Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(79)
He climbed out of the car and made his way back to the security fence. Up and over again, as quietly as possible. He crept low to the open lighthouse door. Sneaked to the top of the stairs, wincing with every creak. At the top he found his cell phone, nothing else. He knew that the rocks too would be empty of everything but spindrift. In Eden, who needed money or Sergeant Ryan DeMarco’s number?
He called off the trace on his phone, canceled the rescue unit, waded back through the darkness to his car, his flashlight beam swinging like a sickle.
Fifty-Three
Before the morning debriefing, DeMarco met with his supervisor in Bowen’s office. The BOLOs on Inman, Bonnie, and Huston had already been updated. Huston, if spotted, was to be approached with caution and if possible picked up and held in protective custody. Bonnie was to be considered a possible hostage of Inman, a possible accomplice. Inman was to be apprehended by any means necessary.
Bowen said, “I’m going to be honest with you, Ryan. This part about you just leaving Huston at the rail and going back to your car, I’m more than a little uncomfortable with that.”
“That’s because you weren’t there,” DeMarco said. “Another step toward him and he would have jumped. Would you be more comfortable with that?”
“You shouldn’t have been there on your own in the first place.”
“I was following a lead. Like I said, you can’t know because you weren’t there.”
“So why didn’t you just back away from him for a minute, out of sight, and use your cell phone?”
“Did you read the report?”
“It’s six pages long. I skimmed.”
“Then skim it again. And this time read the fucking thing.”
“You going to get testy with me?”
“It’s eight o’clock in the fucking morning, I didn’t sleep all fucking night, and the fucking report is right there on your fucking desk. Judgment call. Quit busting my fucking balls, why don’t ya?”
“You think because you used to be my supervisor you can talk to me like that?”
“Yeah I do. So drink your fucking cappuccino mocha latte grande and leave me the fuck alone for a while. I’ve got a debriefing to conduct.” With that, DeMarco turned and strode out of Bowen’s office.
Four seconds later, he stepped onto the threshold again. “By the way, I apologize for swearing.”
Bowen licked the foam off his lips. “Apology accepted.”
? ? ?
After the debriefing, DeMarco stood at his office window for a while and stared at the abandoned cardinal nest. So maybe you saved his life, he told himself. Think of it that way.
Yeah and maybe you didn’t.
He imagined himself in Huston’s place, imagined himself doing the thinking for Huston, feeling Huston’s emotions. You’ve just now found out the name of the man who forced you to stab your own baby and who slaughtered your family. You found out that the woman you trusted and helped—for no other reason than because your innate compassion told you to help her, despite your own misgivings—later betrayed you to her troglodyte boyfriend. Maybe she was coerced into it, beaten, threatened, who knows. Does that matter? No, what matters now is that you know the man’s name. So you don’t jump off the lighthouse. Your previously depleted body now swells with purpose. Fuck compassion, you’re through with that. You can maybe spare an ounce or two of compassion for Bonnie, for what she might have gone through, but not a drop for Inman. Him, you want to make suffer. Him, you want to punish with extreme prejudice. Your own life is over, you know that. You accept it as an irreconcilable fact. But before it officially ends, you want to see Inman suffer. You need it. Fuck food, fuck sleep, fuck oxygen. Your heart pumps lava now. Your pulse pounds revenge.
DeMarco felt the heat in his own veins and was uncertain whose thoughts were fanning that fire, Huston’s or his own. Not that it mattered. He wanted Inman as much as Huston did. Huston’s chances of finding the man were slim to none. No vehicle, no weapon, no knowledge of Inman’s whereabouts, no means of locating him. DeMarco’s chances, with the nation’s finest law enforcement units all backing him up, were better.
Fifty-Four
A long, gray day filled with long, dark thoughts. DeMarco quietly seethed through the first two hours of the morning, waiting for the telephone to ring. When he thought himself capable of conducting an interrogation that did not involve strangulation or similar means of persuasion, he drove north to a small mobile home on the periphery of a sand quarry and hammered on the metal door until Bonnie’s brother, Moby, appeared, blinking behind the filmy glass. He was wearing a wife-beater and gray sweatpants cut off at the knees, a two-day beard, and the look of a scrawny rat terrier that had recently been kicked in the balls by a Siamese cat.
DeMarco didn’t wait for an invitation to go inside. Moby’s empty hands were all the invitation he required. He pushed past the startled man and strode through the compact kitchen/dining/living room. “Where’s your sister?” he asked.
Moby rubbed his crust of beard. “I wish to fuck I knew.”
“How about Carl Inman? Seen him lately?”
“What the fuck is an Inman?”
“Tex. The bouncer.”
“Far as I know Tex’s last name is Snyder.”