Woman Most Wanted

“This one’s obviously the key to your own apartment,” he said. “That’s why it wouldn’t fit.”

Behind him, he heard her taking a deep breath.

His sisters always had problems with keys. Privately he was convinced it was built in with the XX chromosome, although the one time he’d run that theory by his older sister, Carmela, she’d hit him over the head with her physics textbook.

He straightened up in abrupt annoyance. “The stupid thing’s not working. Which apartment does your super live in?”

Jenna took her keys back and pressed a button on the intercom board. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I didn’t have a problem this morning. I forgot my bus pass, and I had to let myself back in to get it.”

She gave the buzzer another halfhearted little tap and turned back to him without waiting for a response. “He’s not home. Let me try the keys again. Men always have trouble with keys.”

“Trust me—they don’t work.” Biting off the words with unnecessary emphasis, Matt jammed his thumb on the buzzer and kept it there. Whatever information she had for the Bureau, he thought wearily, it had better be good. By the time they got into her apartment and she spilled her big secret it would be midnight, at the rate this meeting was going.

He felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t shown up on time, he told himself. And if his evening wasn’t turning out exactly the way he’d planned, hers had been a disaster. She’d been mugged, for God’s sake. She’d been left penniless by some creep who’d knocked her down and taken her purse, and she was right—the money was going to be the least of her problems. Replacing credit cards and identification would be a major headache.

No wonder her serenity was beginning to crack a little.

“What do you want, mister?” The man who opened the door was about fifty. He was shorter than Matt’s own six-two by about a foot, but he had the bad-tempered pugnaciousness of a bantam rooster. Under the dirty white T-shirt he was wearing strained the hard potbelly of a serious drinker, and his tattooed biceps, stringy as they were, looked as if they’d served him well in decades of barroom brawls.

He didn’t even glance at Jenna, but instead kept his glare pinned on Matt. “If you’re a goddamn salesman for something, buddy, you’ve got about five seconds to get your butt off—”

“Mr. West, my key’s not working.” Jenna didn’t seem intimidated by his stream of invective. “When I moved in last week you said you’d get a spare set cut for me. Can I use them tonight and have some copies made tomorrow?”

He swung round to her, the scowl on his face deepening. “And who are you, lady? What is this, some kind of freakin’ scam?”

Matt had been watching the super, ready to step in if the man’s hostility crossed the line into action, but this newest tactic caught him by surprise. Flashing a quick look at Jenna’s dumbfounded expression, he realized that she was as taken aback as he was. Her polite smile had faded into confusion, and her cornflower-blue eyes widened.

“I’m Jenna, Mr. West—Jenna Moon, from 2B. Remember, you helped me move in my futon and I dropped it on your foot? And last night I gave you an aloe plant and told you how it could heal burns and cuts?” She gave an uncertain little laugh. “You were going to fix my faucet this weekend.”

“You’re crazy, sweetcheeks.” West looked from her to Matt and grunted. “Get your flaky girlfriend out of here before I call the cops.”

He started to close the foyer door, but Matt had had enough. Swiftly he stepped forward and shoved his shoulder and right arm through the narrowing space between the door and its frame, his ID and badge already open and dangling from his fingers.

“I am the cops,” he said in a flat voice. “And the lady’s a tenant of yours. How about you start showing some cooperation here, buddy?”

He could have sworn he saw a flash of something like fear behind West’s hard stare, but that was a common reaction. Men like him always had something to hide, Matt thought with disgust. Usually their dirty little secrets had nothing to do with the case on hand, but as soon as they realized they were dealing with the authorities they started lying automatically, unwilling to give a straight answer to any question.

West was probably just a mean drunk who’d drawn a temporary blank on his newest tenant. But Jenna—what had she said her last name was?—Jenna Moon didn’t need any more problems tonight. She was doing that deep-breathing thing again, he noted resignedly.

“Just let her into her apartment. I’ll even sign for the key if you want some kind of official receipt.” He forced a civility into his voice that he didn’t feel, at the same time exerting enough pressure on the half-open door to make the surly superintendent step back. Giving Jenna a slight nod, he kept his body between her and West as she nervously slipped past him to the short flight of stairs leading to the second floor.

“Look, mister.” West dropped his voice and darted a look at her, now climbing the stairs. “I’m being straight with you—that little sweetheart don’t live in 2B or any other freakin’ apartment here. If I have to, I’ll prove it to you.”

His attitude had changed from abrasiveness to an unpleasant kind of man-to-man confidentiality. For a second, Matt wondered if there was any way the man was telling the truth. His earlier impression of Jenna resurfaced.

West had called her flaky. During her brief phone call to the Bureau, he’d figured himself that she’d sounded like a kook—secretive, refusing to give him any hint of what her vital information was and hanging up after that unconventional description of the dress she was wearing. Her reaction to losing her life savings hadn’t been normal, and even her appearance was a little offbeat. He frowned. On the other hand, this lowlife superintendent was just the type to run some kind of scam himself, and, with her obvious openness and artlessness, he would have pegged his new tenant as an easy mark. The last thing he would have expected was for her to show up with an FBI agent in tow.

“There’s someone in my apartment!” Jenna’s voice was outraged, and glancing up to the first-floor landing he saw her bent over and peering at the crack under the door. “There’s a light on. I didn’t leave any lights on when I left this morning!”

“Okay, that’s it.” Matt jerked his head grimly at the man in front of him. “You’re going to let the lady into her apartment, and if we find anything missing you better be ready with some real fast explaining. What is this, some sweet little deal you’ve got going with a few light-fingered friends?”

