Chapter Two
Kaleidoscope
Deck stood at his dining room table, chin tipped down, eyes scanning the carnage in the photo on top of the mess of papers that was spread out across his table that had once been three thick but organized police files.
A kid. Boy. Seventeen years of age. Hair too long. Clothes ill-fitting by design. Top of his head blown off since he put the barrel of a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.
He’d been bonded out two hours before. They were pushing to try him as an adult. They were doing this because, in the six months the burglaries had been occurring with increasing frequency across the county, he’d been the first one they caught.
Not the first one who was seen. There were two others, both boys, described as young, but since the burglaries occurred in the dead of night, the vehicles used stolen and later dumped and no fingerprints, no IDs had been made. But both the others seen were noted as no older than eighteen.
They were hoping the one they caught would run scared and talk. He’d lawyered up, his family bonded him out, but the cops made it clear that things would go smoother on him, he turned rat.
Two hours later, he’d got his dad’s gun and, instead of talking, took his own life.
Bad shit.
Dark shit.
Pitch.
And no way Dane McFarland would make a kid run that scared he’d blow the top of his head off instead of talking. And no way the likes of Dane McFarland could make a kid follow him to the dark side.
He shoved papers and pictures aside and found a messy stack he’d made. He flipped through them, examining them closely even if it made his throat prickle.
Emme. The new, beautiful, stylish Emme with McFarland.
He couldn’t get used to seeing her like that, even as long as he studied those photos. If the dimple wasn’t there, he wouldn’t believe it was her. And if there weren’t shots of her without sunglasses so he could see her eyes. Eyes he always thought of as exotic. Perfect almonds coming to points at the sides that tipped up, back then her most attractive feature (outside the dimple) by far. Now it was debatable.
Jeff was right. She and McFarland spent a lot of time together. And McFarland wanted it known she was his. He did this by touching her all the f*cking time. Hand to her hip, her waist, the small of her back. Arm around her shoulders. Her in both his arms, his mouth locked to hers. PDA and lots of it.
If Deck didn’t know her and he had that dimple in his bed, those light brown eyes he could make dance, he’d likely do the same.
But he didn’t like it with McFarland. It wasn’t just possessive. It wasn’t at all protective. It was a statement and it was borderline creepy.
He couldn’t see Emme putting up with that.
And he didn’t like that she was.
He had to get her shot of this guy.
What he could see was what Chace said. Whatever made her make the change, grow her hair, get her style together, take off weight, could mean she was finally moving beyond what happened to her and looking to enter the game, find a man. And maybe after not having one for as long as he’d known her, before (if what Elsbeth said was true) and likely for a while after, it could make her think she struck gold with a tall, good-looking, built guy who showed her a f*ckload of attention. This might make her put up with a load of shit that might send up red flags she’d ignore just to get that attention, the kind she’d never had.
His eyes drifted to his mantel and the long, polished, handsomely carved wooden box sitting there.
Seeing that box, he again couldn’t see Emme doing that.
Further, McFarland had tried that possessive bullshit with her in front of Deck and she ended it in a second.
He was whipped. She was not the one having the wool pulled. He had her and he was still gagging for more.
This made Deck’s throat prickle further due to the fact that, he didn’t know Emme, he saw what he saw, he’d be switching pictures on that whiteboard. McFarland bottom right corner, Emme, top center.
But, his eyes aimed to that box, he knew her.
That shit couldn’t be.
He looked back down, shoving the pictures aside and scanning the reports.
He got why they pinpointed McFarland as boss. He had a sister who was a high school chemistry teacher in Carnal. He had a brother who was a high school history teacher in Gnaw Bone. The dead kid’s history teacher. Black lines from McFarland to both of them. The sister had a red line between her and her boyfriend, a known dealer who worked the Carnal/Gnaw Bone/Chantelle triangle. Another red line from that dealer to McFarland since they’d been best friends since high school.
But Emme was clear on paper. Copious recognizance showed she spent the night with McFarland but mostly he spent the night with her. Her father bought the local lumberyard a couple of years after the last owner got put away for murder. Emme ran it for him.
She also bought a place called the Canard Mansion.
Deck had looked it up on the Internet and it was a summer home built for Denver-dwelling silver boom millionaires in 1899. It was purchased from them by different kinds of millionaires in the 1920s. Throughout the ’20s, it saw a variety of rip-roarin’ good times but fell on hard times, as did the rest of the nation, when its owners were cleaned out by the Depression. A number of subsequent owners did their best with the twenty-room house but eventually it fell out of glory to become a bed-and-breakfast and stayed that way through the ’70s and ’80s. The owner lost his wife, grew reclusive, lived in that big pile the next two decades and died without a will. His family fought over it for half a decade before Emme bought it for a song.
It was likely a wreck.
He figured this from his Internet research and the fact that reports stated, when Emme wasn’t working, getting her hair done, going to Denver to visit family and friends or f*cking McFarland, she was working on her house.
On her own.
She didn’t have time to work in or lead a burglary crew.
McFarland, however, frequently disappeared, shaking a tail in a way that the task force was relatively certain he knew he had one. Which meant he had a reason to have one and shake it.
Emme didn’t. If she noticed a tail, she didn’t try to shake it. She lived open.
His eyes went back to the box on his mantel just as his phone rang.
He pulled it out, saw the display and took the call.
“Yo, man,” he said to Chace.
