by L. A. Witt
“I guess.” She thumbed the handle on her coffee cup. “Maybe this was kind of a wakeup call, then. That we need to do a better job of keeping in contact.” She looked in my eyes. “All of us.”
I nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”
Her smile was slow to form, but it did. “Starting now?”
“Yeah.” I reached across the table and squeezed her forearm. “Starting now.”
At a little past ten, I parked outside Darren’s apartment. His car was there, which meant he was back, but when I let myself inside, he was already asleep. Knocked out by painkillers, no doubt.
It was early yet. Way too early by my night owl standards. Still, I was exhausted, and we were at a point in our case where we needed to grab on to any break we could get. The clock said 10:21, and my body said it was time to join Darren and get some goddamned sleep.
As quietly as I could, I stripped down to my boxers, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed beside him. I carefully molded myself to him, making sure not to jar his healing muscles, and draped my arm over his side.
He stirred a little. Laced our fingers together. And passed right back out again.
I kissed the side of his neck. We’d pick up where we’d left off. The spark that had sent us into his bed in the first place was absolutely alive and well, just . . . shelved. While he’d recovered. While I’d wrapped up our last case. While we dived into this one. While his family was in chaos I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
But it was still there. All we needed was some goddamned uninterrupted downtime.
Closing my eyes, I sighed into his hair. Eventually, we’d get that downtime. I hoped, anyway.
Because I wasn’t sure how much more shit Darren could handle before he broke.
I didn’t think I’d get to sleep after spending an hour with Asher, calming him down after he abruptly came to the realization that he wasn’t at home, that our parents were gone, and that he didn’t have a cell phone to call anyone with. He’d thrown a fit, demanding either to talk to me or to call 911. The staff had tried to get close enough to administer a sedative, and when that hadn’t worked, they’d called my folks. And Mom, therefore, had called me.
Asher was crouched back on his heels in the corner of his bedroom when I got there, after a frazzled-looking CNA led me through the blue-toned halls and down to his suite. It was the first time I’d seen the place freshly decorated; it was nice, as tiny apartments went, but I didn’t give a fuck about the carpeting or the wallpaper when all I could see was my brother, freaking out.
“Hey,” I said, coming over to slide down the wall and settle in next to him.
“Darren.” He lifted his head off his arms and stared at me, and the sight of his teary, bloodshot eyes was almost enough to break my heart. “What the fuck is happening?”
It wouldn’t have done any good to ask if he remembered. “You moved in here a few days ago. Mom and Vic and Melissa helped you.”
“Why would Melissa help me? We’ve been divorced for years.” He stared at me, every vulnerability he felt written on his face. “Where were you?”
Oh great, so he remembered that now. I could say that I’d been here, that he just wasn’t recalling my presence, but I wasn’t going to lie to him. “Melissa wanted to see you, and I’ve been working a case. It’s a big one, possible serial killer.” Definite serial killer, but I didn’t need to go into details.
He sniffed. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Like what?” I gently elbowed him in the side. “Scruffy and kinda damp?”
“Like some helpless head case.” He laughed bitterly. “Even though that’s what I am.”
“She’s not gonna care, Ash.”
“I care, though. That’s . . . it’s not how I want her to remember me. Can you make that happen?”
I looked at him and sighed, then pulled him into a sideways hug. “I’ll do my best. I can talk to the front desk about it, and I’ll tell our folks. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” He rested his head on my shoulder. It wasn’t easy, he was a little taller than me, but we made it work. “I hate this place.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know I was too difficult at home, but I really hate it here.”
“I’m so sorry.” It didn’t matter how many times I said it, words could never make things right. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.” I kissed the top of his head. “I love you, okay? I’ll be back soon, as soon as I can. I won’t leave you here alone.”
“You do what you have to do to catch a killer. Just . . . be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“I remember enough to know you’re bullshitting me now,” Asher replied dryly. By the time I left an hour later, he was calm enough to consider going to sleep. Me, though? I thought I’d be running up the walls with frustration, driving Andreas around the bend while I careened from angry to sad and back again. Instead, once I got home, I just felt drained. Andreas wasn’t in, so I took a hot shower and a pain pill, grabbed a file and settled in to wait for him to get back. I fell asleep before he arrived, but I felt him join me in bed and curled in his direction like he was a fire and I was freezing to death.
That was the only bright spot of my evening. My sleep was restless, filled with dreams I couldn’t recall but that still left me feeling worse in the morning than when I’d gone to sleep. We woke up early, and I practically inhaled a pot of coffee on my own. I didn’t have time to feel sleepy and sorry for myself. We had family interviews to get to starting at eight, and I needed to be sharp.
I didn’t feel sharp, though, even after coffee and a croissant. Andreas obviously didn’t think I looked too hot either, because right before we were set to meet Martha Humboldt’s husband at the diner next to his office, he set a hand on my shoulder and said, “Let me take point, okay?”
“I can do it,” I protested. “You don’t have to baby me. I can handle an interview. I’ll be better once I’m face-to-face with the guy.”
