Kyra’s sleepy voice rose from the bed. ‘I’m glad you’re back. I was beginning to worry.’
‘Is everybody in this house an insomniac? A man can’t sneak into his own bedroom without causing a commotion?’
She flipped on the brass bedside lamp. ‘You don’t look so good.’
‘I kind of fell over a cliff.’
‘In the line of duty? Or just for the fun of it?’
He took off his torn jacket, let it fall to the floor, and sat in the birch bentwood rocker in the corner of the room. ‘We found the Dubois girl.’
‘I heard. It was on the eleven o’clock news.’
‘Any details?’
‘Not really. Just that she’d been murdered and maybe raped.’
Kyra was lying on her side, looking at him, head propped up on one arm. She was covered only by a thin cotton sheet that revealed the curves of her long, slender body, and in spite of his weariness McCabe found himself wanting her. In fact, needing her.
‘You’d better take a shower,’ she said, sensing his desire. ‘I’m not making love to anybody who looks like he finished on the wrong side of a mud wrestling tournament.’
She slipped out of the bed, naked, and walked to him. ‘Here, let me help you,’ she said.
She pulled him to his feet and began unbuttoning his torn shirt. He let her undress him, holding out his arms like a child so she could unbutton his sleeves and pull off his shirt. She unzipped his trousers and, along with his underpants, they fell to the floor. He stepped out of them. She ran her fingers, teasingly, up and down, along the underside of his erection. He reached for her.
She backed away. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Not till you’re clean.’
They got in the shower together. The hot water played over them and stung the scraped, reddened skin on his chest and arms. She gently washed his body and then his hair, commenting, as always, on how many more gray hairs there were than the last time. Then he washed her. After that they just stood for a while in the hot water and stroked each other.
When they had dried, McCabe lay on his back on the bed and Kyra climbed on top of him. He entered her and they made love, slowly, sweetly, silently, for what seemed like a long time. Then he fell asleep, watching the horizontal patterns of light and shadow play against both floor and walls as the new morning sun shone through the slats of the wooden blinds.
He woke around seven thirty. His bruises hurt, and he was disappointed that the other side of the bed was empty. Kyra must have gotten up early and gone off to her studio. He wanted her here. He hadn’t yet had his fill of her. He pushed the sheets back. He was still naked, and with the windows open the morning air coming through the blinds felt soothingly cool on his scraped skin. He grabbed a pair of ancient red sweatpants that lay in a heap on the floor behind the bentwood rocker and pulled them on. The words ST. BARNABAS TRACK running down one leg represented the last remnant of Mike McCabe’s less than heroic career as a middle distance runner on his high school squad. He walked to the window and pulled the cord to open the blinds further. He stood, looking out at Casco Bay and the islands. That view and the fact that it was less than a mile’s walk to police headquarters were the primary reasons he’d paid more than he could afford for the three-bedroom condo when he signed on, three years earlier, as chief of the PPD’s Crimes Against People unit.
It was one of those golden September mornings. Not the kind he would have chosen either for investigating a murder or attending an autopsy. Cool air and a good breeze. He watched the down-bay ferry chug toward Portland and a small sailboat, its yellow-and-red-striped spinnaker billowing, move left to right across his field of vision. Absentmindedly he fingered the old scar that ran seven inches across his abdomen, a souvenir from his days as a newbie, still wearing a uniform. He’d been careless making a collar, and a drugged-out teenager slashed him with a four-inch switchblade. He hadn’t seen it coming, but he didn’t shoot the boy. He was proud of that. He brought the kid in. He was proud of that, too, but he’d vowed never to be so careless again.
There was a knock at the bedroom door. ‘Yeah,’ he called.
Casey came in and flopped down on the bed. ‘You looked pretty beat up when you came in last night.’
‘I was pretty beat up.’
She positioned the tattered remains of Bunny, a stuffed animal she’d had since she was a baby, on her lap. It was now little more than a fuzzy rag with ears, but she refused to give it up.
McCabe lay down next to her. ‘Did you have a good night?’ he asked.
‘It was okay. Gretchen and Whitney were here till about eleven. We just messed around till Whitney’s mom came and got them. Kyra came in about ten thirty. She’s gone?’
‘I think she went to her studio.’
‘Are you going to marry Kyra?’ Casey asked, a serious expression on her face. She was fiddling with Bunny’s ears.