Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (16 page)

It hit me that I’d blown by a few things he’d said to me. His friend, Kevin. Black saying he was too much of a coward to face him alone.

Black knew the kid they’d taken.

He was the child of one of his friends.

I’d been doing the clinical thing of distancing myself from the victims as we’d talked. I didn’t really blame myself for that; it’s a survival mechanism that most cops and a lot of doctors employ. Some days, it’s the only way to face the kinds of darkness we see in the course of our jobs––at least without going crazy, or maybe living a little too deeply in that darkness ourselves.

I’d assumed Black had his own protective measures in place.

He’d been a soldier, after all. Hell, like Nick, I’d assumed Black had done time as an assassin, given his sealed military service records and the number of his ops marked highly classified. I’d wondered if he might even
still
be one...say for the occasional specialty job for the United States government or one of their sub-contractors, for example.

I watched, silent, as Black wiped his eyes again, using the heel of his hand.

I was still watching as he looked back out the window.

“They’re going to terrorize that poor kid for two weeks because of me,” he said, quieter.

Watching his eyes as they tracked the scenery going by, I had no idea what to say.

Something else hit me too as I thought over our conversation, tracking different pieces of it back to the look on Black’s face now as he stared out the window.

Nick was wrong about Black.

I’d been wrong about him too...especially when I first met him in that interrogation room at the Northern District SFPD building.
 

Whatever else he might be, Black wasn’t a psychopath.

In fact, I was beginning to think he was about as far from a psychopath as a person could possibly be.

Seven

LAWLESS

BLACK’S FRIEND, KEVIN Lawless, wasn’t what I expected.
 

For one thing, he was a lot older than I’d thought he’d be. I’d expected someone more or less Black’s and my age, partly because Black muttered about having met Lawless in the military, and partly because of the age of the missing child.

Instead, after an older Thai woman ushered us through the foyer and into a high-ceilinged living room with bamboo shades and traditional-looking ceiling fans, a grizzled man who had to be at least in his mid-seventies got up to greet us. He looked a little surprised to see me, but broke out in a guileless grin when he saw Black standing just behind me.

After nodding a greeting in my direction, he walked right up to Black to throw his arms around him in a bear hug. I watched, smiling a little in spite of myself as Lawless broke out in a full-on grin, right before he smacked Black on the back and then began dragging him bodily into the room, despite the fact that Black had to be over a foot taller than him and probably had thirty pounds on him at least.
 

I don’t think Lawless let go of him once after that initial hug. Even as he extended a hand towards me after Black told him my name, he gripped Black’s arm in his other hand.

He still looked openly curious as he gave me a warm, strong handshake.

He didn’t bother to hide that curiosity either as he looked me over before raising his eyebrows at Black in an open question.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said to me, pumping my arm energetically.

He had calloused hands at the end of long, tanned, tattooed arms. The tattoos had faded quite a bit with time and were half-covered in a light coating of gray hair, but I still recognized one of them beside the blurred images of dragons and jungle cats and Thai characters––the distinctive
de oppresso liber
crossed arrows and sword mark of Army Special Forces.

So he’d been a green beret. Interesting.

I glanced around nonchalantly while Lawless said something to the older Thai woman, who acted more like a maid or a housekeeper than a girlfriend, I noticed, despite the fact that she yelled at him a few times in the course of their discussion. Maybe a caretaker, I thought, given his age and the fact that he appeared to live alone.

This didn’t look like a place where a child lived, although I definitely saw signs that one visited.

A widescreen television sat in the corner by a long cloth couch, with two brand new game controllers on the carpet below. A trunk stood against the same wall that might have toys in it. Most of the room had a distinct “bachelor” look to it, however. Art hung on the walls. Tall bookshelves contained spines written in Thai and English and in front of them stood pictures of people, some in color and some black and white. In at least one I glimpsed, a red-haired child smiled out of the frame, covered in freckles.

I didn’t get close enough to really look, though.

Holding both arms out to herd us deeper into the room, Lawless continued chatting to Black about what he’d done to the house, motioning towards the back end where apparently he’d re-landscaped the backyard. I happened to glance at the older Thai woman as he did it, and saw her watching me, a harder scrutiny in her eyes. Her face blanked as soon as I looked at her, so completely and seamlessly that I blinked, doubting that I’d seen that scrutiny at all. Did she know who Black was? Was she curious about me showing up here with him too?
 

I honestly couldn’t tell. Just looking at her, without being able to use my psychic ability, I got nothing.

Even as I thought it, she turned to Lawless, saying something else to him in Thai. Whatever it was, Lawless only nodded, waving her off as if to say, ‘it’s fine’ or maybe ‘go,’ and the woman exhaled in irritation before picking a purse up off a table on the other side of the room. I watched as she walked back into the foyer, slipping on shoes from the wooden rack that stood there and opening the front door. She walked out without looking back.

