LITMIR.BIZ

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his car. As he pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward Shannon’s address, he reached under his seat for his cellular phone. He dialed a long-distance number.

      “We’ve got trouble. He’s skipped.”

      “I found this, Chief,” Mel Anderson, the bookish, thirty-five-year-old forensic assistant said, holding up a hypodermic needle. “It was on the floor.”

      “So? This is a hospital. I think they might have a few here.”

      “I hope to hell not.”

      “Excuse me?”

      Mel pointed to the syringe. “This one has a large air bubble. Inject this and there’s an empty bed available.”

      Jimmy Joe examined the hypodermic. “What’s in here? Poison?”

      “Water. And that air bubble.”

      “And Shannon Riley being a nurse…”

      “…would be scared out of her wits.”

      “I get the drift. Let me know what else you find. I’ll be downtown.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Jimmy Joe walked out of room 505 and found Chelsea giving a statement to his detective. He motioned to the detective. “I’ll take over.”

      “Yes, sir,” the man said.

      Chelsea waited patiently while the detective walked away, then she turned to Jimmy Joe. “I suppose this means I won’t be seeing you later this morning.”

      “Cut the crap.” He glanced surreptitiously over the top of her head at Mel, who quickly looked away.

      “You said you had a special Christmas present for me. I’ve been on pins and needles, sugar.”

      “We’ll have to put it off for now. It’s too dangerous for us to be seen right now.”

      “But you promised.” She pouted.

      “Later,” he snapped and walked away.

      Ben got the master key to Shannon’s apartment from the superintendent. Taking the stairs two at a time, he was winded by the time he reached her door.

      “Damn cigarettes,” he muttered, looking at the collage of notes on Shannon’s door.

      When you get in, knock me up. I’m too sick to sleep. Ben read the note. It was signed, Elliot.

      “The boyfriend?”

      Stepping back, Ben looked down the hall at the doors. He noticed a blue note on the door next to Shannon’s apartment. It was from Shannon to Elliot, with instructions on how to care for his cold.

      Elliot’s interrogation could wait, Ben thought as he unlocked Shannon’s door.

      No matter how many times he’d investigated an empty house, office or apartment, Ben never ceased being wary of the unknown. He reached for his revolver and remembered it was gone.

      “Damn.”

      He knew better than to step into a trap. John Doe could be hiding out here in her apartment. A dumb move, but a logical one for a man just out of a coma, perhaps in delirium.

      Ben glanced at the crack between the door and the wall. No one hiding there. Then he heard a tinkling sound.

      A bell. He braced himself for the worst but then a soft mewing came from the area across the room near the windows. The bell sounded again. A faint glow from a streetlamp illuminated the dark apartment just enough for him to see a caramel-colored Manx cat spring onto the back of the cheap Herculon plaid sofa.

      Ben smiled. “What’s a nice kitty like you doing in such an…ugly place?” he asked as he turned on the light switch.

      Ben’s fantasies about Shannon and her after-work-hours life was based on the subdued, confident, efficient and lonely woman he knew from the hospital. He had imagined so many things about her, about being with her. Somehow, he’d pictured a more expressive life-style. What he saw revealed little or nothing about her.

      “Except that she lives like someone who is in transition. Between lives,” he said to himself after inspecting the entire apartment for would-be kidnappers.

      Assured he was alone, he shut the door and took inventory. He picked up a ratty afghan off the floor and placed it on the arm of the slipcovered Chippendale sofa—the only decent piece of furniture in the room.

      “Shannon, darlin’, you need a subscription to House Beautiful,” he sighed. “Or a life. Like I do.”

      The chairs were old, cracked, and had been sanded down to bare wood. Cans of stain, varnish and glue were stacked in a corner ready to heal them.

      It hurt Ben’s eyes to look from the drab olive hutch with the broken door to the psychedelic wallpapered kitchen with its intensely obvious refusal to indulge in even the smallest appliances. No microwave. No dishwasher. The absence of a dishwasher he could accept, but no electric can opener, no toaster? It was as if she’d deliberately set out to make her life miserable.

      The thermostat was set at a bitingly cold sixty degrees. The bedroom was furnished with only a bed and a lamp on a cardboard box that stood in for a dresser. It contained the white utilitarian panty hose worn, no doubt, at the hospital.

      There were no frilly things women kept in their lair to make them feel special. Even the clothes in her closet were uniforms or faded jeans and T-shirts. Cotton underwear and bras—no lace, no satin.

      “No sex.” Ben stopped cold. “That’s what is missing.”

      The Shannon he knew exuded sensuality with every step she took. Oh, she kept her eyes averted, her walk brisk, but when she breathed in and out, he sensed that she experienced the swell and contraction of her diaphragm, the press of her breasts against her uniform, the rush of air through her nostrils while tasting the hospital ethers on her tongue.

      That kind of acute sensitivity was rare, but Ben knew it when he saw it, because he was like that.

      Though he’d never been married, his apartment was furnished comfortably and adequately. His home was a haven for him. He’d expected Shannon to have the same philosophy. It saddened him that she didn’t.

      His eyes scanned the meager shelves. No stereo. No radio. No music. “No songs to sing,” he whispered absentmindedly to himself.

      Even the bathroom gave no clues to Shannon’s personality. The shampoo was cheap and unscented. A bar of generic soap. A plastic razor. A wide-toothed comb. A brush with most of the bristles broken off. No perfumes. No cosmetics anywhere.

      “Doesn’t she ever go out? Or is the boyfriend next door a natural-look freak?”

      He stopped abruptly, thinking back on his encounters with her. How she’d dodged the personal questions he posed. She never gave clues about her family, her past. He’d been so entranced with her that he’d assumed she was spurning him. Perhaps the answer was not that it was him in particular she avoided, but all people. All relationships. He already knew she was nursing a broken heart. But living like this?

      “She’s hiding something. And it’s big.”

      Entering the bathroom, he opened the medicine cabinet. Vitamins. Lots of them. Antihistamines. Ibuprofen. Cold remedies galore and several antibiotics.

      “She must be prone to head colds,” he mused. “But sleeping pills?” Every over-the-counter brand could be accounted for as well as prescriptions for Seconal, Halcion and Valium. Interestingly enough, all of the prescriptions were long-outdated, as though she’d needed them most in the past.

      “My God, Shannon, just what is your secret? Are you in hiding? Or hiding something? Someone?”

      He scratched his head. “I must have lost my gift for reading people. That, or Shannon is a split personality.”

      Going back to the bedroom, he

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