My mind was racing. I had to get this information to Bill. I had to try to print it out. And yet…inexplicably I didn't want to share the discovery with Pamela, who sat typing her endless press release. Sending a surreptitious glance in her direction, I closed the file.
A message appeared on the screen. “Do you want to save changes made to your file?”
“I haven't made any—,” I started to mumble, and then I stopped.
“What was that?” asked Pamela, her typing silenced.
“Nothing,” I assured her. “I figured it out.”
I was looking at the box that normally said "My documents." Instead, it said “File F Removable Disk.” The ballots were on a USB. Not the networked hard drive, but a flash drive with saved information. A drive someone had inserted in advance with carefully placed evidence for dumb little Madeline to find. That's why it had all been so easy.
I clicked “Yes” and reached around to pull the USB out of the computer, coughing to cover the telltale sound.
It was pink and tiny and may as well have said Pamela Fey all over it. With another glance at the busy Pamela, I dropped it in my pocket, next to the phone from Perez. Whatever Pamela was up to, I didn't want to be involved. If she was double-crossing Don Paul for her own political aims, then I needed to separate her from my investigation.
I shut down the computer. Then I put on a regretful face and turned to Pamela. “I'm not going to find anything, so I guess I'll just get going.”
Pamela's mouth opened, then shut again. She seemed unhappy with my decision. Finally she said, “Oh, how disappointing. Why don't you let me have a look? Maybe I can find something.”
I was sure she could. “No, really. I need to get out of here before the mayor comes. And I have to get to the festival. Fritz is performing in about an hour.”
She struggled to hide her displeasure, then looked around Blanche's desk as if she might stow it there. “The mayor has a full agenda for today. He's making a speech, dedicating a statue, singing with one of the bands. He won't be back.”
“No, I guess not. But I'll be leaving anyway.” I headed for the stairs and bumped Pamela's dry-cleaning bags, which had still been lying across a chair but were now slithering to the floor. I bent to pick them up with fumbling fingers.
“Gee, they didn't do the greatest job,” I said, attempting to distract her from her computer, which she still eyed hopefully. “There are still stains on here. Looks like you had a bloody nose.”
I turned to Pamela, who had stood up behind Blanche's desk. “I know,” she said sulkily. “They told me they'll never come out.”
“Out, damnéd spot,” I joked feebly. “Blood is tough to treat.”
“It's not blood. Why do you keep saying blood?” snapped Pamela, her sensibilities offended. “It's berries. Some kind of stupid berries, and I slipped and sat in them.”
Berries. I stared at her without seeing. I saw, instead, a woman running out of Logan's house. Saw her slipping with her high heels, skidding on a mulberry-lined drive, falling on her bottom, and staining it red-purple. If I checked the mayor's car, would I find more stains on the seat?
I felt for the flash drive in my pocket. My mouth was dry. I was, I discovered, a coward. “Well, I've got to run. Let me just set down your stuff.” I put the dry cleaning back on the table. I hoped Pamela couldn't see my hands shaking.
She was trotting back to her computer, not looking at me. Obviously she wanted me to return to it and find her evidence against Don Paul. “Madeline, let me just see if I can…” The mouse was under her hand. I made it to the stairs before I heard her voice, rather tonelessly, make a discovery.
“Oh, my USB is gone. Madeline, did you take my flash drive?” she asked.
I turned around, trying to play dumb. “You said I was looking at the hard drive,” I said.
“Well, I lied,” she said crisply. Her face looked pinched. “You're ruining this for me, Madeline.”
“Ruining what?” I asked. “Your plans to take down the mayor?”
“He's doing that to himself. I was just trying to facilitate things. You said you wanted to get to the bottom of it. I don't have time for you to go fumbling around—”
“You're right,” I said. “I am fumbling around. So I'm going to leave it to you now, Pamela. You know more than you're telling me, so you'll have to take it to the police.”
She smirked. “Oh, I'll do that. Give me the USB, Madeline.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” I knew that I should run down the stairs. She couldn't chase me in her silly high heels. I thought it, but I didn't do it. Jack would probably tell me it's because of my slow mind-body coordination, which could be accelerated through yoga.
