Why wasn’t Sam saying anything? It was true that Lacey usually took the lead in interviews, but Sam knew the girl. Lacey would have thought he’d start the conversation.
Apparently not.
“So tell us about Kyle’s disappearance,” she said in as neutral a voice as she could muster.
Courtney smoothed the hem of her tank top down over her shorts. She had dark purple—almost black, like her eye liner—nail polish on her short, ragged nails. Lacey wondered if the chewed-up edges were a new development, or if the girl were just naturally a nail-biter.
“He’d been acting weird,” Courtney started. Her voice was soft and tentative. She peeked up at Sam, and he nodded for her to go on. “Jumpy, you know? When I asked him if anything was wrong, he said no. But the body shop hadn’t needed him for almost a week, and we were scrimping. My job was only part time and didn’t pay much. I thought he could go out and check other body shops, see if any of them needed a welder, but he just got mad.”
“How long ago was this?” Lacey asked. As she spoke, she got up and retrieved her purse, pulling out her notebook and a pen.
“Oh, maybe two weeks ago,” Courtney said. She waited while Lacey jotted a few notes.
“And then?” Lacey prompted.
“Then, a week ago Friday, I got home and he wasn’t there. He didn’t usually leave me a note or anything, but I figured he’d gotten a call to work or had just gone out for a while. He never came back.”
Lacey noted the days. Today was Tuesday, so he’d been missing a week and a half.
“Had he ever taken off like that before? Gone away and not told you?”
Courtney looked uncomfortable. “Sometimes. But usually only a couple of days or so. Not like this.”
Probably out on a bender, Lacey guessed. Drug addicts weren’t the most dependable souls on the planet.
“You said he owed money?” Lacey asked.
“Yeah. His supplier.”
“Is this Willie?”
Courtney nodded.
“Any last name?”
The girl shook her head. “Not that I ever heard.”
For the first time, Lacey examined Courtney for signs of drug use. The girl’s teeth looked okay, and there were no signs of needle tracks on her bare arms. She was thin, but not the burnt-out thin of a meth addict. Her nervousness was the usual kind when being questioned by a stranger, not the twitchy, zingy nervousness of a cocaine user.
“Was he your supplier, too?” Lacey asked.
Courtney looked as if Lacey had slapped her. “I don’t do drugs,” she said, her voice taking on an edge.
“Okay,” Lacey said, backing off. It was worth a try. “Can you describe Willie for us?”
The shy tentativeness was back. “I, uh, only saw him once. He came to the motel one night, and Kyle went outside to talk to him. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he was kind of heavy, dark curly hair and a big bulby nose. Kinda greasy-looking.”
“Same height as Kyle? Taller? Shorter?”
“Shorter,” Courtney said. “Kyle was six foot, so Willie was probably five eight.”
“I’m assuming Kyle would call when he wanted a supply. Did you know a phone number?”
“No. He’d usually call when I wasn’t around. He knew I didn’t like him using.”
“And his cell phone? Did it disappear with him?”
Courtney nodded. Lacey noticed a slight quiver of her chin.
“Okay. Let’s get some particulars. What’s the address of that motel you were living in, and the body shop where he worked?”
Courtney supplied the addresses and Lacey jotted them down. She and Sam could pinpoint them on the map later.
She turned her attention to Sam then. “Can you think of any other places we should check out?”
Sam pulled his arm from the back of the couch and angled slightly away from Courtney so they could face each other.
“Were there any places that he hung around a lot? Any places he met people, or just went to chill?”
Courtney looked down and picked at the flaking nail polish on her fingers.
“The airport,” she mumbled.
Sam flashed a look of puzzlement at Lacey. “McCarran?” he asked.
Courtney shook her head. “North Las Vegas Airport. It’s smaller, and there’s a road near the end of the runway where he liked to sit and watch the planes take off.”
Lacey wrote that down.
“Anyplace else?” Sam pressed.
Courtney pulled in a deep breath. “There’s a park near the air force base. A lot of people… meet there. He wouldn’t tell me, but I think he’d meet Willie there.”
“Where is it exactly?” Sam asked.
Lacey wrote down the directions as Courtney gave them. It would be easy to recognize; every large city had parks like that, either downtown or on the fringes. Places frequented by druggies, the homeless, vagrants. Sad places. Dangerous places.
She looked back over her notes. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was more than they had before. She glanced up at Sam, met his eyes and shrugged.
“Anything else you can tell us?” he asked Courtney.
She was silent a moment, picking her fingernails, then shook her head. Finally she raised her head and stared at Sam. “Do you think you can… find him?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Sam covered her hands with one of his. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said sincerely.
She tried out a feeble smile, then just nodded instead. Lacey could see she was on the verge of tears.
“You’ve got Sam’s number,” Lacey said to get past the impending outpouring. “Here’s my card with my number, too, just in case.” Lacey handed the card to Courtney. “If you think of anything that might shed more light on this, call us.”
Courtney looked at the card for a second, then stood up and slid it into the pocket of her shorts. Sam came to his feet beside her, and Lacey set her notebook down and stood as well.
