“I got her,” Jack called, hustling down to the other end of the bar, leaving a stunned Tony Mancetti staring at the half-pulled mug of beer that Jack left sitting on the bar in order to rush to shut Sheila up and give Feb and Colt time to have their conversation.
“Brilliant, just brilliant,” Feb muttered as she started toward Tony.
“Feb, we’re not done talkin’,” Colt stated, his tone short and clipped.
“We so are,” Feb threw over her shoulder and hightailed it to Tony’s beer.
Colt took an angry pull off his own beer mainly because the cool of the bottle soothed the itch he now had to wring Sheila Eisenhower’s neck.
Feb didn’t get near him for the next twenty minutes and Colt played the only card he had in his hand.
“Jack!” he called and Jack jerked his head at Colt to tell him he’d heard him, finished the order he was filling for Ruthie and then walked to Colt.
“She can stay in the RV with you tonight but I want Feb and you and Jackie with me by tomorrow night.”
“Son, your second bedroom is full of junk and Jackie and me slept on your pull out last Christmas. Hate to tell you this, boy, but it’s lumpy.”
“Pull the RV up outside but Feb’s inside.”
Jack pressed his lips together before he said, “Found out yesterday my girl’s got a problem with insomnia and, I’ll repeat, your pull out is lumpy.”
“I won’t pull it out when I’m sleepin’ on it.”
Jack’s eyes grew wide. “You’re givin’ Feb your bed?”
“A man with a hatchet comes into the house I don’t want Feb on the couch.”
Jack threw him a look that Colt just caught before Jack turned away.
Colt had seen that look from Jack many times in his life. After football games. The four proms he took Jack’s daughter to. After Colt graduated from Purdue. The first time Jack had seen him in a police uniform. The day they made him detective.
The weight he’d been carrying in his gut grew lighter.
Jack looked back at him. “She ain’t gonna like it.”
“She doesn’t have much choice.”
Jack grinned. “She comes with a cat.”
This was not a pleasant prospect. Colt was not only a dog person, he didn’t much like cats.
“It stays out of my way, I won’t skin it.”
Jack threw his head back and laughed so loud, February, bending to pick up a fallen towel from the ground all the way down the bar, twisted her head to look at them. She was too far away, the light too dim, Colt couldn’t tell if her expression was anxious or angry.
Probably both.
“I’ll have a word,” Jack said, still chuckling.
“Have as many as you need but get her ass in my house.”
Jack threw him another grin and Colt hated what he had to say next but part of his job was saying shit like this. He didn’t like doing it at all but he really didn’t like doing it with people he cared about.
“Don’t get too comfortable with all this, Jack. The profilers profiled the guy. I want her at my house because she’s not safe. You hear what I’m sayin’ to you?”
Jack sobered instantly and leaned in.
“I hear you, you got more to say?”
He did so he said it. “He’s her age, probably went to school with us. Highly intelligent, organized and fixated. A sexual deviant. Likely he has a good job and is good at doin’ it. It’s probable she knows him. It’s likely, with his level of intelligence, he doesn’t think anyone’s smart enough to catch him and he’s good at hiding his perversion. He wants her attention. She goes off target, does anything he doesn’t like, say, movin’ in with me, his focus can shift from those who did her wrong to what he perceives as her doin’ him wrong. This is a profile, not set in stone, but those guys are good at what they do and we’d be fools not to listen to what they say.”
“Maybe she shouldn’t move in with you.”
“Maybe not, but you happy with any other place she could be?”
Jack read his meaning Colt saw it written in turn on Jack’s face.
“He’s been fixated on her for over twenty years,” Colt reminded him. “Something happened to set him off and it wasn’t her comin’ home. You hear anything, someone around her age, good job, good income, smart guy, who had something happen, say he got laid off, his wife left him, anything, you let me know and I’ll let Sully know.”
“His wife?”
“He’s good at hiding his perversion, Jack. He’s married, she wouldn’t have a clue.”
“Jesus.”
“Get her ass in my house tomorrow night and sleep with one f**kin’ eye open tonight.”
“Don’t think I’ll be sleepin’ at all, son.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
“They gonna catch this f**ker?”
“They’ll catch him but only because they think he won’t stop until he gets caught.”
“She don’t have that many enemies, Colt. Hell, she’s only really got one and he’s already dead.”
“He’ll make them up.”
“Jesus.”
Colt decided to finish it. “I know what you think this is, Jack, and it’s not that. It’s just me keepin’ my family safe.”
Jack turned fully to him and looked him straight in the eye. “Listen to what you say, son. What you just said tells me this is exactly what I think it is.”
He gave Colt no chance to reply before he walked away and Colt found himself at the end of a bar that now both Jack and Feb were avoiding and he needed another beer.
Five minutes later, Darryl hefted up the hinged portion of bar and slid through.
“Get me a beer, will you, Darryl?”
“You got it, boss,” Darryl replied, pulling out a beer, setting it in front of Colt and moving off without snapping off the non-twist cap.
Colt watched Darryl move away thinking they really should get rid of that guy. Two and two did not make anywhere near four for Darryl.
He reached over the bar, twisted to use the bottle opener underneath it and when he sat back down he saw Amy Harris making her way to him.
This sent a chill up his spine.
He’d known Amy for thirty years; she was between him and Feb in school.
She was very pretty and petite but had always been painfully shy. She got out of high school and got a job as a teller in the bank across the street from J&J’s. She’d been in that job ever since, never moving up, never moving on. Even as pretty as she was, she’d never had a boyfriend that Colt knew of, not that he paid much attention to Amy. In fact, he rarely saw her, even though he’d lived in the same town as her for three decades. He’d see her at the grocery store, the post office, driving down the street but not often.