Page 39 of The Murder Inn

“No, Clay, I—”

“I know you want to move slow with this,” Clay said. “Go at your own speed. Figure out how you want to divorce this guy and get custody of Joe and start your new life. And hell, I don’t mean to be pushy. But April, we have to make sure you’re not in danger. And guys like this? They usually have records. They usually have outstanding warrants.” He tapped at the screen again, opened the search database. “If we can get him pickedup, we can at least rest easy that he’s not out there somewhere looking for—”

She was kissing him. It happened that fast. Her hand was around the back of his head and her lips were on his, and before he could even process what was happening, he was holding her cheeks and kissing her back, hard. And when they were done, he leaned his forehead against hers and felt a joy and excitement that was new and foreign and frightening, like it might get out of control and make him whoop and scream and punch the air like an idiot.

The two of them looked out the windshield and saw Joe standing there, watching them with an expression as disgusted as it was surprised. The boy held up the radio.

“Gross, guys,” came his voice through the speaker.

The mounted radio in the dash blipped. Clay looked down at it.

“Sheriff, you about? It’s Gidley here.”

Clay grabbed the speaker, his whole face feeling like it was on fire as April sank back into her seat, smiling, daydreaming.

“Go ahead, Bob,” Clay said.

“We got something weird down here at the marina,” Gidley said. “South end, behind the sheds. Might be a sunken car.”

Clay threw April an apologetic look, flipped his shoulder radio over to the police channel, and turned the car radio off. He got out of the car and shut the door. Half the time, sunken cars meant suicides, and his officers weren’t polite about death on official channels. All efforts Clay had made to get them to use proper codes on closed channels around town had failed.

“OK.” Clay’s head was still spinning. He sucked in the cold air outside the car. “OK.”

He looked into the car and saw April had turned the MDT screen toward herself, was tapping at the screen fast. His mind was spinning so quickly as Gidley talked, Clay noted the activity but didn’t log it, couldn’t interpret the warning bells going off in his head.

“We also got Rich and Warren out on the highway looking for a car crash, maybe,” Gidley continued. “Might be a couple of shots fired. Not sure what’s happening there. I know you’ve already clocked off, but—”

“I’ll be right in,” Clay said. “Over.”

He slipped back into the car. April turned the MDT screen back toward him. He told himself he’d talk to her about that later, call her out on using his police resources covertly, hoping he wouldn’t notice. He was here to help her. She had to understand that. But there was no time for all of that now. Clay smiled at mother and son, picturing himself saying what he was about to say next to the two of them every day as he left the house.

“Sorry, you two,” he said. “Duty calls.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

SUSAN AND I bolted through the forest. Strange thoughts penetrated the thick blanket of shock-induced numbness that had overtaken me. It occurred to me that I’d never run for my life beside my girlfriend. Any girlfriend. I guess I assumed I would outrun her, be the one stopping, slowing, looking back as the gunshots still popped behind us, now and then skidding off the undergrowth or hitting nearby trees. But it was her. Susan had to stop for me three times. Eventually the gunshots stopped, too. We emerged, panting, on the side of a dirt road. Beyond it, I could hear cars on asphalt. Wordlessly we headed there, crossing the flattened earth and entering the woods again. I was sucking in breath hard. Susan met my eyes and I shook my head, resigned.

“No more of those pies,” I said.

She managed a smile, took my hand, and led me on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

NICK SAT IN his car in the parking lot of the imposing brick building in Providence, Rhode Island. To him, Chapel Street Homeless Services had the look and feel of a prison. Small windows, huge slabs of mirrored glass, people in uniforms with keys and lanyards walking busily about. He wondered if it was his paranoid thinking, making him associate a shelter, a center for charity, with threat and capture.

This was the fifth homeless shelter he and Breecher had hit that day. They were hoping to find Rick Master’s sister, last heard to be homeless in Providence. Nick watched Breecher in the side mirror as she walked back to the car, looking tired and downtrodden. She’d only been inside five minutes this time. When she saw him watching, she shook her head.

She came and crouched by his open window.

“Never heard of her.”

“Damn,” Nick sighed.

“I might take a wander around the block, see if I can sniff her out,” Breecher said.

“Shouldn’t we give up for the day?” Nick asked, glancing at the setting sun. “I mean, we’ve got the faintest damn hope of finding her. Master mentioned to me that his sister was homeless in Providence maybe a year ago. Even if that was true at the time, you know what the homeless are like. She could be anywhere by now.”

Breecher sighed, stared at the asphalt. Not for the first time since she’d come back into his life, Nick was struck by how beautiful she was. He knew it was weird to see her that way, now, as pain and uncertainty was dancing in her eyes. And he’d noticed her beauty before, on deployment, sitting across from a troop carrier for four hours, watching the vehicle jostle her gently into a semisleep. Maybe when Nick saw happiness, it just tapped back into that paranoid vein of his mental illness. Small streams all leading to the same river, the same great sea: to be happy was to be unsafe. It was just a state of suspension before an inevitable fall.

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