Mister X. John Lutz

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      “I remember her,” Buddy said. “Nice lady, tipped okay.”

      “Luggage?” Quinn asked.

      “Big red Samsonite hard shell with wheels. Also a black nylon carry-on, looked like the kinda thing that might hold a notebook computer. She was wearin’ jeans and a yellow silk blouse.”

      “What color eyes?” Pearl asked.

      “One brown, one blue.” Buddy grinned hugely. “Naw, I’m funnin’ you there. I don’t remember her eyes. The rest of it, though, you can count on it bein’ right. I got a—”

      “Yeah, we know.”

      “The suitcase was heavy. She was plannin’ on bein’ around for a while.”

      “You help her with the suitcase when she checked out?” Quinn asked.

      “Naw, she just wheeled the thing out to the curb an’ piled into a cab. The carry-on was slung over her arm with her purse. The purse was brown leather. Kinda scuffed. That was the last I seen of her.”

      Quinn thanked Buddy and turned back to the desk clerk. “Anybody been in five-twelve since Chrissie Keller?”

      “Only the maid.”

      “Mind if we have a look?”

      “At the maid?”

      Pearl dead-eyed the desk clerk, which seemed to scare him.

      “Don’t mind at all,” he said. “Yous see our rooms, you’ll maybe wanna stay here sometime. But yous won’t find nuttin’—not the way our maids clean up after a guest.”

      “Still,” Quinn said with a smile, “you never know.”

      “I guess not,” the desk clerk said. “Yous might find lint or a hair or somethin’.”

      “You’d be surprised,” Quinn said.

      “No, I wouldn’t. I watch all those forensic crime-scene shows on TV, read mysteries about how crimes are solved.” He appeared thoughtful. “There a crime been committed here?”

      “We’re trying to find out,” Quinn said.

      Buddy accompanied them in the elevator and led them to 512, where he opened the door and then hung around as if expecting a tip. Habit, Quinn supposed.

      “The bathroom’s in there,” Buddy said, motioning toward a closed door. “There’s your television. There’s a refrigerator right there stocked with—”

      Quinn gave him a look that shut him up. Buddy grinned, shrugged, and left the room.

      Quinn and Pearl looked around. The room was neatly arranged; it had to be, since most of the furniture was fastened to the walls. The maid had indeed been thorough. The scent of Lemon Pledge still hung in the air, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of dust.

      Pearl checked the tiny bathroom and found it smelling of bleach and gleaming and spotless. Even the grout between the blue tiles looked clean. She wished she had a bathroom like it. Hers was about the same size but was comparatively cruddy.

      Quinn was impressed. “The maid emptied the waste-baskets, and it looks like she polished their insides,” he said.

      “Waste of time,” Pearl said.

      Quinn wasn’t sure if she meant the wastebasket polishing or the room search.

      They went over the room thoroughly, but not with much enthusiasm, deftly staying out of each other’s way because they’d done this dozens of times in dozens of rooms.

      The desk clerk was right: the maid’s thoroughness had neutered the room when it came to anything like a clue. There was nothing that might be of help. Not lint, not a hair. Nothing.

      “Chrissie’s away clean,” Pearl said. “She did a number on us.”

      Quinn knew she was right. But what kind of number?

      And why?

      Two blocks away from where Quinn and Fedderman stood, a man was standing staring in the window of a luggage shop.

      A trip to someplace interesting, where I’ve never been before. That’s what I should do, take a trip. Pack a bag and get out of this city, at least for a while. Someplace in Europe. Or the Caribbean, if I can find an island that—

      Air brakes hissed, drawing his attention.

      He watched the young woman step down from the bus that had stopped near the corner. She was in her thirties, with dark eyes and luxurious shoulder-length dark hair that bounced with her generous breasts as she took the long, lurching step down to the pavement. Her dress was pale green, made of some kind of thin material that clung to her body in the light summer breeze.

      How gracefully she moved. So like a cat. Her high heels flashed as she extended her long legs with each stride, her calf muscles working like silk.

      Dancer’s legs, he thought. Maybe she was a dancer. Maybe she was—

      He realized he’d begun following the woman without even thinking about it. As if some part of him had already made the decision that their lives and her death should converge.

      No, goddamn it!

      He stopped walking, using all his willpower to avert his eyes from the woman.

      I don’t do that anymore.

      I don’t even have a hard-on.

      He turned around and started walking in the opposite direction the woman was going. He didn’t even glance back at her for one last look. One additional memory of her he could recall in detail at least for a while. He walked faster, lengthening his stride, pounding his heels down hard as if testing the resiliency of the sidewalk.

      I don’t do that anymore.

      I don’t have to do that anymore.

      But he found himself recalling the way her hair and her breasts had bounced as she’d stepped down out of the bus.

      He smiled. Even though that part of his life was over and he was somebody else now, it did no harm to remember. To think about how things were, or even how they might have been. Even how they might be. After all, he wasn’t the one who’d stirred up the past and started the thoughts playing like movie scenes in his mind. Scenes that he was in or was simply observing, looking at them usually from above, as if he’d been a spirit in the room.

      Thoughts…

      Thoughts never hurt anyone. How could they? They weren’t real. You couldn’t even touch them.

      And sometimes you couldn’t stop them.

      But he did stop thinking about leaving the city.

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