fifteen outside of Hangtree, with the window open to the rain and the October night air chopping through him like when he was a kid, but sweating like hell, he decided everything would be all right, the fever would get him through.
Beautiful as she was, with that red, storm-blown hair dripping across her throat, fiery eyes full of anger and faint dignity, Crease didn't really notice her until he saw the blood.
She moved to the ladies' room as he hung back in the corner of the dark hall at the back of the diner, talking on the pay phone trying to get Mimi to calm down. The woman opened the bathroom door by pressing her shoulder to it and letting out a small gasp of pain as she slid inside, leaving a small swath of red against the scarred wood.
Mimi's kids shrieked in the background so loudly that he had to pull the phone away. She shouted his name repeatedly as if urging him not to forget it. 'Crease! Are you still there? Crease!'
'Yeah,' he told her, his gaze still on the shiny slick on the door. It had him curious. He stepped from the alcove to look out into the Truck-Mart Diner and see if there was anything going on. Cops around, a pissed off boyfriend. He saw nothing.
Mimi must've practiced being shrill. Nobody could get there on their own like this without really working at it. 'Crease!'
'I'm here.'
'You should be, you're the one who called me. What do you want?'
'I just wanted to know how Joan and Stevie were doing.'
Mimi's breath slowly whistled out her nostrils. 'You barely see either of them, you've been gone for months, and now you're phoning me to ask how they're doing? What is it with you?'
'Nothing.'
'What's going on? You're getting in too deep in this undercover work, aren't you? It's messing with your head.'
He'd always liked Mimi. Unlike Joan, she had a worldly crust and lots of sharp edges. She talked to him with a dark honesty that his wife had always lacked.
'Stop in and see them. Whatever you're caught up in, I think you need to come home now.'
'I can't. I have to finish something first.'
It took her back. She seemed to think he was talking about suicide. 'But… but Joan and Stevie need you. They-' Even Mimi couldn't quite work up enough enthusiasm to make a real appeal. If he was on a ledge, he would've gone over by now. 'What about your pension? What about your insurance?'
'Relax, I'll be back in a few days.'
'You're not in the city. Where are you? When are you coming home?'
'Whenever I put an end to this thing.'
'Which thing? What thing? You want to come out with it, I can hear it in your voice. But then you put up the wall. If you want to tell me, just say it. Are you drinking?'
'I'm drinking coffee, Mimi. I'll be fine. And why aren't your kids asleep yet? Go put them to bed.'
'I'm going to take advice on parenting from you?'
'You should take it from somebody. Tell Joan I'm all right. And tell Stevie I love him.'
'Like he'll believe me.'
Crease started to hang up but the phone shook in his hand with the force of Mimi's voice, fighting him. She'd been married to a longshoreman named Lenny until five years ago when Lenny decided to throw himself in the East River one Fourth of July. Mimi was already pregnant with Lenny's fourth child by then and Crease, who was only twenty-two at the time but married for three years, a cop for two of them, had somehow allowed himself to be swept along with Joan's plans to take care of Mimi and the children.
They needed insurance. They needed coverage. He didn't know all their names but he'd legally adopted them. Or some of them. He didn't know you could do it and still wasn't sure it was entirely legal. He hadn't quite believed what was going on around him until the judge repeated Crease's name several times, just like Mimi was still doing at the moment, and asked him a few questions Crease had never answered. He'd blinked a couple times and dumbly nodded, and the next thing he knew he was suddenly the father of three or four kids. Maybe five.
Now he was twenty-seven and had a thick patch of gray growing right up in front and he couldn't remember what he'd wanted to do with his life before he'd gone undercover. Whatever it had been was now too far away.
It got confusing. He knew he was a good cop because they kept giving him more and more string, and forgave him for always breaking the rules. The ones they found out he was breaking. The others they didn't ask about. Even under deep cover you weren't supposed to back up the dealer during his raids on the competition, dispose of bodies, and screw the guy's mistress. Probably not, anyway.
Crease slapped the phone down onto the receiver finally cutting off Mimi's voice. They never did find Lenny's body. Crease was beginning to think that no matter how stupid Lenny had been, he'd been pretty sharp there at the end.
The woman stumbled out of the ladies' room and almost did a header into the wall. Crease's hands lashed out and caught her easily. She went slack the moment he touched her. He drew her gently into his arms, pulling her into the glow of the dim overhead light. She was completely flaccid but her intense eyes were watching him.
She had a split lip and the beginnings of a new shiner over an old one. A fresh bruise on her chin and another higher on her jaw line that was partially covered by a halfhearted sweep of flesh-colored powder, as if she'd decided there was no point in trying to cover the marks. Her hair was full of blood. He swept back the damp, waving curls and saw that an earlobe had been torn.
She said, 'Well, you through looking? You can take your hands off now. Or you got something else in mind? That what this is about?' Her lips firmed so much that the cut at the corner of her mouth began to ooze again. 'You want to try something?'
'Would you want me to?' he asked.
His return had already begun to affect the town, his past moving forward through time to meet him. He could very clearly see the threads of his life drawing together now, the pattern beneath beginning to emerge. There were no coincidences. From here on out, everything that happened would have resonance, like a church bell calling the lost in from the fog.
Crease said, 'Hello, Reb.'
~*~
She didn't recognize him, not even after she looked him up and down for a minute. He released his hold but kept a hand softly on her elbow in case she needed to be steadied. 'Who are you?'
'The guy who did this, he still around? Out front maybe?'
'I asked you a question. Who are you? How do you know my name?'
He checked her eyes again to make sure they were focused, the pupils not dilated, no potential serious head trauma. She looked all right. He glanced down the hall to see if anybody out in the diner was getting inquisitive, if somebody might be heading back here to check on her. He didn't see anyone.
A bleeding redhead stumbling through the place at two in the morning. Past the waitress, the fry cook, a few truckers, a couple geezers gumming late night eggs and toast. Nobody even looked up. You'd think somebody might at least angle his neck to see if she'd snuffed it.
'We knew each other a long time ago,' he said.
He realized she'd never recognize him. It was more than the gray hair and the mileage and the voice. He'd gone very far away from the kid he was over the last ten years, until even he didn't know who he was anymore.
'We did?'
'Is the guy still here?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'I think he drove off. What do you care?'
'Boyfriend?'
'He thinks so.'
'What do you think?'
'I think he's the latest mistake in a long line of them.'
He could see she regretted saying it immediately. It was flippant and coy, something a tough chick teenager
