Shelter in Place Page 22

Came awake with a start, reaching for the weapon she wasn’t wearing.

“Sorry! Sorry.” Reed held his hands up. One of them held a bouquet of pink-and-white-striped tulips. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I was just going to leave these.”

“What time is it?”

“About five-thirty.”

“Okay, okay.” She sighed. “I just dropped off for a few minutes. You brought me tulips.”

“I have it on good authority—my sister—that people tend to forget the sleep-deprived mom after the first couple weeks. Why aren’t you sleeping inside the house?”

“I wasn’t going to sleep yet. Sit down. My boys are snoozing upstairs. I could use the company to keep me from drooling on the porch. Wait, go on in and get a drink first. There’s this tea, there’s beer.”

“I could use a beer.”

At home at her place, he went in, got a cold bottle, popped it. He came back, sat down with her. “How ya doing?”

“Honestly, I never thought anybody could be so damn happy. And the hits keep coming. Hank told me today he’s decided to take a year’s sabbatical. He’s going to be a stay-at-home dad. I don’t have to think about leaving Dylan with a nanny or at a daycare.”

When her eyes teared up, she slapped her own cheeks. “God, God, hormones. Will they ever go back to normal? Talk cop to me. That’ll work.”

“We closed the Bower case.”

“You got her.”

“Yeah, the greedy, scheming widow’s booked. Her boyfriend flipped. He gets the deal, she gets murder one.”

He filled her in on a couple of open cases, made her laugh over some office gossip.

“I looked at a couple more houses over the weekend.”

“Reed, you’ve been looking at houses for nearly a year now.”

“Yeah, but none looks back and says: Here I am.”

“Maybe you’re too fussy, and you’re going to end up living your life in that shitcan of an apartment.”

“An apartment’s just a place to sleep. A house has to be right.”

She couldn’t disagree, and yet. “That place I waddled into with you a couple months ago was great.”

“It was close. No direct hit. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Maybe it’s Portland.”

“Portland’s okay. I’m close to family, I’ll be working with you. That makes up for the shitcan until I get the direct hit.”

“I’d say that’s the same attitude that keeps you from having a serious relationship, but I was the same way there until Hank.”

“No direct hit,” he agreed. “I got an invitation to Eloise’s wedding. June.”

“She’s really doing it.”

“Looks that way. Eloise is taking the plunge, and I think it’s working for her.”

“There’s something else.” She poked his arm. “I can see it.”

He studied his beer a moment, shook back the mop of hair he no longer had to shear short. “You didn’t get the alert?”

“Shit. I don’t even know where my phone is right now. Who?”

“Marshall Finestein. He’s the one who took one in the hip, managed to crawl off.”

“And served as an eyewit, with considerable detail, on Paulson. He consulted on a documentary. He pops up on TV at every anniversary.”

“He won’t make the next one. Hit-and-run. He jogged every morning, started it after he got back on his feet after the incident. The car didn’t even slow down, knocked him out of his Adidas, and kept on going.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Quiet stretch of road, early morning. But a Toyota Land Cruiser with front-edge damage and blood, fiber, skin, turned up abandoned a half mile from the scene. The owners—parents of two, a CPA and a pediatrician—reported it stolen about the time it was mowing Finestein down. We’ll take a harder look, but they’re clean, Essie.”

“Somebody knew Finestein’s routine and his route, stole the car to take him out.”

“That’s six deaths with the victims connected to the DownEast Mall. Three murders with this one, two suicides, and Marcia Hobart’s one accidental. There’s a pattern, Essie.”

“One of the suicides was in Delaware, the other in Boston, one of the murders—deemed gang related—was in Baltimore.” She held up a hand before he objected. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Reed. But it’s still a stretch. A connection pattern, yeah, but statistically you’re going to have deaths, especially that include suicide and accidental, in any large group. There’s no pattern to the method. A silenced handgun, a knifing, a hit-and-run.”

“Overkill’s a pattern,” he insisted. “Three bullets in Roberta Flisk. Thirteen stab wounds in Martin Bowlinger, ramming a big-ass SUV at high speed into Finestein. Bowlinger, in his first month as mall security, panics and runs when the shooting started. He can’t live with it, moves away, starts using. He’s zoned when he’s stabbed, dead after a couple of holes go into him, but the killer keeps slicing. Overkill.

