Cook, Glen - Garrett Files 03 - Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook [Cook, Glen]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-01T18:38:44+00:00

30

I dropped out of the coach in front of my place and thought I'd keep dropping. "Getting too old for this," I muttered. This thing had become too deadly. I barely had time for a cleanup and maybe an hour nap before I started tracking Jill down.

If I could decide where to start.

I was sure she hadn't gone back to her apartment, though I'd check. She'd have more savvy.

Dean let me in. He fed me. I told him what had happened so my useless boarder could listen in. Dean was properly appalled, though he thought I'd exaggerated an incident into a whopper. Afterwards I went upstairs, stretched out, and continued to worry the problem I'd badgered all the way home.

Was I becoming identified with the kingpin?

People were getting killed and people were trying to kill me and all I could think about was the chance that my reputation for independence might be sullied.

That rat Dean let me snore for four hours. I yelled at him. He just smiled. I didn't yell too much. Chances are his reasoning was sounder than mine. Rested I was less likely to do something stupidly fatal.

I jumped up, did a quick change and cleanup, a quicker meal, and hit the street. My first stop was Jill's apartment. I had no problem getting inside. At first glance nothing had changed. But I felt a change. I looked around until I caught it.

The coin drawer was empty. Anybody could have gotten to that. But a battered old rag doll had disappeared too. I was willing to bet nobody but Hester Podegill would bother taking that.

So she'd risked coming back, if only for a moment. Just to grab a doll and some change? I didn't think so, not the ice maiden. It felt like a by-product of a more desperate mission. So I tossed the place again. And I didn't find another thing added or taken away.

I wasn't pleased as I slipped out. There should have been something … I eyeballed the doorway across the hall.

Why not look?

The door swung quietly as I pushed it inward. Nobody stampeded over me. I went inside. And there it was, lying in plain sight on a small writing table.

Darling:

The key is safe. I have to disappear. They are getting desperate. Be careful. Love.

Marigold. Marigold? The handwriting matched that in a note written to me by one Hester Podegill. Did she have a different name for every person she knew? That would make her hard to find. No one would know who I was talking about.

She was an actress. Suppose she became a different person each time she donned a different name? She'd really be hard to find then.

I had to get to know who Jill had been before I looked for the Jill who existed now. That was a technique Pokey had used when he was after someone who was voluntarily missing. He talked to relatives, friends, enemies, neighbors, acquaintances, seducing them into talking however he had to, until he knew the missing person better than anyone else alive—until he was able to think like his quarry.

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