“Still at the shelter.”
He met my gaze, and I didn’t need to say anything else.
He paced around my kitchen. I noticed he had a fading bruise on his cheek and wondered if he’d gotten it in prison, remembered Hicks’s warning about Ryan’s reputation. Tonight he was agitated, angry. He looked like how I felt.
He said, “I’m not going back.”
“I’m not either.” I was still sitting on the bed, the covers pulled around me. He was looking at my face, a hard searching look.
“Are you in this for real? Whatever it takes?”
“Whatever it takes.”
He took a breath and let it out, his body finally calming. “I’ve been thinking about this. Cathy had a lot of friends, maybe one of them—”
“We need to talk to her dealer.”
*
We drove around town, stopping at a few known crack houses. We always parked the truck out of sight and made sure to keep our heads down when we entered the buildings—I wore one of Ryan’s baseball caps and an old work coat. If anyone recognized us and reported it, Suzanne would suspend our parole instantly. At first no one would talk to us, but finally Ryan recognized a guy who used to hang out with Cathy. He told us that Cathy’s dealer, a guy named Boomer, lived in an old white house near the train station. We cruised up and down his street, unsure which house was his. I was getting worried, then we saw some shady characters leaving one of them. Ryan gave the door a hard rap. A skinny man wearing jeans that were sliding off his hips opened the door.
“You Boomer?” Ryan said.
“Who’s asking?”
“We want to buy some weed.”
Boomer ushered us in after glancing down the street. Inside the house, he sat on the couch, pulled out a bag and a scale, and said, “How much you want?”
Ryan asked for a gram, but Boomer just stared at us.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said. “No one asks for dope like that unless they’re in high school.”
“I’ve been in prison—I’m out of touch. You got any or what?”
“You cops?”
Ryan laughed. “Right.”
“We need to talk to you,” I said. “About Cathy Schaeffer.”
“What about her?” His gaze flicked to the door, like he was wondering if someone was going to burst in.
“We know she was with you before she died,” I said.
The guy stood up. “Get the hell out of my house.”
Ryan said, “I’m not leaving until you tell us what we need to know.”
Boomer reared back and threw his beer bottle. It shattered against the wall behind Ryan.
Ryan rushed the man, grabbed him around the neck, then backed him against the wall. “Listen, asshole, I’m not fucking around here, got it?”
The guy was nodding, his eyes panicked, his face red. I stepped closer to Ryan, saw how angry he was. He wasn’t letting go.
Shit, he was going to kill him. “Hey, Ryan. Take it easy.”
Ryan slowly released Boomer, who slumped to the floor, rubbing his throat. “You’re nuts, man,” he croaked out.
Ryan crouched in front of him. “You’re right. I am, so you better start talking.”
“Shit, dude—all I know is she showed up here with a bunch of money and bought a shitload of dope. Cathy was fucking happy, man, like she’d won the lottery.” He looked upset. “She said she was going down to the pier. I didn’t know what was going to happen to her.”
“Do you know where she got the money?” I said.
“No idea.”
It had to have been Shauna.
“Anything else?” Ryan said.
“That’s all I know, man.”
Ryan reached out and grabbed the guy by the back of his long hair, pulling it tight. “You better not be bullshitting me, or I’m coming back.”
“I don’t know anything else—I fucking swear.”
I touched Ryan’s shoulder, said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We drove away, fast, then parked down a side road to talk. My heart was beating hard from the adrenaline rush. Ryan’s eyes were intense as he stared out the window, and he kept running his hands through his hair.
“What happened in there?” I said. “You lost control.”
He looked at me, surprised. “I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“You looked like you were going to kill him.”
“What are you saying, Toni?”
“Nothing.” I stared out the window.
He paused for a moment, then said, “We both did shit to survive inside, we had to. There were times when I wondered if I’d ever be human again, but I do still have control. I wanted to scare the shit out of him and it worked.”
When we were kids and he got in fights, I’d seen that he was capable of violence and could kick some ass, but I’d never gotten the sense that he would let things go too far. Tonight, I wasn’t so sure. I thought again of Hicks’s warning.
“It scared me too.”