In the Woods полностью

On my way home I swallowed my pride and phoned Cassie, who didn't even try to pretend she hadn't guessed where I'd gone. She had spent her evening eliminating Sandra Scully from the inquiry. On the night in question, Sandra had been working in a call center in town. Her supervisor and everyone else on the shift confirmed that she had been there until just before two in the morning, when she had clocked out and caught a night bus home. This was good news-it tidied things up, and I hadn't liked thinking of Sandra as a possible murderess-but it gave me a complicated little pang, the thought of her in an airless fluorescent cubicle, surrounded by part-timing students and actors waiting for the next gig.

I won't go into details, but we put a considerable amount of effort and ingenuity, most of it more or less legal, into identifying the worst possible time to go talk to Cathal Mills. He had some high position with a gibberish title, in a company that provided something called "corporate e-learning software localization solutions" (I was impressed: I hadn't thought it was possible for me to dislike him any more than I already did), so we walked in on him halfway through a crucial meeting with a big potential client. Even the building was creepy: long windowless corridors and flights of stairs that stripped your sense of direction to nothing, tepid canned air with too little oxygen, a low witless hum of computers and suppressed voices, huge tracts of cubicles like a mad scientist's rat mazes. Cassie shot me a wide-eyed, horrified look as we followed some droid through the fifth set of swipe-card swing doors.

Cathal was in the boardroom, and he was easy to identify: he was the one with the PowerPoint presentation. He was still a handsome guy-tall and broad-shouldered, with bright blue eyes and hard, dangerous bones-but fat was starting to blur his waist and hang under his jaw; in a few more years he would have coarsened into piggishness. The new client was four identical, humorless Americans in inscrutable dark suits.

"Sorry, fellas," Cathal said, giving us an easy, warning smile, "the boardroom's being used."

"It is indeed," Cassie told him. She had dressed for the occasion, in ripped jeans and an old turquoise camisole that said YUPPIES TASTE LIKE CHICKEN in red across the front. "I'm Detective Maddox-"

"And I'm Detective Ryan," I said, flipping out my ID. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

The smile didn't budge, but a savage flash shot across his eyes. "This isn't a good time."

"No?" Cassie inquired sociably, lounging against the table so that the PowerPoint image vanished into a blob on her camisole.

"No." He cut his eyes sideways at the new client, who stared disapprovingly into space and shuffled papers.

"This looks like a good place to talk," she said, surveying the boardroom appreciatively, "but we could go back to headquarters if you'd prefer."

"What's this about?" Cathal demanded. It was a mistake, and he knew it as soon as the words were out. If we had said anything off our own bat, in front of the clones, it would have been an invitation to a harassment claim, and he looked like the type who would sue; but hey, he had asked.

"We're investigating a child-murder," Cassie said sweetly. "There's a possibility it's linked to the alleged rape of a young girl, and we have reason to believe you might be able to help us with our inquiries."

It only took him a fraction of a second to recover. "I can't imagine how," he said, gravely. "But if it's a question of a murdered child, then of course, anything I can do… Fellas"-this to the client-"I apologize for this interruption, but I'm afraid duty calls. Let me get Fiona to show you around the building. We'll pick up here in just a few minutes."

"Optimism," Cassie said approvingly. "I like that."

Cathal shot her a filthy look and hit a button on an object that turned out to be an intercom. "Fiona, could you come down to the boardroom and give these gentlemen a tour of the building?"

I held the door open for the clones, who filed out with prim poker faces unchanged. "It's been a pleasure," I told them.

"Were they CIA?" Cassie whispered, not quite quietly enough.

Cathal already had his mobile out. He phoned his lawyer-kind of ostentatiously; I think we were supposed to be intimidated-and then flipped his phone shut and tilted his chair back, legs spread wide, checking Cassie out with slow, deliberate enjoyment. For a giddy second I was tempted to say something to him-You gave me my first cigarette, do you remember?-just to see his brows draw sharply downwards, the greasy smirk fall away from his face. Cassie batted her lashes and gave him a mock-flirtatious smile, which pissed him off: he banged down the chair and shot his wrist out of his sleeve to check his Rolex.

"In a hurry?" Cassie inquired.