“No,” I said. “Did he say where he was?”
Nick waved a hand vaguely. “Somewhere south. Central valley, maybe? Said he might have to go as far as L.A., but he had someone closer to home he could ask first.” Nick grunted. “Pretty ironic, given that our favorite hotshot detective, Mozar, just came from down there.”
I nodded, but didn’t speak.
I knew both Angel and Nick could probably tell I wasn’t thrilled.
I also didn’t miss the edge in Nick’s voice when he mentioned Mozar.
I knew that might not entirely be about the murder case, either.
In one of the more awkward moments of my professional career since I’d started doing contract work for the SFPD, Mozar asked me out––more or less publicly, and while we were all still working. He’d done it minutes after Black left us out on that pier and climbed onto a brand new looking Ducati motorcycle that I didn’t even know he owned.
I’d been watching him drive away when Mozar approached from behind and asked me––way too loudly, in my opinion––if I’d consider joining him for dinner that night.
Luckily, I’d already had an excuse. I didn’t even have to think about it for long, since I’d only just recently asked Angel and Nick out for drinks and dinner.
Mozar had been persistent though.
And yeah, loud.
“What about tomorrow night?” he said, not missing a beat.
“I’m seeing someone,” I told him, as politely as I could. “But thank you. It’s nice of you to ask.”
“Seeing someone?” Mozar frowned. “You mean tomorrow? Or as in you’re dating someone?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“So? You’re not married, right?” Mozar smiled when he said it, but I could tell it wasn’t really a joke. “Or does Mr. Boyfriend get pissed off when you have a few friendly drinks with anyone besides him?”
“We’re exclusive,” I told him, without smiling back. “So yes. He does.”
Mozar didn’t lose the smile, but when I glanced to my right and saw Glen and Nick standing right there, I felt my mood sour considerably. Nick and Glen were practically gaping at us––they didn’t even try to hide the fact that they’d been eavesdropping. Nick was scowling openly at Mozar as soon as he seemed to wrap his head around the exchange, his thick arms crossed over his chest the way they had been when he’d been arguing with Black.
Glen just kept looking me up and down with a puzzled expression on his face, like he couldn’t figure out why he kept looking at me.
He probably couldn’t.
Figure it out, I mean.
Anyway, because of that little scene, Nick had been making cracks about Mozar off and on all night, pretty much ever since we’d dropped him off at the Northern Precinct station.
“Guy’s not very good with ‘no,’ is he?” Nick grunted, as if he’d read some portion of my thoughts on my face. “Can you believe the nerve of that shit-head? We were working for crying out loud. Did he somehow miss that part of our being out there? And what’s up with that Sphinx-like partner of his? I don’t think that guy said two words the whole day.”
“He found the other symbol,” I reminded him.
Nick shrugged, his expressing relaxing somewhat. “True.”
Hawking had been the one who found another alchemical symbol, presumably left by the killer. None of the CSI guys caught it, since it had been carved on the inside of the door of the pavilion, right on the other side of where the killer left the body.
Nick grunted, taking another bite of the Pad Thai.
“He’s got a good rep down south,” he conceded. “Hawking, I mean. Quiet, but good at his job. I talked to Joanna... remember her?” When I nodded, he focused back on his food, still talking. “She said Hawking and Mozar have been working this thing together from the beginning... that Mozar gets all the press, but Hawking’s done a lot of the legwork.”
He glanced up, giving me a level look. “He found the merc connection too, doc. Hawking. He started mapping the guy as ex-military after the first kill, from what Mozar says. Something about the way he stalks his victims. Hawking served over there when we did, give or take. He was a Ranger. Sniper. So he should probably talk to Black when he gets back.”
I nodded, taking all that in.
It made sense, given the small amount I’d felt on Hawking the few times I’d read him. He had a kind of sniper’s personality. One type, anyway.
Truthfully, I’d checked him out in part because I’d wondered fleetingly if he was our killer. The guy I’d felt on the ladder had been blank too, like an absence of presence, which is how Hawking himself struck me. The coincidence was too much for me not to do a quick pass, if only to make sure those resonances weren’t the same.
They weren’t––the same, that is. Maybe there were more guys like that in Spec Ops than I realized. Most of the ones I’d known could shoot their mouths off with the best of them, although I knew that could be a form of camouflage too.
I didn’t say any of that aloud over dinner. In the end I found myself thinking that maybe you needed a quiet-guy hunter to catch one of his own.
Angel only grinned at Nick’s words over dinner, shaking her head a little. Even so, I’d seen her looking at me, that narrower scrutiny in the back of her gaze.
Pretty much the exact same scrutiny she was aiming at me now.
I exhaled. “You mean why am I here? Why did I ask if I could stay with you?” I leaned my jaw on my hand like her, turning so I faced her. “You heard Nick. Black’s out of town.”
“You asked to stay with me before you knew that,” Angel said, shaking her head to show me she wasn’t buying it. “And things were... chilly... with the two of you. And I don’t just mean at the pier, where he walked off without so much as a goodbye.”