“And the suicides,” he continued, warming up. “What if they weren’t? Add Hobart’s mother’s accidental, which still doesn’t sit all the way right for me, and you’ve got too damn many.”

“The pattern breaks down with Hobart’s mother. She wasn’t a victim. She wasn’t a survivor.”

“She was a victim,” he insisted, his green eyes going hard. “Maybe she wasn’t a terrific mother, maybe she was weak, but she was a victim. Her son made her a victim.”

“Motive?”

“Sometimes crazy’s motive enough. I know it’s a stretch, but it just keeps circling back.”

Though the ice had melted, diluting it, Essie drank more tea. “And that might be the real reason you’re still in that shitcan. You can’t keep circling back, Reed. Keeping track, that’s one thing. I’m never going to not keep track. But you have to move on, too.”

“I wouldn’t be a cop if it wasn’t for that night, if it wasn’t for you. And the cop’s saying it feels like a pattern, all the way through it. I want to look closer at the suicides and the accidental. On my own time,” he said quickly. “But I want you to know I’m going to look closer.”

“Okay, all right. If you find anything, I’ll be the first one to help you push.”

“Good enough.”

They both heard the first fussy cries through the upstairs window. “That’s my cue,” Essie said. “do you want to come in, stay for dinner?”

“Not tonight, thanks. Next time I’ll bring dinner.”

“I’ll take it.” She picked up the tulips. “Thanks for the flowers, partner.”

“You bet. Have fun, Mom.”

“I could sleep standing up.” She paused at the door. “My boobs are a milk factory and I haven’t had sex for a month. And you know what? It’s fun. Come back, bring pizza.”

“You got it.”

He walked to his car, decided he’d go back to his shitcan, toss a frozen pizza in the oven, and dig a little into a couple of suicides.

*

Simone hauled suitcases and boxes down four flights of steps to Mi’s Prius. Fork in the road, she told herself, determinedly cheerful. This was just a fork in the road, and a big, bright opening for Mi with the move to Boston, the position at Mass General.

Mi deserved it, had worked for it, would be great at it.

“How are you going to get all this stuff in there? You should’ve shipped all these books.”

“Everything’ll fit.” Mi tapped a finger to her temple. “I’ve got it all worked out. It’s like Tetris.”

“I never understood that game, but once a geek…”

Realizing her skill had been in the hauling, Simone stood back, watched Mi—her long, sleek ponytail through the back loop of a Boston Red Sox hat (a gift)—calculate, arrange, shift.

She wore cropped jeans, pink sneakers, and a Columbia T-shirt. Small hands, Simone thought, boxing away every detail. Short nails, never painted. The little Vietnamese symbol tattooed under her right thumb that meant hope.

Lovely long, dark eyes, soft jawline, slim bladed nose.

An oversize watch on a slender left wrist, tiny gold studs in small, close-to-the-head earlobes.

And, of course, the brain, as within minutes Mi had everything loaded. “There! See?”

“Yeah. How could I have doubted. Except there’s one more.” Simone held out the box she’d kept behind her back. “You can find room, and open it when you get there.”

“I’ll find room, but I’m opening it now.”

Mi tugged off the raffia tie, took off the lid, peeled back the cotton batting. “Oh. Oh, Sim.”

The sculpture, no bigger than Mi’s hand, formed three faces. Mi and Simone, with Tish centered between them.

“I was just going to do you and me, but … she wanted to be there. It’s how I think she’d look. If.”

“It’s beautiful.” Tears rose up, thickened the words. “We’re beautiful. She’s with us.”

“She’d have been so proud of you, Almost Dr. Jung.”

“Still have a ways to go for that. She’d’ve been proud of you, too. Look how talented you are.” Gently Mi traced the features of her friends. “She’d have been a star,” Mi murmured.

“Damn straight.”

“It’s the first thing I’ll put out in my new apartment.” Carefully Mi replaced the cotton, the lid. “Oh God, Sim. I’m going to miss you.”

“We’ll text and call and e-mail and FaceTime. We’ll visit.”