by Layton Green
He replied to Javier and replaced the phone. After indulging his son by playing trucks for fifteen minutes, Cobra went to his room to pack. “I have to go away,” he told his mother when he returned downstairs carrying a small duffel bag. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll miss you,” she said, as she finished up the dishes. She never asked questions. She knew hard choices had been made.
“I hope it’s just for a day or two.”
After turning the water off, she dried her hands and hugged him. “Take care of yourself. Don’t worry about Hugo.”
“Don’t let him play with the older boys, okay? They grow up too fast these days.”
She patted his arm. “You’re a good father.”
“I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too.”
Before he left, to Hugo’s great delight, Cobra swept him into a bear hug and carried him through the front door, all the way to his black- and-red Yamaha R3 in the parking lot. His mother followed them out. After letting Hugo sit in the seat and rev the motorbike a few times, Cobra released the boy into her arms and drove off.
30
A cold, fierce wind whistled through the streets of downtown Creekville, ruffling the leaves of the oaks, bending the limbs of smaller trees, cutting through the worn fibers of Preach’s forest-green overcoat. After lunch, he had taken a walk to think through the case. Was it enough, he wondered?
If Claire had a drug business, would she have killed her own son to protect it?
There were two parts to that question. The first was whether someone would do such a thing. The answer to that, unfortunately, was an emphatic yes. Just last year, in North Carolina, a doctor was arrested for having his wife killed in order to protect an illegal prescription opioid drug ring.
The second part to the question—could Claire Lourdis commit such a terrible deed—was a different story. Was this single mom and fashion boutique clerk, former high school knockout from Preach’s own past, living a double life as a drug queen?
Maybe the chief and Ari were right. Maybe he was too close to the case and should recuse himself.
But what if they were wrong? What if Claire was innocent and needed him more than ever? Could he put everything aside and treat this case as he would any other? Could he look at the evidence fairly and arrest Claire if he had to?
His answer mattered. Not just to the case but to him. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who answered any of those questions in the negative. He didn’t want Ari to see him as a man who could not overcome his juvenile crush on another woman.
But he had to be honest with himself as well. He had to do the right thing for David, even if it meant admitting his own weakness.
The station was just around the corner, less than two blocks away. The chief needed to hear what Wade had told him. A decision loomed.
At the next intersection he stopped at the light, running a hand through his hair and clutching the back of his neck. Traffic flowed like quicksilver in both directions. Pedestrians eyed him as they passed, and it felt as if the whole town was spinning on an axis around the spot in which he was standing. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, buffeted by the wind, he knew he could not step away from the case and still live with himself. This was his job. His calling. His town.
In a strange way he did not fully understand, he knew failing David would be like failing Preach’s younger self as well.
A lost and fallen ideal he had already failed before, in so many ways.
The light turned yellow and then red. The traffic ground to a halt. His face numb from the biting wind, Preach hunched his shoulders and took a step that felt like pushing through tar, joining the flow of people crossing the street.
Chief Higgins’s stare bored right through Preach when he told her about the new drug czar in Creekville. One chance, the chief had said. One chance to get this right, or I pull you from the case.
When Preach returned to his desk, he leaned back in his chair and debated the best course of action. His thoughts returned to his earlier questions about Claire’s lifestyle. Even if Brett had paid the down payment on the house, what about everything else ? How had Claire lived before Brett ? Was there a long string of extravagant expenses ?
One did not step into the middle of a drug operation without experience, he knew. Creekville was small beans, and it might not take long to rise to the top, but it was not exactly applying to the local grocery store. There would be a history there.
He had to admit Claire had the perfect cover: a soccer mom raising the town golden boy. Who would suspect her? She could even have met her drug mules in the woods between Wild Oaks and Carroll Street Homes.
After spending the afternoon looking into her finances, he didn’t like what he saw. Claire’s vehicle history showed a string of fancy new cars. Leases on a Land Rover, a Lexus, and an Infiniti coupe. How much did she make at the boutique, he wondered? Fifty thousand at most?
Before her current house, she had rented a two-grand-a-month townhome. How did she afford that rent, those cars, the country club she had belonged to for years, and also raise a child?
It didn’t add up.
Preach called Terry over and asked him to give Claire’s financial history the third degree. Trace it all, he said. Every single loan, credit card, and tax return. Figure out her job history. Tally up her expenses.
After that, Preach checked in with Bill, who hadn’t made any progress on finding Nate. Frustrated, he told the older officer to keep looking. Preach left the station and had a lonely lunch at a Mexican joint that shared space with a Buddhist center, thinking of all the times he and Ari had eaten there, dreading what he planned to do next. After lingering over a second basket of chips and dabbing the last bit of habanero sauce off his mouth, he stepped into the parking lot and prepared to meet Claire.
Sometimes the best way to get an answer to a question, he knew, was to look into someone’s eyes and ask them.
