LITMIR.BIZ

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not sure yet.”

      He shot me a quelling look. I waved a dismissive hand. “What? Like she’s gonna go Tweet it to the world?” I looked at Amy sternly. “This is strictly hush-hush. Spill it and you’ll nix Mason’s shot at the chief’s job.”

      “You told her that, too?”

      “She’s my personal assistant, Mace. I tell her everything.”

      “Yeah,” Amy said. “Nice job in the sack, by the way.”

      He looked like he was gonna pass out before I said, “I don’t tell her that, for crying out loud.”

      He closed his eyes and gave his head a rapid shake.

      “So, Amy,” I said. “Yes, a girl is missing. And the truth is, she might just have run off. But I keep getting a feeling it has something to do with what happened to you.”

      “And we all know better than to ignore her feelings,” Mason added, probably relieved that I hadn’t blurted out Stephanie’s name, address and phone number while I was at it.

      “I am so dying to help out on a case,” Amy said.

      “You’re not helping out. And it’s not a case.”

      I clapped a hand onto Mason’s thigh. “You are helping out, and it’s not a case yet. But it might turn into one if she didn’t leave voluntarily. So if you can stand to go over it one more time...”

      “I was driving to my mother’s in Erie for Thanksgiving,” she said, nodding. “I stopped for gas and noticed these guys in a white pickup pulling in behind me. I went in for the restroom and some snacks for the drive, and when I came out, they were still there. Not buying gas, not shopping, just sitting there.”

      “Right. We saw the surveillance footage,” Mason said. “What do you remember about the second guy?”

      “It’s all in my statement,” she said.

      “I know, but you might have left something out that didn’t seem important, or remembered something since. Maybe there’s something you thought you told us but didn’t. Just humor me, okay?”

      “Okay.” She ate another chip, handed one down to Myrtle, then took her sandwich out of her bag and unwrapped it slowly. “I didn’t really look at the guys in the truck at that point. I just sort of noticed the truck was there as I left. I didn’t get any bad vibes until I saw them pull out behind me. And even then, I thought I was just being a drama queen.”

      I nodded and said to Mason, “She can be a real drama queen sometimes, so that adds up.”

      Amy threw a chip at me. It landed on the sidewalk and Myrtle snapped it up before it settled. “Then my tire went flat. I still wasn’t overly concerned, until they pulled over in front of me. That’s when my alarm bells started going off. I snapped a quick pic of the truck with my phone and slid it under the car just in case.”

      “Remind me how smart she is if I ever even consider letting her go, Mace.”

      “I promise.” He nodded at Amy to keep going.

      “After they dragged me into the truck, the driver dropped the second guy off. Do you need me to describe them again?”

      I looked at Mason to answer that one. He shook his head. “No, the driver’s dead, and we have the sketch you and the police artist did of the second guy on file. We’re just trying to figure out why they took you. Did they say anything that might be a clue? Maybe something you’ve remembered since the incident?”

      She frowned really hard, and I knew she was trying her best to recall every detail. “The jerk drove me off to that freaking no-tell motel and chained me to the bed. But he didn’t touch me. Didn’t even try. Then I said I had to use the bathroom. He cuffed me to the pipe in there so I wouldn’t run off. I picked the lock and crawled out the window, then ran for it. He chased after me. Caught me and tied me up again out there in the woods, and then you guys showed up.” She shrugged. “The only odd thing he said was when he was chasing me through the woods. He was calling me, only not by my name. He called me Venora.”

      Mason blinked and looked at me. “Was that in the report?”

      I shrugged and looked at Amy. “Was it? Did you tell the cops that?”

      “I think so.”

      “Either way, it bears looking into,” Mason said. “Thanks a lot, Amy. Remember not to say anything about this to anyone. Not even your mother.”

      “Please, if I told my mother it would be on America’s Most Wanted by tomorrow. That woman is better networked than I am.”

      * * *

      Jacob Kravitz lived in an apartment above a tattoo place on Washington Avenue in Endicott, one of what we locals call the Triple Cities, the other two being Binghamton and Johnson City.

      I’ve had Manhattanites tell me that all three combined don’t really qualify as a single “city,” but it works for us. We’ve got the river. We invented Spiedies, bits of chicken marinated in our own Spiedie sauce, served on sub rolls with cheese and other tasty toppings. Hell, we even have our annual blowout, the Spiedie-fest. And we’re on the Best Small Cities in America list.

      Washington Avenue is a funny place. It’s got the highest-end salon we can lay claim to and drug deals going down on the sidewalk outside. It’s got a Greek diner where customers come to get a whole meal for five bucks and park their Mercedes out back. It’s got local celebs strutting up one side of the sidewalk and pants-falling-off gangbangers on the other.

      We went through the front door and up a set of steep stairs to Jake’s apartment door, rapped on it and waited.

      “You lookin’ for me?”

      We both turned toward the guy who was at the bottom of the stairs, standing in the open door, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand and a six-pack of Genesee beer in the other. I sized him up visually, which was becoming way more automatic than I liked. I pick up more about people non-visually.

      He was tall. Even from up here I could tell he was taller than Mason. Maybe six-three, six-four. He had Frampton Comes Alive! hair (I’d seen Amy’s classic vinyl collection) and a rugged unshaven thing going on. Wore jeans and an army-green coat with about fifty pockets, despite that it was a sixty-degree afternoon.

      “If you’re Jake Kravitz,” Mason said.

      “I am.” He came up the stairs, tucking the beer under one arm and then fishing a set of keys out of one of the coat’s pockets. When he reached the top and inserted the key in the lock, he said, “You look like a cop.” Then he looked at me. “And you don’t.”

      “That’s ’cause I’m not. But you’re good. How could you tell he’s a cop?”

      He shrugged and opened his door, then waved an arm at us to enter ahead of him, so we did. The place was a hole. Sofa with a blanket over it to hide the worn spots and stains, assuming the rest of it matched the arms. Linoleum floors so old the pattern was worn off. A fat-ass-style TV set sitting on the middle of a wooden card table that was sagging a little under its weight. An open door revealed an unmade bed and scattered clothes on the bedroom floor. He walked into a kitchen with appliances that were almost old enough to qualify as retro, dropped the bag on the Formica table, took a can of beer out of the sixer and slung the rest into the ancient fridge.

      He did not offer us one.

      “So what do you want?”

      “Wanted to talk to you about Stephanie Mattheson,” Mason said.

      “And to know how you knew he was a cop,” I added, because I thought there was something there. He didn’t like cops. It felt like he, big guy that he was, was shrinking into himself on the inside, where it didn’t show. On the outside he wasn’t revealing a thing, subconsciously making himself bigger. Like an animal in defense mode. I wondered if I could close my eyes without

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