Something heavy and disturbing settled in his gut. Something he didn’t want there. It felt like it felt when he was a kid in his room, listening to his mom and dad fight. Knowing exactly when it would escalate by the change in their voices, being able to count it off to within seconds before he heard her head hit the wall or her cry of pain before her body hit the floor. He hadn’t had that feeling in years, not in years. Not since he sat on that toilet seat with Feb wiping away the blood his father caused to flow from his face while Morrie got the ice and Jack and Jackie left their kids to take care of him, knowing they’d raised good kids who’d know what to do while they went about the business of rocking his world.
He wanted to open his own flesh and tear the heavy thing out. It didn’t belong there. He’d worked for years making himself into a man who didn’t carry that kind of weight around. Jack and Jackie had helped him get rid of it, and Morrie and Feb. He didn’t want it back, not ever. But particularly not when it being there had to do with Feb.
He looked at Morrie. “Bring Feb in here.”
“I don’t want her seein’ that.”
“Bring her in here.”
“Colt—”
“Morrie, this has to do with a homicide, bring her…the fuck…in here.”
Morrie held his eyes for too long. So long, Colt thought the situation would deteriorate. He’d fought with Morrie, too many times, but the bad blood never lasted long.
But this was about February.
Finally, Morrie muttered, “Shit,” and he walked out the door.
In his head Colt went over the crime scene.
Angie’d been done by the dumpster, murdered not dumped, right behind Jack and Jackie’s bar.
Lab results weren’t back, autopsy not finalized, but there’d been no apparent struggle. Her eyes were closed naturally which meant she was probably out but not bludgeoned. There were no head wounds. She had maybe been drugged when she’d been slaughtered, which was good. At least it was for Angie.
Bloody footprints leading away from the body, that much blood, what he did to her, the killer had to get messy. Footprints ended abruptly five feet away. He’d gotten into a car, his clothes and hands likely covered in Angie’s blood, and drove away.
The hatchet was found not far from where the footprints ended. He’d tossed it aside. No prints on the hatchet, no DNA left at the scene that they could find, though, considering it was an often used alley, they were still sifting through all the shit they found.
But it appeared it was just the footprints and the hatchet and Angie’s body. That’s all he left.
And it had to be a he. No woman had the strength to hack those wounds, clean and precise, like he chopped wood for a living and knew what he was doing.
Unless she was a German shot-putter, it had to be a he.
Colt’s thoughts shifted to Feb and Angie.
It hadn’t escaped him as he went through his day they’d once been good friends.
Hell, even as recently as a few nights ago he’d watched Feb wander over to Angie’s table and stand beside it, looking down at Angie, saying shit he couldn’t hear but it made Angie laugh.
Angie didn’t laugh much, never did unless she was flirting or unless Feb wandered over to her to shoot the shit with her to draw Angie out, to make her melancholy face alive again, even if for a few minutes.
But a long time ago, it used to be more.
When Angie and Feb were in junior high, Angie was at Jack and Jackie’s nearly as much as Colt was. Jack and Jackie, and Morrie and Feb for that matter, collected strays. Jack and Jackie’s house was always filled with kids and people for as long as Colt could remember. Angie’s home wasn’t much better than Colt’s so, like Colt, but unfortunately for Angie only for a while, she’d been adopted.
Something had happened though, in their freshman year. Something that made Angie quit coming over.
Colt looked at the note.
Kevin Kercher happened.
Feb appeared in the doorframe and leaned a shoulder against it. She took him in but her eyes didn’t meet his.
He had a sudden impulse to wrap his fist in her hair and make her look at him like she had that morning, like she used to do when they were partners in euchre. Or sitting across the dining room table one of the thousand times he’d been over at her house having dinner. Or when she was underneath him in the backseat of his car, her deep, brown eyes looking direct into his, nothing to hide, nothing to escape, nothing to fear.
Before this impulse could take hold, she lifted a hand and swiped back the hair from her face, pulling it away, holding it at the back of her head, exposing her ear and that silver hoop dangling from it.
There was something about that earring in her ear, the same something that said what the choker said. And Colt understood it then.
It highlighted the vulnerability of her body, enticed you to curl your hand around it, get your teeth near it, at a place where you could do your worst or you could do something altogether different.
Her voice came at him. “Morrie said you wanted to talk to me?”
Colt looked from her ear to her.
She’d changed clothes since that morning. Colt knew Morrie took her to her place to pack and move to Morrie’s, Colt had checked in. She was now in her bartender clothes. Tips were probably better in those clothes rather than the light, shapeless cardigan she had on that morning. Though Feb could likely wring a good tip out of you with a glance if she had a mind to do it, no matter what she was wearing.
Still, she looked beat, drawn. Her shoulders were drooped, her eyes listless.
“Sit down, Feb.”