The Shadow Hunter

she said.
    “Heard?”
    “It’s been all over the radio and TV—with my loyal friends at KPTI leading the charge.”
    “I’ve been asleep,” Abby said gently. “Why don’t you sit down?”
    Kris looked at the visitor’s chair in the room and took a moment to study it, as if trying to decide what it was for. Then she sat. Abby assumed a lotus position on the unmade bed.
    “It’s Howard,” Kris said, her voice hushed.
    Abby nodded. From the look on Kris’s face she had already guessed that word of Howard Barwood’s probable involvement in the crime had been leaked to the media. “What about him?”
    “Well”—Kris lifted both hands, palms up—“he’s disappeared.”
    This took Abby by surprise. “Disappeared?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “An hour ago. He—he ran away. He ran away.” She needed to repeat the words in order to make them real.
    “Kris, what happened exactly?”
    “What happened…”
    “Tell me the who, what, where. The bare essentials. The time line.” Abby hoped an appeal to the woman’s journalistic training would prod her to organize her thoughts.
    The tactic worked. Kris straightened, her gaze clarifying. “All right, here it is. Howard was with me for most of the night. This morning he left for an interview at the sheriff’s office. It was supposed to be routine. I expected him to return, but he never did. Finally I reached him at home. He was in a meeting with his lawyer, he said. He promised to call back.”
    “But he didn’t?”
    “No. Half an hour ago I called again. This time Martin Greenfeld answered. Howard’s attorney. He said—well, it’s just incredible what he said.”
    “Take it easy. Go slow.”
    “He said detectives had arrived with a search warrant for the house.
Our
house. They’d searched and found something. They seemed excited about it. Martin saw it in a clear plastic evidence bag. It looked like a phone, he said. A cell phone.”
    Abby knew it had to be the phone registered to Western Regional Resources, the phone Howard had used to call Hickle’s apartment. “Where did they find it?” she asked.
    “Martin wasn’t sure. It could have been in a closet downstairs, but why? Howard and I have three cell phones, but we don’t keep any of them in a closet.”
    “And after this,” Abby prompted, “Howard disappeared?”
    Nod. “He said he had to use the bathroom. Must have slipped out of the house via the rear deck. He went to Terri and Mark’s place down the road and asked if he could borrow one of their cars—they’ve got three. Claimed he had to visit me here and his Lexus wouldn’t start. They gave him the keys. He got out of the Reserve without being spotted. Now he’s gone, just gone. And it’s on the news, every channel. They’re saying he’s a suspect in the case, and he fled. Martin won’t give me any details, and I’m afraid to call anybody in the news business—I can’t talk openly with them. They’re my friends, but they won’t hesitate to screw me if they can get a jump on the competition. I’m about to go home now, and I still don’t know what’s going on.”
    Her last statement was a plea. Abby knew she had to answer it. “Travis told you I was here?” she asked, stalling a little.
    “Yes, he mentioned it.”
    “But he didn’t say anything else, anything about Howard?”
    “Not a word.”
    “Well…he should have.” Courage was a quality Abby prided herself on possessing, but she felt it desert her as she met Kris’s earnest, beseeching gaze. She steeled herself for honesty. “All right, here’s what I know. Hickle had an informant who ratted me out. We don’t know exactly who it was, but…”
    Kris shook her head in automatic denial. “No. Oh, no, impossible.”
    “There’s evidence.”
    “What evidence?” Kris got up, paced the room. “The phone? Is that it? The cell phone they found?”
    “I think so.”
    “What could a phone possibly mean?”
    Abby answered with a question of her own. “Has Howard ever mentioned a company called Western Regional Resources?”
    “No.”
    “On Thursday night Hickle got a call at his apartment, probably to arrange some kind of rendezvous. I traced the call. It was made from a cell phone registered to Western Regional Resources. Travis found evidence that the company is something Howard set up offshore—without your knowledge, apparently.”
    “No, it can’t be true. Why would he want to help that man? What conceivable motive could he