t really shoot me, would you?”

  “I’m a dangerous lunatic,” he said. “Two nights ago, I stabbed a man.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket, drew out a ring of keys.

  “Toss them here,” he said.

  Her fist closed around a small black cylinder attached to the key chain. Her thumb found the end of it.

  “Pepper spray,” she said. “Now we have a standoff.”

  He made a grim mask of his face and leveled the shotgun at her chest, holding it with two hands now. “Give me the keys,” he said. b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  Valerie Calnero stood up slowly from the sofa, her dark eyes fixed on him. The muzzle hovered inches away from her chest. Off to the side, the cat whined plaintively from its carrier.

  With no particular urgency, Valerie said, “Do you think no one ever aimed a gun at me before? I had a stepfather once. At least that’s what my mother wanted me to call him. They weren’t married. He had a pistol, a souvenir from his days in the army. He used to bring it out, when my mother wasn’t home, when he’d had a few beers. He’d aim it at my head and make me take off my clothes. I was eleven. He never touched me. He thought men who did that were sick. He had scruples. I was safe with him, he said. Then in a couple years, when I started to fill out, he lost hold of his scruples and I wasn’t safe anymore.”

  Without taking her eyes from Loogan’s, she reached for the briefcase with her left hand. Her right hand gripped the pepper spray. “You’ll have to shoot me or let me go,” she said. “I’m willing to use mine.”

  He stepped back from her, lowering the shotgun. He watched her gather the straps and handles of the remaining bags on the floor. The black cylinder remained in her right hand. The pet carrier was still on the counter when she headed for the door.

  “Are you coming back for the cat?” Loogan asked her. She looked at him over her shoulder from the doorway. “I think the cat’s on her own. This is the one and only exit I plan to make.”

  The cat mewed quietly in the hallway as Loogan restored Wrentmore’s shotgun to the guitar case. The animal was purring softly when he placed the pet carrier on the front passenger seat of Valerie Calnero’s car. The sun came out from behind a cloud as Valerie piled her bags in the backseat. She turned to Loogan and the sunlight illuminated her face.

  “I’m off,” she said. “It’s a good day for driving.”

  She held the pepper spray discreetly at her side.

  “Where to?” Loogan asked her.

  Her laugh came involuntarily. It tossed her head back. “You’re a ridiculous man,” she said. 1

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  He squared his shoulders against the weight of the guitar case. “Was it true what you said, about your stepfather?”

  Taking off her glasses, she looked at him keenly. “Ridiculous,” she said again. “And you make a terrible gunman. But I can see why Laura likes you.”

  She raised her chin and stood on tiptoe and with her eyes open she gave him a kiss that lingered on his lower lip.

  He got his phone out as she drove away. Turned it on and punched a number as he crossed the street. Three rings and then he heard Elizabeth Waishkey’s voice.

  “Mr. Loogan. Where are you?” She sounded slightly amused.

  “You need to talk to Valerie Calnero,” he said.

  “We’re on our way to do that. We’ve been delayed, listening to the story of your visit to Self-Storage USA.”

  “She’s skipping town,” he said evenly. “If you want to catch her, now’s the time. She just left her apartment.”

  All amusement vanished. “Is that where you are? Stay put. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “She’s heading east in a light green Chevy sedan.” He recited the license number from memory. “You’ll want to hurry.”

  “We’re hurrying. Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Loogan. Stay right there.”

  He reached his car, popped the trunk, and lifted the guitar case inside.

  “I’m already gone,” he said.

  Chapter 26

  In the quiet of Wednesday evening, Elizabeth found herself alone in her living room. Sarah had gone to the library to work on a project for school. Elizabeth sat on the sofa, a glass of wine on the coffee table nearby, files and reports arranged on the cushions beside her. A Chopin étude played softly on the stereo.

  The flight of Valerie Calnero had set the tone for Elizabeth’s day. Chief Owen McCaleb had taken the news stoically, standing for once perfectly still in the center of his offi ce. He had offered no reproach to Elizabeth or Shan, saying only, “Let’s find her, and let’s find Loogan while we’re at it.”

