Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(99)

“You ever notice that little limp she’s got? That was from asking him a question he didn’t want to answer.”

“What about the abortion?”

Moby sat motionless, said nothing, held himself unnaturally still.

“You knew about it, right?”

Moby pursed his lips, thought for a moment, and nodded.

DeMarco said, “Huston claimed he never touched her.”

“Far as I know he didn’t.”

“So the baby was Inman’s?”

Moby said nothing. He stared at the floor.

“Moby?” DeMarco said. “She doesn’t need you to keep her secrets anymore.”

Moby raised the mug to his lips, held it there for a moment, smiled a small smile. Then he tilted the cup up and took a swallow. Then he closed his eyes and sat motionless for a while, the cup against his chest. Finally he sucked in a noisy, glutinous breath, then opened his eyes, leaned back against the cushions, and fixed his gaze on the door.

He said, “She had a couple of regular customers, you know? I don’t mean at Whispers. Private customers. Longtime friends. All she knew was that somebody’s stuff must have slipped past her diaphragm. She’s forty-two years old, runs a strip club, for Chrissakes. You think she was going to let herself bring a baby into this world, no matter how much she might have wanted one?”

“So how did Inman find out about the abortion? Why would she tell him?”

“That abortion place did a thing on her. Before they gave her the pill and whatever. Like an X-ray or something. On her belly.”

“A sonogram.”

Moby nodded. “They put the picture of it on a computer disk for her. She said it looked like a fuzzy dot is all. But she just kept telling me about it, you know; she got all teary-eyed. Over a fuzzy little dot. I guess that’s why she held on to it. That computer disk, I mean.”

“And Inman found it?”

“She already knows he’s going to beat the shit out of her, right? I mean, that’s a given. But if she admits that the baby might not be his…”

“So she did what she had to do.”

“All her life,” Moby said.

“Okay. So you think that’s maybe why Inman killed her that night he came for me?”

Moby shrugged. “All I know is she thought you were a decent guy. A decent guy for a cop is what she said. And when she packed up to leave her place, she just thought they were clearing out for a while. Getting away from all the mess. He was taking her someplace warm, she said. Sit out the winter. She hated the fucking winters here. Always did want to get away from the cold.”

“So it probably surprised her when he pulled the car over on the street behind my house.”

“I figure he would have reached for that big knife of his, you know? He kept it under the seat when he was driving. She would’ve said something then for sure.”

DeMarco nodded. “She knew where I lived. From the old days. Back when she had that little place on West Venango.”

Moby sipped his wine. Then, “She didn’t often stand up to him, but she would have over that. I even know what she would’ve said. She’d’ve said, ‘You do this, and I won’t be here when you get back.’”

DeMarco nodded and considered the possibilities. So Inman had planned to kidnap me, steal my car, transfer his clothes and traveling money out of the Mustang, then drive north. The maps were probably a ruse to fool Bonnie into believing they were headed for Mexico. Maybe he had intended from the beginning to kill her too. As punishment for destroying what he thought of as his, for depriving him of another poor creature to bully and beat. He was a nutcase, but not an idiot; he knew I’d be hauling him in sooner or later. Maybe he thought that by kidnapping me, then killing me, making it difficult for anybody to find my body for a while, he could short-circuit the investigation long enough to find a safe place to hide. Maybe he thought I could lead him to Thomas.

“The thing about Bonnie,” Moby said. “She didn’t often go off, you know? But when she did, she let it fly in all directions.”

“Go off how? I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“It took a lot for her to snap. Usually it only happened when she was really, really scared about something.”

“Like what?” DeMarco asked.

Moby said, “You know why she gave me that job at Whispers?”

“How about you tell me.”

“Up till three years or so ago, she always hired some college kid as a bouncer. Somebody with more muscles than brains.”

“So what happened three years ago?”

“I had a little too much to drink one night. Borrowed somebody’s car. Sliced a telephone pole in half. The top half came right down through the roof of the car. Missed me by half a splinter or so.”

“That’s when she lost her temper?”

“At the hospital that night. I was just banged up a little is all. Till she started laying into me. Called me every name in the book at the top of her lungs. It got so bad, they wanted to give her a shot of something and strap her down. I told them to leave her alone, ’cause I had it coming. And I knew she was just scared because of what I almost done to myself.”

“And you think she might have lost her temper like that with Inman?”