So I did.
“You know, I watched one. I watched her have sex and give blowjobs to four different men in forty-five minutes. She took it everywhere. And the whole time she was gone. Diane was not in her eyes. She was spaced out. Doped up. So damned high, my girl, my Diane had left the building. I don’t even think she knew what was happening to her. Like a trained dog, going through the motions, moving and moaning, just to get her fix. It made me sick. Literally. I haven’t vomited in years. That DVD ended, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.”
After offering that morsel, it happened.
I dropped my chin into my neck and there was no holding it in by pressing my bag to it. The pain tore up my stomach, burned through my lungs and forced its way out of my mouth laying waste to my throat as it came out on a ragged sob.
My purse was gently pulled from my hand and a dark blue handkerchief was pressed into it.
I bent forward, lifted it to my face and pushed it hard against my mouth as my shoulders shook with silent sobs.
“She was . . . she . . . she was . . . sh-she was gonna be a physical therapist,” I whimpered into the blue cloth.
“I’ll get her some water,” Chavez murmured.
“Yeah,” Nightingale murmured back.
Eventually, I saw the toes of his boots close to mine. I sniffed, wiped the cloth on my face, tipped my head back and saw Nightingale had wheeled himself close, elbows on his knees, not in my face but encroaching my space.
This was soothing too.
Shit, he had this down.
“You hear these stories a lot,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
“Someone has to do for them what they can’t. Make things as right as they can get after they’ve gone so wrong. Find justice. And someone has to find answers for people like you.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Most people surprise themselves with the stuff they can do,” he told me.
“Both the good and the bad.”
He did a slow nod. “Both the good and the bad.”
“She was good,” I told him quietly. “Honest to God, however you saw her tonight, that wasn’t the real her. She was good. She was sweet. She was funny and smart and hard working. She was a great friend. She loved her folks. God, she loved her folks so much, Lieutenant Nightingale. They were so close. I was jealous of that until she gave me them too.”
“Hank.”
“What?”
“Call me Hank, Rebel.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure you should go with Eddie and me to see them.”
I straightened and shook my head.
He straightened with me.
“I’m not certain they should learn this at all if I’m not there when they do,” I returned.
“So, you’re tight with them too.”
“That happens when you wage war against addiction,” I educated him, though I reckoned he probably knew that a lot better than me. “We did interventions. All the shit. But they’d already adopted me before.” It surprised the hell out of me when I felt myself grin shakily. “Her mom and I’d sneak a flask of mojitos into her volleyball games. Made them a lot easier to watch.” I tipped my head to the side as I did a one shouldered shrug. “Neither of us are into sports.”
He grinned back. “Mojitos help make a lot of stuff a lot less boring.”
“Word on that, policeman.”
His grin got bigger.
“I see Hank has worked his magic,” Chavez remarked as he re-joined us carrying a paper cup of water.
He handed it to me.
I took it, thanked him, and took a sip.
Then I held Hank’s handkerchief to him.
“Keep it,” he said.
Yeah, I should keep it. We weren’t quite done with our thrill-a-minute night and I had a feeling the best was yet to come.
“How many of these you lose in a year?” I asked.
“Enough my wife keeps boxes of them in the linen cabinet next to the toilet paper she’s obsessive about never running out of, due to her mother’s decree we’re always prepared for a blizzard.”
I hoped his wife was awesome.
I had a feeling he deserved awesome.
Really, freaking awesome.
“We live in Denver, not Alaska,” I noted.
“We just stock toilet paper. Trust me. It’s better than rubbing up against Trish,” Hank replied.
Chavez settled back down on Hank’s desk and I looked to him before I said, “We probably should keep going. There are, um . . . things to do that need to get done.”
“You’re right,” Chavez said. “You good to go on?”
I nodded.
“Just the routine questions left, Rebel. Like do you know anyone that would want to hurt Diane?” Chavez asked.
I shook my head. “Not that I know of, but I wasn’t a part of her world anymore. I don’t know what she was into, outside of what I told you. But she was so deep into what she was into, who knows what else she got herself into.”
“This voice on the phone,” Hank put in. “You think you might remember who it is?”
I shook my head again but said, “I hope so. If I do, I’ll tell you. But it isn’t coming to me now.”
“It might,” Chavez said. “Things are extreme now, Rebel. Your head clears out, it might happen. My advice, don’t try too hard. Just take care of you, Diane’s parents, and let it come if it comes. No pressure.”
“Right,” I replied.
“You see anyone come, go, anything around Diane’s house when you pulled up, walked to the door, sat in the car waiting for the police?” Hank asked. “Anything, Rebel. A car, someone walking by, movement in any of the other houses?”
I had to shake my head again. “No, and I was looking. I was freaked. I was freaked sitting in my car in her ’hood and waiting for the cops. I was freaked about what might be happening with Diane. So I was hyper-alert. I still didn’t see a thing.”
Hank and Chavez glanced at each other before they looked back to me.
“That’s all we have now, Rebel,” Hank said. “Drink your water. Freshen up in the bathroom. Eddie and me need to have a chat. Then we’ll head out to see Diane’s parents.”
I looked between them both and stood up.
But I ended my look on Chavez.
“I’ll tell you what I told Hank. That wasn’t her, what was in her house tonight. She was good. Diane Ragowski was a good person. A good woman. A good friend. A good daughter. Until she wasn’t. But that part was always with her. It was just who she was. It was the drugs that made her something she wasn’t.”
“She doesn’t have to be good for me to work my ass off to find out what happened to her, Rebel,” Chavez replied. “But I’m glad to know she had people who loved her and at one point in her life, earned that.”
She had that.
People who loved her.
Okay, time to deep breathe again.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
And having said my piece, I decided to let them have their chat so we could move on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.
“Bathroom?” I asked.
“I’ll show you,” Chavez said, pushing off the desk again.
He showed me. I drank my water, threw the cup in the trash in the bathroom, freshened up as best I could, went out and met them again at Hank’s desk.
Then I led them to Paul and Amy’s house and we moved on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.
It was seven million times worse than what had come before.
It was also a time I’d never forget.
And then there’d come a time I was glad for that.
Because I would need to remember just how hideous it was in order to make sure I got the job done.
Hank had been right.
I surprised myself with the stuff I could do.
The good.
And the bad.
You Got Balls After All
Chew
Seven months later . . .
He stood with his shoulders against the back gate. She’d come out. He’d watched. She always came out, pissed off and grumbling to herself because her man did not keep things the way she wanted them kept, and that was somehow her man’s fault.
Chew did not get that shit.
If a bitch wanted something her way, she should just fucking do it. Don’t ride your man’s ass about it. He doesn’t want it that way. He doesn’t give a shit the trash was taken out every night so you wouldn’t smell it. Who gives a fuck?
You don’t like the smell, haul the trash out your own self, bitch.
Well, she did. And there she was, looking ticked as shit and grumbling about what a loser her man was.
Sure, it was the middle of the night after a long shift at a roadhouse. She was probably tired. And her man hadn’t shown for work, as usual. Chew had staked it out and he’d seen. So she was probably seriously tired since she had to do her shift and his.
But it was her that wanted the trash out, for fuck’s sake.
She’d run a bar for decades.
It didn’t take her but a couple of steps down her walk to sense him in the shadows.
Her outside light had a motion sensor, but it didn’t kick in because the bulb had blown. Something else Chew had noted when he’d scoped out where this was going to go down.