West gave a short bark of humorless laughter, shedding the false bonhomie he’d displayed a few seconds ago as if it had never been. He rubbed his unshaven jaw thoughtfully, a thin smile on his lips. “You’re as crazy as she is. But I don’t want no trouble with the feds.” He shrugged and started for the stairs, reaching around the back of his belt for the collection of keys that hung on a steel ring there. “Come on, let’s see how Miss Looney Tunes explains this.”

They were close enough now to Jenna that she overheard this last remark, and the expression in those wide, guileless eyes made Matt think of a deer, shot without warning. She’d obviously trusted this jerk. He felt a sudden spurt of irritation at her naiveté. Where the hell had she been all her life, that she seemed so ill equipped to deal with the real world? She had to be twenty-three or twenty-four—not a susceptible teenager anymore. It was as if she’d been living in some peaceful utopia up until now, where everyone could be taken at their face value, and the sordid side of life—money, violence, dishonesty—never intruded.

“Use your damn key, West,” he snapped. The man had raised a meaty fist and was knocking on the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

Even as he finished speaking, he heard footsteps coming from inside the apartment and all his senses went on full alert. Jenna had heard them, too, and she turned to him, shocked.

“What’s going on, Matt? Does he have the right to let someone in when I’m not at home?”

“Move away from the door, Jenna.” He ignored her question and gave the command in a low, urgent voice. Standing to one side of the door himself, he reached inside his jacket for the shoulder-holstered Sig Sauer he wore during working hours and narrowed his eyes at West, who hadn’t moved.

“If your pals are armed, you stand a good chance of being the first casualty. And if you’re not the first, you can bet I’ll make damn sure you’re the second.” He gripped the gun in both hands, the barrel pointing at the floor. His words were barely above a whisper, but the threat was unmistakable. “Tell them to open the door slowly, and no sudden moves.”

The man’s shrug of reply was almost insolently unconcerned. One side of his mouth hitched up in a mocking half smile. “This is a real career-breaking move you’re making here, D’Angelo. Maybe you should go home tonight and start packing for Anchorage. The Bureau’s probably going to send you as far out of town as they can after this foul-up.” He tapped with almost ludicrous courtesy on the door as the footsteps shuffled to a halt. “Mrs. Janeway? It’s Pete West. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Matt’s finger was tight on the trigger, and for one fleeting second he could see himself—Matt D’Angelo, who never rushed into things without carefully considering every angle, standing armed and ready to kick down a door if necessary, all on the word of a woman he’d met only minutes ago. What’s wrong with this picture, D’Angelo? he thought in momentary confusion. This isn’t you, man—step back and think this out, for God’s sake!

Then he stopped trying to reason, and let instinct take over completely as he saw the door swing slowly open.

“FBI—freeze!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jenna edging nervously but resolutely up to the other side of the door, the dented can held high above her head like a weapon, and he felt his heart skip a couple of beats. “Step out into the hall with your hands up!”

For a second there was no reply, but then a voice answered him in a hesitant quaver. “I can’t, young man. If I let go of my walker, I’ll fall. If you’ll give me a minute, though, I think I can spread ’em, as you policemen say.”

Even as Matt pivoted swiftly from the side of the door frame to confront the intruder, his brain was scrambling into overdrive, desperately trying to pull in every scrap of information it was receiving and process it into something that made some kind of sense.

Except when he realized that he was holding a gun on a little old lady in an aluminum walker, a little old lady with white hair, orthopedic shoes, and bifocals that glinted in front of curious faded blue eyes, he suddenly got the feeling that there was going to be no way this was ever going to make sense.

God, D’Angelo, you could have blown away Grandma Walton, he thought with numb horror. Well, it hadn’t been that close a call. But he’d be willing to bet that West, standing behind him, would embellish the encounter to the first reporter he could get on the phone.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Jenna asked the woman.

For a second he’d forgotten about Jenna, but that had been another mistake, he thought, his heart sinking. Hair flying around her shoulders in a burnished copper cloud, breasts heaving in indignation under the thin Indian cotton of her dress, and shaking the can of cat food at Mrs. Jane-way, she looked like an angel, all right. Only this time she looked like an avenging angel, ready to drive the old lady out of the Garden of Eden.

Or at least out of the apartment that Jenna obviously still felt she had a claim on. A sudden thought struck Matt, and he turned with renewed hope to the superintendent behind him, ignoring West’s triumphant grin. “What are you trying to pull? It’s the wrong damn apartment!”

“What do you mean, the wrong apartment?” Jenna whirled on him angrily. “I know where I live, Matt! This woman might look like a sweet little old lady to you, but she’s got no right to be here! Look, I’ll show you!”

Before he could stop her, she’d sidestepped past the aluminum walker with a dancer’s agility, but even as he edged cautiously past the old lady with a muttered apology and reached out to grab Jenna’s arm, she froze.

“What have you done to my apartment?”

Her gaze swung wildly around the comfortably cozy living room as if she was looking upon some terrible desecration. With a trembling finger, she pointed at a row of potted African violets on the radiator by the window.

“They—they’re artificial! Where’s my fern and my spider plant?” She gestured at the colonial-style recliner sitting in front of a small television set. On a low table beside the chair was a half-knitted child’s garment, in an insipid color combination of peach-pink and cream. Her voice rose. “And what’s all this? This isn’t my furniture! I had my rattan set here, and I don’t even own a television! What’s going on?”

It was time to step in, he told himself. She’d made some kind of colossal mistake, and she just wasn’t admitting it to herself. Again, the first impression he’d had of her flashed through his mind, but he shoved it aside. She’d only lived here a week, and tonight she’d gone through a traumatic experience. She wasn’t necessarily crazy—maybe she’d hit her head when she’d fallen and received some kind of mild concussion. That had to be it, he thought compassionately. She was suffering from some kind of short-term memory loss.