True-Life Adventure

get her back? Could he have thought publicity would put her in further danger? Who knew? He was an odd duck.
    And so, for that matter, was Joan. After her alternate laughings and cryings, I was damned glad to be heading toward the soothing presence of Susanna.
    I found her staring out at her freeway. Sardis had called her about Tillman. Also, Blick had been there. She was too upset to work and I was going to have to upset her further. “Susanna,” I said, “I’ve found out why Lindsay took Terry and left. But it’s pretty awful.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Terry’s sick. She’s going to die.”
    It took her about half a second to put that together with what she already knew. “Cancer!”
    I nodded.
    “That explains why she was so excited about that show.” Her face was glowing. She was positively cheered up. “And why she left. And where she probably is.”
    I breathed a man-size sigh of relief. I’d thought I was in for more tears. But Susanna was a journalist, and it was probably no accident she’d become one— she was just like all the others I knew. The thing she hated worst was not knowing something. She could take bad news a lot better than suspense and unanswered questions.
    “You think,” I said, “that she’s taken Terry to some cancer quack?”
    “Sure. The question is which one.”
    “I thought you might have some ideas on that. Were there any that particularly impressed her?”
    Susanna shook her head. “Not that I know of. Let’s ask the cameraman.” She called him in and we did. He said that while she hadn’t been her usual cynical self on the story, had seemed much more open-minded than usual, she hadn’t exactly singled out any of the quacks for praise.
    We decided to watch the tape of the show. Seeing Lindsay on screen was as much a pleasure as it always had been. Her hair was taffy-colored, her eyes green, her voice low and lovely. But the best part, as always, was the sense of quick intelligence at work, with a stark honesty behind it. Like Walter Cronkite, she had the knack of making you believe her.
    But the show gave us no hints whatsoever— if Lindsay liked one of her quacks well enough to take her daughter to him, the home TV audience didn’t get inkling one. She was professional as hell.
    Watching the show wasn’t a total waste of time, though. We got the names of the guys she’d talked to— eight of them, scattered from Mexico to Reno. If she put that show together in a week, no wonder the tech crew complained.
    Anyway, I now had the names of the eight most likely quacks (though maybe Lindsay had gone to one she didn’t interview), but where did that get me? I could hardly phone them and ask to speak to her— for one thing, who knew what name she was using? For another, she certainly wouldn’t be taking calls. The only thing to do was talk Joey Bernstein into letting me go prowl around the various cure-halls— if Lindsay could do it in a week, so could I.
    But Susanna thought that was a dumb idea. “People are dying at the rate of one a day,” she pointed out. “We don’t have a week.”
    “What else can we do?”
    “We have to tell the cops.”
    I started to answer, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Seizing the advantage, she kept talking: “Your life is in danger, Paul. And so is Sardis’s as long as you’re staying with her.”
    There was a chance, of course, that her own and Joan’s were too. And maybe Jacob’s and Marilyn’s. She was unquestionably right. If Lindsay was at some hospital, the cops would find her in about twenty-four hours. And if I’d given Blick the damn Koehler file in the first place, Brissette and Tillman might still be alive. This was no time for wasting time.
    I picked up the phone and got Blick. “Howard,” I said. “I have information that may lead to the arrest and conviction of a killer.”
    “Stick it where the sun don’t shine, Mcdonald.”
    “I’m not kidding, Howard. This is big.”
    “Yeah? So’s your dick.”
    Now what was that supposed to mean? I ignored it. “Stay there. I’m coming down to the Hall.”
    The Hall of Justice was what I meant. What a building. Not only was the cop shop there, so was the DA’s office, all the Municipal Courts, several Superior Courts, city prison, and county jail. It was worth your life just to ride in the elevators.
    But I did, clear up to Homicide, where I did not expect to be received cordially and where I was not disappointed.
    Blick’s potato face was