Very Bad Men Read online

  I had picked up the essentials of the story: The protagonist dreams one night that his wife has been abducted from their bedroom by a shadowy intruder. In the dream he finds himself paralyzed, unable to react as his wife tries to fight off her captor. The struggle grows violent—sheets torn from the bed, mirror broken on the bureau. In the morning he wakes to find that the struggle was real, his wife is gone, and all he can remember about her abductor is that he had no reflection in the mirror.

  The husband gets no help from the police. They think his story is nonsense and suspect he’s done away with his wife, but they can’t prove it. He’s left to try to find her on his own.

  Some of the critics found the plot melodramatic, the twists implausible. But they all agreed that the language was gorgeous, and that E. L. Navarro was a major new talent.

  “The bio note says you were writing a second book,” I said to her.

  “That’s true. I was planning a trilogy.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The first one didn’t sell,” Lucy said. “That’s an achievement in itself, I think—writing a vampire novel that won’t sell. In my defense, they tried to market it to twelve-year-olds. But that’s not who I wrote it for.”

  “I know a sixteen-year-old who loves it,” I said. I had talked to Sarah a short time before and learned that Stakes was one of her favorite books. That’s why she had asked me if Lucy was any relation to E. L. Navarro. “She’s waiting for the second book.”

  “She’ll have a long wait,” Lucy said.

  I felt the rough cover beneath my fingers. “But that’s what Beckett offered you, isn’t it?”

  “Beckett never offers anybody anything. I’m sure he told you so.”

  “But someone made the offer.”

  She nodded. “I got a call from my old editor this morning. She wants me to sign a contract for two more books. A nice advance. I’m supposed to drop everything and get to work.”

  I tapped the book. “This was Beckett’s last argument. He thought it would sway me. He thought I’d read it and try to convince you to forget your investigation. He was right. You’re wasting your time working for the Current . You should be writing another novel.”

  “I warned you about him, Loogan. You let him work his spell on you.”

  “No, this is my own judgment. I know a writer when I see one. Callie Spencer’s not your problem. No matter what she’s done—if she drove the getaway car at the Great Lakes robbery herself, if she killed Henry Kormoran with her bare hands—it’s not your responsibility to expose her. Let it go.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Loogan.”

  “I’m serious. Let someone else at the Current take over.”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that?” she said. “You’re assuming the publishing contract is real. But it’s not. It’s Beckett’s creation, and if I don’t do what he wants, it goes away. He wants the investigation to end.”

  Lucy gazed down at the backs of her hands where they rested on the steering wheel. I had an idea of what she was seeing—a different future, something that might have been.

  “No,” she said at last. “I wrote a book and it didn’t sell. No regrets. I made a decision to move on. To try being a reporter. I’m not going to stop.”

  I could have stayed and tried to change her mind, but it was her decision, and I had business of my own. I’d fallen behind on my editing. I needed to get back in my car and back to Gray Streets.

  As I opened the door beside me, she brought a pen from her bag and held her hand out for the book. She found the title page and scribbled her name.

  “There,” she said with a wan smile. “Now you’ve got a signed copy of E. L. Navarro’s only novel. Hang on to it. It’ll be worth something when I break this story about Callie Spencer.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Elizabeth sat cross-legged on the floor with the sofa at her back. On the coffee table in front of her she had spread the contents of Callie Spencer’s loony file—letters from constituents that had been set aside because they contained threats or seemed to have been written by people who were mentally disturbed.

  Callie Spencer had promised Elizabeth the file on Sunday night; her office had delivered it on Wednesday afternoon. Now, on Wednesday evening, with a glass of wine within reach and a Mahler symphony playing on the stereo, Elizabeth sorted through it, looking for a letter that went out of its way not to use adverbs, a letter that might have been written by the man in plaid.

