More Twisted

that without evidence of an overt act, there’s nothing we can do.”
    Cause some harm  . . .
    Evidence of an overt act  . . .
    Maybe if they stopped talking like sociology professors they’d do some real goddamn police work. York came close to telling them this but he guessed the disgusted look on his face was message enough.

    Trying to put the encounter with the cops out of his thoughts, York drove to the gym. Man, he needed some muscle time. He’d just come through a grind of a negotiation with two men who owned a small manufacturing company he was trying to buy. The old guys’d been a lot wilier than he’d expected. They’d made some savvy demands that were going to cost York big money. He’d looked them over, real condescending, and stormed out of their lawyer’s office. Let ’em stew for a day or two before. He’d probably concede but he wasn’t going to let them think they’d bullied him.
    He parked in the health club lot. Climbed out of the car and walked through the fierce sun to the front door.
    “Hi, Mr. York. You’re early today.”
    A nod to the daytime desk manager, Gavin.
    “Yeah, snuck out when nobody was looking.”
    He changed clothes and headed for the aerobics room, empty at the moment. He flopped down on the mats to stretch. After ten minutes of limbering up, he headed off to the machines, pushing hard, doing his regular circuitof twenty reps on each before moving on, ending up with crunches; his job as one of the three partners in a major Scottsdale venture capital firm had him doing a lot of entertaining and spending serious time at his desk; his belly had been testing the waistband of his slacks lately.
    He didn’t like flabby. Neither did women, whatever they told you. A platinum Amex card lets you get away with a lot but when it’s bedtime the dolls love solid abs.
    After the crunches he hopped on the treadmill for his run.
    Mile one, mile two, three . . .
    Trying to push the difficult business deal out of his head—goddamn it, what was with those decrepit farts? How could they be so sharp? They oughta be in an old folks’ home.
    Running, running . . .
    Mile five . . .
    And who was this Raymond Trotter?
    Payback  . . .
    He scanned his memory again but could come up with no hits on the name.
    He fell into the rhythm of his pounding feet. At seven miles he slowed to a walk, cooled off and shut the treadmill down. York pulled a towel over his neck and, ignoring a flirtatious glance from a woman who was pretty but a few years past being worth the risk, returned to the locker room. There he stripped and grabbed a clean towel then headed for the sauna.
    York liked this part of the club because it was out of the way and very few members came here at this time of day. Now it was completely deserted. York wandered down thetile corridor. He heard a noise from around the corner. A click, then what sounded like footsteps, though he couldn’t tell for sure. Was somebody here? He got to the junction and looked. No, the hallway was empty. But he paused. Something was different. What? He realized the place was unusually dark. He glanced up at the light fixtures. Several bulbs were missing. Four thousand bucks a year for membership and they couldn’t replace the bulbs? Man, he’d give Gavin some crap for that. The murkiness, along with a faint, snaky hiss from the ventilation, made the place eerie.
    He continued to the door of the redwood sauna, hanging his towel on a hook and turning the temperature selector to high. He’d just started inside when a sharp pain shot through into his foot.
    “Hell!” he shouted and danced back, lifting his sole to see what had stabbed him. A wooden splinter was sticking out of the ball of his foot. He pulled it out and pressed his hand against the tiny, bleeding wound. He squinted at the floor where he’d stepped and noted several other splinters.
    Oh, Gavin was going to get an earful today. But York’s anger faded as he glanced down and found what he supposed was the source of the splinters: two slim wooden shims, hand carved, it looked like, lying on the floor near the doorway. They were like door stops, except that the only door here—to the sauna—was at the top of a two-step stairway. The door couldn’t be wedged open.
    But the shims could be used to wedge the door closed if somebody pounded them into the jamb when the door was shut. They’d fit perfectly. But it’d be crazy to do that. Somebodytrapped inside would have