Читать книгу Mania - Craig Larsen - Страница 9

Beyond the plate-glass windows of the Starbucks, the sky was so low and gray that street lamps were still burning at ten in the morning. A fierce wind was blowing, whipping brown and yellow leaves down the broad street, tossing heavy drops of freezing rain in handfuls against the thick window panes. The café was packed with students from the University of Washington. The line stretched nearly to the door. Nick had been lucky to snag the table in front of the gas-burning fireplace. Unsteady still, he was staring at the screen of his small computer, oblivious to the voices rising and falling around him.

When a green-eyed girl with Nordic blond hair stood in front of his table and spoke to him, Nick hardly noticed her. She was only one more of the rumpled, tired-looking students milling around the room, waiting for an empty table. The blond-haired girl put her slender ivory hand down next to his laptop and leaned closer to him.

“Is anyone sitting here?” she repeated.

His interest piqued by the smooth texture of her skin and her long, delicate fingers, Nick looked up at her. The first thought that crossed his mind was that he had never seen a more beautiful woman. The tall, svelte girl smiled at him, and Nick found himself smiling back at her, stunned by the radiance of her eyes. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No one.”

“May I?” She rested a hand on the back of the chair opposite Nick, but politely waited for him to respond.

Nick shrugged.

“It’s a good place to sit,” she said, slipping into the chair. “Right in front of the fire.”

As Nick pulled his laptop back to clear a space for her on the table, he realized that she wasn’t carrying a coffee.

“I just came inside to get out of the rain,” she said, reading his gaze. “I left my house this morning without my coat. It’s cold out there.”

“Yeah. Miserable.”

Drops of water glistened in the girl’s hair like tiny diamonds. She was wearing a thin white blouse, and her shoulders were wet with rain. Nick’s eyes were drawn despite himself to the lace straps of her bra, visible through the sheer material.

“When I saw this place by the fire, I thought I’d grab it.” She glanced out the slick window at the dark, windblown street. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Nick shook his head.

“Will you hold this chair for me, then?” She twisted around in her seat and checked the line in front of the counter, just as one of the servers raised his voice and announced, Keith, your non-fat cap’ is ready. Keith. “I think I’ll get a cup of coffee.”

Nick was unable to take his eyes off her as she walked to the counter. A number of other heads turned as well as she walked past. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Assured and elegant, flawless. Nick wondered who she was and what she did. He imagined that she was at least twenty-five—too old to be an undergraduate at the university. She had distracted him from his computer, and he was still watching her a few minutes later when the server behind the counter called her name: Sara. Your tall low-fat latte is ready. She smiled at him on the way back to the table, and Nick felt his face flush. Once again, he was aware of the people watching her as she walked. She moved gracefully, and she seemed nearly to be glowing in her white blouse and tight jeans.

“So your name’s Sara,” he said as she sat back down across from him.

She was holding her coffee up to her lips, blowing on it. “Good job, Detective. Sara Garland,” she said. “And you’re Nick, I take it?”

Nick felt his eyebrows rise in surprise.

“It’s on your cup,” Sara said, smiling lightly. Nick followed her eyes down to the cup of coffee on the table between them, where indeed the server had scrawled his name with a thick black marker.

“Yeah. Nick Wilder.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting you. It looks like you’re pretty busy.”

Nick glanced at his laptop. The screen had long since gone black. “No. I’m glad for the break.”

She looked at him critically, trying to gauge his age as he had judged hers. “You’re not a student. A graduate student, maybe. Or a teacher?”

“I’m a reporter,” Nick said. “With the Seattle Telegraph.”

“That sounds glamorous.”

Nick shrugged. “Not really. It’s a lot of hours, and it doesn’t pay much. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this.”

“What are you working on now? Are you writing an article?”

Nick shook his head. Sara’s question had brought the image of Claire Scott’s corpse back into his mind. The contrast with the woman sitting in front of him was unsettling. He closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, running his fingers through his hair, becoming aware at the same time how disheveled he was. He had left his apartment a few hours before without showering or shaving.