“I know that. I’m just sayin’, this is one of the upsides of having a partner. You don’t have to do everything by yourself. I’m not the one who spent last night taking care of my brother, so let me help out this morning.”
“What did you spend last night doing?” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked yet, but my brain still felt like mush.
“Getting grilled by my daughter about everything under the sun.”
“Oh.” Shit. I wasn’t sure anymore that I’d gotten the raw end of the deal.
“Don’t look so worried, it wasn’t bad. Although she’s onto us now,” he added casually, like that didn’t flip my stomach upside down and inside out.
“Yeah? How did she, um, how did she take it?”
“She said she wasn’t surprised, since I act like a decent human being around you. Which is pretty high praise, given the way she’s seen me act with people I don’t like. Her eighth-grade math teacher comes to mind.”
“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t help smiling a little. The thought of Andreas going all protective-daddy for one of his kids was too appealing to ignore. “Was he mean to her? Did you punch him?”
Andreas rolled his eyes. “He said she needed to be held back a grade because she was failing Algebra, and no, I didn’t punch him. I said he was a terrible educator if he couldn’t tell that my kid was doing just fine in math before she was put in his class, and that I was gonna complain about him to the principal.”
“Did you?”
“Nah, I went to the superintendent instead.”
“Devious,” I congratulated him.
“Whatever works.” He looked closely at me, and I had to resist the urge to slump over and lay my forehead against his chest. Fuck, I was going to be useless today. “You doin’ a little better now? Ready to let me take the reins?”
“Ready to let you take the reins for a while, at least. I’ll be your strong and silent backup.”
“Just what I always wanted.” We got out of the car and headed into the diner.
Martha Humboldt’s widower was an older man with dark skin and short, salt-and-pepper hair. He greeted us solemnly, thanked us for meeting with him so early, and immediately got down to business.
“I wish I could tell you something useful about what happened to Martha, but the truth is, there just isn’t much to tell.” He held on to his mug of coffee with both hands but didn’t pick it up to drink, just clutched it tight. “I never saw the car she was talking about. I work at a law firm, and my hours tend to be long. To be honest, I thought she was exaggerating when she said it made her nervous.” He grimaced. “We live in a nice neighborhood, you know? There’s almost no crime there, even when other places in the city are falling apart. We had a good life, we had . . . I don’t even know if she locked the door that morning after I left,” he said helplessly. “All I know is, we ate breakfast together that morning, I kissed her good-bye, told her I loved her . . . By five in the evening, Martha was dead and I was being questioned by the police about where I’d been all day.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Andreas said. He had a very specific tone he used during witness interviews, leagues removed from the way he spoke to suspects. It was the way I bet he talked to his kids when they came to him upset: calm but compassionate. Come to think of it, he’d used it on me more than once lately. “That wasn’t fair.”
“I wouldn’t have minded it so much if they actually had caught the person who killed her, but they never did. I ended up with nothing: no wife, no sympathy, and no one to blame. We never wanted children, and I didn’t regret it, not until . . .” He shook his head. “All I have now is my job, and that’s not the sort of thing that keeps you warm at night.”
“We’re doing our best to figure out who’s responsible for the death of your wife, Mr. Humboldt. I promise, the case isn’t cold anymore.”
“Oh really?” He focused all his attention on Andreas. “What can you tell me about it, Detective Ruffner?”
“Nothing specific at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Andreas spread his hands. “It’s all I’ve got for you right now, sir. We’re working on getting more information, though.”
“Hmm.” He looked back down at his coffee. “I guess that’ll have to do. For now.”
It started bad and went downhill from there. The next victim’s adult kid had nothing to add, but started crying halfway through the interview and couldn’t seem to stop. Her toddler caught on to her discomfort and added his wails to the mix, and we spent the next half hour making her tea and calming her baby while she pulled herself together. I let Andreas tackle the toddler situation—I was good with adults, but knew nothing about how to handle small children that couldn’t understand me yet.
Katie Lewis, the woman in her thirties who’d been found hanged earlier this week, had a roommate who was already moving out of their apartment. She wasn’t very forthcoming, either. “I didn’t see anything,” she insisted as she taped boxes shut. “I thought Katie was being a drama queen. She always loved to make a big deal out of things. You have any idea what I went through for her thirtieth birthday party? We all had to go to Vegas, had to make it into this big deal, and it was so fucking expensive . . . God, I hated it at the time.” She sniffed and wiped a hand across her eyes. “Course, if I’d realized she wasn’t gonna celebrate another one, I’d have acted like less of a bitch about it.”
“Well,” I said as we piled into the car after Katie’s roommate basically kicked us out. “That was incredibly unhelpful. Motivational, don’t get me wrong, but unhelpful.”
“It reinforces the idea that Brian is careful,” Andreas mused as he started us back toward the precinct. “I think this afternoon we should stop by Reginald’s again. He’s off today, according to his manager. I want to ask some more questions about his behavior at work, whether there have been any client complaints, that sort of thing.”
