“He said he went out for a cigarette and saw Miller shouting outside, so he went over to see what was up. Then when the cops showed up, he gave them the stolen ID by accident, then he freaked. I mean, he’s some kind of fraudster, no doubt. But the ID thing, I think it was a genuine mistake. He didn’t mean to hand it over. I guess he figured if we ran a check on it, we’d pull him in, so he beat it.”
I grunt in reply. It sucks that the story actually makes sense.
“Becker said we can’t get a warrant, and honestly, she’s right. Property Crimes is watching him. They’ll get him one of these days for something. But we got nothin’ on him. What else can we do?” He stops talking, and I hear him chomping his gum. “Are you all right? Why are you breathing like that? What’s going on?” He chuckles. “Oh, wait, are you busy?”
In spite of the dread settling in the pit of my stomach, I bark a laugh. “No, you perv. You think I’d answer the phone?” I’m grateful for this moment of humor, for the tiny hint of a genuine smile that threatens to creep across my face. When was the last time I was busy, anyway? Hell, it’s been a year, almost to the day, since Cora and I ended it. Her birthday is coming up. Maybe I should send a card. No, stop it with the distractions. “I’m thinking,” I say. “Look, I’ll be back in a couple hours. I want to—”
“Boss lady said to tell you not to come back today. Take the rest of the day. Sleep. I’m gonna try to catch a couple hours, myself. I’ll call you later if anything happens.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Boyle, Fishner is at the end of her rope with you, and we’re at a standstill. Roberts is gonna try to get more footage from those dumps in the Flats, but aside from that, we’re out of leads.”
I mutter a goodbye and slide the phone back into my pocket. I watch some cars go past. Sunday-afternoon shoppers enter and exit the little boutiques along Coventry Road. There’s a mom with her two kids on their way into the pet store. She looks about my age, but I can see from here that she has a big diamond, probably set in platinum, on her left hand. Her kids are well dressed and well behaved. The older boy holds the door for his mom and brother. They’re all smiling, and it kind of makes me want to puke.
Christopher comes barreling out of the door, holding a foil-wrapped slice of pizza. “Hey, I thought you were never coming back.”
He looks so much like our father that I almost want to cry or scream or something. My dad, a straightlaced former Marine, would never do the stupid things that Christopher does. Dad was an amateur boxer in the service and kept in shape with the heavy bag and speed bag he hung in our basement. When I was eight or nine, I showed an interest, so he taught me how to fight. It must have been amusing for him to watch his lanky, awkward daughter make two fists and bash that bag with her bare hands. The gloves had been too big back then. I only did it to be close to him. In a way, I might still spend all of that time at the gym to be close to him.
“Sorry,” I tell my brother. “Work call.”
Christopher holds the pizza out to me.
“You can have it,” I say.
“Aw, c’mon, sis. You only had, like, two bites. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
Back at my apartment, we make small talk about his new girlfriend and possible job, both of us avoiding the topic of our mom. After he’s gone, I actually fall asleep for a few hours. I dream about Cora, my ex, having a birthday party. We’re smiling and laughing, and it’s as though no time has passed, as if we never ended it, as if I wasn’t completely terrified of someone knowing me so well.
But then it turns into some sort of psychedelic autopsy. Watson hands me my liver and tells me to weigh it, and the sting of regret as I lie on the cold steel table is worse than the pain when he saws through my sternum. My heart is the size of a basketball, and it weighs too much. He makes a big deal about it before free-throwing it into a jar of formaldehyde.
When I awaken, it’s dark outside. The phone is buzzing, so I grab it off the coffee table on my way to the kitchen for my bourbon ration.
“Hey, girl!” Josh chirps. “What’re you doing? You should come down here!” There’s a lot of noise in the background. He’s probably at Bounce, and even though it’s early, he’s likely surrounded by several sexy young things hot on the prowl, even on a Sunday.
“Hey, Josh.” I pour just a tad more than my allotted amount into the glass.
