LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 28

      I jumped from the cab into a hard-blown rain, pulled my hat low and sprinted to a trim blue house on a broad Brooklyn avenue of other trim houses. Shelly had the door open as I leapt up the steps.

      “Come in, Detective. Welcome.”

      “Anything on Alice?” I asked.

      He shook his head no. I looked to a dining-room table stacked with papers.

      He saw my glance. “I’ve been looking through files your partner sent. As well as some others. It’s the only use I’ve found for the dining-room table, since I eat at the kitchen counter by the TV. The joys of bachelorhood.”

      “Were you ever married, Shelly?”

      A pause. “Once it seemed possible, but in hindsight it was never an option.”

      Waltz went to grab himself a drink. I hadn’t known what to expect from his digs, thinking either neat as the proverbial pin, or as disheveled as a frat house. It turned out to be both: open and orderly rooms with dark carpet and a peach hue to the walls, solid furniture, a long shelf of books in the living room where I stood. The other side of the equation held in a small room to the side, centered by a table bearing stacks of books, magazines, a small fan that looked ready for repair, a shirt still in the wrapper, a box of candy, a handful of neckties, and so forth. The corners of the room were nests of items: spinning rods with red and white floats on the line, a vacuum cleaner, old shoes, a tennis racquet.

      The home felt like Shelly Waltz. There was general order, but with a section of items awaiting categorization or some form of decision. An overstuffed chair, well worn, owned one corner of the room, and I pictured Shelly ruminating over the items from the chair, tented fingertips tapping pursed lips, sad eyes scanning the disorder in hope of a solution.

      The light in the house was a low, warm yellow. Thunder shivered the windows as Waltz returned with his beer, nodded me to sit on the couch. He sat opposite in an armchair. On the low table between us was a manila folder, pages peeking from the edges.

      “Pegging Jeremy Ridgecliff as a Portuguese businessman was a damn interesting piece of intuition, Detective.”

      “It was just a hunch, but it felt right.”

      “You play a lot of hunches, I take it.”

      “They seem to work a fair amount of the time.”

      He paused, as if gathering thoughts into a bundle. “Have you put any thought into contacts Ridgecliff might have in the area?”

      “We’d all pretty much eliminated that line, I thought.”

      “The Ridgecliff family never came up north, you said. Or if they did, it wasn’t long enough to leave traces.”

      “True.”

      “Not leaving traces,” Waltz said. “Isn’t that interesting?”

      I smiled politely and nodded. But Waltz wasn’t done with the subject.

      “Though it’s useless to us, there’s Ridgecliff’s bit with the hair, obliterating traces. And while he was on his spree years ago, he managed to obliterate all traces of himself, at least until viewed in hindsight after his capture. Perhaps obliterating traces is a Ridgecliff trait.”

      “Umm, I suspect so, Shelly. Guess you hit a dead end.”

      He crossed his legs, opened the file, set it on his knee. His finger tapped the pages. “I’m not sure. Ridgecliff has a brother. His name is Charles. They grew up together.”

      “Sure. We’ve all seen the files. Charles disappeared.”

      Waltz flipped open the file. “Charles went to college for two years in Mobile, edge-of-expulsion grades. A party boy, I’ll bet. Then Jeremy Ridgecliff gets nailed. Shortly after that, bang: Charles Ridgecliff disappears, leaving an empty bed and a lot of rumors. A guy who bunked with him for a while heard the guy ran off to a commune in Oregon. Others heard Charley-boy got wanderlust, headed to sea on a freighter. You studied at University of Alabama, right? Psychology? What year you start?”

      My palms dampened. I pretended to stifle a yawn, told Waltz the year.

      He nodded. “The year Charles turned to vapor.”

      I feigned confusion. “Am I missing something here, Shelly?”

      Waltz shifted pages in the folder. I tried to catch a glance of what he was looking at, but he held the edges high.

      “There’s no ID photo of Charles in the college files. There should be, but back then hackers could dive right into databases, rearranging info, adding, deleting. But in checking with the university, I discovered Charles had been a member of the swimming club. I had a club photo sent up, a fax of a copy. It’s murky, but have a look.”

      Waltz passed the photo over. I was in the back row of the twenty or so swimmers standing at the edge of the pool. I hadn’t changed much.

      “You’re Charles Ridgecliff,” Waltz said.

      I handed the photo back. It was shaking. “I’m Carson Ryder.”

      “Let me re-phrase, Detective: I believe that for the first twenty-one years of your life your name was Charles Ridgecliff. What is it preachers like to say … Can I get an Amen on that?”

      I closed my eyes. “It’s not like you think. It’s –”

      Waltz’s voice turned to a whisper. “Are you here to fuck up the case, sabotage it? Did you pass the information to the Watcher?”

      “No to the first question.”

      “And the second one?”

      I held Waltz’s eyes. “Yes.”

      Waltz slammed the file to the floor, pages scattering like white leaves. He stood, shoulders forward, hands clenched into fists, his eyes like jets of flame.

      “Get the hell out of my house.”

      “I’m trying to bring Jeremy in, Shelly.”

      He stormed to the door, opened it. “You hid the fact that the perp we’re after – a man who’s killed three women in a week – is your goddamn brother! Then you tipped him off that we were on to his disguise.”

      “I also told you what the disguise was.”

      “Because you’re probably as sick as your brother and get off on pulling our chains. Get out of my house. Expect a visit from the NYPD tonight. You better damn well be at your hotel.”

      I looked into the controlled chaos of Shelly’s room to the side, my mind racing. I had one card to play. I pulled it from smoke, from nagging moments of the past few days, from red flags unfurled in far corners of my mind. I looked Waltz in the eyes and threw my card on the table.

      “You knew her, Shelly.”

      Hesitation, a millisecond. “What the hell are you talking about?”

      “Vangie. You didn’t just know who she was, you knew her personally. She was a friend of yours. Or a relative.”

      “What?”

      “The tape from LaGuardia. You picked her from the crowd while her face was a blur, even though I couldn’t make her out. Several times while talking about her, your throat ‘got dry’ or you claimed an allergy, wiped your eyes. Talking about Vangie nearly broke you up, you needed to reach down and hold it

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