  Earlier, Sarah had fixed dinner for the two of them: pan-fried steaks served with cauliflower that had been tossed in olive oil and baked in the oven. As the twilight deepened into dark, she joined Elizabeth on the livingroom floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Police business,” Elizabeth said.

  Sarah plucked a letter at random from the coffee table.

  “If I read this, am I going to be scarred for life?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  At one time, Elizabeth had tried to keep her home life strictly separate from her work life. She had gotten along fairly well until Sarah entered her teens and developed a strong curiosity about what her mother did for a living. Eventually, Elizabeth had given up on trying to keep the girl entirely out of police business. But she still tried to preserve some boundaries. “Scarred for life” was one of them: anything traumatic was off-limits, including things like autopsy reports and crime-scene photos. From what Elizabeth had seen, the letters from Callie Spencer’s file seemed relatively harmless.

  Sarah looked up from the letter she had chosen and said, “This one’s about mourning doves.”

  Elizabeth set aside a rambling note scrawled on a page torn from a phone book.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “This guy wants Callie to vote to lift the ban on hunting them.”

  “That’s ill-advised, but not crazy. Maybe that one got misfiled.”

  “He wants to be able to shoot them because he thinks they’re travelers from another dimension,” Sarah said. “He can’t get their cooing out of his head. He thinks they’re trying to control his thoughts.”

  “Interesting. But if they could control his thoughts, would they have let him write that letter?”

  “Well, they’re only trying so far. They haven’t succeeded.”

  Elizabeth reached for her wineglass. “Does he use any adverbs?”

  “I don’t see any,” said Sarah. “No, wait. Here’s one: the doves taunt him mercilessly. That’s not our man, then.”

  He’s not in here, Elizabeth thought. The man in plaid could pass for normal. If he was in Callie Spencer’s files, he was with all the other ordinary citizens who cared about ordinary things: unemployment and taxes, green technology and better schools. But Callie had refused access to those files.

  Elizabeth sipped wine and returned her glass to the table. Sarah read aloud from a letter that requested funding from the legislature for research into levitation and telekinesis. When she came to the end of that one, she found another that described a plan for fortifying Michigan’s southern border against the coming invasion from Ohio.

  “It has pictures,” Sarah said. “Diagrams of battlements. A system of trenches.” She was on her feet now, pacing around, riffling through the pages. “I want to keep this out and show it to David. Do you know when he’ll be home?”

  Elizabeth picked up a fresh letter. “He didn’t say.”

  “I think the spirit of it might appeal to him. You know how he is, always checking the locks on the doors and windows.” Sarah paused before one of the windows that looked out onto the porch and the street. The white slats of the blinds alternated with the dark outside.

  Elizabeth heard the snick of the blinds being closed. A moment later she heard the front door opening and being pulled shut again. She didn’t look up from her letter. She assumed Sarah had gone onto the porch to look at the night.

  A minute or two passed before she heard the door again. Sarah came into the living
room and touched a button on the stereo. The symphony cut off abruptly. She turned the switch on the floor lamp and the room went gray dark.

  “What are you doing?” Elizabeth said.

  Sarah knelt beside her. “There’s a car parked on the street with its engine running. Two people in it—a man and a woman. There’s something strange about them. The man slouched down when I walked by, like he didn’t want to be recognized.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “You should have said something to me before you went out there.”

  “I was curious.”

  “I don’t suppose you got a plate number.”

  “Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” said Sarah, looking wounded.

  “Let’s have it, then.”

  Sarah recited the number. “It’s an Audi. Looks new.”

  Elizabeth got up, found her cell phone in her bag. Dialed the Investigations Division on her way to the window.

  “Shan here.”

  “Carter. You’re working late.” Parting the blinds, Elizabeth spotted the car down the block, in a dark patch between two streetlamps.

  “Paperwork,” Shan said.

  “Check a plate for me?”

  “Sure.”

  She gave him the number. Heard him working a keyboard.

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “Call it curiosity. The car’s been sitting on my street.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe I should come over.”