“Girl, I’m so serious, it’s a great night to be out, to be alive! It might be early, but it’s fabulous!”
“I can’t, Joshie. I’m on a case.” I walk back down the hallway.
“Rough one?”
“You could say that.” If you only knew.
“If I only knew what?”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I think so. Kid case. No real suspects. Went to the funeral. It was fucked.” I plop down next to my gun belt on the bed and run my fingers along the stitches in the black leather.
“I’m coming over.”
“No, no. Really. I gotta get back to work.”
He sighs. “Call me when you can. I’m on days all week, so just let me know.” He puts up with too much shit from me. We both know it.
“Thanks. See you soon.”
I set my glass and phone on the dresser and go into my closet. Kneeling in front of the safe in the back corner, I punch in the combination. I eject the magazine from my Glock before shoving the weapon, holster, and heavy leather cuff case inside.
I change into my oxblood Doc Marten eight-eyes. The cat opens one eye and stares at me as I drain my glass. I slide the sleeve of my leather jacket out from under him, put it on, and slip my shield into the left inside pocket, not that I’ll need it, but better safe than sorry.
I go to an old metal-club-turned-hipster-hangout that I haven’t been to in years. After ordering a double bourbon and a beer, I try to make myself invisible in a far corner.
First on my list for tomorrow is the grandparents’ house, yard, and garage. If that’s where Kevin disappeared, even if someone has been there already, I’ve got to go look.
I order another round and put my notebook away.
Chapter Twelve
Monday morning, when I get back to my gym locker after working the lingering booze out of my system, I have three missed calls from Jo Micalec, our senior lab tech. That strikes me as weird, because it’s only seven thirty. I call her back right away.
“Hey, Liz. I’m really sorry to bother you so early. But you need to know this, and you need to hear it from me.”
“What? You get something on the bag? The van?” I shove my sweaty gym clothes into my locker. She’s used to my brusque phone voice, so I’m not worried that she’ll take it personally.
“Nothing on the bag yet. It’s about this hair. The one Watson got off the sheet.”
The hair. Please let it be a match for Ricky. “Okay. What about it?”
“It’s a match to you.”
I sit down on the bench in front of my locker. “What?”
“It’s a match to you, Liz.”
I blink a couple of times. “That’s impossible. Why would you even think that?”
“Well, after Watson didn’t get any hits, I ran it through the state employee system, thinking we might get a match from one of the universities or from a city employee. But the mitochondrial DNA matches yours. So it’s not your hair, but it is someone related to you on your mother’s side. Is your mom still alive? Do you have any siblings? Anyone on that side of your family nearby so we can get swabs from them?”
Christopher. Shit, what did you do? He might be a hapless, bumbling pain in the ass, but he’s not violent. He’s always been the gentlest person in my life, way nicer than I am. He’s the soft one, the caring nurturer. The humid air of the locker room starts to suffocate me.
“Liz?”
My breathing has become too shallow, but my lungs don’t cooperate when I will them to inhale deeper. “Yeah, I’m here.” Something bubbles in my chest, pressing down into my stomach like a vise, something like rage or regret or maybe fear. “Okay,” I say, and I don’t like the quavering in my voice. I get up and walk back to the shower area, hoping no one else is in there. “Can you sit on this for a couple of hours?”
She takes a few seconds to respond. “Sure, Liz, but you know I have to give it to Fishner. I can try to stall, but—”
“Thanks, Jo. I’ll call you back. Bye.” I hang up the phone and shove it back into my pocket. Leaning against the sink, I try to take deep breaths. My vision goes white around the edges. I stumble back over to the bench and bend forward to put my head between my legs.
There’s no way Christopher did anything to that kid. He couldn’t have. It has to be a mistake. I’m lucky to make it to the toilet before I vomit.
Once I’m cleaned up and calmer, I send Goran a text that says I’m running late and to cover for me with Fishner. I walk out to my car.
