I swallowed and took a couple of steps back, tossing my hair over my shoulder as if I hadn’t a care in the world. “I have a lot of homework to catch up on, Detective,” I said. “I really doubt I’ll be able to come down this week. But thanks for the invitation.”
I walked away, turning the corner quickly and getting out of sight before I let out the breath I’d been holding. For a few moments, I stood in the middle of the hallway, shaking my head in disbelief. As if I would waltz into the police station and spill my guts on everything I knew about Dru Hollis just because some die-hard detective wanted me to.
As if I knew anything about Dru Hollis anyway.
The thought made my palms grow cold and clammy. Made the mint green crawl up my skin.
I tried to shake it off, continuing toward the office. Class would be half over before I got in there, and my rage at those girls had worn off a little. How tough would I look, how sure of myself, if the door burst open halfway through class and I was escorted out in handcuffs? Walking through the aisles would feel much more exposed than I’d originally thought. Much more like maybe they could be right.
But of course they weren’t right. I knew this because I knew about Gibson Talley. I knew about the threats and about the way Vee reacted when I confronted her and about the black daisies and seeing Gibson in the hospital parking lot.
Instead of turning into the office to get my tardy slip, I blew right past it and through the front doors of the school.
If Detective Martinez wanted to talk, we would talk.
DETECTIVE MARTINEZ’S TOTALLY obvious “unmarked car” was still sitting in front of the school when I left, so I knew I had some time to kill. I decided to drive slowly and take a little detour.
Hollis Mansion was on a street that featured sprawling houses guarded by a sea of undulating hedges and decades-old trees. Everything sculpted, everything pristine, expensive. Dad had a guy we called a gardener, but he was really a guy who mowed the lawn once a week and weeded our flower beds three or four times a year. People on the Hollises’ street probably had fleets of actual gardeners, the type who were as much artist as landscaper.
I’d never been inside the Hollis house, although, truth be told, I probably could have shown up to any number of parties and nobody would have even noticed I was there. I wasn’t comfortable around all this opulence. I didn’t like show.
I pulled up in front of the house and parked. A gleaming white monolith that seemed to laugh at me with its enormous arched windows, Hollis Mansion was impressive, even to someone who’d grown up driving past million-dollar houses. Balconies and porches jutted out from every room, wrought iron and white picket and stately navy-and-yellow-striped awnings. Palm trees swaying gently against the chimneys. Concrete benches and statuaries and fountains. I could only imagine what it looked like inside.
I didn’t know what I expected to do here, what I expected to learn. Maybe I was hoping that Peyton would have left a clue in a window or I would learn something more about Dru by studying the front of his house. But all I really saw was a shiny estate that looked like the perfect place to grow up.
I was just about to leave when the garage door began to rumble open, an SUV pulling into the driveway. But before the SUV could make it all the way to the garage, Bill Hollis stormed out of the house, stepping into the driveway so that the driver had to slam on the brakes. The door popped open and Vanessa Hollis stepped out, stilettos first, followed by long legs that seemed to end in a postage stamp of a skirt. Tucked into her skirt was a deep-V shirt, which showed most of a hot-pink lacy bra underneath. Make no mistake—Vanessa Hollis had some crazy curves, and she was proud of them.
I slid down into my seat and opened the window.
“Fine, you can park it,” Vanessa yelled, throwing up her hands and stomping up the driveway past Bill, her purse dangling from her arm.
“Did you even go to the hospital today at all?” Bill demanded.
She stopped. “I have to work. As you already know. My clients’ needs don’t stop just because someone’s laid up. You’ve been there. Dru’s been there. I’ve actually been there, if you’ll recall.”
“Once. You’ve been there once.”
She shrugged, her purse bumping against her thigh. “I thought you were having her moved to someplace closer to home. More comfortable for us.”
“I’m working on that. In the meantime, it would be nice if you would make the occasional appearance.”
Vanessa slid her sunglasses down her nose, peering up at Bill, pouty. “She’s not my biggest fan. I’m sure she doesn’t mind my not being there.”
“Do you know how it makes us look?” he boomed. “Do you know how important it is for all of us to be there? The media has gotten ahold of the story. By tomorrow, this place will be crawling with cameras. I can only deflect so much. Show up.”
She turned, walked back to him, and ran her finger down his chest while slowly moving her knee up his inner thigh. I had to lean closer to the window to make out what she was saying. It sounded like, “Don’t you fret about a thing. It’s all fine.” She leaned in, nuzzled his neck, and then abruptly turned and waltzed back through the front door. “Seriously, you worry too much,” she tossed over her shoulder before going inside.
After a few minutes of standing in the driveway, Bill Hollis climbed into the still-running SUV and pulled it into the garage. The door swung down, leaving the house looking as perfect as ever.
I watched a while longer, turning over their conversation in my head. Peyton had called him the daddy from hell in that email, had said he liked power trips. Vanessa seemed to be more concerned with herself than with Peyton. Dru was sitting in jail. Peyton was clinging to life.
All I could think about while pulling away was that this was one strange family, and I might be Peyton’s only hope.