  “Who is it, Carter?”

  She heard the squeak of his chair as he sat back.

  “The car’s registered to Jay Casterbridge,” he said.

  Callie Spencer’s husband. Elizabeth watched the doors of the car swing open. Two figures got out.

  “Say the word,” Shan said, “and I’m on my way.”

  Elizabeth saw Jay Casterbridge step into the light of the streetlamp. The woman with him was tall and rail thin. Not Callie Spencer.

  “No. Let me see what he wants, Carter. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  JAY CASTERBRIDGE MOVED restlessly around the kitchen, skittish as a pony in an unfamiliar stall. His tie was loose and one end of his shirt collar hung over the lapel of his jacket.

  “Callie doesn’t know I’m here,” he said.

  “Is that right?” said Elizabeth.

  She had turned on the downstairs lights, and the fluorescents in the kitchen made Casterbridge blink. His companion seemed more at ease. She had long slender limbs and a delicate face. Blond hair with dark roots. She wore deep blue slacks and a matching blazer with a white blouse underneath. The blouse was open at the collar, showing freckled skin stretched over prominent clavicles. Casterbridge had introduced her as his law partner, Julia Trent.

  “What Jay means,” she said, “is that we’d like this conversation to remain confidential.”

  “That’s fine,” said Elizabeth.

  Julia Trent braced her arms against the counter behind her. “We saw a young woman come out of the house a few minutes ago. Was that your daughter?”

  Elizabeth nodded once. “She’s gone upstairs. She’s won’t overhear us.”

  Jay Casterbridge wandered over by the refrigerator and stood with his arms crossed.

  “I think you had a good idea the other night,” he said. “About the files.”

  Elizabeth watched him pluck at the sleeve of his jacket. She said nothing.

  “If you found someone that way,” he said, “no one would need to know, would they? I mean, no one would need to know how you found him.”

  “All I need is a name,” Elizabeth said. “Once I’ve got it, I can look into his background, determine if he’s a viable suspect.”

  “And it wouldn’t come back to Callie. That’s important.”

  “There’s no reason it should have to. Are you suggesting she might be willing to let me see her files?”

  Casterbridge grimaced. “God no. She’s set against it.”

  Elizabeth touched the glass beads of her necklace. “Are you offering to let me look at the files without her knowing?”

  He glanced at Julia Trent, who stared right back at him.

  “Callie’s been here for the past three days,” he said carefully. “I’ve been in Lansing. Her main office is there. All the files.”

  “You’ve found something,” Elizabeth said.

  He nodded. “A typical letter from a constituent. He wrote to her about an issue—violence against women. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If he thinks he’s protecting Callie from harm, if he’s targeting the Great Lakes robbers because, in his mind, they pose a danger to her—”

  “Yes, it makes sense.”

  “Now Callie gets a fair number of letters about violence against women,” Jay Casterbridge said. “I would have passed over this one, except that it fits the pattern you described. It goes on for three pages without using a single adverb. The guy who wrote it, he talks about a friend who was beaten by her husband. He attacked her again and again—‘beat her like a savage would.’ That’s the phrase that caught my attention. The writer doesn’t say ‘savagely’; he won’t use the adverb. In the next paragraph he says, ‘Threats are serious and should be heeded’—when anyone else would say, ‘Threats should be taken seriously.’ There are at least five more examples like that. Sounds like the man you’re looking for, doesn’t it?”

  Elizabeth had been standing across the room from the other two. Now she moved closer. “It does,” she said. “I need to see that letter.”

  Julia Trent stepped over to Casterbridge’s side. “We’re willing to let you see it,” she said in a crisp lawyer’s voice, “but we have conditions. You get one look. You don’t keep the letter, or even a copy. You don’t reveal that we showed it to you.”

