Shattered Glass (46 page)

Are you flaking out?”

“Detective,” Darryl said gently.

I avoided Luis by turning to Darryl. “What?” “I know where he hid it.”

“You know?” I asked. “Or you think you know? Because if you’re wrong…”

“I’m pretty sure.” He nodded. “No, I’m positive. Last year Joe found an X tab. He went ballistic and searched Cai’s room. I mean seriously searched. Cai comes in right in the middle of it, and then they have a blowout. Cai takes off.” “Does this story end?” I asked. “Ever?” “I’m explaining so maybe you can make up your mind, dickwad! Rabbit had to skip classes to find him. Cai finally picks up his cell phone after forever, and Rabbit said that they’d work out a lock for his room. Because Rabbit felt guilty ‘cause the tab was his.”

“That’s it? In his room? I need more than—” “My point, dickwad, was that Rabbit couldn’t get Joe to agree to a lock on his door. So he bought this crappy little safe where Cai could hide—well, whatever he was hiding.” How I went from prettyboy to dickwad in a week was a mystery. “Where?” I asked, leaving out the obvious question of why Peter would give a kid who was using drugs, a place to hide them.

Darryl shrugged. “His room somewhere.” “Which is toast,” Luis pointed out. “Metal?” “Yeah. With one of those dial thingies.” “Not a lot to hang our hopes on, Glass.”

I thought about fire and water damage. “If it’s a weapon in there, we’re good. I should have taken Cai up on the tour of his room so we’d know where to find this thing.” “Cai invited you to his room?” Darryl asked.

“Yeah. He said he had some painting he wanted to show me.”

“Weird.”

“Second time you’ve used that today with regards to the kid.

Not that I’m disagreeing. Weird doesn’t begin to describe him.” “Cai’s pretty shy. Plus, you’re a cop. It’s weird.” “Cai was not shy that day. I guarantee you. And this might be a shocker, but some people like me.” “Who?” Luis asked.

“Cats, or mangy creatures formally known as cats.” “That’s about right,” Luis said, lifting his phone to his ear.

Luis and I both checked our guns while we waited near the burnt wreckage of Joe’s townhome. Waiting was always the hardest part of being a cop. Waiting for warrants. Waiting for information. Waiting for unobserved access. Waiting for fire marshals.

“Hey, Luis?”

“What?” He switched his badge to a neck chain and fitted it over his bulletproof vest.

“I’ll take the bullet this time.”

Luis sat back and put his elbow over the center of our seat, his finger pointing directly at me. “Remember a few months back, when we stopped at that bodega—”

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” I interrupted, quickly trying to fix my badge to my neck chain and tuck it into my shirt.

“—and you bought the coffee—”

“We should get going.”

“—but the lid popped off and you spilled it?” “Have you called the captain again?” “You jumped around in the car and unbuckled your pants.” “Let’s talk about—”

“Screaming to get you to the emergency room.” “You were really reckless, by the way.” “Only it turned out they mistakenly gave you ice coffee.” “Ice can burn, Luis.”

“Hey!” Darryl said. “Remember that time,” he kicked my seat, “two asshole cops sat in their car telling stories while more asshole cops tortured my—” he nearly knocked my seat out of its bucket with the next kick, “brother?” Luis and I both looked at Darryl then each other. My partner jerked his thumb at the back seat and pursed his lips. “I like him.”

“More than me?”

“I like everyone more than you.”

“Why do people keep saying that to me?” “Want a list?” Darryl said.

“Why is he still here?” Luis asked.

“Because, Luis, if we don’t keep him in the car behind locked doors, he’ll do something stupid. Like wade through the wreckage of Joe’s house before the fire marshal has declared it safe. Then he’d probably do something even more stupid, like

bargain with the kidnappers.”

“Too damn right I will. It’s more than what you’re doing!” “What he doesn’t realize is that once they have the items, they have no use for witnesses. Plus, and this is why cops are better at kidnapping cases than, say,
bartenders
—cops realize that bad guys might be watching the house, waiting for an unprotected Tinkerbelle wearing a glow-in-the-dark, neon pink hoodie to lead them directly to what they want.” “Do you know what I did to the last guy that called me Tinkerbelle?”

