I opened my eyes, but kept them on the far counter and fridge. I couldn’t look at Cody for a moment or two. I couldn’t.
“You held on to this note she left on your car, Cody.” I dangled it by my leg.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile through the blood and move his head on the floor in an approximation of a nod.
“Of course. That was the beginning of the game. First contact.”
“You notice anything different between the note and these letters?”
Now I looked directly at him. I forced myself to.
He said, “Nope. Should I have?”
I squatted by him and he turned his head to look up into my face.
“Yeah, Cody, you should have.”
“Why’s that?”
I held the letter in my left hand, the note in my right, and placed them in front of his eyes.
“Because the handwriting doesn’t match, Cody. It’s not even close.”
He tried to roll away from me, his eyes bulging with horror. He flinched violently as if I’d already hit him.
When I stood, he rolled again, flattened himself below the sink.
I stayed where I was, watched him try to burrow into the wood cabinet. Then I took the butcher knife and walked into the living room. I found a lamp with a long cord, and I cut the cord, came back into the kitchen, and tied Cody’s hands behind his back with it.
He said, “What’re you going to do?”
I said nothing. I yanked his arms back and tied off the end of the cord to the steel leg of his refrigerator. It was a small leg, and thin, but stronger than four Codys even after a day of rape and workout.
“Where’s my wallet, car keys, stuff like that?”
He tilted his head up at the cabinet above the oven, and I opened it, found all my personal belongings in there.
As I stuffed them in my pockets, Cody said, “You’re going to torture me.”
I shook my head. “I’m done hurting you, Cody.”
He pressed the back of his head into the refrigerator and closed his eyes.
“But I am going to make a phone call.”
Cody opened one eye.
“See, I know this guy…”
Cody turned his head, looked up at me.
“Well, I’ll tell you about him when I get back.”
“What?” Cody said. “No, tell me. What guy?”
I left him there and let myself out the sliding glass doors onto his porch. I left the yard through the tall wooden gate, then through Cody’s side yard and reached the front of the house. I picked up the morning
I let myself into the garage through the door Bubba and I had left through last time, and used my cellular as I stood in the cool dark by Cody’s Audi.
“McGuire’s,” a man’s voice said.
“This Big Rich?”
“This is Big Rich.” The voice was wary now.
“Hey, Big Rich, it’s Patrick Kenzie. I’m looking for Sully.”
“Oh, hey, Patrick! What’s going on?”
“Same old.”
“I hear that, brother. Yeah, hang on, Sully’s in back.”
I waited a moment and then Martin Sullivan picked up the line in the back room of McGuire’s tavern.
“Sully.”
“What’s up, Sul?”
“Patrick. What’s shaking?”
“I got a live one for you.”
His voice darkened. “No shit? No doubts?”
“None whatsoever.”
“And someone’s tried to reason with him?”
“Uh-huh. Conversion seems out of the question.”
“Well, it’s rare,” Sully said. “That disease is like Ebola, man.”
“Yeah.”
“He waiting?”
“Yeah. He’s not going anywhere.”
“I got a pen.”
I gave him the address.
“Look, Sul, there are some extenuating circumstances here. Barely, but they exist.”
“So?”
“So don’t make the damage permanent, just severe.”
“All right.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No sweat. You be there?”
“I’ll be long gone,” I said.
“Thanks for the tip, brother. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe anybody anything, man.”
“Peace.” He hung up.
I found a roll of electrical tape on a shelf and then let myself back into the house through the other door in the garage, came out into a rec room, empty except for a Stair-Master in the center, a few curling bars on the floor. I walked through that and opened another door onto the kitchen, took two steps, and was standing over Cody Falk again.
“What guy?” he said immediately. “You said you knew a guy. Who are you talking about?”
I said, “Cody, this is very important.”
“What guy?”
“Shut up about the guy. I’ll get to him. Cody, listen to me.”
He looked up at me, all sweet and harmless and willing to please suddenly, the fear treading water like mad behind his eyes.
“I need an honest answer, and I don’t care what it is. I won’t blame you on this one. I just need to know. Did you or did you not vandalize Karen Nichols’s car?”
The same confusion I’d seen in his face that night I’d come here with Bubba filled it again.
“No,” he said firmly. “I…I mean, that’s not my style. Why would I fuck up a perfectly good car?”
I nodded. He was telling the truth.
And some small alarm bell had gone off in my head that night in the garage with Bubba, but I’d been too angry at Cody’s stalking and rape history to listen to it.
“You really didn’t, did you?”
He shook his head. “No.” He glanced at his ankle. “Could I have some ice?”
“Don’t you want to hear about this guy?”
He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Who is he?”
“He’s a nice guy mostly. Regular dude, works a job, has a life. But a decade ago two sick fucks broke into his house and raped his wife and daughter when he wasn’t home. They never caught the guys. His wife recovered as best women can after encounters with assholes like you, but his daughter, Cody? She just locked herself up in her
