Eerie (14 page)

talbert just walked in with some other guy

Both Talbert and Rugged-Handsome exuded that same trance-like intensity.

No one spoke.

A minute into the silence, Talbert broke his thousand-yard stare, looked at Seymour, shook his head, and looked away again, as if he’d been offered something and were politely refusing it.

The waitress returned with two coffee mugs and a carafe.

“Anyone interested in dinner?”

Seymour seemed to speak for everyone. “No, we’re fine.”

When the waitress was out of earshot, Talbert said, “We have the van.”

Seymour nodded.

Talbert said, “Any word from him?”

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

Silence again.

Seymour looked at Talbert as if he’d spoken. He reached over and grabbed a plastic tub of creamer from a pile that filled a porcelain bowl beside the other condiments. Rolled it across the table to him.

Talbert tore off the seal and dumped the creamer into his coffee.

For a moment, he stared down into the cup, mesmerized, as if the swirls of cream were revealing the mysteries of the universe.

Rugged-Handsome said, “The children are there.”

“Full house,” Seymour said.

“He looks a lot like him.”

“So does she,” Talbert said without looking up.

The other two nodded in agreement.

“Won’t be long now,” Seymour said.

Silence descended on their booth again.

Sophie reeled.

On those rare occasions when she escaped the precinct for lunch hour, she liked to head downtown to Lola on Fourth and Virginia. She’d always take a book, intending to read, but inevitably she’d never even power it on. Instead, she’d sit alone, eating and soaking up fragments of conversation from the pleasant noise of the restaurant, reassembling them as best she could into a picture of the lives and stories of the people all around her. She was good at it too. Easy work for a detective and aspiring novelist.

But that particular aptitude was failing her at the moment.

It was different with Seymour, Talbert, and Rugged-Handsome.

Eavesdropping on their conversation was like trying to make sense of a dream. Like reading a code without the cipher. The words were plain enough, but they were fragments of a larger picture that she couldn’t even begin to guess at.

She dug out her phone and sent another text to Dobbs.

something about to happen … how far?

Ten seconds later, her screen illuminated.

10 min

She set the phone on the table.

Seymour straightened.

So did Sophie.

His head ticked to the left, as imperceptibly as the twitch of the minute hand, but she caught it.

The other two men watched him, something like wonder and fear exploding in their eyes.

Sophie thumbed off the brass snap that secured her Glock in the holster.

“The fourth?” Talbert said.

Seymour nodded. “He just arrived.”

Chapter 22

Grant had just thrown up for the third time in the last hour, and he was still hunched over the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, gasping for breath while Paige patted his back.

“You’re going to feel better soon,” she said. “I promise.”

Grant wiped his mouth as an intense shiver wracked his body.

“How long until your client—”

“Anytime.”

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

She looked the part at least, having changed back into her kimono.

“Got your phone set up?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to go in there alone. I’ll do it when I take Steve up.”

“You be careful. Guy could flip out he catches you trying to record him.”

“I will be.”

Grant struggled onto his feet and flushed the toilet. The spinning of the water made him queasy all over again. He ran the tap, bent down, rinsed and spit until his mouth no longer burned with bile.

Already, it was dark outside and even darker in the brownstone. By the illumination of the candle on the sink, Grant studied his reflection in the mirror. The soft light should have knocked off ten years, but instead he looked worse—pallid and sweat-glazed and thinner.

Eyes as dark as pits.

The headache raged on—felt like his frontal lobe had been dropped in a food processor.

“What time is it, Paige?”

“Six fifteen.”

Through the pain and the fog, Grant registered the distant, manic anthem of an alarm, although it took him a minute to land upon the crisis that had triggered it.

He staggered out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, steadying himself against the island where his phone waited. There were candles everywhere—in the living room, dining room, at least a half dozen casting a flickering warmth across the kitchen.

“Stu was supposed to call me fifteen minutes ago,” he said, picking it up.

He held the power button down for several seconds.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, pressing harder and longer, his thumbnail blanching from the pressure.

Might as well have been trying to power up a brick.

He finally dropped the phone and put his head on the counter, the chill of the tile providing the briefest flash of relief.

“Grant, what’s wrong?”

“Battery’s dead.”

“So your friend can’t call you?”

“Right.”

“Just use my phone.”

“I don’t know his number off the top of my head, and he’s not on the Internet.”

“So what do we do?”

Grant looked up from the counter.

It felt like someone was prodding around in his head with a screwdriver.

“I don’t know. That was our best chance.”

Paige came over, laid a cool hand on the back of his neck.

“We’re gonna get through this,” she said.

A noise reverberated down the hallway—someone pounding on the front door. It seemed to shake the entire building.

“That would be Steve,” Paige said.

Grant choked down the despair, the exhaustion, the agony.

No time for pain.

He pulled himself up.

“I’ll be in the closet by the bar.”

Chapter 23

Sophie nearly jumped out of the booth when her cell began to vibrate.

She glanced down at the caller ID—
Stu Frank
.

It took her a moment to place the name—a semi-shady private investigator she and Grant had used once or twice. If she remembered correctly, Stu was ex-law enforcement. Six or seven years ago, he’d been thrown under the bus over a scandal involving several detectives and an ill-advised beat down of an errant CI. Even during their limited contact, she’d hated working with him. The man radiated an intense skin-crawling aura.

What the hell could you possibly want?

She answered quietly with, “Really not a good time, Stu.”

“I’ve got something for Grant, but I can’t get a hold of him.”

“I’m his partner, not his mother.”

“Be that as it may, you’re still the closest thing to a mother he’s got. Now I have some info on this crazy-urgent request he hit me with this afternoon. I’ve been trying to call him, but he’s not picking up.”

