The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 19

Trey looked up from his paperwork at my knock. I sat in his client chair, facing him, my tote bag in my lap. I realized I was clutching it like a life preserver and released my grip. Trey waited, politely.

“You wanted to see me,” he finally said.

“Yes.”

He waited some more. This was the part where I gave up the goods and threw the whole mess in his lap—the phone call at midnight, the target on my car, the grave in the cemetery, the sister in the courtyard—and let him sort it out. It was what he did. His resumé said so.

So why wasn’t it coming out of my mouth? I trusted him, didn’t I? I’d said as much to Garrity last night. But then I’d gone snooping, and then I’d found that article, the thing that Garrity wasn’t telling me…

Trey was patient. He picked up a pen and held it poised over a blank yellow pad. The office was silent.

I clutched my bag tighter. “There’s something—”

A knock interrupted me. A woman stood in the doorway, arms folded. “Tai Randolph,” she said. “They told me you were here.”

I turned to face her. She was tall and rectangular, like the prow of a dragon ship, an effect intensified by ice-gray eyes and a platinum chignon. Her voice reverberated deep and womanly, and she wore a black pantsuit cut like one of Trey’s. Her nails were a flamboyant extravagance, however, as pink as frozen raspberries.

Trey stood. “Marisa. I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

So this was my mysterious benefactor. Up close, she was all artifice—the porcelain skin the result of an expert make-up job, the hair a shimmering monotone, the eye color too perfect to be anything but contacts.

She gestured my way with a manila folder. “Your brother has mentioned that you were interested in a job here, as one of our research assistants.”

I noticed my name typed on the label. My dossier, I guessed. “Eric’s sweet. But I’ve got a job.”

“The gun shop, yes. He mentioned that. We were hoping you would change your mind.”

She tossed the folder in Trey’s inbox, and he promptly filed it in one of his meticulous drawers. Probably under T for Trouble. Cross-indexed under P for Problem.

“Eric is a fine employee,” she continued. “We’re very happy to have him here at Phoenix.”

“Eric is something else, that’s for sure.”

She smiled without showing her teeth. “I hope he has a long and successful career with us. I really do.”

I didn’t miss the implication. Apparently the only thing standing in my brother’s way was me, which meant that for his sake, I’d better behave.

She turned to Trey. “I need to see you when you’re done.”

“Certainly.”

“With a full report.”

“Of course.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, casually, like a friend might. His expression didn’t soften. They were bookends, these two, equally civilized, equally dangerous. Marisa might sport a French manicure, but she could kill too, without breaking a nail or smearing her lipstick. For all I knew, she was the one sticking threatening notes on my car—it would suit her purposes if I stayed still and scared.

She retracted her hand. “Tell me, Tai, what brings you here this afternoon?”

“I came to pick up my car.”

“Trey was helping you with that?”

“No, he…” I took a deep breath. “I just wanted to thank him, for last night. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

“I can only imagine.” She said it with a shake of her head. “Please let Trey know if there’s anything else we can do for you. He knows to keep me informed.”

She said this with a meaningful look Trey’s way, and then she was gone. Trey sat back down. He looked a little dazed.

“That was a threat,” I said. “A very pretty one.”

“It was a reminder.” He adjusted his in-box so that all the edges were straight once again, then returned his attention to me. “You said you needed to see me?”

I held the bag in my lap. Trey was a fortress too, like Marisa, all veneer and protocol. He’d do whatever she told him too—that was part of the rules. Suddenly all I wanted to do was get out of his expensive ergonomic client chair and go someplace real and gritty, with dirt and randomness.

I stood, shouldered my bag. “No. It’s okay. I can handle things.”

Trey’s eyes were placid, but there was that definite edge in there, like the glint of a switchblade. The lie was written all over my face. And yet, once again, he didn’t call me on it. He just nodded.

“I’ll walk you down then.”

***

Back at the shop, I scrubbed the linoleum until my elbows hurt, then attacked the cobwebs. I opened the front door and flooded the place in late afternoon light. With clean windows, the shop looked friendlier, warmer. I could see it tricked out with cherry-stained bookshelves, maybe a thick bright rug. A plant, something hardy and unkillable.

“So this is it,” Garrity said from the doorway. “When you told me the address, I couldn’t remember ever coming here. But now I do.”

He held a bag of food that smelled of roasted meat and chili peppers. He closed the door behind him and the bell dingled cheerily. “I hope you like Cuban food. I brought enough to share.”

I hid the overflowing ashtray behind the coffeemaker. “Good. We can eat, and you can tell me about the shooting.”

“What shooting?”

“The one involving Trey.”

Garrity sighed. He put the bag on the counter and turned to face me. “So you know.”

“I know that Trey resigned afterward, that there was an official investigation and that he was cleared of all charges. I know that you were a witness, my brother too. But that’s all I know. I got overwhelmed and gave up around one o’clock. You feel like filling me in on the rest?”