The freak windstorm earlier in the day had left debris and broken branches strewn throughout Wild Oaks, as if an angry god had gone on a rampage. Preach wound through the neighborhood as the soft cloak of dusk settled onto the placid lawns, the residents working to clear their yards before the light failed completely.
Claire answered the door in a beige, fringe suede jacket she had thrown over a white slip. Preach’s eyes fell, unbidden, to her bare feet and the tanned striations of her calves.
A frail smile fluttered on her lips. “How was your weekend ?”
“Eventful.”
“Do you . . . have any news ?”
“I thought I might find Brett here,” he said, switching subjects.
She stiffened. “We decided to take a break for a while. Probably forever.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t take that very well.”
Her eyes flashed. “He should have thought of that before he put his—” with a struggle, she composed herself and stepped to the side. “Come in. It’s cold.”
“Thanks.”
After she shut the door, Claire retreated to the couch, sitting by the gas fire with a glass of red wine in hand. He left his coat on a hook and joined her, though he sat further away than last time.
“Is he still a suspect?” she asked.
“I’ve haven’t ruled anyone out, but he has a pretty solid alibi.”
Her lips curled in derision. “Lisa Waverly?” When he didn’t answer, she took a long drink of wine. “Why’d you leave the ministry?”
Surprised by the personal question, he chuckled and said, “Everyone wants to know that. Do people ask that question of electricians and bankers?”
“People are fascinated by ministers, whether they admit it or not. Probably because they wish they had that kind of faith.”
“Ministers are fascinated by people who don’t have a compulsive need to think about those things all the time. Still, it just never felt right to me. I need my feet on solid ground, wearing out my shoes.”
She stared down at he
r glass, into the blood-red depths of the wine. “Does any of this . . . your job, the things you’ve seen . . . cause you to wonder where God is ?”
There was a defeated look in her eyes. Was she grieving, he wondered? Acting?
Questioning her decisions? Asking him to tell her something she wanted to hear?
“The families of the victims ask that a lot,” he said quietly, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater to relieve the heat from the fireplace.
“And what do you say?”
“That if we’re looking for Him, then we must want Him to be there.”
“That doesn’t mean He is.”
“It means something.”
She set down her wine, removed her jacket, and threw it atop a chair, leaving her slim arms exposed. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s hot, and grief does not lend itself to modesty.”
His gaze caught the contours of her breasts beneath the creamy fabric of the slip. She was not wearing a bra, and Preach felt heat from a different source rise within him.
“So if Brett’s not a suspect,” she said, “who is?”
He looked her in the eye. “You are, Claire.”
His hope for a reaction, a gut response to the accusation, was unfulfilled. Her expression didn’t change, though she sipped her wine in silence for a long moment before she answered.
“In high school, I thought I was going to be famous,” she said. “A model or an actress or the wife of someone glamorous. Anything to rise above this town. That’s okay. Dreams die. That’s why they’re called dreams, right? Because they’re not real. Do you want to know what my new dream was, before my son died? I wanted to see him off to college and start a pop-up clothing boutique. Maybe I’d run it like a food truck, drive around in a sexy vehicle of some sort, maybe even a Silver Stream, and sell my fashion designs around the Triangle. That’s not too much to ask, is it?” When he didn’t answer, she repeated the question. “Is it?”
“Claire.”
“Do you know I haven’t said his name since he died? I don’t dream anymore, Joe. At least not when I’m awake. I think about the future, sometimes. That’s about as close as I get. Do you know what I think about ?” “Claire—”
“I think about my funeral. When I’m going to join my son. When I’m fucking going to die, because that’s all I have left.”
She set her wine glass on the coffee table with a shaky hand. Some of it sloshed onto the rug. She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them, her face pale as she stared through him. “There’s only one reason I care whether or not you arrest me,” she said. “Because that would mean you’re not chasing the bastard who killed my son.”
“I need your phone, Claire.”
“It’s on the kitchen table,” she said, in a monotone. “Take it.”
“I’m not saying I think you’re guilty yet. I’m saying I have to look at the facts and investigate them as best I see fit.”
“I’d ask for nothing else. Can I ask what led you to this absurd conclusion?”
“Your story about the night David died doesn’t match up with what a witness saw.”
“I already told you about that. I don’t remember seeing him again.” “We also found footprints in the leaf pile with David’s blood on it. Prints from a man and a woman. You argued with him before he died. More than one witness has told me David resented you . . .” he trailed off when he saw the hurt his words had caused, as if he had just taken a knife, slipped it between her ribs, and twisted it. She stared past him, face white and hands trembling.
“To be honest, none of that was enough for me,” he continued. “Not for this. I heard something else today, though. I heard there’s a woman drug dealer in Creekville with ties to the Carroll Street Homes trailer park.”
Her eyes slowly lifted. “You think I’m a drug dealer? And what? David found out and threatened to turn me in? So I killed him?”
“It’s something I need to get to the bottom of”
Her gaze went distant again. After a long moment, she said, “It’s something more than love, you know. What you feel for your child.” “I’m sure that it is.”
