Death Benefits by Thomas Perry Page B

she can wait.” He stepped ahead of Walker. “I don’t think she is, of course.”
    “At least let me look.” He jerked his arm away.
    “I’ll do it,” said Stillman.
    “Why you?”
    Stillman sighed. “Because in your fit of chivalry you’ll tromp all over everything that might tell me what happened here. Besides, I’m beginning to like you. A four-day stiff starts to get ripe. That means if she’s here, somebody chopped her up and put her in a Coleman ice chest. You would find that looking at her would spoil the word ‘picnic’ for you forever.”
    Stillman moved rapidly across the living room, stepping in a straight path along the wall with his eyes on the floor. He opened a closet, then entered a doorway to the left that Walker judged must be the bedroom. In a moment he emerged, moved into another room, then returned to the kitchen. He stepped past Walker to the refrigerator, knocked on the front, opened it, then opened the freezer door. “Nobody’s home in there,” he announced. “Sit down and relax for a while, and I’ll call you if I need you.”
    Walker hesitated for a moment. Why wasn’t she here? He reluctantly admitted to himself that maybe if he left Stillman alone, he would find out. He sat at the kitchen table and watched Stillman through the doorway. He walked in a spiral motion around the living room, staring at the floor until he reached the center. He stepped to the bookshelf and moved books around. He examined the back of the television set, did something to the radio, studied the pictures on the wall, the empty mantel above the fireplace. He looked at the windowsills and latches, the light fixtures.
    As Stillman completed each operation, Walker had to resist asking, “What’s that? What are you looking at? What does it mean?” At six o’clock, he heard a car in the driveway, and then there were footsteps above the ceiling. They were light and quick—a woman, probably. In the silence he heard water running, faint music that he recognized as the theme of a commercial for dog food. Stillman kept at it.
    Finally, when the sun was down and the kitchen was almost completely black, Stillman came in and took off his gloves. Walker said, “Did you come to tell me something?”
    “Yeah. I’m hungry.” Stillman walked to the door, opened it, and left. He was walking down the driveway when Walker came out. Walker hesitated, then pushed in the lock button with his fist, grasped the knob with his coat, and closed the door. He caught up with Stillman on the sidewalk.
    After they had walked a short distance, Stillman reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers. “I’d like you to look at this.”
    Walker took the papers. “What is it?”
    “It’s six sheets of paper. Look them over.”
    Walker scanned the sheets as he walked, but that didn’t diminish his confusion. “It’s a lot of addresses and phone numbers. Restaurants, hotels, car-rental agencies . . . hospitals. Why do you suppose she had them?”
    Stillman took the sheets back. “She didn’t. Whenever I go anywhere, I take a few addresses with me.” He folded the sheets and returned them to his pocket.
    “Hospitals?”
    “You want to start looking for them after you need one?”
    “Oh,” said Walker. “Why did you want me to look at it?”
    “Because I didn’t find anything in the apartment,” he said. “If somebody is watching the place, we want them to think we did.”
    “We do?”
    “Yep,” said Stillman. “If they broke in to look for something, they’ll think we found it. If they broke in to clean up, they’ll think they forgot something.”
    “What if they broke in because they’re burglars who do that for a living?”
    Stillman turned up a long, narrow alley that ran along the backs of the stores on the street where they had parked. “It’s tough to get anywhere as a burglar if you leave all the stuff you can sell. The TV set is there. The radios are there. You can’t get by