“Of course.”
“You’d make your pops proud, you know that.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
As de la Cruz came over, he didn’t spare a glance for the big man standing next to her, but he was like that. Unfazed by almost anything. “I got nothing to say yet. I’m sorry.”
“No suspects?”
“No comment.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Say ‘hi’ to your mom, okay?”
“What about the hair color?”
He just waved over his shoulder and kept going, getting into a dark gray Crown Vic and pulling out of the parking lot.
As the last officer closed the room door, locked it, and put the CPD seal in place, she turned to the man behind her—
He was gone, as if he’d never been there.
Weird.
Heading over to Tony’s car, she could have sworn she was still being followed, but there was no one anywhere near her. The feeling persisted as she drove off, though, to the point where she wondered if paranoia wasn’t a virus you could catch.
Matthias was certainly worked up, but he might well have reason to be.
She certainly didn’t.
Mels took the shortest way home, which was on the surface roads, and as she went by the cemetery again, she decided to take a little detour.
The house she eventually stopped in front of was on a street where every other garage, except its own, had cheery twin lanterns glowing on either side of its door.
This particular ranch was lights-out inside and on the exterior, a black hole amid all the other occupied-by-owners.
Reaching for the car door, she wanted to poke around a little, look in some windows, maybe find an unlocked way into the garage. But as soon as she made contact with the handle, a wave of dread came over her, sure as if all the ambient someone’s-watching had coalesced into an actual bogeyman who was coming up from behind her with a knife.
Mels gave the eerieness a second to pass, in case it was heartburn from that burger and fries at the Marriott, but when it just sat on her chest, she put the car back in drive and turned around in the middle of the street.
Probably the mist that was still hanging in the air.
Yeah, it was the serial killer—movie fog that made the night seem darker and more dangerous than it really was.
Driving off, she hit the door lock and held on to the wheel hard.
She didn’t loosen up until she pulled into the familiar driveway of her parents’ house, the headlights of Tony’s car washing up and over the front of the Cape Cod she’d grown up in.
For some reason, she focused on the shutters on the second floor. The ones outside of the dormer of her bedroom.
Her father had fixed them when she’d been ten years old: After a Nor’easter had come in and blown both of them off, he’d gotten a shiny aluminum ladder and lugged the heavy old wooden things up, balancing them on the eaves, rescrewing the pinnings, making it all right.
She’d held the base of the ladder, just because she’d wanted to be a part of it. She hadn’t been worried that he’d fall. He’d been Superman that day.
Every day, actually.
She thought of that stranger by the motel, the one with the proselytizations and the piercings. Maybe he did have a point about that scarcity and surety stuff when it came to some people. But for her, if she knew for certain her father was okay, she would actually find a measure of peace herself.
Funny, she hadn’t realized until tonight that she might need that.
Then again, since his passing…she’d made a point not to look closely into things.
It was just too painful.
21
At just before five a.m., Jim was in Matthias’s room at the Marriott, staring at the muted television from a chair in the corner. About two hours previously, he’d gotten a text from Ad saying that the reporter was home safe at her mother’s and the angel was going to check on Eddie and let Dog out. The next report had been forty-five minutes later—Ad was going to try to catch a few.
Over on the king-sized bed, Matthias was sleeping like a corpse: on top of the covers on his back, head on the pillow, hands linked across his sternum. All he needed was a white rose between his fingers and a canned organ and Jim could have been paying his respects.
Why the hell had Devina helped them?
Christ, the only thing worse than her going against him was her rescuing him. And he hadn’t needed her lifesaver. He had tricks up his sleeve, damn it. He had been just about to bust out a light show.
Maybe she was trying to suck up to the Maker.
How f**king galling was that—
The five a.m. Wake Up, Caldwell! newscast led with a reporter covering a murder scene downtown, the woman standing in front of a motel, turning back and nodding to an open room where police were going in and out. Then there was a cut to a box of hair color and the mug shot of a hard-used woman with stringy red hair.
So much sin in the world, Jim thought.
And on that note, he needed more ammo.
When a commercial for Jimmy Dean sausage came on, his stomach would have ordered room service if it could have picked up the phone and dialed.
“Can you at least tell me my own name?”
Jim glanced over to the bed. Matthias’s eyes were open, but he hadn’t moved, like a snake coiled in the sun.
“I’ve only ever known you as Matthias.”
“We were trained together, weren’t we. Last night we had the exact same moves at the same time.”
“Yeah.”
Sensing where this line of questioning was going to take them, Jim outted his cigarettes, put one between his teeth, and then remembered they were in a public place. And wouldn’t it be ironic to get booted out of the hotel for lighting up when they’d broken in the back entrance, traded open fire, left a body, and broken out again?
Har-har-hardy-har-har.
Jim refocused on the TV, which was playing a deodorant commercial. For a split second, he envied the dudes portrayed in the scene: all they had to worry about were their armpits, and as long as they used Speed Stick products, they were good to go.
If only the solution for Devina came in both aerosol and stick.
“Tell me how I killed myself.” When Jim didn’t answer, the other man said, “Why are you so afraid to talk about it? You don’t strike me as a pu**y.”
Jim scrubbed his face. “You know what? You should sleep less. You’re a pain in the ass well rested.”
“I guess you’re just a pu**y, then.”
As Jim exhaled hard, he wished it were smoke. “Fine, you know what I’m worried about? That when you find out who you were, you’re going to become that man again and I’ll lose you. No offense, but this clean slate you’ve got going on is a blessing.”