I rolled my eyes a little, but felt my face heat. Thinking, I took a sip of my own glass of wine. Eventually, I could only shrug.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head, once. “I think he’s mad at me. But I honestly don’t know.”
“You think he’s mad at you,” Angel said. “Black.”
I nodded, meeting her gaze. “He told me to ask you if I could stay with you. He didn’t want me staying alone, but he said I couldn’t stay with him. That was before he decided to leave...” Pausing, I frowned. “Well, I think it was. Unless he’d decided to leave and just didn’t tell me.” My frown deepened as I turned that possibility over in my head. “Anyway. He made it clear he didn’t want me staying with him. He asked me for space. He was clear about that.”
Feeling my face heat again, I shook my head.
“It was confusing, honestly. I was the one who first said we needed to talk. But he comes back at me that if I want him to talk to me, he needs space first.”
“What did you want to talk to him about?” Angel said, resettling her arm and butt on the couch. She was frowning too, like she was having trouble following all of that.
I shrugged, taking another sip of the wine. “Seer stuff, I guess. He kept getting pissed off about things... things I couldn’t really understand. It was starting to seem like maybe we had a cultural problem.”
Angel quirked an eyebrow, smiling. “A cultural problem.”
Again, she didn’t really say it like a question.
“Yeah, you know.” I made a vague gesture with the hand gripping the wine glass. “Like a disconnect. Like we’re not quite meeting each other in the same place.”
When I glanced up that time, Angel burst out in a laugh.
“What?” I said, annoyed. “That’s funny to you?”
“You two... wow. You’re like little kids. I honestly can’t decide if it’s cute or deeply disturbing, given that you’re both over thirty.”
I felt my jaw tighten more. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Angel said, scooting towards me on the couch and giving me a mock stern look. “That boy is head over heel
s in love with you, Miriam. If you can’t see that, you’re blind as a bat. And whatever ‘cultural disconnect’ you think might be happening, I strongly suspect he’s losing his shit because you’re doing your weird ‘doc’ thing with him and putting up all your walls.” She shrugged, taking another sip of the wine before adding, “You’ve been doing it to him pretty much every time I’ve seen the two of you together, Miri. I can’t vouch for when you’re alone. But even that morning in his apartment, you were doing it––”
“I was not––” I began, fighting real annoyance.
But she didn’t let me finish.
“––Maybe you’re doing it worse this time after Ian or what happened in Bangkok. Or maybe it’s because of all that crap that went on in Paris and him leaving you alone for months on end. Either way, he’s too paranoid, or too freaked out––or just too much of a damned guy to realize why you’re doing it. He just knows you’re shutting him out and it’s scaring him. Apparently he doesn’t know you well enough yet to realize you’re crazy about him too... and terrified of this whole thing for that very reason.”
I felt my jaw harden the longer she talked. I forced myself to take all of it in, but at the end, I found myself shaking my head.
“That’s not all of it, Ang.”
“What’s the rest of it?” She took another drink of the wine, still smiling at me bemusedly. “More of that alien, seer crap?”
I gave her a disbelieving look. “Now that you mention it, yes. There’s a hell of a lot of that ‘alien, seer crap,’ as you put it. And most of it, I don’t understand at all... and Black seems to think I should, even when he doesn’t bother to explain it.”
“Like what?” Angel said. “Or can’t you talk to me about that, either?”
Sighing in annoyance, I fought to think. “Like... I don’t know. We get really weird together, Ang. Like irrational weird. We went out for dinner one night and I thought he was going to beat the shit out of this old friend of his who owned the place, just for finding me attractive. I mean, we both get possessive...”
Angel let out a sarcastic grunt, but I blew past that too.
“...Unhealthy possessive,” I added, glaring at her. “And he’s told me a few times that it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better... but he still hasn’t explained what any of ‘it’ is, much less what it means. My uncle made it sound like this bonding thing is kind of a...” I waved a hand in irritation. “...a thing of some kind. Like it’s not something normal. It definitely doesn’t happen every time two seers date, or start sleeping together. Uncle Charles made it sound like it would change the two of us. Permanently, I mean.”
“So have you asked Black to explain all of that? The bonding thing?”
“I told him we needed to talk,” I said. “About us.”
“You mean today?” she clarified. When I nodded, her frown deepened. “Okay, but what have you talked about in that area so far? Before today?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, taking another sip of wine. Then I shrugged. “Well, he asked me not to sleep with anyone else. While he was in Paris. But that was months ago. Right after that night I got drunk and kissed Nick... so yeah, that was pretty much a direct response to him thinking I was going to sleep with Nick if he didn’t ask me not to.” Shaking my head, I combed my fingers through my hair, muttering. “...I’ll probably never hear the end of that.”
“Wait.” Angel held up a hand. “You’ve been sleeping together since Paris and you haven’t once even talked about it? About what’s going on with the two of you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“It’s been what... three weeks? You haven’t had a single conversation about it?”
