judgment to challenge Dylan to a pitching contest, the prize being Grady’s new bike. Dylan, who’d been scouted by several pro baseball teams as a senior in college, had all but taken his cousin’s head off with his fastball and, at the end of the exercise, had driven off on Grady’s bike, whistling “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Evan stepped back and away from the crowd. Still on the fringes, he watched Annie for a few more minutes, but she never glanced his way. He walked out of the tent toward the parking lot and disappeared into the night.
He drove around for forty minutes trying to decide what to do. When his phone rang, he answered on the first ring.
“ Crosby.”
He listened for a moment, then turned his car around in the next parking lot.
“I’m on my way.”
He headed for Belle Mead, a small town four miles away, where another young girl lay dead, and tried to ignore the fact that his first reaction had been relief of sorts for having been provided with an excuse for having left the wedding.
He knew that it was Annie he’d left behind, and that sooner or later he’d have to deal with that. For now, he could simply tell her he’d been called away, and rather than making a scene at the wedding, he’d thought it best to just slip out quietly. Surely she’d understand. She was, after all, with the FBI.
She’s also a shrink, he reminded himself, and more likely than not would see right through that smoke screen.
Well, so be it. He’d deal with it.
And sooner or later, they’d both have to deal with the fact that while Dylan Shields was gone, he sure as hell wasn’t forgotten.
3
Anne Marie sat at the red light and speed-dialed Evan’s cell phone for the fourth time. He always had his phone with him, and it was always turned on. Why wasn’t he picking up?
Maybe he’s in a meeting and has the volume turned down. Or maybe he’s at a crime scene and can’t take the call. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was almost two in the afternoon. He could be home, sleeping. Maybe he’d been out on a case all night and had only been home for a few hours. Not unusual for a homicide detective to play catch-up during the day if he’d been up for more than twenty-four hours.
She’d find out soon enough. She was less than six miles from West Lyndon and Evan’s townhouse.
She closed up her phone and tossed it onto the passenger’s seat, and tried to ignore the uneasiness that had been haunting her since she’d looked for Evan at the wedding and found that he was gone.
That had been three days ago. She hadn’t heard from him since, despite having left several messages for him on his home, office, and cell phones.
Not a good sign. Definitely not a good sign.
As she turned the corner onto Evan’s street, she was surprised to see his car parked out front. Annie pulled into the space behind his and turned off her engine. Walking alongside then in front of his car, she placed her hand on the hood. It was cold. The car had been there for a while.
She slipped the key he’d given her three months ago, when their relationship passed from occasional to steady, into the lock. Assuming that he was in fact asleep, she opened the door and quietly entered the townhouse then paused in the foyer. From the basement, she could hear music. Loud blues, which grew louder with every step she took in the direction of the steps leading downstairs.
“Evan?” she called.
“Yo!”
Well, if nothing else, he was awake.
She descended the steps into the long, narrow space Evan had been working on for the past year. His goal was to have a fully operational family room-complete with wide-screen TV, a bar, and a built-in stereo-before next Christmas. For months, he’d barely had time to work on it. Today, he appeared to be determined to make up for lost time.
In the center of the room, Evan stood over a table saw. At his feet, a pile of two-by-fours was stacked unevenly. He turned on the saw and proceeded to cut first one, then another, of the lengths of wood until they were all of a uniform size. Annie sat on the third step from the bottom, watching the pile grow, making mental bets with herself as to how many minutes would pass before he would turn around and talk to her.
Finally, she stood up, unplugged the saw, and turned off the radio.
“Why, yes, I was able to find a ride home from the wedding, nice of you to inquire.”
“Any one of a dozen people would have been more than happy to see you home on Friday night. I knew you’d have no problem getting a ride.” No longer able to cut, he started to stack the wood in an obsessively neat pile, an attempt on his part, she knew, to concentrate on anything other than her.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Her eyes narrowed. “You knew someone else would take me home after you dumped me?”
“I didn’t dump you. I got called out.”
“Not another…?”
“Yup.”
“Same as the others?”
“The same-but different this time.”
“Are you going to elaborate?”
“Same MO. Throat slashed. Vic is the same age as the others, but no one seems to know who she is. No ID. No one’s reported her missing. And she’s Hispanic. The others have all been white, reported missing before the bodies were found. This girl, it’s like she came out of nowhere. I’m not sure what to make of that.”
“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”
“Like I said, same MO. Same cause of death, the missing shoes-”
“Any chance of a copycat?”
“We never released the details, no one outside the investigation knows about the shoes.”
“I realize this is an important case, but you could have taken one minute on Friday night to tell me you were leaving.”
“I couldn’t have gotten to you even if I’d tried.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you were in the Shields zone. No outsiders allowed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I did come over to the table, but I couldn’t get through the throng. Couldn’t even get your attention, you were so caught up with whatever story whichever Shields was telling at the time.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“Maybe you don’t know me so well, after all.”
“Are you serious? You’re jealous?”
“Let’s just put it this way, Annie. It’s really tough having to compete with a dead man for your attention. Especially when that dead man was, by all accounts, an absolute paragon of-”
“Stop it, Evan. Just… stop it.”
She turned her back and started toward the stairs. She got up to the second step and turned back to him.
“I will say this one time, so listen up.” She took a deep breath. “If you are waiting for me to tell you that I did not love Dylan, you are going to be very disappointed. I did love him. I loved him with all my heart. I planned to marry him and grow old with him. When he was killed, I thought I’d never feel that way about anyone, ever again. I accepted that.”
“Annie…”
“Don’t. You started this, you will let me finish.”
She came down off the steps.
“The first time I met you, I knew how I was going to end up feeling about you. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. But I met you, and I thought, Well, now, how about that? Lightning can strike twice, apparently. Then we began dating, and for a time, I was confused, because I wasn’t sure I understood how anyone could be lucky enough to find that kind of love more than once. And I knew that I loved you, pretty much right from the time we started seeing each other. There was just something in you… something so good and honest, something that just spoke to my heart.” She took a long breath.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but there was something else I saw in you that I saw in Dylan as well, and I don’t mean this to sound as if I’m comparing you to him. I’m not. It wasn’t that you were alike. It’s more in the way he cared about what he did. It might sound corny, but he took the whole business of fighting crime very seriously. He was always on the side of the victims, always stood for those who couldn’t stand for themselves. I loved that in him. I saw all those same things in you-that same determination, that same dedication-and I loved it in you, too. I really felt that in spite of what had happened, I would have my happily- ever-after. With you.”
Evan rubbed the back of his neck, then shoved his hands into his pockets. He just didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry that you felt left out on Friday. I have to be very honest with you-I did feel uncomfortable, after a while, the way Dylan’s family was turning my sister’s wedding into a sort of memorial service. But you have to understand that this is a very close family. In some ways, they are still trying to come to grips with Dylan’s death. His father will probably never accept it. He’s still reeling from it. I feel bad for all of them. It hasn’t been easy.”
“You didn’t seem to be protesting too much when I saw you.”
“What was I supposed to do, Evan? Tell them all to just get over it, to get on with their lives?”
