Angels Fall

studied the sketch.
    "Strong resemblance. I'd say it was her, or a close relation. Why are you looking for her?"
    "She's missing," Brody said before Reece could speak. "Would you still have the note she left you?" Mecklanburg considered a moment, studying Brody's face, then Reece's. "I like to keep everything in a file. Wouldn't want her coming back to me, saying I'd rented the place out from under her. I don't see any harm in letting you look at it."
    He moved over to the far end of one of his bookshelves, pulled up a rolling stool and sat to go through a lateral file cabinet.
    "Nice collection." Brody said easily. "The books."
    "I can imagine living without tood. I cannot imagine living without books. I taught high school English for thirty-five years. When I retired.
    I wanted a job where I'd have plenty of time to read, but not enough I'd turn into a hermit. This provides that balance. I'm fairly handy with small repairs, and once you've dealt with teenagers for a few decades, handling tenants is no strain. Deena was one of the more difficult. She didn't want to be here."
    "Here?"
    "In a small, inexpensive apartment on the edge of the action. And while she paid the rent, she didn't want to. She offered me, at various times, quite an expansive menu of sexual favors in lieu of rent." He smiled a little as he pulled out a folder. "We'll just say she wasn't quite my type." He took the top sheet out of the folder, handed it to Brody.

    Screw all of you and this dump. I'm moving on to better. Keep the junk upstairs or burn it. I don't give a flying fuck. D

    "Succinct," Brody commented " This looks like it was written on a computer. Did she have one?" Mecklanburg frowned. "Now that you mention it. I don't believe she did. But there are any number of Internet cafes and accesses in town."
    "Seems odd." Reece put in, "that she'd take the bother to tell you to get screwed. Why not just leave?"
    "Well, she did like to bitch and to brag."
    "She was seeing someone the last several months.
    "I believe so. But she stopped… entertaining here, oh, sometime before the holidays last year." 
    "Did you ever see him, the man she was involved with?"
    "I may have. Once. Most of her 'companions' didn't bother to be discreet. We have laundry facilities downstairs. One of the tenants had reported the washer was acting up. I went down to take a look, see it I could fiddle with it or needed to call a repairman. I was just coming up when he—her friend—was leaving. It was a Monday afternoon. I know as, at that time, all the tenants worked on Mondays."
    "A Monday," Reece prompted. "Around the holidays."
    "Yes, just after New Years, I believe. I remember we'd gotten several inches of snow overnight, and I had to go out and shovel first thing.
    Generally I do any maintenance necessary in the morning or between four and six, barring emergencies. I like to read during lunch, then take a nap. But I'd forgotten about the machine that morning and needed to get to it."
    Brushing a finger over his mustache. Mecklanburg paused a moment, pursed his lips in thought. "I d have to say he was surprised to see me— or be seen. He turned, angled himself away and quickened his pace. And he wasn't parked in the lot. I was curious enough to hurry into my apartment and look out the window. He turned away from the lot."
    "Maybe he lives in town," Reece supposed.
    "Or parked elsewhere. But I do know that from that point on, Deena went out to meet him. It indeed that's who she was meeting. As far as I know, he never came around here a train."

    "HE DIDN'T WANT to be seen. Wouldn't you say that?"
    "Seems that way," Brody agreed. "Which says married, or in a sensitive position."
    "Like a politician? A minister?"
    "That'd be two."
    At his car, she turned around to study the building again. "It's not a dump. It's basic, but it's clean and tended. But not good enough for Deena Black. She wanted more. Bigger, better, shinier."
    "And thought she'd hooked one who'd give it to her. Fish on the line," Brody repeated when Reece frowned at him.
    "So either he wasn't providing her as she wanted him to, or he broke it off. I'd say he broke it off—this maybe married, maybe public figure. But. Brody, if he was afraid to be recognized here, what does that do to the theory that he's from Angel's Fist? That he's been stalking me on the home ground."
    "Doesn't change it." He pulled open her door, walked around to the driver's side. "Someone who does business in Jackson Hole,