“Slept with him?”

Darryl was silent for a second. “After that.” My lips pulled up in the first real smile since this day started.

Because he was behind me, I wasn’t sure if Darryl’s did, too. I didn’t get a chance to look. Luis’s phone rang with the call we had been waiting for.

I Love You, Man

“Fire Inspector just finished. We’re a go,” Luis said. “CSU will be here in thirty.”

“Can you see my vest?”

“No.”

“Luis?”

He grunted a, “What?”

“If I don’t have a job after this—”

“You will.”

“—I want you to know—”

“I know, kid.” He shifted and stared out the window.

“—that I masturbated to images of you in a thong and

corset.”

“Dios Mio, give me strength.”

“I’m going to check it out,” I nodded to the townhome.

“I’ll brief CSU. Inspector said to stay off the second floor.” I twisted to look at Darryl. “Cai’s room is on the first floor?” He jerked a nod. “I’ll go with you. You won’t recognize anything.”

“No can do,” I said. “You’re a civilian, that’s a crime scene, and I’m in enough shit without having a beam fall on your head and the Department getting sued.”

“You’re not going to know what to look for!” He was right. How was I going to recognize anything in Cai’s room if the safe wasn’t out in the open? Which it wouldn’t be, because Cai wasn’t an idiot. I tossed Darryl my cell phone. “I’ll video it. Sync our phones. That’s as close as you’re getting.” He rolled his eyes, typed into my phone, and threw it back at me. I smiled brightly at Luis as I tucked the phone into my pocket.

“Kiss me goodbye?” He whacked me in the back of the head.

“Get out, and don’t get dead.”

“Ditto,” I replied, climbing out of the car and jerking a thumb to Darryl. “And give him to one of the uniforms when CSU gets here or he’ll follow you.” I remembered what Peter told me about Darryl. “Actually make it two uniforms. With Tasers.” I started to shut the door.

“Austin,” Darryl said. I stuck my head back in, expecting to be told to get bent. “Don’t let a beam fall on your head or nothin’.”

“Worried about your meal ticket?”

“And that would top the list of reasons no one likes you.” He

glared.

“Sorry. Listen, if you promise not to double back and do something stupid, we can have someone drive you to the hospital.”

“Nah. I’ll stay.”

I nodded, then slammed the door.

I understood Darryl wanting to stay. At the hospital he’d be climbing the walls, pestering nurses, taking care of Rosa and…

the other one. I knew that was how I’d be. Focusing on work gave me a brief reprieve from my worry. Peter’s name alone brought the image of him looking at his bloody hand in confusion and Leila’s gun pressed against his head. Better to not think about him at all. Better to not wonder if later, when all was said and done, I might never again feel him lying against me.

If I thought about that. If I believed that. Would I try very hard to avoid a bullet?

True Irony Is Lost on the Idiots

I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Peter’s life reduced to piles of black dust. Just outside the door, I paused and took a breath.

The fire marshal jogged up to greet me. I flashed both my badge and a forced smile at her. Her serious eyes were framed by a surgical mask and a bright yellow hard hat. She carried an extra of each in her weathered hands. “They told you not to go upstairs?”

I nodded, and she held out the mask and helmet to me. “Can I see something in a red? Yellow isn’t my best color.” My joke fell as flat as my smile.

“Can’t let you in there without them.”

“Are you coming in with me?”

“I’ll be inspecting next door if you need me. The homeowners are anxious to check for recoverable items.” She nodded to the townhome on the right.

“What about here? Are there recoverable items?” “Nothing salvageable in the main room. Further to the back of the house, soot, ash and water damage are the most concerning. Upstairs it’s mostly water damage. Fortunately, the fire house was close.” She gave me a quick rundown of safety measures and turned to leave. Her sneakers squeaked as she crossed the lawn. The sound faded as I stepped inside Joe’s front door.

The smell hit me first. A mixture of chemicals and the acrid stench of smoke. The air was also moist and more than a little suffocating. My mouth opened to draw in sufficient air where my nostrils failed. It only grew worse from the living room to the back bedrooms.

