The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 15

Garrity dumped a handful of grim photographs on the counter. Crime scene pictures, official ones. Lurid and vibrant, they hit me with the force of a punch in the stomach, and yet there was a detachment to them too. An unnerving composure.

“This is what murderers do,” he said. “This is what happens to people who get in their way.”

The photos were repulsively magnetic. One showed a woman’s hand, her palm sliced with a red line, a finger bent at an unnatural angle. The other showed a spreading pool of blood, black-red, clotting tendrils of blond hair.

I peered closer. Blond?

“That’s not Eliza,” I said. Then I noticed the date stamp on the photographs. “Garrity, these things are ten years old! What are you doing showing them to me?”

“Getting your attention.” He collected the images and shoved them in his pocket. “Getting killed is fast most of the time. You never see it coming. Life’s all chuckles and then suddenly someone’s brains are making modern art on the wall. Are you getting the point?”

I was getting the point. “Fine. I apologize for my behavior this afternoon at Beau Elan. I should have listened to Trey. Can I have my pizza now?”

***

Garrity ate like a starving teenager, in quick two-bite attacks. He looked kinetic, even sitting at the table, like his spring was wound too tight. I sat opposite. Trey took up a position near the window, his arms folded.

“I got somebody checking out that SUV following you all this morning,” Garrity said. “Guess what? It’s registered to Dylan Flint.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding. The Dylan Flint, the Dylan Flint who boffed what’s-her-name, that boy toy actress, and then sold the videotape on the Internet, Dylan Flint the sleaze?”

“Flint claimed it was stolen,” Trey said.

“Wouldn’t you, if you were a sleaze?”

Trey ignored me. “Did anyone ask him why he was following us?”

Garrity shook his head. “No. The officer dropped by his apartment, but there was nobody home. Same at his work, some photography studio over on Luckie Street. “

“So that’s it?” I said.

“For now. We can’t put out an APB for acting suspicious.”

“But Trey said he saw the same car at Phoenix Thursday morning. And then the parking garage cameras at Phoenix got smashed that afternoon.”

“Circumstantial.”

“What about Eliza?” Trey said. “Has there been any progress in the investigation?”

Garrity got another piece of pizza. “No weapon, no suspect. No purse either, so they’re thinking maybe a car jacking gone bad.”

“What about the guy who was following her,” I said, “the one Eric saw in the pick-up?”

“At this moment, he’s a phantom. Just like this Dylan Flint character.”

Trey kept his gaze on the horizon, his eyes focused on the ink and brilliance of the city sky. He seemed to be inhabiting his own world, and I guessed in many ways, he did.

“Do they have time of death?” he said.

“Sometime between three and six p.m.” Garrity wiped his mouth. “Eliza called in sick around nine o’clock Thursday morning, called your brother around three. It’s looking like Eric was the last person to see her alive, on record anyway.”

“So you heard his story?”

“I got the basics. Something else, though. She’d been roughed up a bit—bruises on the arms and wrists, chest, back of the neck. ME said probably forty-eight hours or so before she died.”

Forty-eight hours. Tuesday night. When Eric was still in town and they’d been at the Mardi Gras ball together.

I picked at what remained of the mushrooms. “So how bad is Eric looking?”

Garrity chewed vigorously. “Hard to say. I’m sure he knew he shouldn’t have been meeting some young, single girl under such strange circumstances.”

“I can’t believe that makes him ‘a person of suspicion.’”

“You are, too, you know.”

“That’s beginning to dawn on me.”

“Don’t take it personally. Everybody’s guilty of something, it’s a cop’s job to find out what. Your job is to be prepared.”

Trey spoke up. “Landon has approved counsel for Eric. I could talk to him about what might be available for Tai, but—”

“But,” I interjected, “since Landon has a bug up his ass about my hanging around, I don’t think I’m going to be getting any favors from him.”

Trey nodded. “Marisa is more amenable, however.”

He’d brewed another cup of hot tea for himself and was sipping it at his station at the window. His eyes didn’t have that blue flash to them, and every now and then, he tilted his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling, taking long slow blinks.

I leaned closer to Garrity. “Is Trey okay? He looks kind of…”

Garrity waved off my concern. “He’s fine, just tired. A good night’s rest and he’ll be back to normal. Or whatever.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We finish this pizza. Then I’m taking you back to the Ritz.”

“But I left my car at Phoenix.”

“You can get it tomorrow.” He turned his cop eyes on me. “Looks like bodyguard duty falls to me this evening.”

Garrity had granite in his gaze. Could I see him killing somebody? Oh yes. Up close and efficient. But he’d have to have a good reason to do it.

“Personal protection,” I corrected.

***

Garrity went to bring his car around front, leaving Trey to make the arrangements. He talked to several people on the phone, then handed me a piece of paper with names and numbers on it.

“If you have trouble, any of these people can help you. I’d prefer if you called me first, however.”

I tucked the list into my bag. Up close, he looked exhausted, but he was still being polite, attentive even. He kept his arms crossed, though, and stayed farther away from me than personal space dictated.

“I appreciate everything you did today,” I said. “The ride, the pizza, letting me hang out here.”

He nodded.

“You’ve been very considerate,” I said.

He nodded again.

I wanted him to say something. But he just stood there, arms folded, his body slanted away from mine.

“This has been the damn strangest forty-eight hours of my life,” I said.

“There’s always tomorrow.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s what people say.”

I searched his eyes for the joke. There wasn’t one.