Ridiculous. She could never outrun him.
He stepped onto the walkway outside the alcove.
Then a door opened — the door to the motel office — and she heard a male voice say, “Excuse me. I’m Detective Shepherd, Tucson PD.”
The door swung shut.
He was in the office. He’d had no interest in the alcove. He hadn’t seen her, after all.
Relief weakened her. She dropped the soda can, and its contents painted an ink-stain splash on the cement floor.
Moving fast, she left the alcove and doubled around to the rear of the motel, praying she had time to salvage her belongings and flee.
*
The manager was in her office, smoking a cigarette and arguing with somebody on the phone. She hung up quickly when Shepherd entered. He’d heard enough of the conversation through the door to know she’d been in a dispute with her bookie, but he didn’t give a damn about that.
He introduced himself, showed his badge. She was no more interested in it than the receptionist at Hawk Ridge had been.
“How can I help you?” she asked indifferently. She had narrow, suspicious eyes and three chins.
“I’m looking for a woman, a fugitive, and it’s possible she’s staying here.”
“What woman?”
“She’s blonde, looks to be between twenty-five and thirty, and if she checked in, it probably would have been this morning, before ten.”
“We don’t get many check-ins at that hour….”
“It could have been later. She was wearing—”
“Whoa. Hold on. What I was gonna say is, we don’t get many check-ins at that hour, which is why I remember the lady in question.”
She was here.
Elizabeth came around the back of the motel at a run and nearly collided with a maid’s cart outside room 29.
“Senora,” the maid called from just inside the doorway.
A note of urgency in her voice made Elizabeth stop. “Yes?”
The maid came forward, struggling to find words in English. Elizabeth remembered her from this morning, when she changed the room after the early check-in.
“There is a man who looks for you,” the maid said finally. “A tall man.”
A man? Detective Shepherd? Had he been here earlier, snooping around? Or was it some other cop?
Elizabeth didn’t know, had no time to think about it.
“It’s okay, thanks,” she said meaninglessly, and again she was running for her room.
She reached it and found her key and flung open the door. Crossing the threshold, she realized distantly that the shredded newspaper was still in her hand. She dropped it on the floor and found this morning’s outfit scattered on two armchairs and a table — skirt, blouse, jacket.
Quickly she scooped up all three items and ran to the big suitcase on the folding stand. She thrust the clothes inside.
Maybe it was stupid to take the time to salvage her things. Maybe she would be better off just running now, leaving everything behind.
But she had almost no money left. How could she replace her wardrobe? She didn’t have much as it was. She had to save what she could. She—
A presence.
Behind her.
She sensed it, felt it.
Detective Shepherd — he was here, he was in the room with her, and she’d lost her last chance, she was finished, she could never get away.
Slowly Elizabeth turned, dread numbing her, and she saw the man in the doorway, limned in the afternoon glare.
Not a detective.
Detectives wore suits and were neatly groomed and said things like Don’t move, you’re under arrest.
This man was clad in khaki trousers and a lime-green shirt, and there were deep sweat stains under his armpits, and he wasn’t saying anything at all.
A tall man, as the maid had said. A man who, like Shepherd, had come looking for her.
Elizabeth stood frozen, staring at him, uncertain what to think or what to do.
“Kaylie,” the man whispered.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she knew him suddenly. She remembered.
He was one of Cray’s patients — yes — the one who was a permanent fixture at the hospital. He’d entered her room — her cell — several times to change the bedding, while she huddled in a corner, watching, hoping he wouldn’t notice the marks of tampering on the grille of the air duct.
Walter. That was his name. She used it now, in the feeble hope of establishing a connection with him.
“Walter,” she said. “Hello.”
He took a step forward.
Somewhere an impatient voice was screaming at her that she had no time for this, because the policeman would be coming, might be on his way already.
She ignored it.
The policeman was not her biggest problem at the moment.