“It’s deeper than anything else. So deep it . . .” her voice had thickened, and she hugged her knees tighter. “I can’t take it, Joe,” she whispered. “I can’t accept that he’s gone.”
He couldn’t bear to watch her suffering. Whether or not she was guilty, the pain was tearing her apart. Of that he was certain. He moved closer and put a hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry, Claire. Can I suggest a grief counselor?”
“I don’t want a grief counselor. I want my son back. I want his murderer to burn in hell.”
As he started to pull away, she reached up to grab his hand. “Stay with me.”
“Sure,” he said. “I have a few minutes.”
Her hand slid up his forearm, her nails tracing lightly against his skin. “I mean stay with me tonight. Make me feel better. Make me feel anything. You can arrest me tomorrow.”
“You know I can’t do that, Claire.”
“Of course you can.” She unfurled from her position and put one leg on the floor, leaving the other bent and resting against the side of the couch. The shift exposed a silky patch of underwear and the shadow of her sex underneath. Her nails moved to the underside of his forearm and stroked it, giving him chills, and her other hand moved to the spaghetti strap of her slip. “I know you want to stay,” she whispered. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Time seemed to compress and bear weight as she continued to stroke his arm. It wasn’t enough, he knew, to leave in that moment. Without knowing who he truly was.
“Desire is a tiny part of the equation,” he said. “We desire many things in life. It’s how we act on those urges that matters.”
“Let’s finish what we started all those years ago. One night. No strings attached.” She pushed the strap off her shoulder, and it fell away, exposing the pink tip of a nipple. As she reached over to remove the other strap, he caught her wrist. “Get some sleep, Claire.”
“Look at me, Joe,” she said softly, arching her back and causing the slip to fall even lower, exposing her breast in full. “This was always meant to be.”
As if taking the last sip of water in a desert, his eyes drank her in, all of her, the parted lips and smooth skin, the firm swell of her chest, the stabbing memory of his youthful desire, all the weak and lonely urgings of the flesh.
“I need you,” she said, leaning in so close he could feel her breath on his lips, her hand sliding up his arm. Her scent enveloped him, musk and butterscotch, and he felt light-headed, his thought processes muddled.
When she tried to kiss him, he pulled away at the last moment, pushing off the couch on wobbly legs. “Don’t leave town for a few days,” he said, aware of how husky his voice sounded. “Try to get some rest.” On his way out, he grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen table, and her stare of disbelief followed him out the door.
Outside in the cold air and bright stars, the passion started to ebb, and he knew it for the shallow thing it was. After releasing a deep breath, he drove through the streets of Creekville with a purpose, the past exorcised, thinking about the case and what to do next.
His cell rang, and he checked the caller. It was the station. “Detective Everson.”
“It’s Bill. I’ve got a tip on Nate tonight.”
Preached eyed the dash—9:17 p.m.
Bill had taken his edict seriously.
“Where are you?” Preach asked.
“At my desk.”
“I’ll be right there.”
31
As Preach drove through downtown Durham at night, he marveled at how much the city had changed over the years. Bright city lights, bars and restaurants in every direction, plenty of pedestrians on the street. Unlike in the days of his youth, these pedestrians were strolling languorously, talking and laughing instead of hurrying as fast as possible to their destination, terrified of being mugged.
In
the rare times when Preach and his friends had ventured to Durham during his teen years, always without their parents’ knowledge, he vividly remembered the aura of danger that permeated the streets after dark. A wasteland of abandoned buildings, criminals, and addicts that the rest of the Triangle treated like a quarantine zone. Taxi drivers had refused to go there at night.
Was it really that bad? he wondered. Yes, to some extent. The crime rate had been astronomical compared to the rest of the state. The drugs and loss ofjobs and urban blight were real. But during the recent boom times, Durham had not magically imported a few hundred thousand people. Like waking from a bad dream, the city’s long-suffering residents had embraced the change and poured their energy into making Durham one of the most vibrant downtowns in the state.
That didn’t mean all of the problems had disappeared. Many of them were swept under the rug, pushed further out from the city center. Even now, his practiced gaze caught the menace lurking on the edges of society. The pair of men eying passersby like prey near the entrance to a parking garage. A group of teens with gang colors disappearing down an alley. A still-abandoned building with broken windows.
He parked across the street from the Pinhook, a grungy music venue on the eastern edge of downtown. A few blocks down, past Mangum, the city got eerie real quick at night.
One of the kids Officer Wright had rousted in the trailer park claimed Nate went to the Pinhook on Tuesday nights for the all-agesshows. Unsure what to expect, Preach opened the door, greeted by a blast of electric guitar and synthesizers. He paid the eight-dollar cover and got his hand stamped for the first time in years.
Red-painted walls and a black ceiling. Dim lights. Scuffed wooden floor. The sticky-sweet stench of stale beer.
Inside, to his right, a group of people around his own age occupied a pair of booths along the wall. This was not the wine bar crowd, however. The patrons resembled aging band members more than young professionals.