Maybe someone Christopher knew, or even a stranger, picked up one of his hairs by accident and left it on that sheet. He works in a restaurant. He has contact with hundreds of people on a weekly basis. But it’s a pubic hair. I wonder if someone planted it there, trying to frame him. Even as sweet as my brother is, he’s pissed off a few people along the way.
I grab a bottle of water off the passenger seat and swallow gulp after gulp. I think about sending Christopher to Boston, where we have a semi-estranged aunt and uncle. No, I’m a terrible liar when it comes to my brother. I would lose my job, and they’d find him, anyway. I can’t ask Jo to cover it up. She’ll have to tell Fishner. Maybe I should tell him to go talk to Fishner. I’d be off the case, and I’m committed to finding Kevin’s killer. I owe it to Teresa. I owe it to Kevin.
But one way or another, I’ll have to tell Fishner, and there’s no way she’s going to let me stay on this now. I squeeze the bridge of my nose. Damn it, Christopher.
I’m going to have to get Christopher in for a DNA swab then come up with a reason why we’re running a cotton swab through his mouth. I’ll have to explain to Fishner that some inexplicable crazy thing is going on, that it can’t possibly be what it looks like.
First, I have to talk to him. I drive over to his place and pull up in front of his apartment building and sit for a couple of minutes, wondering if he’ll notice the red in my eyes.
I ring the doorbell then immediately knock hard three times. When he opens the door, I can tell he just crawled out of bed.
“What’re you doing here?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.
“Do you have a few minutes?”
He yawns. “I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet.” He doesn’t move out of the doorway.
“Christopher, can I please come in?”
“Why do you look like that? Is Mom okay?”
“Yeah, Mom’s fine. I just need to ask you a question.” I step forward. It takes him a moment to get the hint and move out of the way. During those seconds, I have to restrain myself from shoving him to the side.
“Well, come on in, I guess. I’m gonna put on a pot of coffee. Sit down.”
Instead, I follow him into the kitchen.
He goes straight for the sink and fills the pot with water. “Liz, you look really upset. What’s going on? Why are you being so weird? You’re not acting like yourself at all.” He dumps the water into the coffee maker, fills the basket with coffee, then turns on the machine.
I want to tell him that I’m being unlike myself because I’m starting to not like myself very much, and I think I’d rather be like someone else, someone normal, someone kind and soft, someone who likes to take vacations and spend time with family and friends instead of digging through piles of bloody clothes and watching autopsies. But if I were someone else, I wouldn’t know him, and this wouldn’t be happening. “Did you do something that I need to know about?”
He cracks a grin. “Sis, I’ve done a lot of things, but you don’t want to know about any of them.” He chuckles as if he’s replaying something humorous in his head.
“Christopher, I’m not trying to be funny. I’m serious.”
He turns and pulls two mugs out of the cabinet. “No, I don’t think so.” He opens the refrigerator and retrieves the half-and-half. “Lots of cream, no sugar, right?”
“Sure, yeah.”
He pours the cups and hands me one. Leaning against the counter, he takes a sip. “So, seriously, why are you here so early in the morning?”
I see no way to deliver this gently, and I’m running out of patience, anyway. I just blurt it out. “Christopher, your DNA was found on a murder victim. Did you kill someone?”
He laughs. “Jesus, Liz, don’t fuck with me. All this for a joke? That’s like the time you—”
“I’m serious. This is serious. You need to tell me, honestly, what you’ve been doing for the past several days.”
“Of course I didn’t kill anyone. And no, I don’t need to tell you anything.” He pushes past me and goes into the living room.
“I need to figure out how to protect you here, and I can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.”
He slams his coffee onto the table hard enough that some of it shoots up out of the cup and onto the wood. He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t need you to protect me.” His eyes are fierce, but I can tell he’s terrified. “Do you understand?” he asks in a low, measured voice. “I don’t need you to protect me. I’m a grown man.”
