Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(81)
DeMarco thought, This from a man whose pecker probably hasn’t worked for years. On the other hand, maybe that’s why he’s so smart.
“I mean, I just don’t understand it,” Moby said. “Women should be treated special, you know? Yet they let themselves be treated like crap.”
“Happens every day, Moby. All over the world.”
“Which only makes it an even bigger fucking mystery, don’t it?”
Fifty-Five
Monday dawned like a mile-long freight train filled with radioactive sewage. DeMarco trudged through it. All he could do now was to wait for a tip, a sighting of Inman or Bonnie. He felt as heavy and hollow as a gut-shot dog dragging its ass uphill. He wondered where Huston had spent the night, wondered if he was still alive. You never should have let Huston go, he told himself. Should have taken him into protective custody, tricked him, told him a lie, whatever was necessary. You should have recognized Inman that night you saw him at Whispers, should have looked back through the fog of all those years, instantly recognized Inman, instantly fit all the pieces together, instantly shot the beast on sight. You should have never become a cop. A teacher, maybe, like Laraine. Social studies and history, that’s what you would be good at. Lesson plans and field trips.
He busied himself with paperwork and chastised himself and second-guessed the way he had handled things. The mistakes went years into the past. If he had made better choices on a rainy night twelve years ago, little Ryan might still be alive. His house might not be a stinking, sunless cave. His soul might not be a dead leaf, empty shell, dried-up turd, whatever it had become.
“You look like crap,” Bowen told him in the afternoon.
“You are crap,” DeMarco said from the threshold.
“What is this, like your twelfth trip to the coffeepot?”
“Go back to your Internet porn and mind your own business.”
“Get in here,” Bowen said.
“I’m busy.”
“Get in here now. And close the damn door.”
DeMarco stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut. He stood with his left buttock pressed to the doorknob.
Bowen told him, “You look like a junkie, you know that?”
DeMarco slurped his coffee because he knew Bowen hated the sound.
Bowen opened a desk drawer, rummaged around inside, brought out an amber prescription bottle, shook two white tablets into his hand, laid them on the far edge of the desk. “Pick those up, get your ass home, swallow those pills, and go to bed. And don’t give me any shit about it.”
“I don’t take medications,” DeMarco said.
“Right. Caffeine all day, Jack all night, no food, no sleep. You’re destroying yourself. You realize that, don’t you?”
DeMarco smiled, then took a longer, louder slurp.
“Here’s the deal, Ryan, and it’s the only deal you’re going to get. You take those pills, go home, and get some sleep. Or else I’m taking you off the case.”
“You wouldn’t fucking dare.”
“You’re supposed to be heading this investigation, but look at you; you’re a mess. I don’t know what it is about Huston, but you’re taking this case way too personally. It was probably a mistake for me to let you head the investigation in the first place. But just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I’m going to keep looking the other way while you rip yourself to pieces over this guy.”
DeMarco remained with his back pressed to the door. He tried to still the caffeine jitters streaming through him, watched the ripples in his coffee cup.
Bowen’s voice softened. “Or maybe this isn’t about Huston at all. Maybe it’s about Laraine somehow? Or Ryan Jr. maybe?”
DeMarco gripped his cup with both hands. His mouth felt sticky and sour. He spoke in a whisper. “Don’t talk about my family,” he said.
Bowen stood and scooped up the white tablets. He crossed to DeMarco. Took the coffee cup from his hands, pressed the tablets into his palm, closed DeMarco’s hand around the pills. He stood very close, his fingers still clenched around DeMarco’s.
“Go home, Ryan. If there’s any news between now and morning, I’ll send a trooper to drag your ass out of bed. That’s not a suggestion; it’s an order. And this time, you’re going to fucking listen to me.”
For some reason, DeMarco could not bring himself to look Bowen in the eye. For some reason, all he wanted was to go to sleep now. He wanted to sleep a hundred years, no dreams, no night sweats, no thoughts of another day.
He leaned slightly forward, reached behind himself, and gripped the doorknob. With a sliding, turning motion, he faced the door and pulled it open and said as he stepped into the hallway, “Make sure you scrub my mug out when you’re done fondling it.”
Fifty-Six
The long, cool shadows of afternoon. On the edge of his back porch, DeMarco stood for a while and looked at his unfinished brick path. Streaks of soft yellow sunlight slanted in low across his yard. He remembered that Laraine had told him once that photographers and painters call this hour of such clear, soft sunshine the hour of magic light. He wondered what a painter would make of the scene from his back porch. Dandelions and crabgrass had grown up between the bricks and out of the bare soil. The grass in his yard was four inches high and hadn’t been mowed for over a month. At the far end of the yard, the windows in the unfinished apartment in the small barn looked back at him like cartoon eyes, black and unblinking.