“We might as well,” I agreed.
“Yeah. You hungry?”
I sighed and laid my head back against the seat. “Not yet. Let’s update the family statements in the files and go from there.”
“Sure.”
We got back to the precinct in twenty minutes, but that was enough time for me to fall asleep in the car. I woke up with a start when Andreas gently nudged my shoulder. “Mmmfuh,” I groaned. “Ugh. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, but he was nice not to mention it. I was falling down on the job, and I couldn’t afford to do that right now. “Let’s head inside.”
I managed to make it up the stairs without needing an assist, thank God, but before I could get to our conference room, Marla met me in the hall.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she said quietly. “I showed her to your desk. I thought it would be a nice, public, nonconfrontational spot to meet.”
I frowned. “Why did you think we’d need one of those?”
“Because it’s your sister-in-law. Ex-sister-in-law, I should say.”
Fantastic. Just what I needed today: a confrontation with Melissa. I turned to Andreas. “If you hear screams, come and rescue me, okay?”
“I’m coming with you.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t need to do that.”
“Need to, hell. I want to. Unless you’d rather be alone with her in the middle of the bull pen right now.”
I considered that for a second. “On second thought, please join me.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The bull pen was surprisingly quiet when we walked in, no barbs or insults tossed our way. This was Melissa’s doing, inevitably; she tended to stun people into submission. She was leaning against the edge of my desk, a large paper bag stapled shut sitting beside her. She looked gorgeous, just like I remembered: she was wearing a subdued but perfectly fitted navy sheath dress, navy pumps, and a tiny black lace jacket that somehow toed the line between professional and flirty. Her blonde hair fell in careful, deliberate waves down the sides of her face and back, and her expression was blandly pleasant. That meant she was probably plotting my death.
“Darren,” she said as we got close enough to talk without shouting. “How nice to see you.”
“Melissa.” I didn’t follow it up. She didn’t look surprised.
“I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by with lunch.” She gestured to the bag. “Is Laudisio’s still your favorite Italian restaurant?”
“Only when I feel like bankrupting myself.”
“How lucky I was here to provide, then. I brought enough for two, but . . .” She glanced at Andreas. “I see you already have someone to dine with.”
Time for social niceties. Fuck her, I could be polite. “Melissa, this is my partner, Andreas Ruffner. Andreas, this is Melissa Rickman.”
“Pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand, and Andreas, like a gentleman, shook it. He shook it exactly once, actually, and then dropped it and folded his arms. I could have kissed him.
“What are you doing here, Melissa?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why did you tell Applewood Memory Care not to let me in to see Asher?”
“How do you know it was me?”
“Because it wasn’t Jessica or Vic,” she said, full of surety. “Although when I asked Jessica about it, she said maybe it was for the best. Why would that be?”
I stepped a little closer and lowered my voice. “Because Asher had a panic attack last night and freaked out, and he doesn’t want to see you, and I’m not going to go against his wishes today just because he might not remember what he said last night.”
“He was happy to see me,” Melissa insisted. “We spent all day together, not that you would know since you’ve been too busy to visit your only brother lately.”
I took a deep breath, and exhaled as slowly as I could. “You don’t get to play the guilt card with me. Not after what you did.”
She dropped her eyes. “You act like it was only my idea. It wasn’t.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn if Asher hauled you to divorce court kicking and screaming—the point is, in the end, you left. You left Asher, you left this family, and you moved on. And sure, maybe that was the best thing you could do for yourself, I get that. It was certainly the easiest thing. But no matter why you did it, it’s done, and one good day doesn’t make up for years of absence. Do you understand? You don’t get to demand to see him when you’re just going to be gone in another few days, never to come back.”
I was getting too loud. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Be grateful for the time you had with him. If it had been up to me, you wouldn’t even have gotten that.”
“God, Darren.” Were those actual tears in her eyes? They seemed even more glossy and limpid than usual. I had listened to my brother go on and on for years about how gorgeous Melissa’s eyes were. It used to be funny. “If you can’t feel compassion for me, can you at least feel a little pity? I loved Asher. I still do, and I don’t want to leave things like this.”
“Mel.” I sighed. “Honey, you already did.”
She didn’t speak, just pressed her lips tightly together for a moment, then got up and left without another word. I didn’t watch her go.
“Damn, Corliss,” Ross said from where he’d been watching. “That was cold.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” I snapped. “Wait until your erection goes down before you stand up, okay?”
“Hey, screw you, kid.” He was belligerent right up until he noticed Andreas glaring at him, and then he refocused on his computer screen. I wanted a glare like that.
I squared my shoulders and looked at Andreas. Did he think I’d been cruel? Did he think I’d made a scene?
“So.” He nodded his head toward the food. “Do we eat that or throw it out?”
Oh, thank God. I laughed, hopefully sounding only a little hysterical. “We eat it. Are you kidding me? Laudisio’s is amazing. It would be a crime not to enjoy it no matter who it came from.”