THE POLICE STATION was crazy busy, even for a weekday midmorning, and at first I had the inclination to just turn around and walk right back outside. I was never in the mood for fighting crowds—too many things to try to shut out of my mind if I wanted to concentrate on anything, and in a police station crowd, the color of the room was so ugly it was almost unbearable.
Dread. Grief. Bitterness, confusion, rage. Brown mist, bruise-violet swirls, sickly green waves, rays of black and gray and pulsing reds. I clutched my stomach, nauseated.
“Can I help you?” asked an officer at the front desk.
It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. I swallowed against the bile that was trying to rise up in my throat and stepped closer.
“I’m looking for Detective Martinez,” I said. “I’m Nikki Kill. He’s expecting me.” Not technically true—I had pretty much told him expressly not to expect me—but she didn’t need to know that.
She gave me a long look, like maybe she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to believe me or not. I wondered if she gave everyone that look—if that’s what being a police officer in a busy city did to everyone—but started to feel myself glower the longer she stared at me. For all she knew, I was here to report a crime.
I opened my mouth to say something, but she picked up the phone and punched in a couple of numbers before I could. Probably a good thing. The last thing I needed was to be in a cell adjoining Dru’s. Dad would really think we needed to talk if I got myself arrested. The “discussion” would be interminable.
The officer mumbled something into the phone and then hung up, moving on to the person behind me without so much as telling me to move over, hold on, or piss off. I scooted to the side and kept myself busy by staring at a single white tile on the floor. If Martinez didn’t come out soon, I was going to bolt.
And do what? I asked myself. Go back to school? No big, I just missed first period to hang out down at the police station. Go home and talk to Dad? No thanks. Go to the hospital and wait for Peyton to wake up, trying to block out all that crimson around me? The thought made my throat feel dry.
“Miss Kill,” I heard. I looked up. Det
ective Martinez was coming toward me, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a gun clinging to his waistband. I hadn’t noticed it at school, but he’d gotten a haircut—the buzz a little closer to his head. How weird it was to think of him having a regular life that involved normal stuff like haircuts. I tried to imagine him doing ordinary things like mowing the lawn or folding a T-shirt. Impossible. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“Surprise,” I said, pasting on my shittiest smile. I gestured toward the door. “But I can leave.”
“No, no, I’m glad you came. Follow me.”
Every fiber in my body told me not to follow him. Cops had failed me before. Cops had failed my mother. Yet there was something about this one. Something about the way he held himself, the way he followed me around, almost as if he was pursuing this case as hard as I was, the way he made me think of baby-chick yellow and sunshine yellow and the yellow of trustworthiness.
We went into what looked like a small conference room, a square table in the center, with three chairs surrounding it. I wondered how many criminals had been questioned in here. How many had broken under the accusations. My eyes flicked up toward the ceiling, looking for the video camera that was almost certainly pointing at me.
“Nobody’s listening in,” he said, as if he could read my mind. He pulled out a chair. I stared at it, obstinate, and after a few seconds he went over to the other side of the table and sat in his own chair. He leaned back and crossed his leg so casually over the other one, I began to feel uncomfortable standing there. He gestured toward the chair. “Please, have a seat. There’s no need for you to feel worried. Are you worried, Miss Kill?”
I cocked my head to one side. “Why would I be worried?”
He shrugged, turned his mouth down in a thinking frown. “Most people get pretty nervous in here,” he said. “Nobody likes to be in this room. Not even me.”
“Well, I’m not exactly jumping for joy, either,” I said. “But I have nothing to be worried about.”
“All right, well, let’s just get down to it, then. What do you know about Dru Hollis, Nikki? Okay if I call you Nikki?”
I glared. “No. And I know enough. What do you know?”
He ignored my question and fired another at me.
“So you know about his involvement with Arrigo Basile, then, I assume?”
“Who?”
He grinned, a spider-to-the-fly kind of grin, and slid an open file toward me. Inside was a photo—a mug shot—of a bulky middle-aged man with a bad comb-over. He didn’t look like the kind of guy anyone would be afraid of if they walked past him on the street, but there was something in the way he peered up at the camera from beneath his bushy eyebrows that was chilling. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought,” he said. He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, gestured to the empty chair again. “Please, have a seat, and I’ll fill you in.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to let the good detective, Chris Martinez, tell me what to do, ever. But I was curious. I sat on the very edge of the chair, keeping my arms crossed over my chest.
He reclined against the seat back and folded his arms to match mine. “Arrigo Basile is a prominent member of the Basile family. They’re a pretty dangerous family with lots of connections.”
“Mafia,” I said.
He nodded. “They’ve been on our radar for years—we think they have some ties to drugs and prostitution, but we can’t pinpoint what or where. We’re also not sure what Arrigo’s role is in the family, but we know that he likes to hang around women and drugs. And he likes to hang around Dru Hollis.”
“So Dru has a friend that you don’t like, but you don’t really know why you don’t like him, so you arrest Dru? What kind of sense does that make?” This actually sounded like the police work I’d grown to know and hate.
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Sounds to me like the most complicated part about it is you trying to figure out how to pin something on Dru. Who cares about this Arrigo Basile anyway? Just because he likes to sleep with hookers doesn’t mean he beat up Peyton. Don’t you see what a huge leap this is? Why?”