“You’re staying with friends?” Sam asked as he put one arm around Courtney’s shoulders and steered her toward the door.
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. We’ll call you as soon as we know anything. There’s just no telling what we’ll find or when.”
Courtney stopped short of the door, biting her lip and staring down at her feet. She slid out from under Sam’s arm and turned toward him.
“Could I… go with you? Maybe I could, um, help?” She glanced down again uneasily. “I, uh, don’t have a job anymore, and I don’t like staying by myself all day.”
Lacey shifted her gaze to Sam. She’d thought he’d confer with her about this, but his eyes remained on Courtney.
“Sure,” he said. “We can pick you up at, oh, say nine? Is that good?”
“Yeah. I’ll be ready.”
Lacey dashed back to the couch to get her notebook. “The address?” she asked a bit testily.
Courtney rattled it off and Lacey wrote.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Get some rest.”
Courtney nodded. Sam opened the door for her and she slid out, glancing first up and down the hall. Then she looked back at both Sam and Lacey, waved, and walked away.
As soon as Sam had closed the door, Lacey went to the dining room table with her notebook and unfolded the map of Vegas. She found the North Las Vegas Airport and the park near the air force base pretty easily, but had to check the index for the addresses of the motel and body shop. Head down, she found those locations as well, and marked the map with her pen.
“You wanna talk about it?” Sam asked.
Lacey startled slightly, then held her body very still. “Talk about what?” she said, her voice carefully casual. She was too engrossed in the map to look up, and continued to trace the route from their hotel to the various locations.
Sam sat down across from her at the table and laid both arms on the map. “What is it? Do you not like her for some reason?”
Lacey considered prete
nding to be too busy to look up, but his spread hands were obscuring the part of the map she was studying. She gathered herself, then glanced up at him.
“Since when has liking or not liking a client had anything to do with anything?” she asked. “We’re looking for Kyle. That’s all that matters.”
She looked down again, and carefully moved one of Sam’s hands off to the side.
“Courtney’s here, so we can pick her up first, then loop around to the motel, the airport, the body shop and the park.” She followed the route with one finger gliding across the map as she spoke. “Unless you want to go in a different order?”
Now she looked up and met his eyes, her own carefully emotionless, wide and direct. Sam just stared at her, his mouth a thin line. Finally Lacey arched an eyebrow at him and angled her head back toward the map.
“That’s fine,” he said, his jaw tight. “But Lacey—”
“You know what?” she said abruptly. She put her notebook aside and began folding up the map. “I think I’m going to have a little ice cream, watch the news, then go to bed. It’s been a long day. I’m tired, and we’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.” She got the map accordioned back into its compact folds and set it next to her notebook. Then she stood and went to the fridge. “You want some, too?”
Sam didn’t answer as she pulled the carton from the freezer. She set it on the counter, then opened the cabinet where the few Corelle bowls were. She grabbed one, then looked over her shoulder at Sam.
“Sure,” he said. His eyes looked like chips of dark glass.
Ignoring the brittle nature of his voice, she got a second bowl and began scooping ice cream. She gave herself two scoops, Sam three. She’d never known a man who was satisfied with only two scoops. Once she finished and put the carton away, she handed Sam’s bowl to him, took her own and folded herself into the chair beside the couch. She clicked on the TV with the remote and fished around for local news. It would have been nice—sort of—to hear about the recovered body of one Kyle Arredondo.
After a moment, Sam came and settled on the couch. He pulled off his cowboy boots and sat back, levering his stocking feet up on the small coffee table.
Lacey watched the news with her eyes, but most of her attention was angled sideways where Sam sat just at the edge of her peripheral vision. Part of her wanted to dissect these prickly impulses she was feeling, but the other part didn’t. She was just tired. She’d apologize to him tomorrow, once she was rested. It had been a long day, and they were both a little edgy.
She finished her ice cream, pushed the remote across the table toward Sam, and went to the kitchen. Rinsing her bowl, she said over her shoulder, “I’m beat, so I’m going to hit the sack. If you’re going to stay up, maybe you could knock the volume down a notch or two.” She set the bowl in the dish drainer and wiped her hands. “Good night.”
She fully expected to hear “good night” from him as well, but he made no response at all. She felt troubled by his silence, but ignored it. Tomorrow, she thought.
She could still hear the murmur of the TV as she changed into a t-shirt and sleep shorts and when she settled into bed. She wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to sleep, but she squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to lie still, ignoring her jangled nerves. Tomorrow, she kept telling herself. Tomorrow would be better.
Her last thought before drifting off to sleep was of Scarlet O’Hara: Tomorrow is another day.
~~~
SEVEN
She awoke to small sounds she couldn’t identify. At first the room seemed totally black, but then she noticed the soft glow of light that leaked from behind the window curtains. Where was she? Oh, yeah—Las Vegas. With Sam.
Another small noise from the front room. She glanced at the clock radio beside the bed—2:42. Had he been up this whole time?
She got up and pulled on her light terrycloth robe. Cinching it with the tie, she went to the door and opened it carefully. No lights on. She stepped into the living room and looked around.
