Free Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html)

art form: it comes from deep within, it's
more intuitive than scientific. Most of us just wing it, let our
material evolve. The ones who have to analyze usually don't have much
of a flair to begin with. But Tracy combined the scientific with the
intuitive—with brilliant results."
    "If she was that intent on success, do you think she would have just
dropped out of sight? Everything I know about her
indicates she was on the verge of a breakthrough."
    He took his feet off the pedals, let them spin to a stop. Then he
got off the bike and sat on a corner of the desk, one leg drawn up on
it, half facing me. "I don't know what to think," he said. "I wish to
hell I did."
    "Any ideas?"
    "None."
    I leaned back in his chair, propping my feet on an open desk drawer.
"I've been trying to think of the typical reasons a twenty-two-year-old
woman disappears," I said. "She's on drugs, or pregnant, or suicidal.
She sees her life as at a dead end, or she's angry at her friends or
family and wants to hurt them. None of those motives fits with what I
know of Tracy."
    "No."
    "I thought of another reason: maybe her disappearance and kidnapping
was staged as a publicity stunt, to further her career. But that
doesn't wash, because in order for it to have been effective, she'd
have to have surfaced long before this."
    "Right. Now she's old, old news."
    "Unless something went wrong with the stunt."
    "Like what?"
    I shrugged.
    "So what's left?" he asked.
    "Tracy's mother has the impression something was weighing on her
mind before she disappeared," I said. "Tracy indicated that she thought
she'd turned into a bad person."
    Larkey's eyes flickered with interest.
    I asked, "Do you know what that might have been all about?"
    He got up and moved back toward the exercise bike, but instead of
riding it again, he balanced on the seat, feet on the handlebars.
"Maybe the business was destroying her youthful idealism."
    "It sounded like more than that. She mentioned a 'sin of omission'—a
situation she hadn't dealt with that could hurt someone
she cared about."
    He was silent, compressing his lips in thought. "Ms.— what's your
name?"
    "McCone, but you can call me Sharon."
    "Sharon, a club like this is a little world all its own… sort of a
scaled down version of the real world, only it operates at a much
higher level of intensity. Most of my people are young, and a fair
number of them are highly creative. They thrive on excitement, drama,
intrigue—and if some doesn't come along naturally, they'll conjure it
up. So you get undercurrents, rumors, secrets. Everybody's up to
something, but they're not letting on what it is because usually it's
pretty mundane, and if people find out, the fun'll be over."
    Larkey paused before continuing: "I'm used to that; Hollywood's the
same way, although the stakes are higher. So I try to ignore what goes
on here. I've got other interests, the Potrero Medical Clinic, for
instance. I keep out of what goes on here, and by and large nobody
tries to drag me in on it. But just before Tracy disappeared, I had the
sense something was wrong here. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the
atmosphere was more frenetic than usual."
    "Can you be more specific?"
    "It was just a higher level of intensity—and it didn't feel good."
    "Did you sense it in all your employees or just certain ones?"
    He considered. "Well, when something like that starts going around,
it spreads like brushfire. But if I had to name the ones who were most
caught up in it, I'd say Tracy and our bartender Marc Emmons."
    "Tracy's boyfriend? Not the guy at the bar tonight?"
    "God, no. Marc still works here, but that's not him."
    "Which one is he?"
    "Marc's the not-terribly-funny fat boy onstage." Larkey flashed his
famous foxy grin. "Why do you think I'm back here pedaling my ass off?
I can't stand to watch him work. But it's the kind of thing that goes
over with the crowd we attract these days."
    "He wasn't one of your performers when Tracy disappeared?"
    "No,