I glanced down at my own shoes.

“Should we...”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Lawless said, waving me off. “Black here says you have to grab a flight soon. No need to bother, given that. Ignore Elsa. She likes to be annoyed.”

I frowned a little, then shrugged it off. Screwing up the local customs while jet-lagged, possibly having my life threatened and with no sleep didn’t strike me as the worst
faux pas
in the world, especially since I’d been here less than twenty-four hours.

Still, I must have had an odd look on my face, because Lawless gave me a reassuring smile when I glanced back in his direction.

“She’s just gone to do the shopping,” he explained. “It’ll take hours, the way she does it. I told her not to come back for awhile, so she’ll probably visit friends, too. Want some tea?” he said cheerfully.

I started to say no, but Black gave me a meaning-laden look.

“Sure,” I said, looking back at Lawless and smiling. “Thanks.”

Sitting on a second couch when Lawless indicated––a lower, faux-leather version that stood under a window sill covered in plants––I looked around and tried to feel less out of place. Apart from the few signs of kid life, the room had a simple but clean feel that struck me as very Asian, although I knew nothing of Thai styles specifically. Lawless himself was about as white as you could get, with bleached hair that might have been red once, but had since gone mostly to snow white. His tanned, freckled skin might have a touch of skin cancer––unsurprising given his coloring and where he’d chosen to live––but otherwise he looked healthy.

Lawless had obviously lived in Thailand a long time, but that wasn’t why I felt strange being here. I more wondered if I should have waited in the car so Black and Lawless could talk freely, the way old friends did only when they were alone.

Especially given why we were here.

I watched Black rise with his usual grace and follow Lawless into the kitchen.

Realizing why he’d likely done that, and what he probably intended to tell his friend once he got him alone, I tensed, feeling even more like I shouldn’t be here.

It seemed like only a few minutes later that I heard a crash from the other side of that extended wall. The murmured voices I’d heard grew louder, but I didn’t try to make out what was said. I wasn’t even positive all of it was in English, although I definitely caught a few English words here and there. I fought to blank out my mind so I wouldn’t eavesdrop, looking out the window in front of me. Blinking, I noticed a cat perched on that sill, a black long-hair who blinked at me incuriously with dark green eyes before it went back to watching the birds vying around a hanging feeder outside.

Then I heard crying.

Feeling a pain rise in my chest, I bit my lip, feeling more intrusive than I had maybe in my entire life. I wondered again if I should go wait in the car with the driver.

No, doc,
Black murmured in my mind.
Stay. Please.

Swallowing, I nodded, even though no one else was in the room.

It seemed like a really long time before the two of them came back.

When they did, I had no idea what to say or do. I watched Black lead his friend back into the living room and over to the couch, where he urged him to sit down next to me. I moved over to make space for him, then watched Black retreat back to the kitchen, presumably to finish making the tea, since neither of them had brought anything back with them.

I felt my stomach twist into knots as I looked reluctantly at the man sitting next to me, still feeling like I was eavesdropping on his grief.

He just sat there, staring at the coffee table in front of him, his hands clasped.

I still hadn’t decided whether to speak when he turned his head, his blue eyes shining with tears. “Did he tell you?” he said.

For the first time, I heard a trace of an accent. Brooklyn.

I nodded, clasping my own hands. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

The man nodded, rubbing his nose. For a long moment he didn’t speak.

“He’s alive,” he said then, clearing his throat. “That’s what’s important.”

I nodded back. “It is. I can’t even imagine how hard this must be though.”

“Grabbed him right out of the park,” he said. He motioned vaguely with one hand towards the window. “It was a damned field trip. Dusit Zoo. He was with other kids and the teacher from the international school and everything.” Stopping, he seemed to lose words. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell my little girl.” Tears began running down his face. “Her husband got stationed here so they’d be closer to me.” He bit his lip, his eyes welling again.

I felt my chest clench more as I understood.

Grandchild. This had to be his grandchild.

That actually made a lot more sense.

Awkwardly, I reached out, rubbing his shoulder.

I felt him relax under my fingers and relief hit me that I’d done the right thing. Touching people was a no-no for the most part in my practice, but this felt different somehow. When he turned his head next, the look he gave me held gratitude, but mostly I just saw that pain. Frankly, I’d never felt pain like that before, not since my sister Zoe died; it nearly overwhelmed me, sitting so close to him, so much so I was struggling to control my own emotions. I could feel him desperately not wanting to go there, though. I didn’t want to make things worse for him by bursting into a sob myself.

Even as I thought it, he wiped his face, giving me a wan smile.

“So. Black has a girlfriend,” he said, clearing his throat. He wiped his face again. “I admit, I never saw that coming.”