I looked up when a shadow blocked the nearest security light. Albers squinted down at me.
“The fuck was that?” he asked. “A werewolf?”
DAY THREE
CHAPTER 27
Home is where you stand on the front porch and wonder which would be worse. To go inside. Or to walk away.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
I’d been to Joe’s Tavern a lot when I was a kid. First my father, then later my mother, had taken me there. My father to meet friends. My mother, I think, just to get out of the house. I’d sit at the end of the bar with my book, while a series of bartenders, none of them named Joe, gave me a Coke with a straw and a maraschino cherry. My mom or dad would play pool or darts or sit around one of the big tables with the half-sloshed day drinkers who made up the bulk of Joe’s clientele. I never thought about the fact that a bar was no place for a child. Joe’s Tavern was warm and friendly, and if I didn’t enjoy the company of my parents as much on the way out as on the way in, it was better than being home alone, or dropped off with a sitter.
I hadn’t lived in the neighborhood for sixteen years. But Joe’s Tavern was a fixture from my childhood and, like a toddler to her mother, I flew back there whenever I was distressed.
“You two sure that’s all you want?” Ralph asked.
Mac and I were sitting in a booth near the front door, nursing our Cokes. I had a headache severe enough that half my face felt numb. The heartache was worse.
“You got burgers?” I asked. “Clyde’s hungry.”
Ralph grinned, pleased to be able to offer something. “Coming right up.”
It had been hours since Roman disappeared. While the paramedics had taken care of Albers, and the ME arrived to deal with Veronica Stern, and Cohen and Bandoni started processing the scene, Clyde and I had joined the army of uniforms who were fanned out through the woods and along the streets, hunting for Roman. But we’d found nothing. Of course we hadn’t. Roman had forced me to choose between running him down or protecting Clyde. He’d been gone within minutes.
At police headquarters, I’d repeated the entire sequence of events for the record. Then Mac and I sat with Cohen and Bandoni and the rest of the team, turning over every stone, following up on every lead, however remote. Finally, unable to think in the panicked bustle, Mac and I had walked out the door and ended up here, not long after midnight.
At my feet, Clyde huffed. He was willing to tolerate the bar as long as it made me happy. Or at least kept me from screaming. But I wasn’t the only one who felt twitchy; he’d been up and down like a yo-yo all night. The vet who had come to see about the wolf dog had checked out Clyde’s injuries, declared them minor, and given me some ointment. But the beast had sunk its metaphorical teeth into Clyde, just as it had with me.
Both Mac and I had our phones on the table, waiting for any news. Outside, across the city, searchers still crisscrossed Denver, looking for Roman and Hiram. Denver’s crime lab people were running a DNA test on items taken from Jack Hurley’s apartment to see if Roman Quinn was, in fact, Hiram’s son. Whatever their actual relationship, no one looking for Hiram had much hope that he would be found alive. Roman’s goal seemed to be to eradicate every trace of Hiram’s kin. Hiram—or maybe Lucy—would presumably be the last to go.
“That was a hell of a shot you made,” Mac said. “A wolf. That must have been something to see.”
“Wolf dog,” I reminded her.
“Still.”
“Clyde was terrified,” I said. “But he didn’t even pause.”
We both leaned over and gave Clyde a respectful glance.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the animal since it first appeared out of the dark. The green glow of its eyes in the light and its eerie grace. The way my gut had clenched and the hair had gone up on my neck. The way I’d felt like prey caught way too far from the campfire.
“Let’s hear it for electricity,” I said.
Mac nodded as if she understood.
I looked down. Clyde had finally gone to sleep. But his paws kept twitching.
“I couldn’t go after Roman,” I said, for what was probably the thousandth time that night. “I couldn’t leave Clyde.”
“I know,” Mac said. “I would have done the same.”
In the dusty yellow light of the bar, she looked as though something deep inside had cracked. Nothing visible, exactly. She still appeared composed, if you overlooked the black eye and the way her blouse had worked its way free of her jeans. It was more a fragility in her posture, a sense that the only thing propping her up at the moment was some dimly registered sense that falling down in a bar like Joe’s was something she couldn’t allow herself to do.
“You need to come work for the Feds,” she said. “You’d make a great agent.”
My laugh was strung high. “Because I’d fit in so well? Me being a team player and all.”
She leaned across the table, gave me her serious face. “You are wasting your talents. You should apply.”
“Mac. No.”
“Yes. It takes a year to run a background check. Do it now.”
To distract her, I said, “Tell me the third reason.”
She knew immediately what I meant. The brief animation in her face vanished. “It’s not a good story.”
“Then it will fit with the night.”
Mac pushed her glass away and rested her chin on her clasped hands. Her eyes turned bright and she blinked and looked down. Tears, I realized.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry. Let’s talk about something else.”
But Mac said, “It was my second case. A child in Mobile was snatched on her way to school. She was raped and tortured for two months, then chopped into pieces, the body parts dropped in sewers across the city.”
“Jesus.” My fingers slipped into my pocket, touched the photos of Lucy and Malik.
“She was eight.”
The headache exploded across the back of my skull and chewed down my neck like it had teeth. “Like Lucy.”
Mac nodded. “We had no suspects, zero leads. So for two fucking months, this guy is torturing her, and we have no idea how to find her. We know she’s still alive because he’s sending notes and photos to the newspapers. I went a little crazy. Quit eating. Quit sleeping. My entire life became that case. I did everything I could, but in the end, I couldn’t help her.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“My marriage ended after that. Who wants to be with a fucked-up, crazy-obsessive woman? That was the worst part of it. Chris and I had survived so much together.”
“He was a coward to leave you.”
“It’s a cautionary tale, Sydney. About not getting emotionally involved in our cases.”
“You’re emotionally involved with this one.”
“And it’s a mistake. It doesn’t help Lucy. It only slows us down.”
I drank down half my Coke, hoping the caffeine would take the edge off the headache. “What about later? Did you meet someone else?”