“No. We haven’t talked about it, okay?” I let my annoyance grow audible again. “And yes, okay, maybe that’s my fault. He tried a few times, but I guess I wasn’t ready.” Feeling another pulse of disbelief off Angel, I gave her a harder look. “I know we need to talk about it... okay? I get that. And I’m admitting it’s my fault. But when I finally put my foot down and said we need to talk about this, now, that it couldn’t wait anymore, his response was to tell me he needed space... and then to take off. Apparently.”
Fighting back my anger even as it hit me I was over-reacting again, I took a sip of wine to distract myself, staring down at Angel’s Persian-looking carpet.
“So yeah.” I shrugged deliberately. “Maybe I waited too long. Or maybe he’s mad about something else. I honestly have no idea. He seemed to think I was fucking with him deliberately or something... even after I told him I was confused.”
I shook my head, still thinking without looking up from that green and blue patterned rug.
“You really don’t understand how weird this gets, Ang,” I said next, looking at her seriously. “When it’s just the two of us especially. It gets really fucking weird.”
Angel grunted, leaning back in her seat. “I saw the apartment.”
“You haven’t seen him though, Ang. He acts... different.” Biting my lip, I went back and forth on whether I should tell her. In the end, I guess I’d had enough wine or maybe needed to talk to someone badly enough that I found myself saying it.
“He told his friend, that old army buddy of his, that we were married. He called me his wife, Ang. Like... loudly. He practically threatened the guy.”
Angel burst out in a laugh. “The guy at the restaurant?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t smile back. “It’s not funny, Ang. He let me pass it off like he just did it to get his friend to back off, but honestly, I don’t know...”
“You don’t know what?” Angel frowned, pouring more of the merlot into her glass from the bottle on the coffee table. “Why else would he do it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. But it didn’t feel like that.”
Swallowing, I turned my head, looking out her bay window. Low and rectangular and directly across from her comfy green couch, it gave an almost unobstructed view down the hill towards Castro Street. She’d had the same, rent-controlled apartment for as long as I’d known her, what had to be over ten years now. She’d joked once that she’d had it since college, which was likely true.
It was also likely the only reason she could still afford it, given the location. A few blocks up the hill from Divisadero Street, her two-bedroom, upper-story flat overlooked the busy intersection of Market and Castro, which made up the main strip where most of the parades and the crazy Halloween parties happened down there. Her bedroom had an equally amazing view of Divisadero going the other direction, and she was high enough up to see most of the way north to Geary Street.
And the place wasn’t small. It had to be over a thousand square feet.
“What did it feel like, doc?” Angel said, softer. “When he said you were married?”
I looked at her, and realized I was still avoiding, even with her. The truth was, I’d never admitted this even to myself until now. I found myself telling her the truth anyway, maybe so she could tell me I was nuts.
“It felt like he meant it,” I said, swallowing more wine. “Like he was telling the truth.”
Angel frowned. “Like he intends for the two of you to get married?”
I shook my head, giving her a nervous look.
“No,” I said. “Like he thinks we already are.”
HOURS LATER, I still lay on her couch, only now we had it folded out as a bed. I couldn’t sleep. I’d pretty much given up trying at that point. I stared up at the orange street-light pattern on her ceiling instead and tried not to think about Black.
I tried not to think about the Templar murderer, either.
Of course, no matter how intensely I thought about the killer, chances were, he wouldn’t know I was thinking about him. With Black, there was a good chance he would.
I probably needn’t have worried on that score though.
Black felt strangely distant to me, like he’d done something different in cutting me out this time. Like he really didn’t want me
to find him, unlike those times in the past where he’d only pushed me out partway, or only enough to obscure certain details about where he was, or what he was doing. This time, he’d gone dark for real.
I didn’t really want to think about why that was.
I found myself thinking about what Angel said instead, after I’d confessed my fears about Black and his weird outburst with Cal, his friend who owned the Italian restaurant we’d visited in North Beach. Unlike some of Black’s old military pals, Cal wasn’t that much older than me, maybe in his late thirties, so probably served after Black already owned the security firm. They likely met while Black worked alongside the military as a private contractor.
Either way, I could tell Black liked him. Which might be why it shocked me so much when he’d gotten in Cal’s face about me.
Angel thought I should talk to another seer about Black.
When I laughed, asking her where she thought I could find someone like that, she’d only raised her eyebrows at me meaningfully, lifting her wine glass to her lips. My humor pretty much died when I realized what she meant. She was talking about my Uncle Charles.
I’d laughed again once I understood, but there hadn’t been much humor in it that time.
Instead, I’d followed it up with a curse.
Even so, as I lay there now, listening to the traffic down on Market Street and the occasional higher whine of a siren, I found myself thinking she was right.
I needed to talk to someone knowledgeable about these things.
Preferably someone reasonably objective.
Of course, I knew my Uncle Charles didn’t fit the second of those criteria, but he definitely fit the first. He couldn’t stand Black, or the fact that he and I were together, so I knew I couldn’t trust anything he might have to say about Black himself, or about our relationship specifically. But maybe I could still get some basic information from him about whatever was happening to the two of us.
By the time I finally dozed off, right around when the clear night sky began filling with cloud cover, obscuring the streetlights and the fainter stars shining through Angel’s bay windows, I’d more or less made up my mind to do just that.
Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Page 12