Written Off (16 page)

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” I said. “
You
have work to do. You have to go find out who kidnapped and killed Sunny Maugham and those other three women.
I
have to revise the next book with you in it and worry every time my e-mail program makes a noise that indicates I’ve gotten a message. We have our assigned tasks. You go do yours. You don’t need me for that.”

Duffy Madison regarded me with what I’m sure he thought of as a kind and professorial demeanor but actually came across as unctuous and condescending. “You have the knowledge I’ve needed on this case. I’ve told you that from the start.”

“Yeah, and how’s it working out so far?”

He winced just a little. Duffy hates failing, especially when he doesn’t get to the kidnap victim in time. I’m guessing, because this was the first time in my experience that had ever happened in my world.

“We have not done well,” he admitted. “But that is not a function of your expertise. It’s my failure to act quickly enough and the perpetrator’s superior ability in concealing his identity and location. If we’re going to find and stop this madman, it will be because you can anticipate your own acts and we can anticipate ways in which he might therefore try to strike.”

There was something about the word “strike” that sent a shiver up my spine, and in this weather, any shiver was a significant achievement. “I don’t know that I can help anymore,” I said. “What is it you expect me to do with you tomorrow?”

“We need to research the modus operandi of this perpetrator. That can be done through the prosecutor’s office and the police. But if we assume that you are his next target—and I’m afraid that is an assumption we must make at this point—I will need a complete understanding of your every movement, your thoughts, your intentions. With that knowledge, it might be possible to stay a step ahead this time. You present
a unique opportunity. Before this, we had never known who the killer was targeting before she was abducted.”

“Do you ever hear yourself talk?”

Duffy seemed puzzled. “All the time,” he said.

“You don’t try very hard to make the person you’re talking to feel better,” I pointed out.

“I deal in facts, and they help me to do what I do,” he countered. “With facts, I can help keep you safe.”

I closed my eyes in weariness and frustration. “Fine. What is it you want to do tomorrow?”

“Follow you through the day. Observe. Take notes. I want to be sure of everything you do and every person with whom you come into contact. There is not one aspect of your routine that should be hidden from me. Do you understand?”

“I’m really afraid that I do.”

He went on as if I had not spoken. This was not unusual with Duffy. “Also, we’ll be putting together a portrait of the man who has committed these crimes. I need to know where in Syracuse to start, and we’ll begin with the candy company. But we also need to figure out how old he is, when he went to school, and the people who might have known him. It is impossibly difficult to put together a profile of a man who has no name and doesn’t seem to have a past.”

I looked at him. There was no irony in his voice. “Tell me about it,” I said.

At least he had the good grace to smile.

Duffy Madison arrived at my house the next morning at seven AM. It was a Saturday. He didn’t even bring coffee. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

“If I had brought you something, it would have interfered with your routine, and that is what I’m here to observe,” he said, defending himself. “You should go through your day interacting with me as little as possible.” I looked at him, sifting through the thousands of possible retorts to that suggestion. “I mean, pretend I’m not here.”

“With a great deal of pleasure,” I said.

He studied me with an intensity that was at once flattering and disconcerting. “I am here to observe your routine,” he said, apparently under the impression that I hadn’t understood that the six other times he’d said it. “What do you usually do at this time of day?”

I went into the kitchen to start coffee. If Duffy wasn’t going to provide, I’d have to do so myself. Never rely on a man when you can rely on yourself, my father always told me.
I made a mental note to call Dad the minute Duffy left so I could complain to him about Duffy.

“It’s the weekend, Duffy,” I said, stifling a yawn. “At this time of the day, I’m generally sound asleep. But I had to get up because some lunatic was ringing my doorbell at seven on a Saturday.”

Again the puzzled look. “That was me,” Duffy said.

“Bingo.” There was one coffee filter left. I wrote that down on a pad I keep next to the fridge that becomes a shopping list eventually. This was the fourth page I’d started, because I always seem to need a piece of scratch paper in a hurry and I never bother to protect the sheet with my list on it. Which was probably how I got this low on coffee filters to begin with. “So now you can observe me getting coffee and reading the newspaper.”

He did nothing else for the next forty-five minutes. I drank coffee and read the newspaper. Duffy sat by and said nothing so unobtrusively that I almost had a heart attack twice when I looked up and saw him there, having forgotten he was currently occupying my house.

