Possession

As Cait parallel-parked on Trade Street, no more than a block away from the Palace Theatre, she frowned and leaned into the windshield. It wasn’t because she was lost this time, though. As opposed to when she’d been trying to find the hair salon a couple of nights ago, she had no confusion as to the theater’s location.

The issue was the police.

There were six or seven Caldwell Police Department vehicles parked in front of the Palace, and about half a dozen uniformed officers milling around outside the main entrance.

Getting out into the sunshine, she pulled her light coat in tighter and slung her bag over her shoulder. She had to wait for a stream of traffic to go by, but eventually there was a break in the cars and she jaywalked across.

Probably not the smartest thing to do in front of a cop convention, but it sure seemed like the unis had bigger fish to fry than her.

As she approached the knot of officers, several of them turned to her.

“Hi,” she said, blinking in the glare of their badges. “I’m here to meet a friend for lunch?”

The tallest one, an African-American guy with a voice that suggested you really did not mess with him, spoke up. “Who would that be?”

“G. B. Holde? He’s a singer—he’s here rehearsing for Rent?”

“You’re meeting him for what?”

Abruptly, they were all focused on her, measuring her, no doubt taking mental pictures and notes. “Lunch? We were going to have a sandwich together?”

“Is this a regular thing?”

“Um, no. We made the date—er, you know, the time—last night?”

“Do you know him well?”

“Why are you here? What’s happened?”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Cait. Caitlyn Douglass?” Maybe they were violating her rights, she didn’t know. But she had nothing to hide. “Is he okay?”

“We can’t let you inside, ma’am, I’m sorry. This is a crime scene.”

Cait felt the blood leave her face. “Who died?”

“A young female.”

Which meant G.B. was okay—and yet the intel was not any kind of relief. “Oh … God.” Was it a case of Sissy all over again? Or … “I was chased in the parking lot the other night. You don’t suppose this had anything to do with—”

“When was that, ma’am?”

Even more police officers clustered around her as she told them all what had happened to her. And then an exhausted man in a loose suit came out of the theater’s glass doors.

“Detective?” someone called out. “We got a female over here.”

A man with dark hair and a way-too-early-in-the-day five o’clock shadow walked across the mosaic stretch and put his hand out. “Detective de la Cruz. How you doing?”

Shaking his hand, she instantly felt comfortable with him. “Hi.”

“You’ve got quite a crowd here.” He nodded at his colleagues. “They’re nosy—and paid to be that way. Me, too. So you mind telling me what’s going on with you?”

In quick, clear terms, she explained everything that had happened to her the other night, and as she talked, he scribbled in a little spiral notebook.

“Well, I’m sorry you were chased like that.” He put his notebook away. “Any follow-up on the perpetrator?”

“No. I haven’t called, and no one’s been in touch.”

“I’ll check back at the station and let you know one way or the other. As for your lunch, I’m sorry, but we can’t let you in. Everybody who’s working in the theater is being questioned by my team. As for this …” He took the notepad out again and flipped the cover open. “This G.B. guy? Is that the man you were going to meet?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, he’s going to be busy for a while.”

She frowned. “Detective, can you tell me anything about what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. But you’ll hear about it tonight on the news,” he said dryly as a van with a satellite dish on its roof pulled up across the street. “However, if you want me to get a message to G.B., I’d be happy to carry it in.”

“I just want him to know I came … and that I hope he’s okay.”

Which was stupid. Someone had died. Nothing was okay.

After she got back to her car, she started her engine and pulled out of her spot. She didn’t have any idea where she was going, although she did text G.B. at a stoplight, just in case the detective got busy or forgot.

With any luck, he would volunteer an update.

Hitting another stoplight, she made a random turn. And another. And even more, until she realized she was literally going nowhere. Pulling over, she found herself in Caldwell’s financial district, the thicket of skyscrapers blocking out the light, the pedestrians all in gray and black like shadows of real people.

She really needed to just go home, she thought—even as she put the car in park and sat back in her seat.

Man, one thing that sucked as you got older was that you had so many more associations with things. A couple of years ago, she might have gone to that theater, heard that someone she didn’t know had been killed, and probably only had a moment’s pause. Now? After Sissy Barten’s brutal murder, she was stuck in a domino effect that took her right back to that hospital, when her brother had been taken off the ventilator.

He should have been wearing a helmet. Goddamn him, he knew he wasn’t supposed to skateboard without a helmet.

But teenagers were clueless enough to believe their skulls were stronger than concrete.

That had been the transformative part for her, she realized. If he’d only been properly prepared, he would have been okay—he would have survived the impact.

That had been the basis of the fixation on order for her: the idea that if you just made sure you were always neat and prepared, you’d be safe. If you put on a helmet, you would never be injured. If you always wore your seat belt, and got regular checkups, and flossed and brushed, and never, ever took a step without first considering what kind of padding and safety equipment you needed…

She thought of Thom: If you stuck with nice guys who you weren’t really passionate about, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting your heart broken.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself. That had happened anyway. And curiously … it had been okay. It was okay.

And didn’t that make her think about the differences between G.B. and Duke.

She had known that she was going to have to make a choice at some point. She had not expected to have that decision come to her here and now, as she sat in her car at the side of the road, swarms of business types walking by, taxis shooting up and down the street, distant sirens suggesting that crises were all around.

She had tried the safe option once before and the outcome had been what it was—and in fact, crash helmets only helped in certain kinds of accidents … and even neat freaks who relied on order to protect themselves got chased in garages and scared shitless.

Hell, for all she knew, whatever woman had been killed at the theater had had a color-coded closet, too.

There was no protection from injury, disillusionment, disappointment.

God, what a depressing thought. And yet it was liberating, too.

She knew who she wanted.

At least … she thought she did.

The knock on her window made her shout in alarm.

“Ma’am?” It was a meter maid, her voice buffered by the closed windows. “I’m going to have to ticket you if you don’t get moving.”

“Sorry,” Cait said, trying to remember where the gearshift was. “I’ll leave right now. Thanks.”

Getting back into the flow of traffic, she felt a strange dread come over her, as if her destiny was somehow