CHAPTER 3
I OPENED THE front door and Justine swept in like a soft breeze. She was a first-class psychologist, a profiler, smart—hell, brilliant. Thank God she was here.
She put her hand on my cheek, searched my eyes, said, “Jack. Where is she?”
I pointed to the bedroom. Justine went in and I followed her, standing numb in the doorway as she walked to the bed. She moaned, “Oh, no,” and clasped her hands under her chin.
Even as I stood witness to this heartbreaking tableau, Colleen was still alive in my mind.
I pictured her in the little house she had rented in Los Feliz, a love nest you could almost hold in cupped hands. I thought about her twitching her hips in skimpy lingerie, big fuzzy slippers on her feet, sprinkling her thick brogue with her granny’s auld Irish sayings: “There’ll be caps on the green and no one to fetch ’em.”
“What does that mean, Molloy?” I’d asked her.
“Trouble.”
And now here she was on my bed. Well beyond trouble.
Justine was pale when she came back to me. She put her arms around me and held me. “I’m so sorry, Jack. So very sorry.”
I held her tight—and then, abruptly, Justine jerked away. She pinned me with her dark eyes and said, “Why is your hair wet?”
“My hair?”
“Did you take a shower?”
“Yes, I did. When I came home, I went straight to the bathroom. I was trying to wake myself up.”
“Well, this is no dream, Jack. This is as real as real can be. When you showered, had you seen Colleen?”
“I had no idea she was here.”
“You hadn’t told her to come over?”
“No, Justine, I didn’t. No.”
The doorbell rang again.