“I look forward to seeing them.”
“Thing is, according to Burchett and his people, there should be a couple gigabytes of video of you, just the raw video. There was no sign of it on the computer.”
“Maybe it was boring, so they deleted it.”
“They can check for that. It wasn’t there.”
I shrugged and sipped.
“I have a theory,” Hoffman said, after a moment.
“I have one, too,” I told her. “It goes, dinosaurs are thin at one end, thick in the middle, and thin at the other end.”
“You quote Monty Python when you’re drunk?”
“It’s a theory.” I sat at the table, a little heavier than I had wanted to.
“I think the person who killed your brother is the same person who took your father,” Hoffman said. “And I’m beginning to think that’s not the same person who took the pictures. Brian and Chris, they were planning on their little spy game back at OSP. Chris took computer courses in prison, Brian studied to be an electrician. I think they only planned to spy on you, maybe ultimately to blackmail you.”
“They teach courses on kidnapping at OSP?”
“Not officially.”
“So what the fuck is your point?”
“I don’t think your father wanted to go with the person who took him. I think this person is the reason you’ve got a bruise on your throat and a cut on your forehead and swollen knuckles on your hand, and he’s why you spent today running up and down the I-Five corridor. I think you’ve been trying to figure out on your own who that person is, and that for some reason you think it’s someone from your days in foster care. That’s why you went out to see the Quicks, and that’s why you were trying to be so subtle about what we might have found at his place. Forging bonds. You were fishing.”
I looked at the ash forming on the end of my cigarette. She seemed to have paused for a breath, so I took another drink from my glass.
“According to my theory, you’re trying to get cash together, a lot of it, more than you can get easily by yourself. That’s why you went to see Graham Havers. I thought you were surprised to see us there, but now that I think about it, I think it scared you.
“Which means you’re coming up on the deadline, either expecting a call shortly, or maybe you’ve even received it, though given how shitfaced you are, I hope not the latter. Whatever, this call has instructions, telling you where to bring the money, where to find your father.
“Now, speaking personally, I like this theory, and, incidentally, so does my partner. We both like it a hell of a lot more than trying to fit you for a murder we’re not even sure has been committed, and that, if it has, we’re pretty damn certain you did not do. And this theory, it explains a lot of your behavior in such a way as to make it, if not excusable, at least explicable.”
“That’s a good word,” I said, dropping ash onto the table. I drained my glass and got up, went for a refill. “Explicable.”
“Any comment?”
“No.” I emptied the last of the bottle into my glass.
“No, my theory is crap, or no, you have no comment?”
“If you have questions you want to ask me—”
“Talk to your attorney. We’ll be doing that tomorrow. Right now, right here, I want to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“It’s a little one-sided.”
I got indignant. “I’m participating.”
“I almost got killed today,” Hoffman said. “Never had someone shoot at me before. But I almost got killed today. My partner, too. You could have died, too.”
“These things you say, they are all true.” I grinned. “Dyke Tracy.”
“Goddammit, Mim!” Her cheeks looked flushed. “Being lied to, it’s part of the job. But I have never encountered someone as stupid as you about helping herself. If I’m right, if you
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and I didn’t even try to make it sound like I was telling the truth.
“Why won’t you let me help you?” She was almost pleading. “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? What could this guy have over you that’s keeping you so scared and so silent?”
“You keep coming over to talk to me at night,” I said. “Even when you’re being Dyke Tracy, you come over here at night. Why is that?”
“I’m trying to solve your brother’s murder. I’m trying to find your father!”
I shrugged. “I thought maybe it was because of the thing you have for me.”
“That ‘thing’ is rapidly disappearing.”
“Really?” I put my glass on the stove, by the empty bottle, and took a couple steps toward her. She was standing in the corner, where the counter turned, the microwave behind her. The clock read seventeen minutes past eleven. “I mean, really? Because at Van’s party, it seemed like a very serious thing to me.”
“Knock it off, Miss Bracca.”
“Oh, Miss Bracca, huh? No
The muscles in her jaw flexed as she closed her mouth. I liked her lips, decided to taste them again. When I tried to put my hands on her hips, she caught my wrists, pushing my arms down.
“C’mon, now you’re just playing hard to get,” I told her.
Hoffman tried moving me back, to get out of the corner. I let my weight come forward and my arms spread out. She had my arms extended out like I was playing airplane pretty fast, but I just kept falling forward, giggling, and she had to let go of my wrists to catch me when I pitched into her. I tried to get my mouth on a breast, through her shirt, and she shoved me back and then I was upside down, and looking at her ass. That was really funny, especially when my head started banging against it as she took me up the stairs.
She dumped me on the bed, and I tried to stop laughing and say something more, but then I started to not feel too good, and I had to close my eyes and hold my breath. That seemed to help for an eternity, and then, in the sudden dark, I realized what it was I’d just done, and then it wasn’t just my stomach that felt like it was going to erupt.
I tried getting up and slipped out of the bed, onto the floor on my side. My shoes were off, and my socks, and my feet were cold. The room was dark, and I realized my eyes were open, and that the lights were off.
“Tracy?” I called.
There was no answer.
I hoisted myself using the side of the bed, lurched for the bathroom. On my way in, I caught sight of the cable box, and the time.
It was twenty-two minutes past three.
When I made my way back to bed, it was a quarter to five.
I buried my head in my pillows, and fell asleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
In daylight, I spent most of an hour worshipping the Porcelain God and regretting everything, every goddamn thing, I’d ever done, before I could begin to function properly. When I was finished I saw that I was still in my clothes from the night before, and my head was pounding, and I could feel my pulse beating in my thumbs. Undressing took time, and I nearly nodded off again in the shower, and when I realized that, I panicked and fell in the hurry to get out and get dry.
By the time I was dressed and ready to move, the clock was reading 10:48 A.M. I was heading out the back door when the telephone started ringing.
I hesitated, trying to figure who it was, and the thought that it was maybe the Parka Man was what finally got me to answer it.