  The problem of finding David Loogan had occupied much of Elizabeth’s thought. Throughout the afternoon, she had experienced the growing realization that she knew very little about him. Where was he from? Where had he lived before coming to
Ann Arbor? What work had he done before Tom Kristoll hired him as an editor?

  The one link she had to his past was the history professor from whom he had rented his house. The professor was in Frankfurt, and Elizabeth had spoken with him on the phone. But the man didn’t know Loogan personally; Loogan had rented the house through an ad on the Internet. The only lead the professor could give her was Loogan’s previous address—an apartment in Cleveland—and the name of his landlord there. She’d had no luck yet contacting the landlord, and had delegated the task to Alice Marrowicz. “If we know where Loogan’s been,” she said to her,

  “and if we can find someone who knew him there, it might help us convince him to come in.” It sounded weak to Elizabeth even as she said it, but Alice seemed eager to help.

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  Carter Shan had suggested tracking Loogan through his cell phone. Elizabeth knew it was possible in theory. Any cell phone that’s turned on sends out signals periodically, whether or not it’s being used to make a call. The signals are picked up by cell towers and allow phone companies to determine how to route incoming calls. But they can also be used to estimate a phone’s location. Any given signal is likely to reach two or more towers, and if it does, the relative signal strength at each tower can be used to triangulate the phone’s position—narrowing it down, in some cases, to an area of a few square blocks. If the phone is equipped with a global positioning chip, its location can be determined even more precisely. That was the theory. In practice, things were more complicated. They had subpoenaed Loogan’s cell phone records, and his phone turned out to be an inexpensive prepaid model, without GPS. And he had been keeping it turned off when he wasn’t using it—he seemed to realize the danger that it posed.

  As long as the phone was off, he was invisible. The only option was to wait and see if he would use it again. Shan had spoken with a technician at Loogan’s cell phone provider, and the technician had flagged Loogan’s number in the company’s computer system. If Loogan turned on his phone, the company would notify the department and attempt to triangulate his position. But it would take time, and then it would take more time to send patrol cars to look for him, and when they arrived at the search area he might already have moved on.

  “I don’t think it’ll work,” Elizabeth had told Shan that afternoon. “He’s not going to linger long enough to be found.”

  Shan had merely shrugged. “Maybe not. We’re just covering the bases. He could decide to ditch the phone altogether. Maybe he’s done making calls.”

  But whatever doubts Elizabeth had about tracking Loogan’s phone, she didn’t believe he was done making calls. She expected to hear from him again. He would want to talk. She had dialed his number and left a message on his voice mail, encouraging him to call her.

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  Now, in the evening, she was home catching up on reports, going over the files on Kristoll and Tully and Beccanti. A draft of cool November air came through a partly open window. Chopin’s piano notes ambled along sadly on the stereo.

  Her cell phone rang around eight o’clock, and even before she read his number on the display she knew it would be Loogan.

  “Where are you?” she said to him.

  “You ask that as if you expect me to answer.”

  “I do.”

  “Let’s say I’m at a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike. I figured I’d be safe calling you from here. How fast can you organize a manhunt in Ohio?”

  She couldn’t help smiling at that. “I’m not sure,” she said, “but I’ll get right on it.”

  “Did you catch up with Valerie Calnero?”

  She debated whether to answer him, decided it would do no harm. “Valerie slipped away from us. We had people watching for her on the interstates, all the main routes out of the city. I think she may have stuck to the back roads.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “We’ve got a bulletin out on her, and we’ve contacted the police in Milwaukee. That’s where she grew up. She might go back there.”

  “I doubt it. She’s smarter than that.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Did you find the file box at her apartment?”

  Elizabeth got up and turned down the volume on the stereo.

  “We found it,” she said. “I’m not sure how much good it does us. There was nothing else of interest in the apartment. We talked to some witnesses on the scene though.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “People who saw her leave,” Elizabeth said. “They saw you with her. Saw you put something in her car.”

  “That was her cat.”

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  “Then they saw you kiss her.”

  “Technically, she kissed me.”

  “Is that right?” Elizabeth stood by the window and rested her palm against the cool glass. “Are you really such a passive man? Blackmailers kiss you. Publishers’ wives seduce you. Maybe you need to take some initiative.”