“I’m guessin’ you aren’t gonna delay in seein’ to Emme,” Chace noted accurately.
“Her and me dinner, after, we stake out her house. McFarland takes off late to do whatever it is he does, you tail him and try not to lose him. I go in and search her house.”
“Jesus, Deck, you can’t break into her house and search it. Not at all but not when she’s f*ckin’ there,” Chace clipped.
“I’ll wait ’til she’s asleep,” Deck told him.
“You won’t go in at all. I’ve tried to tail McFarland. He’s lost me twice. You’re new to the team and not a known officer of the law. In the dark he might not make your vehicle. You’re on the tail. I stake out the house.”
“I’m searchin’ her house, Chace, and I’m not waitin’ for a warrant.”
“You’re not goin’ in at all.”
“She’s clear of this shit and soon. I clear her house, we won’t need a warrant.”
“Jesus, Deck, listen to me, man. You are not goin’ in at all.”
“She’s clear,” Deck growled, losing patience.
Chace was silent.
Then he stated, “I looked into her.”
Deck wasn’t surprised and he knew what Chace found.
“That wasn’t buried,” he told Chace.
“So you know,” Chace replied.
“Elsbeth told me.”
Chace again fell silent for a long moment before he remarked, “This is not bringin’ up good shit for you.”
“Elsbeth is gone. Emme is not. Best part of all that was Emme. Took me a while to realize it. Now I got my shot to get her back. But yeah, I knew about her history. And yeah, part of gettin’ her clear of McFarland and fast is that she doesn’t need more shit in her life. Not after that.”
“You figure that’s why she was the way she was?” Chace asked.
“Absolutely,” Deck answered.
“Now you’ve seen her and you notice she was the only one worth your time in that mess, you rabid to get McFarland clear so you got your shot?”
That dimple in his bed.
Those dancing eyes.
That hair, now long and gleaming, not bobbed up to her chin and unappealing, doing nothing for a face with those eyes and that smile.
Her body was arguably better before. He was relatively certain she had curves. She just hid them under shit clothes.
She still had curves, just not as many of them. Something easily taken care of with a shitload of frozen custard turtle sundaes and Reese’s Pieces, her weaknesses.
F*ck.
“No,” he replied.
“Bullshit,” Chace whispered. “Not only seen pictures, man, but I’ve been on this case now for months. Seen her in action. She’s your type from top to toe.”
“We’ll talk about you keepin’ the fact that Emme lives local to yourself later. For this conversation, she’s Elsbeth’s best friend, and I reckon neither of us will wanna go there. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have her like I had her and I’m gonna have her like that. I shouldn’t have waited this long to reconnect. F*ck, it was pure luck I ran into her at all. I don’t squander luck, man, and you know it.”
Chace was silent. He knew it.
Chace ended his silence. “You’re not goin’ in without a warrant.”
Deck dipped his voice low. “You know I am. You want me to tail him tonight, I will. But you know I’m goin’ in sometime and that sometime will be soon seein’ as you also know I don’t f*ck around. So you take my truck, tail him, less chance you’ll get made. I do what I gotta do, which is what I’m gonna do no matter what. I’m not deputized yet. Tomorrow, we’ll see about me playin’ by the rules.”
He heard his friend sigh.
Then Chace stated, “We didn’t have this conversation.”
Deck grinned at his phone and muttered, “Right.”
“He usually goes to her,” Chace told him something the reports already did. “That place is a f*ckin’ nightmare and he lives in a nice condo outside town but he’ll go to her.”
“I’ll text you when we’re done with dinner. I’ll go in through the woods. You get my truck, you take the lane.”
“Copy,” Chace murmured then, “Be careful, Deck. Emme was never stupid.”
No, Emme was never stupid. Though she made bad choices in friends, but women did that shit all the time.
“Right,” Deck replied.
“Later.”
“Later, man.”
They disconnected and Deck looked back down at the reports, his eyes scanning them before the box on the mantel again called to him.
This time, it did it in a way he moved to it.
He’d had it for nine years. Took it everywhere with him. Treated it with care because what it held was fragile and for other reasons besides.
He didn’t study it. Instead, he picked it up, flipped open the lid and carefully pulled out what was inside.
A long triangular tube of exquisite stained glass leading to five disks also made of stained glass.
A kaleidoscope.
If you put it to your eye, aimed it at a light and dialed the disks, an array of beauty so stark it made your breath stop could be found at the other end.
You think you lost beauty, Jacob, but you didn’t. That dimple. That f*cking dimple. This time coming out under sad eyes before she’d whispered, Just turn the dial.
Deck pulled in a breath. He reached up, flipped the lid shut on the box and carefully set the kaleidoscope on top, displayed now, not hidden as it had been for nine years.
After he did that, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and made the call.
It rang twice in his ear before, “Nightingale.”
“Lee, you want me to owe you a marker?” Deck asked Lee Nightingale, owner and top dog badass of Nightingale Investigations, the premier private investigations agency in Denver.
There was only a moment’s hesitation before Lee invited, “Talk to me.”
Deck talked and he said nothing about Dane McFarland and a lot about Emmanuelle Holmes.
When he stopped talking, Lee stated, “We’re on it.”
They disconnected. Deck moved back to his dining room table and looked down at pictures of Emme that did not sync with memories.
Then he looked to his watch, gathered up the files, securely stowed them in his safe and took off to meet her for dinner.