In the night room Page 0,42

off a shelf. All those photographs were of dead people, and one of them was Jim. They cut his hands off! He was shot to death, and he was lying next to the car they found him in.”

“Do you still have that picture?”

“Are you crazy? He was dead! Please help me figure out what to do. I’m shaking all over, like I have a fever. I don’t seem to be able to stop. Giles knows I saw the picture, and Mitchell is going to be coming for me as soon as he gets off the plane.”

He asked for her room number.

“Room 1427.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I can sort of tell you what I did.” Willy lay on her king-sized bed, her arms folded in front of her. Tom Hartland’s sweet, serious face stared at her from a nubbly upholstered chair across from the desk.

Tom had been at Haverford when Willy Bryce and Molly Witherspoon were students at Bryn Mawr, and not long after meeting at a mixer the three of them had become close friends. In the summer after their junior year, they had traveled through France in a heady bubble of van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Loire châteaux, Rimbaud and the Tel quel poets, Gauloise smoke, intense conversation, sleepness nights, bistro meals, le fromage du pays, and vin du pays. One night after too much vin rouge they had all piled into a big bed on the third floor of a cheap hotel in Blois, but nothing much had happened except for fumbling and laughter and Willy’s silent observation that Tom Hartland’s kisses tasted of honey and salt. Tom and Willy had been reading each other’s work for years, and they had their first acceptances—he with Scholastic, she with Little, Brown—within the same two-month period.

Now, leaning forward in the ugly hotel chair with his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled before him, he resembled the grown-up version of Teddy Barton, his brave and clever boy detective, steadfast, concerned, ready to be of use.

“For example,” Willy said, “I know I spent the rest of the night in my office with the door locked. For a while I couldn’t really think. I just paced around the room, scared out of my mind, trying to work out some kind of plan. On their way out the Santolinis yelled through the door that they had to come back the next day. All I really wanted to do was get in my car and run away, but I only had about thirty dollars on me. I needed more cash, because I thought I’d have to be wary about using ATM machines.”

“Good thinking,” Tom said. “If you’re going to run away, never use cash machines and throw away your cell phone. But flight isn’t a solution, it’s a delaying action.”

“You said the Baltic Group was the definition of evil!”

“They line their pockets in corrupt ways; they’re not a cabal of serial killers.”

“You didn’t see those pictures.”

“There could be a lot of explanations for them, Willy.” She turned her head on the pillows to give him a dark look. Tom said, “Of course, one of the explanations would be that he is a sick, homicidal fuck.”

“That’s more like it.”

“Another one would be that he was involved in internal investigations of those incidents.”

“ ‘Incidents’? They were murders, Tom.”

“All the more reason for Baltic to cover itself.” This time the look in Willy’s eye was of a gloomy intensity. He said, “One thing I can do for you is to play devil’s advocate here. But as you must know, basically I’ll do anything you want. However, I do have something to say to you, and you’re going to have to listen to me.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re done.”

“It’s important?”

“Yes. It is to me.”

“Tell me now.”

“When you’re through with your story, Willy.”

“Okay, but you’re a jerk. All right. I told you I spent the night in my office, right?”

He nodded.

“Have you ever tried to fall asleep when you’re scared out of your mind? Besides that, I realized that I’d trapped myself in that office, so stupid stupid stupid. I could have run out as soon as I saw the pictures, but after that, Giles would know I’d probably seen them, know what I mean? And he wouldn’t dream of letting me leave the estate until Mitchell got home. So I had to get out early in the morning, when those two creeps might not be waiting for me. Anyhow, at least I had plenty of