Along the hallway the drywall had burned, leaving exposed wires, cross beams and pipes. The remaining walls and furniture were black with soot. What wasn’t black was grey with ash. All of the painted memories were gone. The loss of those missing portraits and murals weighed on my soul. Images of Peter in his youth gone forever. It was heartbreaking.

I turned away from the walls and took a step past Peter’s room, only to backtrack and push open what was left of the door. Maybe something was salvageable in this disaster.

The carpet squished under my shoes, but the water wasn’t deep enough to wash Peter’s blood off the tips. It was just deep enough to make me grimace. Light from the broken window

gave me more information about the destruction of Peter’s life than I could ever want. My grimace expanded.

His bookshelf had imploded like a well-timed demolition.

The bed’s wire frame survived, but the mattress was basically carbon. The computer desk had split; it and the monitor were now propped by what was left of a cat carrier that had been sitting underneath. Books, papers, bits of ceiling were strewn across the floor. Everything was wet and reeked. I turned my back on it all and prayed that behind the blackened closet doors, something was left.

Tentatively, I slid the door open. My eyes rolled up to make sure the ceiling wasn’t going to crack and fall on my head.

Satisfied that asbestos and stucco weren’t going to rain down, I crouched, examining the pile of shoes scattered at the bottom of the closet.

I found the bunny slippers in the corner under a pair of canvas high tops and another pair of slippers I hadn’t seen before. The rubber from the high tops melted to the fuzzy brown toe of one slipper. It took a few minutes, but I pried the sneaker free and squeezed the water from the slippers. My phone rang as I hunted for something to wrap them in.

I tucked the slippers under my arm and dug for the phone.

“Glass.” Water soaked through my jacket and trickled down my ribs.

“I thought you were going to send a video? How long does it take?” Darryl demanded angrily.

“Wanna see what I see? Here!” I turned his volume down, pressed the video button and then put the phone back in my pocket. He could hear me, but I didn’t want him to see my

attachment to the fucking slippers.

Footsteps along the hallway caught my attention. “Hey, do you have a baggie or something?” I asked the inspector as I rounded the corner directly into the barrel of a gun.

“Whoa, hello.” My hands jumped to my gun reflexively.

“Don’t,” Detective Frank Marco ordered. “I got nothing to lose here, Glass.”

I brought my palms up in front of my stomach. The slippers splatted to the floor. “Hey, Frank. What’s up?” Sweat dripped from his forehead. He blinked excessively and wiped at it with his arm, but another drop followed the same path. The hand holding the gun shook. “Where are they?” The tip of the barrel jammed hard into my forehead.

“Ow. Where’s what?” I took a step back, using considerable effort not to raise my hands higher and rub the pain away. Any sudden movements could set him off.

“Don’t fuck with me. Where are they?” “Look, Frank, man, I came in here to see if I could salvage some clothes.“

“Don’t talk like we’re friends, Glass. You ain’t got friends. I count myself lucky that it’s you in here because anyone else would be hard to shoot. But not you. Give me what I want, and I’m outta here. Don’t, and I’ll find ways to encourage you to give it to me.”

Ouch. Don’t argue with the desperate. “I haven’t found anything,” I said honestly.

“This is the wrong room.” Frank squinted and tilted to look past me. “This is the other one’s room.” “Frank?“ A voice called from what sounded like the entrance

of the house.

“Back here, Del.” Frank’s eyes never left me.

A second later, Detective Max Delmonico’s movie star smile beamed behind Frank. “Martinez and the fairy are sitting in the car playing with their cell phones. Captain thinks we’re here to oversee CSU and this faggot. We’re good to go.” “Get his gun.”

Del reached across and slipped my gun from the holster, tucking it in his jacket pocket. “Why are we in this room?” “Found him here.” They both glanced around the room. “Are they here, Glass?”

I only hoped Darryl was still recording. I needed to buy time.

“I don’t know.” I turned slowly toward the room. “I haven’t had a chance to look thoroughly. I’ve only been here once.”
On Wednesday when one of you assholes tried to set me on fire
. Wednesday.