“Are you all right?”

Nick noted the concern in Sara’s eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

“You look upset, that’s all.”

“I have to admit,” Nick said, “I am a bit. I’m sorry. I’ve been with the paper for a couple of years now. I should be used to it.” He was surprised by his own candor. “I’ve been working as a photographer. I see things sometimes. It still gets to me.”

Sara was peering at him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Sara dismissed his apology. “No—don’t be sorry.” She hesitated. “It was a body. A murder. Wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Nick was taken aback. “How did you know?”

“I have a confession to make, too.”

Nick waited.

“I didn’t sit down here because of the fire. I was standing behind you for about two minutes before I approached the table. You were pretty absorbed in your computer.”

“You saw the pictures.”

Sara nodded. “I have to tell you,” she said, smiling wryly. “I was pretty relieved just now when you told me you were a reporter.”

Nick took a fresh look at the beautiful woman in front of him, intrigued that she would sit down with him after seeing the images on the screen of his laptop.

“You took those pictures today?”

Nick lowered his eyes.

“So you were there. Standing right there, I mean. Almost on top of her.”

“Yes.” Close enough to smell her.

“No wonder you’re freaked out.”

From the corner of his eye, Nick noticed Sara’s gaze traveling down his legs, taking in the mud drying on his shoes.

“It scares me”—Sara said, shivering slightly—“and I wasn’t even there. To see a body like that, it must be pretty frightening—no matter how many times you’ve been around crimes like that before.”

“It is,” Nick admitted.

“I didn’t really get a good look at the pictures. But I could see how violent the crime was. The guy who did it must have been crazy.”

“That’s not what scares me.”

Sara was silent, waiting for Nick to meet her stare, waiting for him to continue.

“It scares me more how sane he was.”

Again, Sara shivered. “What do you mean?”

Nick regretted that he had let them dwell so long on the murder.

“Tell me,” Sara said, prodding him.

“How the same person can be one thing at night,” Nick said at last, “and then something else during the day.”

Nick read Sara’s confusion.

“The guy stabbed this woman so many times—so brutally—she was nearly unrecognizable,” he explained. “This same guy, though, takes the time to gather her up and sneak her out to the bank of this river to dispose of the body. That’s what scares me. That the same person can somehow reconcile the two realities.”

“Because you think maybe we’re all capable of doing the same thing.” Sara’s eyes hadn’t left his face. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“To some degree—yeah, maybe.”

“Sane during the day. Killers at night.”

Once again, Nick looked down at the table.

“You think you’re capable of it?”

Nick turned Sara’s words over in his mind. He found himself wondering whether she was asking him a question. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this. His own voice seemed to resonate in his head, and he felt his face flush.

“It still sounds pretty amazing,” Sara said into the awkward silence. “Your job, I mean.”

“And what about you?” Nick asked her, determined to change the subject. “What do you do? You’re not a student either, are you?”

A slight darkness clouded Sara’s expression. There was something overwhelmingly light about Sara, he realized in contrast. Her hair was silvery blond. Her eyes were translucently green. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. Her skin was ivory. Still, as radiant as she was, there was something mysterious about this woman in front of him, too, something elusive he couldn’t define. “No,” she said, “I’m not a student, either. Is it so obvious that I’m too old?”

Loosening up a little, Nick looked up and down her body, from the top of her head to her toes. After all, she had invited him to. “Not exactly,” he said. “It’s not that you look too old to be a student. You seem too focused.”

“That’s the last thing I am.” Sara’s laugh was genuine, and Nick felt himself relax even more. “Just say it, I look too old to be a student.”

He refused the bait and pushed the compliment another way. “Too polished anyway.”

“I’m an actress,” Sara said. “Well, off and on, anyway. Off right now. That’s why I’m back here in Seattle.”

“You’re from Seattle originally?”

