A Fistful of Rain

He adjusted his plastic glasses. “I’ll give you warts. Warts all over your face, they’ll be totally gross and stuff.”

“Ew. All right, a handful, that’ll keep my skin clear?”

“For now.”

“Oh, a tough guy. Okay. Next?”

The ghost told me he’d haunt me until I was so scared I’d wet my pants. Both of the Harrys and the Hermione thought that was funny, and giggled. Joan, listening in the hall behind me, nearly bust a gut. The ghost got a really big handful.

Hermione told me that she’d make me rich.

“I am rich,” I told her.

“I’ll make you richer.”

“Not sure I want that.”

She frowned, gnawed on her lip, adjusted her pillowcase full of swag. “Nobody else does this, everyone else just gives us candy.”

“Hey, you want candy, you got to do it right.”

Hermione smiled with an idea, said, “Okay, see, I know who you are, and if you give me candy, I’ll bring your brother back from the dead.”

It threw me for a second.

“You can do that?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she admitted.

I dumped two handfuls into her bag. “Let me know when you’ve worked that out, okay?”

Joan pulled another chair from the kitchen and joined me, and we had fun with it, and for a while again, I forgot to be afraid. It had been Joan who made Halloween a pleasure for me again, she who had explained that it was trick or treat, and that you had to play along with the extortion.

Given where I was, this kind of blackmail was a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

It was when I was dumping candy into the bags of unidentifiable monsters, soldiers, and two teenagers too old for it, but in good costumes—both were Star Wars Jedi Knights—that I registered what I’d been seeing on the street the whole time.

A car, parked just inside the view from my door, across the street. That alone wasn’t alarming, but there was someone inside of it, and that gave me pause.

I told myself it wasn’t the Parka Man, that even if my porch light was on, he had to know it was for Halloween. Since there’d been no return visit after the two cops had descended that morning, I had to assume he had faith that the terror he’d put in me would stay, that I’d pay up on time, without causing him trouble.

Couldn’t be him.

It wasn’t something I could concentrate on, either, with Joan beside me and kids parading to and from my doorstep. Each time I looked out, I tried to keep it subtle, and, once, I saw whoever was in the car move, but I didn’t see any features.

The last trick-or-treater came by just before nine, and that was good, because I’d almost run out of candy. I’m very generous on Halloween, I give handfuls, not just one or two pieces, and some years I’ve been reduced to giving away whatever is suitable in the kitchen, bags of pretzels or chips. I never give fruit or vegetables or things like that. What kid in their right mind wants an apple when they can have a Snickers bar?

Joan left around nine-thirty, giving me a kiss and saying that she had to get to bed. I told her I’d call that weekend, and that we could finally go out to the dinner I’d promised her.

She liked that.

Once she was gone, I checked the street again, and again there was motion from the car, and I suddenly knew who it was. There were a couple candy bars left in the bowl, and some Shock Tarts. I picked it up and went down the walk and across the street. The car was a Ford, blue, one of the newer ones. As I was crossing the street, the driver’s window purred down, and I could see both of the occupants.

Marcus was behind the wheel, on my side.

“Trick or treat,” I told him.

He grinned. “That for us?”

“Sure.”

He reached into the bowl, picking out both the remaining pieces of chocolate, then handed one to Hoffman. Neither of them looked particularly upset that I’d seen them.

“Have a good Halloween?” Marcus asked me.

“Pretty good. I like the holiday.”

“You seemed to enjoy talking to the kids.”

“Why are you guys watching my house?”

Marcus looked over at Hoffman. Without looking up from the chocolate bar she was unwrapping, she said, “Why don’t you stop hiding behind Chapel and just answer our questions, Miss Bracca?”

“Because I don’t like the questions. Because I don’t have any idea where my father is, and I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

“That’s why we’re watching your house,” Marcus explained.

“Isn’t this harassment?”

“No, actually,” Hoffman said, and she finally looked at me. “It’s called investigating. Harassment would mean we didn’t have a reason to watch you. But you’ve given us that. This is what we call keeping a suspect under surveillance. You could help yourself and us if you just stepped out from behind your lawyer for a little while.”

“I like it behind my lawyer,” I said. “He blocks the wind. Why am I a suspect?”

“We figure you were at your brother’s place yesterday,” Hoffman said.

“I told you I wasn’t.”

“We figure you’re lying to us.”

“If I call Mr. Chapel and tell him you’re out here—”

“There’s not a damn thing he can do about it,” Marcus said.

“And exactly what am I suspected of doing this time?”

“Murdering Tommy Bracca,” Hoffman said.

It was cold on the street, and I hadn’t bothered to put my jacket on before I came out. It made me want to shiver, and I had to fight it.

“Still don’t want to talk to us?” Hoffman asked.

I went back into my house without answering her.

CHAPTER 31

It all looked worse for the fourteen years since I’d last seen it. The lawn, once perfectly mown grass, was now marked with bare spots of mud, dotted with tangled weeds. The house needed a paint job. Even the station wagon in the driveway looked the same, just older, more beat-up.

I got out of the Jeep and checked down the street, and the Ford was there, a couple houses down at the curb. It was sunny, bright autumn, and painful to my eyes. The sunglasses I wore today were on out of necessity, not anonymity. Marcus and Hoffman were wearing sunglasses, too. I wondered if they’d gotten any sleep, or at least, any more than I had. They’d still been parked outside when I’d gone to bed.

It was ten past nine, Thursday morning, when I walked up to the door of the home of Gareth and Anne Quick.

Wrapped in precisely the same heavy dread that had surrounded me the last time I’d reached this door.

Anne answered, and she, too, looked like the years hadn’t been easy on her. The last time I’d seen her was when she’d handed me over to the Children’s Services woman, to take me to the Beckermans. We’d spent two