She cleared her throat. “Maybe that’s how it was when I bought it.”
“Highly, highly unlikely,” the detective said. “You still good with us running ballistics? Or should we get a warrant?”
She couldn’t answer.
“Mrs. Donati?”
And she knew. The bullets in this gun were going to match the ones in the truck bed exactly.
Chapter Thirteen
THEY BAGGED UP her gun and the clip with the missing bullets while she watched, sweating like Nixon during his resignation speech.
“Thank you, Mrs. Donati,” Dirksen said. “As I’m sure you know, we will be in touch soon.”
Treloar shook her moist hand. “Sorry for the intrusion. Call me if you have any questions. We’ll return the gun after the test.”
“Maybe,” Dirksen said, giving her a piranha--like smile.
Treloar made an annoyed face but didn’t say anything.
“And we still need to fingerprint you,” Dirksen said.
They walked around to the front of the house, got in their vehicle, and drove away.
Nessa went back inside and sat on the couch. How could she prevent the police from taking her fingerprints? Should she force them to get a court order? Or should she go ahead and get a lawyer?
She looked at her phone and saw that she still had thirty--five minutes until Isabeau and Daltrey returned.
Boy, did she need . . .
A dangerous, ancient set of emotions bubbled just below the surface. If she didn’t acknowledge it, didn’t let it spring into form, she could tamp it down. She could keep it at bay.
A shot.
The thought slipped through the cracks.
Just one more time. But there was never just one time. She had to remember that.
What she meant to think was that she needed some loud--ass music to dance to. Her savior. She grabbed her phone and dialed through the alphabet until she came to an appropriate song. “Good Lovin’ ” by the Grateful Dead from 1977’s Shakedown Street. (The worst--reviewed album in the Dead’s catalog, but fuck ’em.) Plugging her phone into the speakers, she let it rip.
Sweet relief. Nessa danced as if she were at a real live Grateful Dead show back in the day. Listening to Bobby Weir’s joyful singing let her twirl like a dervish across her lonely living room. The song ended and she fell back on the couch, listening to the rest of the album at a lower volume.
More tea. Fire up the vape. It will be fine.
She stood and paced in front of her laptop, pretend--smoking, trying to get a grip.
John. What did you do to us?
He’d brought that ugliness into their home, that dirty world they’d both escaped—-or thought they’d escaped. His very absence, the vacuum he’d left, was filled with crack dust.
Now she got out her copy of 101 Common Clichés of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Sayings the Newcomers Hate and the Old--timers Love. Even though she technically was an old--timer, she hated the sayings, but they had helped her keep it together more than once. She didn’t want to bother Marlon again, even though he always said she should call him any time she was feeling like this. She opened the book at random, as she usually did, as if consulting the I Ching.
We have a disease that tells us we don’t have a disease.
We. There was no “we.” She was alone. Alone in the universe. No one to protect her, and no one to help her protect Daltrey. She went to meetings sporadically and never spoke. She didn’t socialize with the other freaks. She went because Marlon told her to go. When they all held hands at the end of the meetings and recited the serenity prayer in a circle, she never made eye contact with anyone.
She read another one. Damn it.
We are only as sick as our secrets.
MOTHS FLITTED AROUND the light over the front door of the station as Nessa put her key in the lock and turned it. Otto was already there, sitting at the receptionist’s desk and using the desktop computer. Without looking up from the monitor, he shoved a stack of envelopes toward her.
“Mail call,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said, picking them up. The Altair website listed a PO box in LA for fans to send mail to. The Altair -people collected her mail, bundled it up, and sent it to her at KCMA once a week. Nessa was amazed that anyone would actually write on paper, put it in an envelope, write an address on it, scrounge up a stamp, and put it in a mailbox. But there was the stack, twenty high. Some -people still liked the old ways, and she could sort of respect that.
“Let’s turn on some lights,” Nessa said, like she always did. Otto liked sitting in the dark, with only the glow of the screen.
She flipped on the overheads, and he flinched like a mole.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Screenplay,” he said.
This week. Last week it was a chapbook. The week before that, a web comic. She had to give it to him, he was always creating something. Unless it was just a big show. But who would do that? Put on a show just to impress her?
She pulled up a chair, opened her iPad, grabbed a letter opener, and started slicing open the envelopes.