“My parents live in Bellevue.”

“You’re staying with them?”

Sara shrugged. “For a while. Maybe I’ll get my own place one of these days. Or maybe I’ll just head back down to LA.”

“You’ve got something to head down there for? A project, I mean—a movie?”

Sara shook her head. “I’ve been lucky enough, I guess. But I haven’t pursued it as much as I should. I’m thinking maybe I’ll do something else entirely. Get into business, I don’t know.”

Nick’s cell phone vibrated, and he glanced down at its screen. Recognizing Laura Daly’s personal line from the Telegraph building, he remembered the staff meeting this morning, the first one for the month of October, when assignments would be handed out by the editors. The senior editor would no doubt be wondering where he was. “Excuse me,” Nick said. “I’ve got to take this.” He pressed a button on his phone and raised it to his ear. “Laura?”

“Were you planning to grace us with your presence, Nick?”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Nick threw a quick, embarrassed smile at Sara.

“Don’t sweat it. We’ll talk when you come in. Listen, you somewhere close? There’s something I’d like you to do now. A couple of blocks from here. It can’t wait. You got a pen?”

Nick cradled the phone against his shoulder and searched through his bag for pen and paper. After scrawling down an address, he snapped the phone shut and looked apologetically at Sara. “I’ve got to go.”

“Oh, really? That’s too bad.” When Sara glanced down at her watch, Nick noticed a gold and platinum Rolex loose on her wrist, its face set with diamonds. Not exactly the watch of a struggling actress.

“I wish I didn’t have to. It’s work.” He closed the lid of his laptop and gathered his belongings from the table, scooping them into the soft leather shoulder bag he carried as he pushed his chair back from the table.

“Well, I enjoyed meeting you, Nick.”

“It was good to meet you, too,” Nick said, in a hurry.

“You’re not forgetting something?”

Nick stopped to make certain he had grabbed all his things from the tabletop, then looked up at Sara, meeting her friendly gaze. He wasn’t certain what she was referring to, and his expression reflected his puzzlement.

“I thought maybe you were going to ask me out.” Sara’s tone was playful, but she dropped her eyes, bashful.

Nick ran his fingers across his unshaven cheeks as he tried to assess her sincerity. He hadn’t been expecting the approach.

“I have a weakness for shy guys,” Sara said, as if she were answering an unspoken question.

“I thought the pictures might have frightened you off.”

Sara laughed sweetly. “The pictures are why I’m here.”

Nick measured her for a few more seconds, once again intrigued by this woman. There was more to her than her pretty face, he thought. Her appearance camouflaged it at first, but then, as much as her beauty validated her, the juxtaposition served too to heighten the observation. She was dangerous. At last, Nick relaxed into a smile. “I suppose I could ask you out for a coffee. But we’ve done that already, haven’t we?”

Sara met his eyes. “It’ll have to be something more, then.”

Repeating the innocent words in his mind, Nick felt a sudden thrill pass through him, taking his breath away. “That sounds promising.”

“Give him an inch and he takes a yard. I meant dinner.”

“Really?”

“You sound tentative. You don’t want me to see who you are after dark?”

“Now you’re just mocking me. I’m shy, that’s all. You said it yourself. That’s what makes me so irresistible.”

“You go to work now,” Sara said. “Here’s my number.” She reached across the table and took Nick’s phone from him, tapping a few numbers onto the display and then saving the number under her name. “Give me a call. I’m free tonight, if that’s not too soon.”

“No,” Nick said, wondering how he would be able to wait that long. “It’s not too soon. I’m free tonight, too.”

Sara watched him as Nick found his way through the crowded coffee shop to the exit. It was an unguarded moment for her, and her face reflected what she felt inside. Had he turned back around, her wistful expression would have confused him. Standing behind him as she had worked up her nerve to approach him, looking over his shoulder at the photographs this self-possessed man had taken that morning at the crime scene, Sara hadn’t expected to like him. Not like this. Not this much.