“Why didn’t you tell me?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know how to explain it, I guess.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Noah. Shit like that won’t ever matter to me.”
The fact that he knew exactly why I hadn’t told him made me feel worse.
“I know,” I said. “It just caught me off guard, and I didn’t know how to handle it.”
He nodded slowly. “I could’ve gone with you or something. So you didn’t have to do it alone.”
“I needed to do it alone.”
“Sure. Okay. But you still could’ve told me. Man, I knew something was off with you.”
There weren’t many people in my life who mattered enough to me to make me apologize for much. But Carter was one of them. “I should’ve told you. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t ready to tell anyone.” “You tell Liz?” he asked, glancing at me.
I didn’t say anything, wishing I could get the right thing to come out of my mouth.
“Figured,” he said, looking away.
The surfers who had been in the water were out of the ocean now, walking up the beach, the end of the day.
Carter stood, pulled his bike off the pavement, and swung a leg over the seat. “I wouldn’t have kept something like that from you, Noah. For any reason. There’s no one else I’d trust with that kind of thing.” He paused, lifting one of his massive feetonto the pedals. “We’ve never judged each other, dude. You really think I was gonna start now? Because some guy shares your DNA?” He shook his head, then shrugged. “If you want my help, let me know.”
He pedaled off.
SEVENTEEN
I hung out on the boardwalk for an hour, moping and worrying. I watched cops go in and out of my place. Occasionally, one of them would glance in my direction and give me a hard look, a silent warning that he knew what I’d done to Zanella.
I tried to look scared.
Klimes came out when they appeared to be shutting down for the night.
“Gonna have to keep you out tonight,” he said, huffing and puffing. “Should be able to let you back in tomorrow, though.” “Can I get my hands on my laptop?”
“No can do. Still gotta dust it, and the tech boys will probably have a peek at the hard drive.” “You already cleared me.”
“Not about you. Whoever offed the girl might’ve used the computer.
“Think they checked their email before shooting her?” “Or did some shopping on eBay. Who knows?” “Come on.”
He grinned. “I’m a thorough son of a bitch, Noah.”
I didn’t like it, but Klimes was being a good cop.
He asked, “What do you need it for?”
“Just wanted to run a name.”
He motioned to the alley. “Come on.”
I followed him to a brown Crown Victoria. He opened the passenger door and waved me in. He went around to the driver’s side.
He squeezed in behind the wheel and pointed to the laptop mounted on the dash. “That work for you?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Guy named Landon Keene. Can you look him up on Google?”
“Don’t talk dirty to me,” he said, smiling and navigating on the computer. He hit a few buttons, then shifted the screen in my direction. “There you go.”
Two items popped up under the name. One was a high school football roster in Florida, listing Landon Keene as a sophomore lineman. The other had Landon Keene as a hairstylist in Alabama. I guessed that neither of those two was the Landon Keene who Russell Simington had told me about.
I swiveled the screen back to Klimes. “Thanks.”
“Anything you wanna tell me about?”
“No,” I said, not wanting to get into it. “Another thing I’m working on.”
Klimes pursed his lips. “Alright. Ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“This girl. Gill. Was she tough?”
I thought of her approaching me in the water and tailing me up the beach. “Seemed like it.”