Sam leaned against the kitchen counter, a glass of water in hand. He was bare-chested, wearing only sweat pants. Even in the dark, Lacey could see his expressionless face angled her way.
Swallowing nervously, she approached him. He made no attempt to disguise his direct and searching stare. She stopped just a few inches away.
“Have you been up all night?” she asked softly.
He shook his head, then gulped the rest of the water in the glass. Setting it on the counter behind him, he turned slightly her way.
“No, I was asleep. For a while.”
Lacey searched his face, but she could find no hint of emotion there. “Did you… dream?” she asked finally.
“Yeah.” His eyes glittered in the dark. “He came to me again. Stronger, this time. More emotion. Fear, pain, regret. He was pretty screwed up at the end.”
Lacey could feel it tug at him. With strangers, she supposed he could distance himself from the end of life struggles, but Kyle was family—or had been. A virtual little brother. Someone that Sam had, at least for a few years, looked out for. He’d said it about Christine, that those feeling of guardianship and responsibility often persisted into adulthood. Perhaps they had for him, as well?
She quit thinking then. She took a step closer and slid her arms around his waist, holding him close and resting her cheek against the warm skin of his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
For a startled heartbeat, Sam stood totally still, but then he engulfed Lacey in his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head. He squeezed her gratefully.
“Thanks,” he said.
They stood like that for several moments, holding onto each other, feeling the physical and emotional bond. Lacey could hear Sam’s heartbeat beneath her ear, and her head rose and fell gently with his breathing.
He stirred slightly. “Come here,” he said. He pulled his arms from around her and took her hand instead, tugging her toward the living room. Settling on the couch, he pulled her down beside him and tucked her into the hollow beneath his arm. He stretched his legs out, supported by the coffee table, while Lacey curled beside him.
“Talk to me, Lace,” he said in a low voice. “What happened tonight?”
For a few seconds, Lacey could feel the wall spring up between them, the denial already in her mind, on her tongue. She held it off with considerable effort. It would be easy to give in to it, to get her back up and stonewall him. But she didn’t want to do that. This moment of connection was too important and too fragile.
“I think,” she said, piecing it out as she went, “I felt… edged out. You and I work so closely together, we almost know each other’s thoughts, each other’s emotions. But suddenly here was someone… in between. Closer to you than I was. I think I got scared.”
“Scared?” he repeated.
“Scared that… what we had wouldn’t be the same anymore.”
She heard him sigh, felt the indrawn breath fill his lungs and elevate his chest. The arm around her shoulders tightened, and he rubbed her arm with his hand.
“Lacey, Courtney’s a kid, a scared, confused kid. I don’t know her well, but the few times I’ve seen her, I think she… felt safe with me. Trusted me. For whatever reason. Maybe Kyle told her about me. Anyway, I know she’s scared, and she just needed some reassurance. But there’s nothing about her or this case that’s going to change how I feel about you.”
Lacey heard the words, felt the solid promise. Somewhere in her head, a voice was asking how he meant that. Friend, or… what? She squelched that. She didn’t need a definition. Didn’t care. It was enough to sit like this, touching, breathing, feeling his warmth. She sighed.
The moments slid by. A clock somewhere in the kitchen ticked off the minutes. Lacey felt her body quiet, felt her breathing deepen. Her eyes fluttered closed.
“Hey,” Sam said in a low voice.
She raised her head.
“My arm’s asleep. Stand up for a sec, okay?”<
br />
Lacey uncurled her body and stood up. Sam stretched out on the couch, his back up against the back cushion, and patted the space in front of him. She crawled into it, her back against his chest, her head pillowed on his arm. His other arm draped around her.
“Good night, Lacey,” he murmured.
She sighed contentedly. “Good night, Sam.”
~~~
EIGHT
Lacey woke up in her bed. Her Vegas bed. She pushed the hair out of her eyes and glanced around. Oh, yeah. She’d awakened at four something and had to get up and go to the bathroom. She’d slipped carefully out of Sam’s arms and had been quietly pleased that he hadn’t awakened as well, but had just shifted onto his back and slept on. When she returned a few minutes later, he looked so peaceful that she didn’t want to take a chance on spoiling his much-needed rest. She’d gone quietly back to her own room and slipped between the covers, thinking no Egyptian cotton sheets, regardless of thread count, could compare with Sam’s warm body.
Now, fully awake, she went to splash warm water on her face and get dressed before going out to the front room.
Sam still slept on the couch. One throw pillow was under his head; he’d kicked the other one onto the floor. Lacey padded softly past him to the kitchen and did her best to make coffee with as little noise as possible.
He awoke just before the coffee pot began to gurgle. She watched him sit up and hunch forward, scrubbing his face with his hands. When he stood up, he looked around and found her in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and watching him.
“Good morning.” She grinned at him.
He squinted at her with bleary eyes. “It’s entirely too early to be that wide awake,” he grumbled. “What time is it?”
She glanced at her watch. “Almost six-thirty.”
Dream Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 4) Page 4
