Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(10)

As for the sell-out theory, DeMarco couldn’t buy it. He had watched the Good Morning America spot, then later, the interview with Charlie Rose. In both cases, Huston had been relaxed, confident, almost serene in his responses. “How is all this sitting with you?” Charlie Rose had asked. “Your sudden celebrity status and everything that comes with it?” Huston had said nothing for several seconds, had sat there looking down. Then a slow smile came to his lips. He had looked up at Rose and said, “This last book is the best I’ve ever written. I’m at the top of my game at last. I feel validated.”

And DeMarco, sitting alone in his darkened living room with a glass of warm Jack in hand, had believed every word of it. He had even raised his glass to the television screen. “Good for you, brother,” he had said aloud.

So no, fuck the sell-out theory. To Trooper Matson he said, “You know his father committed suicide.”

“That was how long ago?”

DeMarco thought it through, thought back to where he had been when he heard the news. Laraine had been pregnant then. He had come home at nearly midnight, a steamy night in August, a bar brawl between Reds and Pirates fans, and found her crying in bed. “That poor man,” she had told him.

“It’s what he wanted though,” DeMarco had answered. He had undressed quickly and climbed in beside her, needing, on that hot night, the warmth of her skin against his, the soothing contact of his hand on the swell of her belly. “I can understand that.”

“I mean his son,” she had told him. “His only child. Imagine how he must feel right now.”

“About four years ago,” DeMarco told Matson. “So that could be a factor?”

“His entire past is a factor, Ryan. Question is, what made him take it out on his family?”

“Okay,” DeMarco said. “So something set him off. And then what?”

“And then…?”

“I mean after the fog clears. After he realizes what he’s done. What happens then? Where is he psychologically?”

“Well,” she said, “if he’s not, in fact, a sociopath—and they can be very hard to spot, by the way.”

DeMarco said, “Let’s assume he’s exactly what he appears. He’s a good, decent man. So when the fog clears…?”

She thought for a moment. “He’ll be horrified. Even beyond that. In all likelihood, he would take his own life.”

“But he didn’t. He walked outside. And he kept walking, all the way up to Lake Wilhelm. Just over three miles from his house.”

“Then he detached. Disassociated.”

“He just blanked it out?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “But for all intents and purposes, yes. He suppresses the knowledge of what happened because it’s just too horrific to face.”

“So he goes walking out into the woods. And maybe he’s still walking. Doesn’t know who he is or where he’s going?”

“Everybody is different. I mean, there are certain patterns to human behavior, sure, but I’m no expert on this…”

“You’re the best I have at the moment.”

“Maybe he’s amnesic,” she said. “Maybe he’s not. Maybe it all seems unreal to him. Like a bad dream he can’t quite remember.”

“That’s sort of what I was afraid of,” DeMarco said.

“Because it makes his movements impossible to predict.”

DeMarco nodded.

She waited for him to continue, but he remained motionless, eyes lowered, one thumb moving back and forth across the other hand’s knuckles.

Softly she said, “You think he didn’t do it.”

He looked up at her and smiled. He saw her again with her hair down the night they had gone to dinner. Penne with portobello sauce for her, pasta puttanesca for him. He had ended up eating half of her dinner while she drank too much wine, drank too much on purpose, she later admitted, so that she would have the courage to say what she had said.

Now, looking at her and remembering, he felt his left eye begin to water. He blinked, rubbed his eye, moved his gaze just slightly to the left, over her shoulder, to a blank spot on the wall. “You advised me once that if I truly want to understand somebody’s actions, I have to get outside myself and inside that person’s head, try to see the world the way they do.”

“I advised you a lot of things. Most of which you totally ignored.”

“I’m just trying to understand Huston from all possible angles.”

Her voice grew even softer. “I wish you would look at me when we talk, Ryan.”

He moved his gaze back to her face. “I need to talk about Thomas Huston now.”

She lifted her chin slightly higher, inhaled, and lost the melancholy smile. “So if he didn’t do it himself but…what? Saw it happen? Discovered it after it happened?”

“Either way. Is he going to blank it out or not?”

“Would you?”

DeMarco put both hands on the armrests, got ready to push himself up. “That’s a big fucking help, Jayme. You sure you need only nine more credits?”

She leaned back in her chair. “You look tired, Ryan.”

He stood. “I’ve been spending too much time in the pool at the country club. I like to sit underwater and look at women’s legs.”