“Now is not the time for your masculine bullshit.”
He turns and faces his front window. The rain has stopped, and the sun is shining, glistening off the damp surfaces as if it’s spring. Minutes tick by.
I lean against the wall and cross my arms. “Have you done something?”
“No. I mean, nothing that would get me into trouble. Drugs.” He blinks hard. “Nothing detectives would care about. Tell me what’s going on. Please.”
I can’t tell him anything. That would compromise the investigation and probably make me the target of another IAU probe.
I’m soft as a kitten with kids, victims, a lot of witnesses, and grieving families, but there’s a fine line here. “I can’t really give you details, and you don’t want to know them, anyway. Christopher, please, I need to question you officially. You have to come with me.”
He points at me. “No, you please. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sucked into his childish display, I jab a finger back at him. “Don’t you fucking point your finger at me.”
He steps over and gets in my face. Towering over me, he points at me again. His fair skin is flushed, and the vein in his forehead pulses with his heartbeat. I have that same vein, so seeing my brother angry is like looking at my own reflection in some kind of distorted fun house mirror.
The conversation stops and starts like this over the course of an hour. We move from anger to sadness to dejection to denial and back through all of them again, with some other uncomfortable silent emotions mixed in. Shortly after I make him tell me about his sex life and he breaks down, he’s on the floor with his back against the couch, crying, embarrassed.
But one of his pubic hairs was on that sheet. I can’t stop. “I have to know,” I say as calmly as I can. “I have to try to help you.” I avoid the word “protect.”
I hold him on the couch while he cries in frustration and fear. I don’t cry, and it feels as if we’re little again. It strikes me that I would give anything, I would throw it all away, if it meant that I could defend him from this investigation, from the unpleasant details of my job that he’s becoming involved in for reasons that I’m certain are not his fault. If I could shield him from me.
“You have to let me take you to the station. We need
to go now. We can get you a lawyer.”
He wipes his eyes. “A lawyer? Are you serious?”
I nod. “Yes, you need a lawyer.”
“Man, I am so fucked,” he mutters.
“I have to go to the bathroom. Please don’t go anywhere. Just stay right here, on this couch, and when I’m done, we’ll take care of this.”
He nods.
I go into the bathroom and sit on the floor with my back against the tile wall. I press my face into a towel that smells like his aftershave and draw my knees to my chest. Then I fall into silent, rhythmic sobs. The pain reminds me that I’m alive. After I pull it together, I make a quick call to Jessie Hedges, one of the only good criminal defense attorneys in the area that our squad hasn’t alienated. I briefly explain what’s going on.
“Did he do it? What’s his story?”
Anger surges through me. I want to scream and rant at this woman for even asking such a thing. Then I realize that I’m going to have to get used to people asking it. Some won’t even bother asking. They’ll just assume he did it. And if I want this woman’s help, I can’t go off the deep end. “He’s an idiot. He’s done drugs, probably other minor stuff. But there’s no way he killed a kid.” There’s no way in hell he cut off Kevin Whittle’s hand. That takes a special kind of monster.
“I can meet him in an hour,” she replies. “My retainer is twenty-five hundred.”
“I don’t have my checkbook on me, but I’m good for it.”
We agree to meet at the station, then I hang up. I was in the bathroom for only ten minutes, but when I walk out, he’s gone. Fuck. I yank my cell phone out of my pocket and call him.
“Hey, it’s Chris,” his voicemail says. “Leave a message.”
I drive to the restaurant where he works. I know he won’t be there. They don’t open until eleven. But I’m not sure what else to do.
The sun blinds me, so I pull my sunglasses out of the console and slide them over my eyes. I crank up the stereo. P.J. Harvey is singing “Rid of Me,” the title track on one of the best albums of ’93. She yells and screams in a deep alto, trying on different characters, becoming someone else on every track. This is the only one of her albums where she sounds like this. She’s raw, frenetic, almost unhinged, which totally matches my mood.
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