Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

and gets those pesky spots off her hands without even having to use water.
    I opened the curtain for Dashiell, then watched him walk under another part of it. Standing half in and half out of Venus’s cubicle, I wondered if maybe, just this once, I might get my way; Venus would wake up, annoyed as hell, tell me who.
    Who. That was only part of it. She’d have to tell me why, too.
    Yeah, right.
    I looked back at the bed, nothing moving without the help of a machine.
    I let the curtain close behind me, thinking. What if she did wake up, just as I wished, but when she did, she remembered nothing?
    Oy, there’s the rub.

Chapter 22
    See Anything You Like? She Asked

    Right outside of St. Vincent’s, Dashiell stopped to sniff the pants of some very patient man, carrying his groceries home from D’Agostino’s.
    “He must smell my dog.”
    “Knows his name, rank, and serial number by now,” I told him.
    I stopped by the cottage, fed Dashiell, and packed my backpack with a towel, a change of clothes, a small tape recorder, and the pages I’d printed at Venus’s apartment. The staff meeting was at eight. I could work out for forty-five minutes, shower, and still get to Harbor View on time.
    Walking over to Serge’s gym, I tried to piece together what started all this, what happened to Harry.
    He’d turned south, planning to go to Venus’s apartment.
    I wondered if the person on the bicycle had expected otherwise—that Harry would turn north, heading for the subway on Fourteenth Street, that he wouldn’t see what was coming, a bicycle headed right for him, maybe someone he knew on that bicycle.
    Maybe someone he knew?
    Of course it was someone he knew. At least, that was the premise that made sense to me, looking at the world as I did, through a dirty window.
    Someone he knew.
    Coming down Bank Street, I looked into the Westbeth courtyard, a place I knew well, a place with lots of memories for me.
    Across the street was the t’ai chi studio where I had studied late into the night so that I could better insert myself into the life of a young woman who had died there.
    The courtyard, too, had been a place of death, and when I came here now, as I had always done, to play ball with Dashiell in the shade of the trees, I tried to erase those memories and replace them with the scenes of Dashiell running, his back legs hitching together like a rabbit’s, his ears flopping, his face alive, his mouth open in a grin, the world in his work, nothing more compelling than getting the ball and bringing it back, acting out the law of the jungle and the demands of genetics in the guise of a game. But even watching Dashiell’s joy, I’d been unable to forget what had happened here. It was foolish to try. The best I could do was add to the mix.
    I detoured into the courtyard. The sun was almost ready to set now, the air still heavy and warm. Even now, so late in the day, delivery men were lying on adjacent walls, one on his back, arms crossed under his head, the other with his knees bent, lying on his side like a baby. Both were fast asleep.
    Their bikes, beat-up one-speeds, one with a basket large enough to hold a couple of orders of Chinese takeout, the other with no basket, the handlebars wrapped in silver tape, were leaning against one of the walls, unchained. Was that the way it worked in China, everyone getting around by bike, you could leave one just about anywhere and it wouldn’t get stolen?
    Not here.
    I wondered exactly how easy it would be to steal one.
    And then what? After hitting Harry, just ditch the bike a block or two away?
    Of course not.
    Abandoning the bike in the street would only bring attention to it, the opposite of what the killer would want. A stolen bike, left near a crime scene, that would be a gift for the cops.
    He might as well leave a red bow on it.
    Or a confession.
    No. The bike wouldn’t have been stolen. It would have been borrowed.
    And returned. That way it would disappear back into the crowd of indistinct, beat-up delivery bikes as soon as possible. Perfect.
    But what kind of a murderer would take the time to return a stolen bicycle?
    A smart one.
    And what if one of the little men woke up before the bike was returned? What was he supposed to do about it, call the police?
    Most of the delivery men spoke just enough English to make change, not a word more. Come from China and call the police? I didn’t think so.
    The courtyard went all the way through to Bethune Street, one block