Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(56)

DeMarco felt something slam into place. A piece of the puzzle. “Bonnie didn’t show up that night?”

“I’m pretty sure it was that night, yeah.”

“Any chance you’d know why she wasn’t there?”

“According to Wendy, her grandmother was really sick and she had to take care of her. Bonnie’s grandmother.”

“And Wendy is…?”

“One of the dancers. She’s like forty or something. Three kids. I guess Bonnie had asked her to watch the bar that night. And it’s not like Wendy brings in the big tips anyway. She said later she’d tend the bar every night if Bonnie would let her.”

“And that same night. Was Tex at the club?”

“Yes, he was.”

“And Moby?”

“Yep. Moby’s always there.”

“So the only two regulars who weren’t there were Thomas Huston and Bonnie.”

“As far as I can remember, yes.”

DeMarco pursed his lips, nodded, and filed that information away. “The next Thursday,” he said, “the last time you saw Thomas. When he told you he’d missed a night because of business out of town. Did he get any more specific than that?”

“I remember I teased him a little. I asked if it was monkey business. I thought it was kind of strange that he didn’t laugh at that, you know? I mean he was always a very upbeat kind of guy.”

“But not that night?”

“Usually he came with a question or two he wanted to ask me. Like, did the girls talk about sex much? Did they like men? Did they hate men? Did their boyfriends and husbands know what they were doing? Trying to understand our psychology, you know? All of our messed up psychologies.” She delivered the last line with a tone that smacked of self-contempt. DeMarco knew the sound well.

He said, “Yours doesn’t seem so messed up to me, Danni.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“I’ve known a lot worse.”

“I guess you would, being in the business you’re in.”

He thought, Right. The business of being human. “So that last Thursday night,” he said. “Thomas wasn’t as upbeat as usual? How would you describe his mood that night?”

“I don’t really know,” she said. “Kind of subdued? Pensive?”

“Like he had something else on his mind?”

“Exactly.”

“But you don’t know what?”

“I wish I did.”

“You sort of liked him, didn’t you?”

The question obviously took her by surprise. DeMarco waited out the silence.

“The truth is,” she finally said, “I did look forward to seeing him. He made me feel… I’m not sure if you can understand this or not.”

“Try me.”

“Most times I leave that place and I’ll come home and sit in the tub for an hour. Then I climb out and I still don’t feel clean. I mean, it’s not like I’m proud of what I do, you know? But where else can a girl make a thousand a week dancing? And that’s all I ever do. Unlike some of the girls there.”

“But with Thomas, you felt different.”

“I guess I felt like everything was going to be okay. Like I really would get my degree, get a job, end up with money in the bank instead of being in debt the rest of my life. And that someday I’d be able to forget all about this past year or so.”

He envied her optimism, her capacity for hope. He had hope too, but of a whole different nature than hers. She hoped for a happy life. He hoped for a good night’s sleep and an occasional dulling of the pain. “I appreciate you talking to me like this,” he told her. “I’ll try not to disturb you again.”

“Actually I don’t mind it at all now that I’m not scared anymore. You’re sort of like Thomas in that way.”

He said nothing.

“I just can’t believe he’s responsible for what happened.”

“You know,” DeMarco began, but left the rest of it, neither can I, unsaid. “You call me if you think of anything important. Anything at all.”

“I will,” she said.

He held the phone to his ear a few seconds longer, listening and waiting. Then he lowered it and hit End.





Despair





Thirty-Nine


This is Sergeant DeMarco, Nathan. Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Did he…? Have you found him?”

DeMarco stared at the legal tablet on his desk. Only seconds before telephoning the student, he had added Nathan’s name to the others. “Not yet,” he said.

“Christ, I’ve had this awful feeling lately.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“Just that something’s happened to him. Something bad.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” DeMarco said. “Meantime, I wonder if you could help me out with something.”

“Sure, anything.”

“What I’m trying to figure out are Thomas’s routines, patterns of movement, things like that.”

“I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

“For example, the way a writer works. The way he comes up with things, I mean. Thomas was working on a novel, and a novel is fiction. So he was making the story up, am I right?”