She who hesitates is lost. Pamela opened her dainty shoulder bag and pulled out a little gun. She held it awkwardly, with her long nails protruding, like Cher holds a microphone.
Absurdly, my first thought was that Jack had been right. If you went around confronting people, you got killed. Now he would be playing the guitar at my funeral, and Fritz and Gerhard would have “Madman” carved into my tombstone.
“I need the drive,” she hissed. “And I need the tape, please.”
I stared at her, half afraid, half surprised. “The tape?”
“The tape Logan gave you. The one with the information about me. About everyone, he said. He had dirt on everyone in the office, even Blanche. I tried to get it myself, but—”
“The tape is no—” I stopped myself before I managed to get myself murdered on the spot. Of course Pamela didn't know that my beloved brother had taped over anything that may have been said about her on Logan's tape. Let her continue to think it was mandatory that she hold it in her hand.
“He gave you a tape, he told me so. He said it was his protection. It didn't protect him enough, as it turns out.”
“You killed Logan,” I said.
“Duh,” she said. She actually said that. “I need the tape. Where is it?”
“And you tried to break into my apartment. Mr. Altschul showed me the scratches on the lock. You lied to me.”
“I tried to get in yesterday too, but your landlord wouldn't let me in. And you decided not to let me pick you up for the wake. You made it hard, Madeline. I warned you not to trust anyone.” She almost smiled.
“So you put that note on my windshield at the funeral?” I asked.
“You threatened me,” she hissed.
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I wasn't going to argue about it at this juncture. I had one hand in my pocket. I fingered Perez's phone and pressed a random button. I wasn't able to concentrate on what I was doing. All I could think of was that Pamela had committed murder.
“You killed Logan,” I said again. “You got the berry stains at the cabin. But I don't know why.”
She pursed her lips. “You're a lot like Logan. Smart, but nosy.”
“But you loved him,” I suggested, backing away.
Her eyes moistened. “I did. And I never did break up with him, like I told you I did. I went out there because I saw Lyle, and he told me he saw Logan outside the White Hen, and he was going away somewhere. I knew where he was going; I'd been there with him before. I decided I was going to let him spend some quality time with me. Hold still, Madeline. It's not like I don't see you trying to creep away.”
I held still. I was poised for flight at the top of the stairs. “So didn't he spend enough time with you?” I asked.
Her face showed signs of strain as she pointed the gun at me. “I knew right away that he had someone else. He was very distant, very mean. Do you know what it feels like, Madeline, to see the man you love looking at you like you're a stranger? We got into a fight. And then he got personal. He was a low fighter. Cruel, even. He called me unforgivable names, and he threatened to—well, to reveal something about me. Something I'd confided. Something that would interfere with my political plans.”
Immediately I thought of Bill's surmises about the “missing year” of Pamela's life. “You were in the loony bin,” I guessed, using Bill's terminology.
Pamela's eyes widened. “I knew that you knew. You implied as much on the phone. I figured you'd listened to the tape already.”
“No,” I said. “And I don't know what you mean—”
“When you called to confront me about our affair. You said people would trace my secrets back to California. I figured you might be implying that you knew.”
I gulped. “I meant that California is where you hail from. You know, reporters going back to the place of origin, that kind of thing.”
She shrugged, her hands shaking slightly. “In any case, Logan knew about my time in the Langley Institution. It was something I foolishly confided, and something he implied he'd be willing to share with the world at large. He said he'd made a tape about me and everyone else, as I told you, but he made the mistake of saying he'd left it with an old friend, and later he said ‘she’ when referring to that old friend. Well, guess what? Logan didn't have too many female friends. All his ex-girlfriends hated him. He wouldn't have called his wife his ‘friend.’ And that left Madeline. I knew it was you. So he no longer had protection. I carry the gun for my own protection. In the heat of the argument, I slipped it out. I am sorry, Madeline. This has gotten me into a lot of trouble. But with the contacts I've been making, I can't afford to risk my good name. I need the tape, and then I'll have to deal with you.”
My mouth felt dry. “My God, you are Lady Macbeth.”
She shrugged. “I never read that play. Logan called me that too, though.”
My hands began to shake uncontrollably. “Oh God,” I said.
Pamela seemed offended by my fear. “It's not like I wanted to do it, Madeline. But Logan was dumping me. Me! And I had told him my secrets. We were supposed to last forever.”