Chris Martinez leaned forward over the table again, concern creasing his forehead. I scooted backward in my chair, not wanting to be any closer to him than I absolutely had to be. “Arrigo Basile is no stranger to assault and battery.”
“Neither are a thousand other guys in this city,” I said. “What does it prove?”
“Listen, Nikki—”
“Miss Kill,” I corrected, narrowing my eyes into steely slits.
He took a breath. “Miss Kill. Peyton Hollis’s wounds are consistent with blunt force trauma. To be more specific, they look like they were inflicted by a smooth, rounded object, like a baseball bat or possibly a cane.”
“So?”
“So, Arrigo Basile’s signature is a cane.”
My stomach dropped. As much as I wanted to deny all this, as much as I wanted to believe in Dru, it was becoming more and more difficult.
“I take it Dru mentioned none of this to you.”
“It didn’t come up,” I said through numb lips. “It’s not like we’re dating.”
“Were you with him the night of Peyton’s attack?” Martinez’s voice had taken on a sudden professional tone.
“No. We hadn’t met yet.”
“Were you with anyone that night?”
I flashed onto the memory of sitting in the window, chain-smoking. “I was studying for a chem test.”
“So your parents can confirm that?”
I shot him my iciest look. “My father can. My mother is dead,” I said.
He looked down. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you suggesting I might have had something to do with this? I didn’t have anything to do with Peyton Hollis before that night,” I said.
“You seem pretty immersed in her business now, though.” His voice was flat, impersonal.
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know why, though! I have no idea why she had my phone number, or how she even got it. We weren’t friends.”
“But you’re pretty friendly with her brother now.”
I blushed. I could feel it. My ears got hot and my eyes burned with it and the familiar prickly pine hue swept in on me. I silently cursed myself and willed the feeling to go away. But when I sneaked a look at Martinez, I could have almost sworn I saw a blush high in his cheeks as well. “That was an accident,” I said, wondering how much Martinez really knew about my life. It seemed like he knew an awful lot. I tried changing the subject. “A one-time thing. Are you sure he’s the one? What evidence other than Arrigo what’s-his-name’s signature weapon do you have?”
He leafed through some papers. “That’s why you’re here, Nikki. Help me out. I know you’ve been following leads of your own. Why? And who are they? What have you found out?”
I didn’t correct him on using my first name that time. My mind was spinning. Should I tell him what I knew about Gibson Talley? Would I ever find out the truth if I let the police get involved? Would I end up in trouble if I kept looking for answers? But I had a feeling he already knew more than I wanted him to, anyway. After all, I still had that unnerving feeling he knew I’d been at Gibson’s.
“Have you ever heard of Viral Fanfare?” I asked.
“I hadn’t until I started investigating Peyton’s attack. It’s her band, correct?”
I nodded. “She is . . . or was, I’m not sure . . . the lead singer. Something happened a few weeks before the attack. I haven’t been able to figure out what yet, but I’m working on it. Gibson Talley is involved.”
At the mention of Gibson’s name, Martinez’s eyes perked up.
“I take it you have heard of him,” I said.
He nodded. “Of course I have. Drugs, assault, breaking and entering, petty theft. You name it, he’s probably been in here for it. We consider him one of our regulars.”
“So that’s basically it. You now know everything I do. Peyton m
oved out of her house and into that apartment where you arrested Dru, and I thought maybe she’d moved in with Gibson, but I was wrong.”
“But how do you know he’s involved?” Detective Martinez asked, his face a tight and intense question mark of scrutiny. “What makes you so sure? There’s something more, Nikki. Something you don’t want to tell me.”
There was plenty I didn’t want to tell him. It was one thing to tell him about Gibson, but there was no way in hell that I was going to tell him about my synesthesia. About the apartment number left behind in that photo of Peyton. About the tattoo on her neck and what it meant to people like us. Those were things the police didn’t need to know—especially Detective Chris Martinez.
“Are we done?” I asked, but my voice was weak. I hated the sound of it.
He licked his lips, thought about it, and then finally nodded. “You’re not in any sort of trouble, if that’s what you’re asking. So, yes, you’re free to go. But I might have more questions for you later. You know, we could solve this faster if we had all the information.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
I could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe me, a look of suspicion that reminded me of cold wintergreen. I shivered.
I pushed away from the table, my chair making a great scraping noise along the floor. But before I could stand, Detective Martinez reached across and put his hand on top of mine. I started to pull away, but his hand wasn’t there menacingly. It was gentle, warm.
“I can see that you’re not going to let this go,” he said. “Although I would highly advise that you do. You’re in over your head. So I will just say this. If you find yourself face-to-face with Arrigo Basile, get away from him and call me. He is not someone you want to mess with alone.”
I pulled my hand free. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”
He left his hand where it was before, now empty of my own. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. You don’t know what it’s like to be in real trouble.” We locked eyes, and I could see it deep down—a woolly, brown-tinged white that told me there was more to Chris Martinez than he wanted people to know. He was asking me to trust him. But how could I when I knew for certain I wasn’t the only one hiding something?
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