24 Hours

McDill closed his eyes and tried to shut out their conversation. In Chalmers’s voice, he recognized the sound of a man who believed he could impose his will on the world. McDill knew how illusory that belief was. Every day he cut into the thoracic cavities of human beings, and it was difficult enough to impose his will on simple human tissue. When you brought large numbers of people into a dangerous situation-each acting independently-the best you could hope for was that nobody would die. McDill didn’t just remember Vietnam, as he’d said before. He had served there as a medical corpsman. And he had seen more situations go to hell in a handbasket because of the good intentions of men like Agent Chalmers than he cared to recall. Chalmers was the classic second lieutenant, green and hungry for action. His faith in technology also struck a dark resonance with Vietnam. McDill hoped that the Special Agent-in-Charge had been tempered by more experience.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the rows of unfamiliar women, then wearily turned another page. His breath caught in his throat. Staring up from the mug book like a graduation portrait was Cheryl’s innocent face.

“Agent Chalmers! This is her!”

The FBI agent stopped in midsentence and looked over. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Chalmers walked over and looked down at the photo beneath McDill’s index finger.

“Who is she?” McDill asked.

Chalmers took the photo out of its plastic sleeve and read from its back. “Cheryl Lynn Tilly. I’ll be damned. She did use her real name. Maybe the others did too. I wonder why she didn’t pop up on NCIC?”

He walked over to the computer he’d been using and began typing in the information off the photo. The JPD detective stood behind him with his arms folded. After several seconds, data from Washington began flashing up onto the CRT.

“She’s got some small-time collars,” Chalmers said. “Passing bad checks, forgery. One prostitution arrest. She did thirty days in a county jail. Nothing violent. You’re positive it’s her?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll make a copy of this photo and fax it down to the Beau Rivage. Maybe someone on staff down there has seen her.”

“What will you do if they have?”

Chalmers raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath. “Call in the troops. If she’s down there this weekend, we have to assume you’re right. There’s a kidnapping in progress. And that is a major situation. Right now, we need to see whether known associates can lead us to the man behind all this.”

Chalmers turned to Margaret McDill, who was watching them with a look of apprehension. “Are you awake enough to keep helping us, Mrs. McDill?”

“Whatever you need,” she said softly.

McDill walked over and put his hands on his wife’s shoulders.

Chalmers picked up a telephone, then paused. “These people have some nerve. To repeat the same crime in exactly the same place, a year after the fact?”

“You didn’t talk to them,” McDill said. “They think they’re invincible.”

The FBI agent smiled. “They’re not.”

Karen rocked slowly but ceaselessly in her chair, her arms around her shins, her chin buried between her knees. Hickey was still lying on the bed, his eyes glued to Bogart and Fredric March as they played out the final minutes of The Desperate Hours. Karen sensed that she was close to a breakdown. She had been pulling hairs from her scalp, one at time. Externally, she could maintain calm, but inside she was coming apart. The knowledge that Hickey meant to kill Abby to punish Will was unendurable.

She had to warn him.

Food was her best excuse to get out of the bedroom, but there was no guarantee that Hickey wouldn’t follow her into the kitchen. For a while she had entertained the hope that the whiskey might put him to sleep, but he seemed immune to its effects. He’d gone into the bathroom twice during commercials, once to urinate and once to check his stitches, but she hadn’t felt confident enough to risk using the phone, much less to try to reach the computer in Will’s study.

She stopped rocking. She had the feeling that Hickey had said something to her and that she’d been concentrating so hard that she missed it.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“I said I’m starving. Go fix something.”

She wanted to jump out of the chair, but she forced herself to sound peeved. “What would you like?”

“What you got?”

“A sandwich?”

Gunshots rang from the television. Bogey fell to the ground. “Goddamn it,” Hickey said. “I don’t know. Something hot.”

“There’s some crawfish etouffee I could heat up.”

“Yeah.” He glanced over at her, his eyes bleary. “Can you put it in an omelet?”

“Sure.”

“What was I thinking? I got Betty Crocker here. Weaned on an Easy-Bake oven, right?”

Karen tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat. She got up from the chair and walked toward the door. “Anything else?”

“Just hurry it up.”

She nodded and went out.