Page 43 of The Murder Between Us
“But when can I see you? We didn’t have pizza tonight, and you’ve been working nonstop since last week. Are you coming home tonight? Can you pick me up if you do?” The plaintive note in her voice nearly broke him right down the center.
“I’m going home, K-Bear, but it will be late. I’ve got to wrap up some stuff here, and I’m just going to crash hard when I get home. Then I’ll be up early and back at the office. It’s better for you to stay at Susan’s, okay?”
“Okay.” She paused. “It’s really cool you caught this guy, Dad. Like, really cool.”
“I can’t take credit for that, K-Bear. A lot of smart people have been working on this. Dr. Kennedy has been a huge help. He’s been invaluable.” Noah smiled at Cole across the dark observation room.
“But didn’t you ask him to come help? Doesn’t that make you smart? Isn’t that what you always tell me, that it’s smart to ask for help?”
He laughed. “So youdolisten to me.”
“Sometimes.” He could hear her eye roll.
In the low light, Cole’s eyes were like stars glittering on a midnight horizon. Dull light bleeding out of the two-way mirror curled around Cole’s face, carving his cheekbones and the roundness of his soft smile into existence. There was a name for the look in Cole’s eyes, but Noah couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say what it felt like when Cole’s gaze drifted over him. “K-Bear, I’m going to go. Sweet dreams, and I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”
He hung up and pocketed his phone, fiddled with the folder he held. After his press conference—God, had it only been that afternoon?—they’d had almost three hundred tips called in about suspicious neighbors and men lurking in shadows. But, buried in the middle of the calls, one stood out. The transcript was in the folder.
For tomorrow. Cole was right. Noah was running in circles inside his own mind, trying to understand the curve balls and loops of the case. Andy Garrett, now and then. Crime scenes from six years ago were melding with crime scenes from a week ago and from today. John, staked to his basement floor. Stacy Shepherd, flat on her back and strangled, arms and legs spread, loose limbed like Molly had been. That broken-doll tilt to all of their necks, spines snapped, hyoid bones broken. Petechial hemorrhage on gray skin. Salt tracks down the temples.
“All right. I’m calling it a night.” He glared at Garrett, still motionless inside of the interrogation room. It was like he wasn’t alive. Was he even blinking? “I’ll drive you?”
Cole nodded, and they circled around to Noah’s office and then to the conference room to pack up. Cole carted the case files with him back and forth to the hotel each night. Noah left his laptop on his desk and turned off the lights. The last thing he saw in his office was a photo of him and Katie tacked to the side of his monitor. She’d been three then, balanced on his shoulders and holding on to his hands as they faced the camera with matching mile-wide grins.
They both sagged into the bucket seats of Noah’s SUV, sighing in unison. Cole rolled his neck, rubbed his shoulders. Noah tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
Do it. Ask him. Ask him before you chicken out. Like you always chicken out.
Noah gripped the steering wheel. His thumbs rubbed over the smoothed, worn leather.I wanted to see you again, too. We still could.He cleared his throat. “Do you want me to take you back to the hotel?”
Cole arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re implying I could go somewhere else?”
“Would you like to come back to my house? I can make you dinner. Well, I can make a decent grilled ham and cheese, and I think I have a bag of Doritos.”
Cole laughed. The sound filled Noah, warmed him, and chased away, for the moment, the images of blood and terror. “I’d love a grilled ham and cheese,” Cole said. “With you.”
Noah shifted the SUV into gear. “I think I only have the butt ends of the loaf left. I haven’t been shopping in a while.”
“Lucky for you, I happen tolovebutts.”
Noah slammed the brakes and whirled on Cole.
Cole grinned.
Shaking his head, Noah started forward again. After they left the parking lot, he reached across the center console and grabbed Cole’s hand. He didn’t let go for the rest of the drive.
14
It wasridiculous how nervous he was as they pulled up to Noah’s house.
He’d been to dozens of men’s houses. Dozens of dozens, in fact. This wasn’t any different.
Except it was.
And not just for the obvious. Noah didn’t live in a high-rise condo overlooking the Potomac, or a K Street walk-up, or a Foggy Bottom Victorian. His house was modest, like Noah was, a quaint square house with a pitched roof, a two-car gable garage, and a porch swing rocking in the midnight breeze. A small floodlight shone on the American flag hanging off his porch. Daisies and roses were planted in beds lining the porch and the walkway. To the right and left, up and down the block, were versions of the same clean-cut Americana: manicured yards and tidy houses and, beyond, fields of corn. The sky overhead was full of stars, sprays and rivers of them.
He’d arrived in a Norman Rockwell painting. But it wasn’t just a patina. This was real, and deep. He stood on Noah’s driveway and stared at the stars, the horizon-to-horizon spread. The slice of sky from Noah’s front yard was wider than he’d ever seen.
