DeMarco nodded.
She waited for him to continue, but he remained motionless, eyes lowered, one thumb moving back and forth across the other hand’s knuckles.
Softly she said, “You think he didn’t do it.”
He looked up at her and smiled. He saw her again with her hair down the night they had gone to dinner. Penne with portobello sauce for her, pasta puttanesca for him. He had ended up eating half of her dinner while she drank too much wine, drank too much on purpose, she later admitted, so that she would have the courage to say what she had said.
Now, looking at her and remembering, he felt his left eye begin to water. He blinked, rubbed his eye, moved his gaze just slightly to the left, over her shoulder, to a blank spot on the wall. “You advised me once that if I truly want to understand somebody’s actions, I have to get outside myself and inside that person’s head, try to see the world the way they do.”
“I advised you a lot of things. Most of which you totally ignored.”
“I’m just trying to understand Huston from all possible angles.”
Her voice grew even softer. “I wish you would look at me when we talk, Ryan.”
He moved his gaze back to her face. “I need to talk about Thomas Huston now.”
She lifted her chin slightly higher, inhaled, and lost the melancholy smile. “So if he didn’t do it himself but…what? Saw it happen? Discovered it after it happened?”
“Either way. Is he going to blank it out or not?”
“Would you?”
DeMarco put both hands on the armrests, got ready to push himself up. “That’s a big fucking help, Jayme. You sure you need only nine more credits?”
She leaned back in her chair. “You look tired, Ryan.”
He stood. “I’ve been spending too much time in the pool at the country club. I like to sit underwater and look at women’s legs.”
“You still like them long and thin?”
“Jayme,” he said.
She said, “I could make that penne with mushroom sauce you like.”
“Rain check,” he told her, and pulled open the door and stepped out.
He was three steps down the hall when he thought he heard her mutter, “Fuck you and your rain checks.” Or maybe it was only inside his head.
Eight
In his office, DeMarco checked in with the borough police who were monitoring the Huston home on Mayfield Road. “What’s it like down there?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the officer told him. “TV news trucks all up and down the road. It’s crazy. Half a dozen people with microphones standing in the front yard of an empty house.”
“What are the chances you can get them out of there? Off Mayfield entirely?”
“They’ll raise hell and start calling lawyers.”
“Close the street,” DeMarco said. “Except for local traffic. Tell the newsies their presence is interfering with an ongoing investigation. Tell them we’ll hold a press conference soon.”
“Where do you want me to put them?”
“It’s your town, Officer. You decide.”
“That empty lot where the farmers market sets up on Saturdays, it’s only two blocks away.”
“And no farmers market now?”
“Maybe three, four stands altogether. Apples, late season produce.”
“So crowd the news trucks together in the back corner, keep the main entrance free for the produce stands.”
“That should work. When’s the press conference scheduled?”
“I’ll let you know. Thanks for your assistance. I appreciate it.”
He went down the hall then, to Bowen’s office. The station commander was using a hand mirror to look at the underside of his chin.
DeMarco said, “Pimple cream not working?”
Bowen laid the mirror atop his desk. “Something you want?”
“Did you schedule a press conference yet?”
“As soon as I get your report. How’s noon tomorrow for you?”
“Count me out of any press conferences.”
“You’re leading the investigation. At your insistence, I might add. How about you follow protocol and let your team do the legwork?”
“We’re dealing with a celebrity here, and not just a local one. I know this man. I know more about the way he thinks than you know about the way you think.”
“Which is yet another reason why you should handle the press conference.”
DeMarco shook his head. “I’m way too pretty for the camera. You’re not.”
“Listen—”
DeMarco turned and headed back out the door. “You’ll have my report within the hour.”
At his own desk again, DeMarco stared at the sleeping computer monitor. He envied the monitor’s ability to shut itself down from time to time, to turn off the images, extinguish the lights. You look tired, Jayme had said.
“I am tired,” he told the monitor. He stared a while longer, then pulled himself out of it.