She felt her interest prickling.

Said, “When did he say he needed this by?”

“Two minutes ago. Six p.m. He was adamant. I’ve called five times, and it’s been straight to voice mail. This house got something to do with a hot case or what?”

She didn’t know how to answer that, so she just said, “Yeah.”

“Is Grant with you?”

“No, but I’m going to see him later.”

Through the window, Sophie watched the headlights of what looked like a Crown Vic whip into the parking space beside the black van.

“What do you want me to do with this file, Sophie?”

She opened her purse, dug out her wallet, threw a ten spot on the table.

“Where are you right now, Stu?”

“Cafe Vita in The Hill.”

She slid out of the booth.

“I’ll meet you there in twenty,” she said.

She met Dobbs at the entrance.

“Outside, Art.”

They stood in the drizzle.

“What’s the word, Sophie?”

Art didn’t exactly look like a law enforcement badass with his receding hairline and burgeoning paunch, but the threadbare JCPenney suit belied a damn good shot and one of the best detectives Sophie had ever worked with.

“Talbert, Seymour, and a John Doe are seated at one of the booths by the window. Stay on them.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I just got a call about Grant.”

“I thought he was sick.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“He in trouble?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you.”

“I had a reservation at Canlis tonight for me and the wife.”

Sophie was already moving across the sidewalk toward her TrailBlazer.

“I owe you one,” she said over her shoulder.

“Yeah you do.”

“Text me when they move. I’ll be in the city.”

Chapter 24

Grant stumbled over to the closet, slipped inside, and pulled the door closed after him.

He sat on the floor.

Drew his knees into his chest.

Buried his head in his hands.

The pain was operatic—audible through the silence like a throbbing timpani drum. He wondered how Paige had held out for three days by herself. In the years they’d been estranged, the memory of his little sister had been replaced by the image of the addict, the fuck-up, and now, the prostitute. It was easy to forget the little girl who would quietly stroke his hair when the tears he had fought back during the day finally arrived in the middle of the night. Those muffled sobs he’d tried to stifle with a pillow. She was stronger than he would ever be.

Now, with his head splitting apart in the darkness, he wished—as he had so many times before—that he could find some of her strength in himself. But he had never been the brave one.

Grant heard the front door close, followed by low voices in the foyer. Reaching up, he gently twisted the knob and nudged the closet door open a quarter of an inch.

He caught a twinkle of candlelight through the crack, and then Paige’s voice.

“I’m so glad you came, Steve.”

“What’s with all the candles?”

“You don’t like them?”

“I can’t tell if it’s romantic or if you’re about to subject me to some Satanic ritual sacrifice.”

Paige laughed, but Grant could tell it wasn’t the genuine article—too quick, too high, definitely forced.

“The boring truth,” she said, “is that the power went out.”

“Bummer.”

Their voices seemed to occupy the same airspace. Grant imagined her arms wrapped around the man’s neck.

“I’m glad you called,” the man said. “Thought you might have forgotten about me.”

“Never.”

Silence, and then the phlegmy slurp of kissing.

Grant grimaced.

“You feeling all right?” the man asked. “You look tired.”

“Nothing you can’t fix. Get us a drink?”

“Please.”

Footsteps plodded toward the closet, and in the soft candlelight, Grant watched his sister approach the wet bar.

For a split second, her eyes shot to the crack between door and doorframe.

“Power’s been out since last night,” she said, “so no rocks.” She grabbed a half-empty bottle.

I could use a hit of that right about now.

“Neat’s the only way I drink,” the man said as he emerged from the shadows and slid his arms around Paige’s waist from behind. “I thought you’d remember that.”

Steve wasn’t at all what he had expected. He’d been prepared for another Jude—tall, perfect hair, chiseled everything. But Steve was shorter than Paige. As he sidled up behind her, the profile of his face met the slope of her neck like a puzzle piece, the top of his head stopping a full four inches below her own. He was thirty-five or forty pounds overweight and the dome of his hairless skull shone like polished marble in the candlelight. Physically at least, Steve was a completely unremarkable specimen. Grant couldn’t decide if it made him feel better or worse to know that not all of Paige’s clients were demigods.

Paige poured two glasses of scotch and turned to Steve.

“Should we take this upstairs?” she asked.

“You read my mind.”

Grant listened to their footsteps trail away into the foyer.

The stairs creaked as they climbed.

Only when they’d reached the second floor did Grant ease the closet door open and step out.

The ceiling creaked above him.

He pictured Steve and Paige heading down the hall toward her bedroom.

Their footfalls stopped. The bedroom door groaned open.

As if on cue, his ears popped—like rolling down the windows in a speeding car.

Grant exhaled.

He strained to listen, but there was nothing else to hear.

Moving around to the wet bar, Grant lifted the best thing he saw—a twenty-five year Highland Park—and poured into a rocks glass.

Shot it.

The whiskey dumping into his empty stomach like a fistful of lava.

He poured another, swirled it.

No plans of stopping until the world lost its hard edge.

Grant raised the glass in the air before him.

“A toast,” he said, “to shit.”

There was a knock at the front door.

For a moment, he wrote it off as a phantom sound. A glitch in his fracturing mind. He waited for confirmation, willing the silence to continue.

Another knock, this time harder.

He set the glass on the bar and made his way into the foyer, careful to stay clear of the windows that faced the street.

Without power, the intercom and camera were useless.

He pressed up against the door, eye to the peephole.

Sophie stared back at him.

He blinked.

Still there.

He clawed his way through the pain and tried to think.

What are you doing here?

What are you doing here?

What are you—

Stu.

That was the only conceivable way. The PI had tried to call at six p.m. like Grant had insisted . But his phone was dead. So naturally, Stu called his partner.