“Despite his wife.”
“He told me she was too good for him. Marriage bored him, I think, or made him feel guilty. It wasn't his wife I lost him to. He was looking for some new adventure. And he was willing to spite me along the way.”
“What about Fawn Paley? Did you kill her too?”
Pamela shook her head. “She's a dumb kid,” she said. “She saw me that day, I guess. She'd been coming over to talk to Logan, and she saw me, and then she went off on her stupid bicycle. So when she told me, I obviously had to do something.”
“Is she dead?” I asked grimly.
Pamela sighed. “No, she's not dead. I'm just…detaining her. Now let's get you taken care of, and I can try to concentrate on my job instead of all you nosy do-gooders.”
My mind felt fuzzy, but I tried to use logic. “What does it matter, Pamela? Psychological problems aren't taboo anymore.”
“No?” she asked, her mouth twitching. “Not in politics? Would you vote for me, Madeline?”
A spurt of rebellion made me say, “Not if you held a gun to my head.” Perhaps my brothers’ nickname for me had a truthful basis after all.
“Give the USB here,” she said, more urgently. She advanced, her little gun held steady.
I pulled the flash drive reluctantly from my pocket; then, in another one of my Madman impulses, I flung it over the wall of the loft and into space. We heard it slap the floor below.
“That was dumb!” Pamela yelled. She went to the low wall and looked over, still clutching the gun in her right hand. I made a desperate lunge and karate-chopped her wrist with all I had in me. “Ah!” she yelled, and the revolver too fell clattering to the floor below, firing once in the process.
We exchanged a look of mutual dislike, and then I dove for the staircase, determined to beat her to the weapon.
She was on me in a second, and we tumbled down the entire set of stairs together. When we landed at the bottom, we actually had to disentangle our limbs. From an aerial view it would have been funny.
I hadn't the luxury to laugh, though, since I believed Pamela would kill me if she reached the gun first. I grabbed her ankle as she tried to get up. “I told Jack I'd be here with you. And my mother knows too.”
She kicked me in the leg. “I'll come up with a story. I always do.” She stood and started skipping toward the gun, which lay about ten yards away on the tiled floor.
I stood too, and dove like a rugby player at her ankles. I took her down, and her jaw landed hard on the tile. “Ouch!” she screamed. “I think my tooth is broken! Dammit!” She sat up and cradled her chin in her hand, looking dazed. I saw that the drive was near me on the floor, and I grabbed it without thinking. I weighed my options: I was closer to the door than to the gun. I ran.
I heard Pamela cursing me as I burned rubber toward the exit. I had a hot moment when I feared I would be locked in with her, but the knob turned under my hand. My hand was sweaty, though, and my haste was making me clumsy. Before I knew it, she was behind me, jamming her little gun into my ribs. “Where's the tape?” she asked, reaching into my jacket pocket and retrieving the flash drive, which I had returned there moments before.
The tape was with Arcelia Perez, but I didn't think it would behoove me to tell her that. “It's in my car,” I said. She was less likely to shoot me out there, with everyone watching. “But I have to get it. It's in a tape box with a combination lock.” That didn't make any sense at all, but I didn't want her to shoot me and then just go to my car and try to retrieve the tape herself. Amazingly, she bought it.
“Then let's go get it,” she said. “And if you try anything funny, I'll shoot you and say that you were trying to kill me with a knife.” She reached into her pretty jean jacket and held up a knife she'd grabbed from the break room's little kitchen. I recognized it from my visit there earlier in the week.
I shrugged, still figuring I could plan my escape outside.
You're supposed to scream
, I told myself, remembering my self-defense class in college. Scream and fight, never give in.
We stepped into the sunshine. Pamela had taken the scarf out of her hair and tossed it over her gun. Fashionable to the last. She held it, walking along like a beauty contestant. We started down the sidewalk toward my car. I scanned for pedestrians on either side of the street. Someone was way at the end of the block, so far that I couldn't determine gender. I wondered if they would reach me in time. I peeked behind me and glimpsed a car parking halfway down the street. It looked like a police car. I stole another glance over my shoulder. Indeed, Kubik was emerging, talking on a walkie-talkie.