'Mosquito,' he said automatically, and his face screwed up with self-disgust. He was doing it again. 'Sorry. Lala.'
'Hello, Cab,' she replied. 'I tried you twice. Where are you?'
'The Arctic, I think. I'm pretty sure I saw a polar bear. Anyway, the signal comes and goes around here. Are you still at the office?'
'No, I'm home.'
'Good. You work too hard.'
Lala was slow to reply. He knew she was wondering if he would sting her with a joke. Anything to maintain their distance.
'Yeah, well, home's no treat. The neighbor's yipper dog is barking again, and someone didn't take out their trash this week, and the a/c is broken, so it's like a compost pile in the rainforest in here.'
'Florida,' he said.
'Exactly.'
'You're welcome to stay at my place while I'm gone,' Cab suggested.
Lala was silent.
'It's right on the beach,' he added.
'I know,' she replied coolly.
'I know you know. I'm just saying. The a/c works. You could feed my fish.'
'You have fish?'
'Actually, no.'
'Are you drunk, Cab?' Lala asked.
'A little.'
'So what, is this a game or something?'
'No, I'm serious. If you want to stay there, I have a spare key in my desk. You should do it.'
'Thanks,' she replied, 'but I think I'll pass. We both decided that once was enough when it came to my staying at your place. Remember?'
Cab knew he deserved the reproach. He also knew it was easier to open the door to a woman when he was a thousand miles away. 'Sure.' 'Nothing personal,' she said with an edge.
'No.'
'I called to give you an update on this end,' she told him.
'Go ahead.'
He listened to her quietness on the line. They'd both pushed too far. It had become a sport with them, leaving bruises on the other. He half expected her to apologize, but she didn't, and he didn't want an apology anyway. That would just make him feel sorrier for himself.
'You made the right choice,' Lala said. 'Going to Door County, I mean. So far, things are still pointing that way.'
'You mean Mark Bradley?'
'Yes, but not just him.'
'Then who?'
'The boyfriend. Troy Geier.'
'What about him?' Cab asked.
'I tracked down a girl who was at the hotel pool on Saturday night when Glory and Troy were there. According to this girl, Glory was flirting with other boys at the pool, right in front of Troy. I mean, it sounds like she was groping some of them under the water. Troy flipped. He pulled Glory aside, and the two of them went at it. The girl couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but she got the gist. When Troy stormed away, she said he looked like he was ready to explode. Those were her words.'
'Troy didn't strike me as having the guts to stand up to anyone,' Cab said.
'Well, what if he woke up in the middle of the night and Glory wasn't back in their room? We know he'd been drinking, and he was already pretty steamed at her.'
'True enough. Any word from the ME? Was there evidence of sexual intercourse?'
'He can't say yes or no,' Lala replied. 'That's the bad news. The Gulf gave her a salt-water douche.'
'What's the good news?'
'The good news is that two of her fingers were buried in enough sand that the water didn't wash away all the organic material. He found some skin cells, enough to run DNA matching. Including the sample we took from Mark Bradley. We'll need to get a swab from the boyfriend, too.'
'I'll work with the sheriff's department up here,' Cab told her. 'Just for the hell of it, see if we can get a sample from the bartender. Ronnie Trask.'
'Already in process. Mr Trask was glad to oblige in order to clear his name.'
'Good. Oh, there's something else you can do for me. It looks like Glory may have been a witness at a murder scene several years ago. Sounds bad — a husband torched his house with his family in it. The guy's still at large. His name is Harris Bone. Come up with everything you can on him and the fire, OK?'
'Sure,' Lala said. 'Is there a chance this guy was in Florida?'
'I don't know. Once we get a profile, let's start comparing it to hotel guests. Glory saw someone she knew, and she got scared. If it was Bone, she had plenty of reason to run.'
'OK.' She added, 'You want more good news?'
'Definitely.'
'I got another call. Another witness.'
'Tell me someone saw Mark Bradley on the beach that night,' Cab said.
'You lead a charmed life,' Lala replied. 'This guy had a room on the Gulf side on the tenth floor. He says he couldn't sleep, so he was out on his balcony in the middle of the night smoking a cigar. He saw a man heading out to the beach from a ground-floor room below him sometime after two thirty.'
'Could he identify him?'
'No, the man's back was to him. But he said the guy was wearing a bright yellow tank top.'
'Did he see Glory, too?' Cab asked.
'Not exactly, but he spotted this same guy down on the beach a while later. He could see the tank top. He couldn't make out everything at that distance, but he's sure the man met up with a girl down there. And get this. He says the two of them were kissing.'
Chapter Twenty-One
The Camry dove into the black side door of the abandoned pickup.
Glass sprayed. The headlights shattered and went dark. The chassis crumpled like an accordion, sucking up the energy of the crash in a loud, tortured twisting of metal. The car swung into a dizzying spin but stayed upright, a mess of folded steel. Ahead of them, hammered by the impact, the pickup rolled bottom over top and spilled into the gully on the far side of the road.
Inside the car, Hilary felt her body snap forward, airborne. In the fraction of a second before the safety belt seized across her chest, the air bag exploded at two hundred miles an hour and began to deflate as she crushed against it. The balloon filled her face, and then she lurched backward, tossed between the seat and the strap like a rag doll. It was over as quickly as it began. The spin slowed. The momentum of the car bled away, and it drifted to a stop at an angle on the highway.
She heard a hiss of steam venting, but otherwise, the aftermath was oddly silent. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she blinked, opening them but seeing nothing. There was a chemical smell in the car. Pieces of the shattered windshield sprinkled into her lap like popcorn, and cold air blew through the gap and stung the abrasions on her cheek. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the air bag drooped over the dashboard. Outside, over the tented