  “That won’t work. The letter’s evidence—”

  “It’s not evidence,” said Julia Trent. “It’s not a crime to write to your state representative. You get a look, that’s all. The letter’s signed. You said all you needed was a name.” She shrugged as if the matter were settled. A woman used to getting her way.

  Elizabeth sighed. “Fine. Let me see it.”

  She would have bet that Julia Trent had possession of the letter, but Jay Casterbridge was the one to reach inside his jacket, draw it out, pass it over.

  Elizabeth accepted it, three sheets clipped together. She saw the date: May of this year. The salutation: “Dear Ms. Spencer.” Neat blocks of text. She turned to the last page and the signature had a half-familiar look. The sharp angles of the capital A and L reminded her of the man in plaid’s note: LET ME HAVE BELL AND I’M DONE. Some of the letters of the signature were hard to make out, but the name was right there in type underneath. She felt a rush of heat in her fingertips, goose bumps rising on her arms. She knew it was him.

  Anthony Lark.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lark’s hand felt better every day. The swelling had gone down and a scab had formed over the cut. He could poke it without wincing. He left the bandage off now, and if he curled his fingers no one would notice the wound. He kept taking the Keflex, morning and evening. A ten-day course, Sutton Bell had told him.

  He had been testing his strength, venturing out of the apartment. Working on the problem of how to get to Bell. Slow and steady, his father used to say. Lark had driven through Bell’s neighborhood and past the clinic where he worked. He had gone at different times of day. He had seen patrol cars parked in front of the house and the clinic, but never at the same time. The police were conserving manpower. They watched the house when Bell was home, but not when he was at work.

  That probably meant that Bell’s wife and daughter weren’t staying at the house, which was fine with Lark. When the time came, he didn’t want the wife and daughter to be there.

  Lark drove into his apartment complex Wednesday night with a deli sandwich and a six-pack of beer on the car seat beside him. A dim suggestion of a headache had begun to stir behind his eyes, but he thought if he went in and took a pill and laid some ice on his brow he might be
able to fend it off.

  He passed along a curve in the drive that led to his building and his headlights washed over the Dumpsters. He spotted a flash of movement, orange and gray, quick as lightning. An animal darting through a break in the wooden fence that framed the Dumpsters on three sides. Through the break and into the tangle of brush on the other side.

  A cat, he thought.

  He stopped the Chevy and left it idling. Got out before he had a chance to think about the wisdom of it. He crouched to look through the break in the fence and thought he could see eyes peering back at him.

  He retreated to the car, unwrapped his sandwich, and peeled off a slice of turkey. Took it with him and left a scrap of it by the break in the fence.

  More scraps at small intervals, a trail to lure the cat out. Lark knelt on the bare concrete before the Dumpsters, a last scrap of turkey dangling between his fingers. The eyes watched him.

  He waited. The cat made a foray through the break, putting its nose out to sniff the air, and then a paw. It came out to the first scrap of turkey and nibbled at it. Lifted its head to stare at Lark. Nibbled some more.

  It came forward, its tail raised cautiously in the air. The pattern of its fur resolved itself for Lark’s eyes: faded calico. White patches on large paws.

  When it came to Lark, it had lost interest in the turkey. It turned its head to the side and rubbed its neck against his wrist. He put the last scrap on the ground and the cat nosed down to smell it politely, then stretched, swaybacked. It turned sideways to rub itself on Lark’s knee, and he ran his fingertips along its back.

  He thought its claws would come out as soon as he tried to lift it—he remembered the scratches on his neighbor’s hands—but he got a palm beneath its belly and it seemed all right: no struggle, just sober green eyes regarding him.

  He hugged the cat to his chest with both arms. Left the Chevy running and walked steadily toward the apartment building’s entrance. Halfway there he felt the cat begin to squirm, but he knew better than to stop and try to soothe it. He got through the glass doors and into the ground-floor hallway. The thing was whining now, the legs flailing. Lark came to his neighbor’s door and kicked the gray metal—not hard, but insistently.