I quizzed the tenants on either side of Roni’s office. One of them said she’d been there earlier in the morning, but he hadn’t seen her leave and hadn’t seen anyone going into her office. We’d been there long enough that she should have been back if she had planned to be gone a short time. I called her again.
“She hasn’t answered any of your calls. What makes you think she’s going to answer now?” Kate asked as we headed for Staley’s Market.
“Wayne Gretzky.”
“Hockey? You’re a hockey fan? You never told me.”
“Never watched a game from beginning to end, but I’ve liked Gretzky ever since I heard him say that you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
I braced myself, one hand on the dash, as I shimmied and grunted, collapsing against the car seat.
“Left turn onto Lexington,” I said, as if nothing had happened.
“You don’t quit, do you?”
“Try not to.”
“It’s heroic, but only to a point. You can’t keep it up, and sooner or later you really will shake when you should shoot and you won’t be able to shake that off.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Notice that I left my hair alone. I’m telling you the truth, and you know it. You can’t spend the rest of your life asking for do-overs for Kevin and Wendy. First there was Lucy, fresh out of jail. You got her a job and a boyfriend and ended up with her house. Not a bad deal in the redemption sweepstakes, but you should have quit while you were ahead because Roni Chase is up to her eyeballs in who knows what and Evan and Cara Martin may, God forbid, be past redemption.”
It was as if she had read my mind the moment before she left to make her phone call.
“So what would you have me do? Walk away? Hope Adrienne Nardelli and Quincy Carter and Braylon Jennings handle it?”
“It’s their job.”
“And they don’t have the time or resources to do it. Nardelli and Carter have too many other cases, and Jennings is too busy trying to save his ass.”
“That doesn’t mean it always has to be you. Next time say no. Go fishing. Take up golf, photography, or painting. Or write a book. That’s what everyone does when they can’t think of anything else to do.”
“I’d rather shake.”
“I know. That’s what scares me.”
The things in life you can’t consign to memory’s dustbin fall into three categories: first, last, and best. Stick the modifier in front of most any noun, and you’ll see what I mean-friend, dog, job, child, lover, and sex. Kate scored on three out of six of these forget-me-nots.
“Why are you here?” I asked her.
“You don’t drive much, remember?”
“That’s not what I mean. Why did you take this case?”
“I told you. I owed Ethan Bonner.”
“Why?”
We stopped for a traffic light. She looked at me, deciding what to say, until the light changed and the driver behind us honked at her to get moving. She jumped on the gas, the car jerking into the intersection.
“Six months ago, Alan got into some trouble.”
Alan was Kate’s ex-husband, a skinny, humorless, short, hairless, chinless man who crawled under my skin and never left because Kate found something in him that she fell in love with that I couldn’t see, didn’t have, and wished I did even though she and I weren’t together.
“Alan who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful?”
“No. Alan who is the father of my son, Brian.”
“What did he do?”
She sighed. “Went crazy the way middle-aged men do when they think their belly is growing and their dick is shrinking. A woman he met at a speed-dating event accused him of putting something in her wine so he could have sex with her when she was passed out. I called Ethan, and he dropped everything, flew to San Diego, and got it cleared up before it made the paper.”
“How?”
“He was able to prove that she passed out because of a reaction between the wine and a couple of different medications she was taking and that she’d made up the rest.”
“They didn’t have sex?”
“Before she passed out, not after.”
“Why’d she make the accusation?”
“She got mad when Alan didn’t ask her out again.”
“Boy, Brian didn’t deserve that.”
“Neither did Alan.”
I smiled at her. “You’re good to the ones you love.”
She smiled back. “And now you know why I’m here.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
Traffic was blocked off at both ends of the block, police barriers and uniformed cops keeping us from getting close to Staley’s Market, a small crowd forming along the line of sawhorses. I got out, gripping the open car door, and scanned the street. A squad car, an unmarked Crown Vic, and two ambulances were parked in front of the market, a body lying in the open doorway too distant to make out race or gender.
“Oh, my God,” Kate said. “Who do you think it is?”
“No way to know from here. Could be someone was trying to rob the store and ran into Nick Staley and his nine-millimeter.”
“Why rob a store that’s out of business?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You don’t think it could be…” She stopped, unable to complete the sentence.
“Roni?”
Kate nodded, echoing the fear that was turning me inside out. Everywhere I went in this case, I got there too late.
I signaled to one of the cops on the line. When he turned, I recognized him from the hospital.
“Fremont!”
He hesitated a moment, matching my face to his memory, meeting us at the center of the intersection. “Agent Davis. What are you doing here?
“We were on our way to see a man named Nick Staley. That’s his grocery. What’s going on?”
“Double homicide.”
“Any ID?”
“None yet, one older and one younger, that’s all I know. I just got here.”
“Who’s got the scene?”
“Detective Carter.”
“I may be able to identify at least one of the victims.”
“I’ll call him, see where he wants you,” he said.
“He’s probably pretty busy. Don’t worry,” I said, patting him on the shoulder, “I’ll tell Carter you weren’t here yet.”
It was all I could do not to run down the block, visions of Wendy lying on a New York City street, face against the curb, telling me she knew I would come for her as I scooped her into my arms, hugging her, watching her die. Fearing my nightmare’s renewal, I held myself in check. I’d get there soon enough.
Crime scenes are organized chaos, everyone doing their jobs, no one paying much attention to anyone else,
