Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(11)
“You still like them long and thin?”
“Jayme,” he said.
She said, “I could make that penne with mushroom sauce you like.”
“Rain check,” he told her, and pulled open the door and stepped out.
He was three steps down the hall when he thought he heard her mutter, “Fuck you and your rain checks.” Or maybe it was only inside his head.
Eight
In his office, DeMarco checked in with the borough police who were monitoring the Huston home on Mayfield Road. “What’s it like down there?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the officer told him. “TV news trucks all up and down the road. It’s crazy. Half a dozen people with microphones standing in the front yard of an empty house.”
“What are the chances you can get them out of there? Off Mayfield entirely?”
“They’ll raise hell and start calling lawyers.”
“Close the street,” DeMarco said. “Except for local traffic. Tell the newsies their presence is interfering with an ongoing investigation. Tell them we’ll hold a press conference soon.”
“Where do you want me to put them?”
“It’s your town, Officer. You decide.”
“That empty lot where the farmers market sets up on Saturdays, it’s only two blocks away.”
“And no farmers market now?”
“Maybe three, four stands altogether. Apples, late season produce.”
“So crowd the news trucks together in the back corner, keep the main entrance free for the produce stands.”
“That should work. When’s the press conference scheduled?”
“I’ll let you know. Thanks for your assistance. I appreciate it.”
He went down the hall then, to Bowen’s office. The station commander was using a hand mirror to look at the underside of his chin.
DeMarco said, “Pimple cream not working?”
Bowen laid the mirror atop his desk. “Something you want?”
“Did you schedule a press conference yet?”
“As soon as I get your report. How’s noon tomorrow for you?”
“Count me out of any press conferences.”
“You’re leading the investigation. At your insistence, I might add. How about you follow protocol and let your team do the legwork?”
“We’re dealing with a celebrity here, and not just a local one. I know this man. I know more about the way he thinks than you know about the way you think.”
“Which is yet another reason why you should handle the press conference.”
DeMarco shook his head. “I’m way too pretty for the camera. You’re not.”
“Listen—”
DeMarco turned and headed back out the door. “You’ll have my report within the hour.”
At his own desk again, DeMarco stared at the sleeping computer monitor. He envied the monitor’s ability to shut itself down from time to time, to turn off the images, extinguish the lights. You look tired, Jayme had said.
“I am tired,” he told the monitor. He stared a while longer, then pulled himself out of it.
“All right. If I have to stay awake, so do you.” He jerked the mouse across its pad. The monitor flickered to life.
In the Google search box, he typed the phrase Thomas Huston parents, then read through the long list of hits. Most of the articles were reviews of Huston’s books. But two were profiles of Huston and his latest novel, The Desperate Summer, a book released three and a half years after his parents’ deaths.
The first profile referred to The Desperate Summer as “the author’s first work following the tragic loss of both parents, one by murder, the other by suicide two weeks later.” The other profile, from Poets & Writers, recounted how a wild-eyed junkie had walked into the Hustons’ hardware store, demanded money, was refused, pulled out a Sig Sauer 9mm and shot Cynthia Huston once in the throat and twice in her chest. He then shot David Huston an inch and a half above his heart. Then emptied the magazine, with no effect, into the black Hayman MagnaVault against the wall behind the counter.
The interview section of the profile probed even more deeply.
P&W: I think it’s fair to say that The Desperate Summer is your darkest story to date. So is it fair to assume that the novel was colored by the circumstances of your parents’ deaths?
TH: I had come up with the basic story line well prior to that. But I did most of the writing in the nine or ten months after. And yes, the story line changed, as they always do.
P&W: Changed because that’s the nature of stories? Or because of your parents’ deaths?
TH: Both, I’m sure.
P&W: I’m thinking particularly of the protagonist. Joshua Kennedy has some very dark moments.
TH: He does indeed.
P&W: Do those moments reflect the author’s own state of mind at the time?
TH: Well, every character is, in some way, the author. Some aspect of the author. So, in that case… Listen, to suddenly be orphaned, even at thirty-five years old… I mean, when are the sudden and violent deaths of people you love not a shock? So yes, of course it affected the writing. Of course some of my own thoughts at that time found their way into the novel.