Garrity stared out the window. He was trying hard to be indifferent about this, and I was trying just as damn hard, but failing miserably.

Minefields. God, I hated them.

“It was maybe six months after the accident,” he began. “Trey was hard as hell to work with. He was in PT, OT, all kinds of therapy. He’d get frustrated at the least thing, then veer back to calm, but it was this scary calm. He still followed orders, though, still had the skills. So he kept his gun and his badge.

“And then one night we were on our way home and stopped to get some gas. Off duty. Unfortunately, this prick decides to take the register and pulls out this piece, waves it around. Trey draws and fires. Drops him in one, I mean, right through the heart.”

“I take it that’s not procedure?”

“Oh, hell no. You tell them to drop their weapon, give them a chance to end it peacefully.”

I made a noise. “I think I like Trey’s way better.”

Garrity’s voice rose. “Look, did the jerk deserve to die? Maybe yes. But that wasn’t the way to do it, because the moment he shot him, Trey became a liability.”

I put down my broom. “So what happened?”

“There was a review, of course. Your brother was called as an expert witness—that’s how he and I met. Based on my testimony, OPS ruled it justifiable use of deadly force. No indictment. The other people there—the clerk, this kid in line behind us—they testified to the same thing I did, that the punk was getting ready to fire, and that by acting when he did, Trey probably saved our necks.”

“Well, was he?”

“What?”

“Was the guy getting ready to fire?”

Garrity didn’t look at me. “That’s what I testified to.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It should.”

I moved to stand beside him. “So what happened to Trey?”

“He resigned. He was a disaster waiting to happen, and we all knew it, even Trey. But your brother had connections at Phoenix, and they agreed to take him on.”

“Phoenix hired him with that kind of history?”

“Your brother explained that the injury only affected certain functions, like making judgment calls or understanding emotional contexts. Trey actually got better at other things—long-term memory, focus, linear analysis.”

“So Eric fudged the facts to get him a job at Phoenix?”

Garrity made a face. “Hell no, he just explained that as long as Trey works within certain boundaries—lots of rules, highly organized structures—he’s capable of some amazing shit.”

“Like the lying thing?”

“Like that, yeah. So now his job is premises liability, knocking holes in other people’s security systems and then fixing them. It’s all simulations, though, so nobody ever gets shot for real, and he’s so damn good at it, it’s scary. Plus, the Armani routine impresses the hot shot clientele.”

“That’s the second time you’ve used the word ‘scary.’”

“If the shoe fits.” He shot me a sideways glance, and then his mouth softened at the corners. “I’m not trying to frighten you; I’m just being honest.”

I pulled off my blue rubber gloves with a thwack. His every word rang with deliberate honesty. Why then was every secret of mine still in that tote bag? I railed at Eric for keeping things from me and then proceeded to do the same thing. Were we really that much alike? Was I that calculating?

I wiped my hands. They were pasty and shriveled, like they’d been submerged in brackish water. “Is he going to get better?”

Garrity shook his head. “No. He learns how to handle things better, so he improves in some ways. His brain adapts. But the injury is permanent.”

I remembered the way words eluded him sometimes, the way he repeated things. The way he stood too close. But I also remembered the shelves of books on neuroscience. Trey hadn’t given up. He was still fighting.

Garrity laid out containers of food, yellow rice and pulled pork. “Listen, I may not be his partner anymore, but I trust him with my back. He has bizarre rules coming out his ears, but his main operating procedure is the one he learned in Catholic school—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

I picked up one of the forks. “So I’m supposed to trust him because a bunch of nuns taught him the Golden Rule?”

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it. And you might want to lay off brandishing weapons at him. You do not want to trigger that Special Ops training.”

***

Once Garrity left, I cleaned until I couldn’t see straight. I thought about crashing on the sofa bed in Dexter’s office, but then I remembered the photo of me with the bullet hole through the center, and my stubborn streak vanished.

The Ritz received me once again, as plush and predictable as Phoenix. My gritty hair and sweat-drenched clothes earned me horrified glances from the other guests, as if I were wearing convict stripes and leg irons.

The desk clerk displayed no such aversion. “Ms. Randolph?”

I turned around. So much for surreptitious. “Yes?”

“A gentleman left a package for you.” She pulled a manila envelope from under the counter. I immediately recognized Rico’s heavy scrawl across the flap: CONFIDENTIAL—FOR TAI RANDOLPH ONLY!

I thanked her and took it to my room, where I opened it while the bath ran, hot and steamy. It contained several printed pages, official documents on William Aloysius Perkins AKA Bulldog. I examined the first one, not sure I was seeing what I was seeing. But when I figured out what I was looking at, I knew Janie and I were having another talk, even if I had to corral her in a bathroom again.