The van had no plates.
A minute later, the night swallowed it as completely as if I’d imagined the entire encounter.
Now, on Cohen’s deck, I opened my eyes.
I’d forgotten all about that night. Was it possible there was a connection between the man and the Barbie doll? With the van idling outside Cherry Hills?
A veil of clouds drifted over the stars. The lights at the Walker mansion clicked off on a timer, and the night turned utterly black.
Sensing something, I jerked upright as goose bumps rose on my skin.
A man—unearthly, insubstantial—stood at the far end of the deck, turned away from me, his hands gripping the rail as he lifted his broken face to the night. He was nude from the waist up, his back carved with words of blood and betrayal.
I pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders.
Our John Doe had no face. But still I had not been able to stop myself at the autopsy. As much as I could, I did for him what I do for all the dead. I restored him to what he’d been before violence broke him apart. I cleaned away the blood and reshaped his ruined skull and made his chest rise and fall once more. I placed a pulse in his wrists and ankles and neck.
But I did not give him a face. And I did not make him smile.
For if the dead smile, they don’t do so in the places where I meet them.
CHAPTER 10
What greed, to think others can belong to us. That we can belong to them.
It’s like trying to hold the universe in your pocket.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
At six in the morning, Bandoni phoned.
“We got an ID,” he said. “Our victim’s a local boy.”
Cohen and I were sitting on the deck, surrounded by trees and birdsong and the remnants of breakfast. After I’d signed on with Homicide, Cohen had decided that we should start our days with a good meal whenever our caseloads allowed. Today he’d outdone himself. Egg and vegetable frittata with toast and blueberries. Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Coffee from Saint Helena.
An hour steeped in indulgence before we moved on to sex and murder.
“Go on,” I said.
A grunt from Bandoni. I suspected there was an entire language buried in Bandoni’s nonverbal sounds. Like dolphin clicks. Or whale song. Maybe someday I’d figure out the code.
“Victim is Noah Asher, twenty-five years old,” he said. “He lived alone in University Hills, so clearly not doing badly for himself. No wants, no warrants. Not so much as a traffic ticket. I just texted you his DMV photo. Kid looks like a choir boy. You want to tell me what he was doing on a train out of Nebraska?”
“That’s why it’s called a mystery.” I opened Bandoni’s text. He was right. Pale-moon face, gentle eyes. A cowlick. I passed the phone to Cohen so he could look at the photo. “When can we get in his house?”
“Soon as we get there.”
“I can meet you in—”
“But.” A sigh. “My fucking take-home car won’t start. I’m having it towed to the police garage.”
I gulped down the last splash of coffee. “Why don’t I pick you up, and we’ll head over?”
“Long as I don’t have to sit in the back with Fido.”
“No worries,” I said. “Fido always gets the front seat.”
Forty minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Wingate apartments and texted Bandoni that Clyde and I had arrived.
The apartments, a collection of bland, beige buildings with dark-brown trim, had seen better days. Broken screens, a pitiful-looking playground featuring a single swing, wooden railings that looked like they’d fly apart in the next breeze. A strip of grass marred the otherwise flawless expanse of pitted and crumbling tarmac. The entry gates were propped open, and it looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to the code box.
I half regretted the fact that I’d driven my city-issued car instead of my old Land Cruiser. Bandoni was sure to be unhappy with my ride, a blinged-out black Chevrolet Tahoe equipped with a passenger-seat K9 belt and a temperature-controlled dog crate in the rear. But the Tahoe had come to the Denver PD free of charge—an anonymous donation by someone who said they’d read about my role in recovering a kidnapped child and wanted to make sure Clyde and I were safe in our new position.
While the cars issued to detectives by the city were decent, they weren’t fancy. And when they broke down, the cop had to get a car from the carpool, which meant driving around a piece of junk. Which meant I was grateful for the SUV. But I also knew it was another black mark in an ever-lengthening column whose heading read Golden Girl.
Bandoni emerged from his building brushing crumbs from the front of his suit jacket. He looked unkempt and harried and pissed off at the world.
In other words, exactly like himself.
“Good morning, partner,” I said when he opened the passenger door.
His scowl deepened. “Who sprinkled fairy dust on your cereal?”
“Same guy who peed in yours.”
“Ha.”
Bandoni hauled himself into the front seat—freshly dehaired just for him—and examined the car’s features as I pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. The donor had added every imaginable upgrade, from heated leather seats to Bluetooth.
Bandoni glared. “You’re probably scared to eat in here.”
I wasn’t about to admit that, even though it was true. “Car’s got a self-cleaning function.”
“Good.” His grin was pure evil. “Let’s go through the drive-through at Mickey D’s. It’s gonna be a three–Egg McMuffin day.”
A while later, the Tahoe redolent with the smell of sausage, I turned into a neighborhood of homes dating from the 1950s. I parked in front of a single-story redbrick home with dark-green shutters and a matching door. The door was blocked by crime