  She drew her fingertips down along the glass. “The witnesses said you were carrying a guitar case. That’s a nice touch.”

  He laughed. “The thing is, I needed some way to threaten Valerie. I told her if she didn’t talk, I’d beat her with my guitar. But in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “No wonder she kissed you. Mr. Loogan, I should advise you that carrying a concealed weapon is a crime. I should also advise you that there are now two warrants out for your arrest—one as a material witness to the death of Michael Beccanti, one for obstructing a police investigation. I recommend you find a lawyer and turn yourself in.”

  “You said that before.”

  “I’m going to keep on saying it.”

  He went quiet for a few seconds. Then: “Have you worked out the connection yet between Valerie Calnero and Sean Wrentmore?”

  “More or less,” Elizabeth said. “We know Wrentmore left a key to his storage unit with Delia Ross, in case something happened to him. He must have done the same with Valerie. She copyedited one of his stories when she was an intern at Gray Streets. I’m not sure why he wanted two people to have access to his storage unit. Maybe he thought one of them was unreliable.”

  “Delia Ross is close to fi nishing her degree and plans to leave Ann Arbor,” Loogan said. “If Wrentmore knew that, he might’ve chosen Valerie as a replacement.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Also, Sean Wrentmore was a solitary man, and Valerie Calnero is a beautiful woman. He might have seen it as a way of getting close to her.”

  “You’ve given this some thought.”

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  “I’ve had time on my hands,” he said drily. “That reminds me. I’ve been thinking about Michael Beccanti. Whoever killed him was either waiting at my house, or followed him there. I think they must have followed him.”

  “Why would they follow him?”

  “Because they knew he was looking into Tom Kristoll’s murder. I told you Beccanti searched Tom’s office on Saturday. I forgot to mention that someone caught him at it. The secretary, Sandy Vogel. She might have told someone else. That’s worth investigating, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’d talk to her myself, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t approve.”

  “I wouldn’t. Don’t try to contact Sandy Vogel.”

  “I won’t. How are you holding up?”

  Elizabeth turned away from the window. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Four murders now,” he said. “It must be a lot of work.”

  “I have colleagues, Mr. Loogan. I’m not expected to solve four murders on my own.”

  “Still, you must be busy.”

  “A lot of it is paperwork,” she said, returning to the sofa. “Forms, notes, reports. That’s what an investigation comes down
to—papers in a file. I’ve got some of them here.” She picked up one of the folders beside her. “We’ve made a timeline of your actions, for instance. When you called me yesterday, you implied you were somewhere far away, but that was a bit of deception. You must have been in Ann Arbor, or at least nearby, because a short time later you went to Self-Storage USA. Then you may have left town for all I know, but you came back this morning for your tête-à-tête with Valerie Calnero. In the meantime, you acquired a guitar case. To anyone else, this might seem like trivia, but yesterday I happened to walk through every room of your rented house. There was a guitar case in the spare bedroom. I went back today, and there was a guitar but no case. Do you know what that means?”

  “What?”

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  “It means now I’ve made a note in the file about the guitar case. You’re making more work for me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If you were sorry, you’d turn yourself in.” She reached for a different folder. “Here’s another report—on the knife that killed Michael Beccanti. Most of the fingerprints we found on the knife belonged to Beccanti himself. That’s not surprising. He was the last one to touch it—he pulled the knife out of his stomach. But we found a partial thumbprint that didn’t belong to him, and we compared it to yours. You gave us a set of prints after Tom died, as I’m sure you recall. We fingerprinted everyone who had access to Tom’s office, for purposes of elimination. The thumbprint on the knife was yours.”

  “That can be explained,” Loogan said mildly. “I told you the knife came from my kitchen.”

  “That’s true. You told me,” Elizabeth said. “But your prints also turned up in Adrian Tully’s car. What do you think of that?”

  This was something she herself had learned earlier in the day. She could tell from the way he paused that it had caught him by surprise.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he said softly, “I’d think you were trying to trick me.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.

  “My prints have no business being in Adrian Tully’s car.”

  “That’s what I would have thought. Yet there they are.”