"Laurent? She's dead."
Dead? Then what was "Find me" all about? "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Happened about twenty years ago and she was older than God when she croaked, so nobody's broke up about it."
"I thought you said the old lady went into a rest home a few years ago."
"Son, it's plain to me you don't know squat about that house and the people who used to live in it, and yet you said your wife took you there to meet her family. Now you lay it out plain. Is this Ray Cryer blackmailing you about something? Did you do something criminal in that house? Or are you just insane? Because you sure as hell did not marry a woman who has anything to do with that house, since that family is gone. Old lady Laurent is dead. The current owner is her daughter, the old lady I mentioned who went into a rest home. And her only daughter is about thirty-five and married with a little kid, and she's never been back since the old lady moved out."
"I did nothing criminal in that house. If Ray Cryer is blackmailing me, he hasn't asked for money yet and if he does I won't give him any because I haven't done anything I need to hide. As to whether I'm insane, well, at my income level people generally call us eccentric."
"But you're still not answering my questions."
"Chief, I want very much to meet you."
"The feeling is mutual."
"I want to go through that house with you and find out everything you can tell me about it."
"What, am I a realtor now?"
"Believe me or not, Chief, my wife came to that house with me. She grew up in that house, of that I have no doubt. It's her people buried in the graveyard. And if I have any hope of finding her, it'll be through whatever I can learn about that house. So I will be there soon. And in the meantime, I'll fax you the receipt from the limo service that took us there, so you can find out whether I did in fact arrive with my wife."
"I'll be waiting for it, son."
They said their chilly good-byes. Quentin hung up the phone and called the limo company to have them fax Chief Bolt a copy of the bill. All the while, he kept telling himself that this was about the stupidest thing he could do. Since Ray Cryer was lying and he hadn't told the police anything, why should Quentin do anything to arouse more suspicion? Why didn't he just tell Bolt some cockamamy story and hang up and sigh in relief and call off the search for a missing wife that he knew would never turn up? And above all, why would he provoke Bolt into getting proof positive from the limo driver that yes indeed, Mrs. Fears got out of the car and went into the house with Mr. Fears? The fact that there were no woman's footprints coming out of the house could only make the chief suspect foul play.
And yet at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. A gut feeling. A sense that Chief Bolt was a decent guy whose trust was worth having. And there was something important about him.
Oh. Of course. Chief Bolt knew the old lady. And if there was any sense to the universe at all, the old lady in the rest home had to be Grandmother. Didn't she? Only she wasn't old lady Laurent, who was twenty years dead, which would make her Grandmother's late mother, which meant Laurent must have been Grandmother's maiden name and the chief would know her married name and where to find her. So knowing the chief was maybe a route to Grandmother.
It was also quite possibly a route to jail.
Quentin shuddered, and then thought of the thing that had made him shudder: When he felt so certain that he should say what he said to the chief, what made him think it was his own idea? For all he knew, he was acting out somebody's script.
No. The User doesn't do that. She's made me see things, but she hasn't made me do things. She can't make me say or do things because if she could, that box would be open and this whole thing would have ended back there by the Hudson. And if Grandmother could make me do things she wouldn't have made me see a talking rat in order to persuade me.
Quentin thought about it some more and realized why he didn't palm off some easy lie on the chief. It was because Quentin was a pretty good judge of people, Madeleine, of course, being a spectacular exception. After screening hundreds and hundreds of people responding to his ads, after working with many dozens of partners over the years, he could tell pretty quickly which people he'd enjoy working with and which would be nothing but pain.
And Chief Bolt was his kind of guy. It was that simple. If Bolt were asking him for funding to start some business, Quentin would hear him out, make sure the premise was sound, and have the papers drawn up, because he could do business with Bolt.
Except the business Bolt was in was the suspicious cop trade, and the only partnership the chief had in mind was the uneasy partnership of cop and suspect. The only thing the chief lacked was evidence of a crime and Quentin was helping him find some.
Maybe it's an unconscious attempt to thwart the User, thought Quentin. After all, I can't open that treasure box if I'm in jail.
11. Reunion
Something touched him in the night. As he lay on his side in bed, something light glided over his bare skin, above his hip. He woke with a start, slapping at it. Someone gave a cry. He lunged for the light and turned it on.
Madeleine sat in the bed, holding her hand as if it had been burnt, an accusing look on her face.
He couldn't think of anything to say.
"Miss me?" she said.
Suddenly it annoyed him, the way she was holding her hand, as if she were really in pain. "Don't bother holding your hand. I know you aren't hurt."
"You think it doesn't hurt when you slap me?"
"I thought a spider was crawling up my—yeah, well, I wasn't far wrong, was I?"
"Don't be mad," she said. "Please don't be mad."
The expression on her face was so genuinely sad, so full of longing, that he felt himself melting with compassion in spite of himself. But no, no, he refused to be taken in.
"Get out," he said.
She was wearing a nightgown. She plucked at the hem. "Tin, please, I..."
"Don't call me that. You sucked that out of my mind. Or Lizzy's—that name doesn't belong to you!"
"No, it's your name."
"It's my name when it's spoken by somebody who loves me. Not somebody who's trying to use me to open some... box." He got up and walked clumsily around the bed, out of the bedroom, into the kitchen. He got orange juice out of the fridge and poured a glass.
She stood in the kitchen doorway. "Enough for me?"
"No," he said. "You don't need it. And that's something I want to know. Since you're not really here, what did you do with everything you ate and drank? Where does it go?"
Her face went cold and she walked back to the living room. "I see," she said. "Your note meant nothing."
He followed her, the glass of juice in his hand. "So your real name is Duncan?"
She whirled on him. "My real name is Madeleine Cryer Fears. Your wife. There's a license."
"And how did you sign it? How did your name get on it? You can't really hold a pen."
"I can hold a pen. I can hold a glass. I can hold you. Remember how it felt?" She reached for him. Her hand, reaching to brush against his cheek, to cup his jaw and draw him close...
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her even closer, then poured orange juice over her head. It dribbled down her hair, over her forehead. She covered her face with her hands and wept. "All I want is to love you, Quentin!"
He stood there, looking at the juice, how real it looked. How it dripped from her hair onto her shoulders, some of it down onto the carpet.