She shrugged and wheeled her cart to the next corner, where she took up a post against the bricks.
The alley was dark and cluttered with trash bins, waterstained cardboard boxes, and an unrecognizable hump that may have been a discarded water heater. Then again, it just as easily could have been a rug with a body rolled inside. A high chainlink fence spanned the alley halfway down. I could hardly climb a fourfoot fence on a good day, let alone a tenfoot one. Brick buildings flanked me on both sides. All the windows were greased over and barred.
Stepping over crates and sacks of trash, I picked my way down the alley. Broken glass crunched beneath my shoes. A flash of white darted between my legs, stealing my breath. A cat. Just a cat, vanishing into the darkness ahead.
I reached for my pocket to text Vee, intending to tell her I was close and to watch for me, when I remembered I’d left my cell phone in my coat pocket. Nice going, I thought. What are the chances the bag lady will give you back your phone? Precisely—slim to none.
I decided it was worth a try, and as I turned around, a sleek black sedan sped past the opening to the alley. With a sudden glow of red, the brake lights lit up.
For reasons I couldn’t explain beyond intuition, I drew into the shadows.
A car door opened and the crackle of gunfire broke out. Two shots. The car door slammed and the black sedan screeched away. I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and it blended with the sound of running feet. I realized a moment later that they were my feet, and I was running to the mouth of the alley. I rounded the corner and came up short.
The bag lady’s body was in a heap on the sidewalk.
I rushed over and fell on my knees beside her. “Are you okay?” I said frantically, rolling her over. Her mouth was agape, her raisin eyes hollow. Dark liquid flowered through the quilted coat I’d been wearing three minutes ago.
I felt the urge to jump back but forced myself to reach inside the coat pockets. I needed to call for help, but my cell phone wasn’t there.
There was a phone booth on the corner across the street. I ran to it and dialed 911. While I waited for the operator to pick up, I glanced back at the bag lady’s body, and that’s when I felt cold adrenaline shoot through me. The body was gone.
With a shaky hand, I hung up. The sound of approaching footsteps tapped in my ears, but whether they were near or far, I couldn’t tell.
Clip, clip, clip.
He’s here, I thought. The man in the ski mask.
I shoved a few coins into the phone and gripped the receiver with both hands. I tried to remember Patch’s cell phone number. Squeezing my eyes shut, I visualized the seven numbers he’d written in red ink on my hand the first day we met. Before I could secondguess my memory, I dialed the numbers.
“What’s up?” Patch said.
I almost sobbed at the sound of his voice. I could hear the crack of billiard balls colliding on a pool table in the background, and knew he was at Bo’s Arcade. He could be here in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.
“It’s me.” I didn’t dare push my voice above a whisper.
“Nora?”
“I’m in PPortland. On the corner of Hempshire and Nantucket. Can you pick me up? It’s urgent.”
I was huddled in the bottom of the phone booth, counting silently to one hundred, trying to remain calm, when a black Jeep Commander glided to the curb. Patch slid the door to the phone booth open and crouched in the entrance.
He peeled off his top layer—a longsleeved black Tshirt— leaving him in a black undershirt. He fit the neckhole of the Tshirt over my head and a moment later had my arms pushed through the sleeves. The shirt dwarfed me, the sleeves hanging down well past my fingertips. It mingled the smells of smoke, saltwater, and mint soap. Something about it filled the hollow places inside me with reassurance.
“Let’s get you in the car,” Patch said. He pulled me up, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face into him.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said. The world tilted, including Patch. “I need my iron pills.”
“Shh,” he said, holding me against him. “It’s going to be all right. I’m here now.”
I managed a little nod.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Another nod. “We need to get Vee,” I said. “She’s at a party one block over.”
While Patch drove the Jeep around the corner, I listened to my chattering teeth echo around inside my head. I’d never been this frightened in my life. Seeing the dead homeless woman conjured up thoughts of my dad. My vision was tinged with red, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t flush out the image of blood.
“Were you in the middle of a pool game?” I asked, remembering the sound of billiard balls colliding in the background during our brief phone conversation.
“I was winning a condo.”
“A condo?”
“One of those swank ones on the lake. I would have hated the place. This is Highsmith. Do you have an address?”
“I can’t remember it,” I said, sitting up taller to get a better look out the windows. All of the buildings looked abandoned. There was no trace of a party. There was no trace of life, period.
“Do you have your cell?” I asked Patch.
He slid a Blackberry out of his pocket. “Battery’s low. I don’t know if it will make a call.”
I texted Vee. WHERE ARE YOU?!
CHANGE OF PLANS, she texted back. GUESS J AND E COULDN’T FIND WHAT THEY WERE
LOOKING 4. WE’RE GOING HOME.
The screen drained to black.
“It died,” I told Patch. “Do you have the charger?”
“Not on me.”
“Vee’s going back to Coldwater. Do you think you could drop me off at her house?”
Minutes later we were on the coastal highway, driving right along a cliff just above the ocean. I’d been this way before, and when the sun was out, the water was slate blue with patches of dark green where the water reflected the evergreens. It was night, and the ocean was smooth black poison.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Patch asked.