“They came in Bonnie’s car?”
“I was in bed, man. Barely awake. They let themselves in and came to my room and told me.”
“A couple of days.”
“That’s what she said. Said she’d be back in a couple fucking days. At most.”
“And what did Fuckhead have to say?”
“Told me to keep my mouth shut or he’d twist my balls off with a pair of pliers.”
“And yet here we are, chatting like this.”
“Hey, nobody said nothing about there being murders involved. I don’t believe in hurting people.”
“But you know that Fuckhead believes in it, don’t you?”
“I know how he treats my sister.”
“And you too, I bet.”
“I couldn’t care less how he treats me.”
“Still, you probably wouldn’t mind much if I were to give him a nice room of his own far away from here for the next hundred years or so.”
“All I care about is that you fix it so Bonnie can’t hear from him or know where he is. When it comes to fucking up your life, I don’t have much room to talk, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why a woman ever lets herself be suckered by a piece of shit like him.”
“It’s a mystery, no question about it.”
“That place where I work?” Moby said. “Why do those girls do that to themselves? I mean some of those girls are so fucking sweet.”
“They do it for the money, I guess.”
“Hell, man. Women could own this whole planet if they wanted to. They lock up their pussies long enough, every red-blooded man alive would be on his knees within a couple months.”
“Maybe so. Or maybe human nature is a little more complicated than that.”
“There’s no complication to it. Men want pussy and they’ll do whatever they have to, to get it.”
DeMarco thought, This from a man whose pecker probably hasn’t worked for years. On the other hand, maybe that’s why he’s so smart.
“I mean, I just don’t understand it,” Moby said. “Women should be treated special, you know? Yet they let themselves be treated like crap.”
“Happens every day, Moby. All over the world.”
“Which only makes it an even bigger fucking mystery, don’t it?”
Fifty-Five
Monday dawned like a mile-long freight train filled with radioactive sewage. DeMarco trudged through it. All he could do now was to wait for a tip, a sighting of Inman or Bonnie. He felt as heavy and hollow as a gut-shot dog dragging its ass uphill. He wondered where Huston had spent the night, wondered if he was still alive. You never should have let Huston go, he told himself. Should have taken him into protective custody, tricked him, told him a lie, whatever was necessary. You should have recognized Inman that night you saw him at Whispers, should have looked back through the fog of all those years, instantly recognized Inman, instantly fit all the pieces together, instantly shot the beast on sight. You should have never become a cop. A teacher, maybe, like Laraine. Social studies and history, that’s what you would be good at. Lesson plans and field trips.
He busied himself with paperwork and chastised himself and second-guessed the way he had handled things. The mistakes went years into the past. If he had made better choices on a rainy night twelve years ago, little Ryan might still be alive. His house might not be a stinking, sunless cave. His soul might not be a dead leaf, empty shell, dried-up turd, whatever it had become.
“You look like crap,” Bowen told him in the afternoon.
“You are crap,” DeMarco said from the threshold.
“What is this, like your twelfth trip to the coffeepot?”
“Go back to your Internet porn and mind your own business.”
“Get in here,” Bowen said.
“I’m busy.”
“Get in here now. And close the damn door.”
DeMarco stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut. He stood with his left buttock pressed to the doorknob.
Bowen told him, “You look like a junkie, you know that?”
DeMarco slurped his coffee because he knew Bowen hated the sound.
Bowen opened a desk drawer, rummaged around inside, brought out an amber prescription bottle, shook two white tablets into his hand, laid them on the far edge of the desk. “Pick those up, get your ass home, swallow those pills, and go to bed. And don’t give me any shit about it.”
“I don’t take medications,” DeMarco said.
“Right. Caffeine all day, Jack all night, no food, no sleep. You’re destroying yourself. You realize that, don’t you?”
DeMarco smiled, then took a longer, louder slurp.
“Here’s the deal, Ryan, and it’s the only deal you’re going to get. You take those pills, go home, and get some sleep. Or else I’m taking you off the case.”
“You wouldn’t fucking dare.”