The
New York Times
sends some of its Sunday sections on Saturday, which technically makes them Saturday sections, but I’ll take what I can get. One thing they always include in the Saturday bag is the Sunday magazine, and that’s fabulous because it means I get an extra day to figure out the Sunday crossword puzzle. I took the magazine out of the blue plastic bag (you’d think the
Times
would be more into biodegradable materials) and walked from the kitchen to my office. Once there, I opened the lid on my printer/copier/fax machine and carefully folded the magazine back to reveal the puzzle. I
pushed a few buttons on the copier, and it began making me facsimile crossword puzzles. I checked to make sure the copy that came out was properly folded to have both edges of the puzzle and the clues visible; you have to be careful with the Sunday puzzle.

I was taking the second copy out of the tray when I heard that voice behind me again. “Why are you making two copies?”

Third heart attack of the day; I spun. “Jesus, Duffy, don’t do that!” I almost crushed the paper I had in my hand and pushed the button for a new copy.

“Do what?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that. You scared me half to death.”

Duffy’s eyes were slits. “You knew I was here,” he said, the truth so obvious it was practically painful to him. “Why do you make more than one copy of the crossword puzzle? Why don’t you just write the answers in the magazine?”

“I always make two copies of the Sunday puzzle,” I said, sitting down in my desk chair and choosing my pen very carefully. There’s no writing surface on my desk, so I keep a clipboard nearby for this very purpose, and I clipped the first copy onto it for easy solving. Or at least easy writing of the letters. Solving was not the clipboard’s responsibility. “That way if I make too many mistakes, I have another copy so I can start writing again.”

“Why not just write in pencil on the original page?” he asked. It was like having an inquisitive six-year-old in the house; they want to know
everything
.

“Because I like pen better than pencil, and if I make too many mistakes on the magazine page, not only will I not be able to solve the puzzle, I won’t be able to read the article on the other side of the page. Can I ask how your knowing this is going to track down our pal in Syracuse?”

“I don’t know yet,” Duffy answered. Well, that settled it, right?

“I’m going to do the puzzle now. Feel free to go back to not talking.” Without awaiting a response, I started in on the Sunday. There’s always a gimmick (real solvers call it a “theme”) on Sundays, and this one was no exception. But I hadn’t yet been able to figure out what the longer clues—the ones associated with the gimmick—had in common yet. I grazed over the clues looking for real gimmes and found a few I filled in quickly. It gives one a sense of confidence.

Once the easiest clues were out of the way (which, since the solver was me, didn’t take long), I started in on what I could glean from the letters I’d already solved. Finding the proper crosses is what saves the bacon of many a solver every day. One clue asked for an “AL MVP in ’76.” I knew enough to figure that was a baseball clue, but I know nothing about baseball. So I swiveled in my chair and turned to every writer’s favorite source of quick information. I Googled “MVP 1976” and was rewarded with two names. Unfortunately, the two names (Thurman Munson and Joe Morgan) both corresponded with the crosses I had, the
M
and the
N
. I looked at Duffy.

“You know anything about baseball?” I asked.

“A little,” he responded. “Why do you ask?”

“I need to know if Thurman Munson or Joe Morgan was in the American League.” I turned back to Google and quickly got the answer: Munson.

“That was for the crossword?” Duffy asked suddenly.

I swiveled to face him. “Yeah.”

His eyes showed shock. “That’s
cheating
,” he gasped.

I turned back toward the puzzle. “Go back to being an observer,” I said.

*   *   *

This went on through my completion—yes, with some help—of the puzzle. Now, I don’t know where you come down on this, but I believe that the puzzle is supposed to be an avenue for information as well as entertainment. If I discover new facts through a tough clue that requires some online assistance, I believe that is in the puzzle constructor’s mission, not outside of it.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Then Duffy followed me through my morning routine, which unbeknownst to him, did not usually include a forty-minute shower during which he was instructed to stay as far from that part of the house as possible and to take me at my word that I was indeed becoming cleaner. I also cut out my exercise regimen, which mostly consists of me doing some
Wii Fit
yoga and then power walking around the house, because there was no way I was doing any of that stuff in front of Duffy. So I didn’t tell him about it.

He
did
watch while I revised some of the latest Duffy novel, which was disconcerting in itself. There had been enough times I’d felt the character standing over my shoulder, but now it was a literal reality, and that was more than I could take.

