“Marty,” I said. “It’s been a minute.”
He held out his wrists as if to say “Cuff me.” Marty was always the type who preferred prison to the street.
“Wish I could, buddy, but I’m working a murder.”
He nodded vigorously, pounded his chest with a tight fist.
“What, you?” I asked.
More nodding. Marty’s life hadn’t exactly panned out, but he’d always seemed harmless, even gentle. His rap sheet was a laundry list of petty offenses, and no way could I see him hoisting a cinder block high enough to cave in a man’s skull. I figured he viewed this as his chance to go inside for good.
“I tell you what,” I said. “Flip your hands over. Let me see your palms.”
He obliged. Sure enough, the skin was scraped to the bone. I decided to test him.
“We going to find your prints on that two-by-four?” I asked.
He looked confused, started drawing a rectangle in the air with his fingers, then mimed lifting something really heavy. There were tears in his eyes. They seemed legit.
Hot damn, I thought. You really never know.
“Do yourself a solid,” I told him. “Hold back on the remorse. You’ll get a longer sentence.”
I cuffed him, read him his rights, put him in the back of the nearest squad car, and signaled for one of the uniforms to go fetch Randy. A few minutes later, my junior colleague came stomping up to me, looking as if his little world was about to implode.
“I thought you were my partner for the day,” he said. “So far all you’ve done is take a phone call and drag me away from the scene.”
I got the feeling he was rehearsing his report to Heidi.
“Sorry, but I was busy solving your case for you,” I said.
“What?”
I jerked a thumb toward the squad car. Marty looked to be singing silently to himself in the back seat.
“He confessed?”
“Not in so many words.”
I laid it out for him, told him about my history with Marty, said he’d find corroborating fingerprints all over the cinder block. Then I asked for my reward.
“The collar’s all yours,” I said. “But I need a favor.”
Randy left me the sedan, drove back in the squad car with Marty and the uni who’d greeted us at the scene. I stuck a siren on the hood, made it crosstown in record time. I was sweating as though it was mid-August, and my head was spinning from the all-nighter, but at least I had the presence of mind to dial the animal hospital and make sure Símon’s hangover hadn’t turned into a sick day. It hadn’t. If Serena was at the apartment, then she didn’t have her big brother around to protect her.
An elderly woman pushing a grocery cart let me into the building without asking any questions. I hightailed it up two flights, rang Símon’s bell to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” hoping to sound playful and innocent. Serena didn’t answer, so for the second time in as many days I broke my way into Símon’s condo. The glasses from last night’s tryst were sitting in the sink alongside the morning’s breakfast dishes. Otherwise, the place looked just as tidy and unlived-in. I started for the back rooms.
“Serena,” I called. “Siesta’s over. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
No response. No stirring that I could hear.
“Polícia,” I tried. “We need to talk.”
I counted to ten, then started opening doors. Spare room empty, bathroom empty, bedroom half ransacked but also empty. I made a beeline for the balcony. There was a newspaper and a half drunk cup of coffee on the table where I’d found English on Your Lunch Break the night before. The small, tan duffel bag brimming with Serena’s things was gone, too.
My gut started churning. I dropped onto one of the wrought iron chairs, held my breath until the nausea passed. I’d missed her. She’d been here, and I’d missed her, and the only place I knew she might be headed now was roughly a thousand miles away, a country where even the Costellos had no pull.
Chapter 24Sarah Roberts-Walsh
October 15
3:00 p.m.
Interview Room C
THE BEST shower in the world is the one that’s long overdue. I watched the blood and dirt, and whatever else had clung to me since I woke up on that boulder, swirl around the drain of Doris’s claw-foot tub and vanish. Then I stood under the spray awhile longer because that warm, pounding water felt so damn good.
Afterward, I changed into a DINER THINGS IN LIFE T-shirt and a pair of jeans Doris said she never wore because the fit was too snug. Downstairs, in her sprawling farmhouse living room, my hostess greeted me with a cold beer.
“Let’s take a load off,” she said, pointing to a pair of overstuffed recliners. “The dinner rush won’t start for an hour or so. I’ll go fetch us some snacks.”
I sunk deep into my chair, sat looking the room over. It reminded me of an enormous booth at a high-end flea market. Besides an abundance of antique furniture, there was a faded Navajo rug spread across the center of the floor, a wagon wheel chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a bookcase crammed with hardback encyclopedias and well-worn dime novels. Collections of cacti occupied every windowsill; randomly placed figurines and kachina dolls seemed to be crawling all over one another atop the fireplace mantel. Above the mantel was a very formal portrait of a man with a thick red mustache sporting a flannel hunting jacket. I wondered who he was. I wondered how long Doris had lived here.
She came back carrying a bowl of pitted olives and a glass canister filled with pretzel rods, set them on a TV-tray-style table between the recliners, and took her seat.
“Now, I’m not one to pry,” she said, “but since you’re a guest in my home, I need at least some of your story. Starting with who or what you’re running from.”
It was a fair request. I started out slow and guarded, but before