“Isn’t there some investigating you should be doing?” I asked.

“I am observing you.”

“Yeah I get that, Artoo, but the fact is that you’re a distraction and you’re making it hard for me to do my work.” I stood and started throwing a stress ball I had on my desk into the air and catching it. It doesn’t relieve any stress, but it does give me something to think about that isn’t tied to the motivations of killers and the clues that might be dropped in to distract the reader’s suspicions. Writing a mystery is intricate enough without an existential reminder that your character is a living being right in the room.

Duffy looked uncomfortable. “What am I doing that obstructs your working day?” he asked. “I need to see it as it would be if I weren’t here.”

“The only way that works is if you’re not here. Don’t you get it—I’m writing Duffy Madison with Duffy Madison on my couch! That’s just too bizarre, even for me!” The stress ball hit one of the spinning arms on the ceiling fan, sending it shooting across the room and toward a pile of books I wasn’t reading.

Duffy watched that and appeared to be debating whether to call in a psychological evaluation expert, a criminal profiler, or a SWAT team. “I can’t help being myself,” he said quietly. “How can I observe your routine if I’m not here?”

I thought of suggesting that he rent the house across the street and buy a telescope or some surveillance equipment, but I was afraid he’d take me seriously. “I don’t know how you can,” I said gently. “I really don’t think this is going to work. I can’t behave like myself with you here.”

“Why not?” Maybe he really
was
just four years old. He asked questions like some of my friends’ kids.

“Because I can’t decide if you’re really my fictional creation or if you just think you are. It’s like I’m trying to figure out which one of us is the crazy person.” There. It was out. I didn’t feel any better, but at least it wasn’t hanging over me.

“Neither of us is crazy,” Duffy said. He stood up to pace as he talked. I’d written that for him. “It isn’t unreasonable for you to be skeptical of me; to you, my existence doesn’t make sense. And while my position on my origin is certainly unorthodox, from my point of view, having eliminated all impossible options, my conclusion is the only logical one. We have two different perspectives and therefore different ideas of what can be possible.”

That really didn’t help much, but it made me feel better. I must have smiled at him, because he stopped pacing and his posture relaxed. “So what you’re saying is that we don’t have to agree on this; we should just both continue to act on our own view of the situation.”

He smiled now. “That’s it,” he said.

“Do you want to be some help to me?” I asked. The thought had just popped into my head, and suddenly it made all the sense in the world.

“Of course, if I can observe you while I do so.”

I was already back at my desk. “Do you have a laptop with you?” I asked.

“No, but I have a tablet.” He produced one from a messenger bag he’d stashed on the sofa.

“Good. I’m going to e-mail a file to you. I want you to read it and point out any inaccuracies you might find.”

I could hear some curiosity in his voice, but I didn’t turn to face him. “What file is that?” he asked.

“The next Duffy Madison book. Would you read it and tell me if you find any areas that aren’t consistent with your character?”

Having sent the file, I swiveled to look at him. Duffy was all intent, already working on the tablet screen.

“I will be happy to,” he said.

*   *   *

We proceeded that way for the next three hours. I kept revising based on my own notes and thoughts—some of my original ideas had been placeholders because I simply couldn’t think of anything better at the time—and Duffy would occasionally draw my attention to a speech he felt didn’t sound like him, but never an action he thought he wouldn’t take.

“You really have captured me quite accurately for the most part,” he said at one point.

“That’s because I made you up,” I reminded him.

He smiled a little. “That’s what you say.”

“Did you see anything that doesn’t work?” I asked. Hearing from the character himself is not something a lot of (sane) novelists get to do; there was value here.

“There is one thing,” he began. And suddenly I was hit with conflicting emotions:
Uh-oh. He found me out for the fraud I am
, followed quickly by,
Who the heck is this guy to tell me I don’t know how to write him?

Neither was expressed because Duffy’s cell phone rang (he was using the theme from
Mission: Impossible
as a ringtone, which I thought was a little unsettling), and he pulled it out to look. “It’s Ben Preston,” he said.

Duffy clicked the button on the phone. “Yes, Ben. Actually, I’m with her right now. No, at hers. Because I was observing her daily routine to—yes. All right. We’ll be there.” He disconnected the call and looked at me. “We need to leave now,” he said.

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Is the killer in the vicinity?” I asked. I have no idea why I thought they could know that and still not pick the guy up.

“No. The FBI.”