Don't Look for Me(59)

He looked up, surprised to see her.

“Hey,” he said. “How did things go yesterday?”

Nic walked quickly to the bar, standing across from him. In the mirror behind the bottles of alcohol she could see herself. It was startling—the wet hair, loose sweatshirt, crazy expression on her face.

She took a breath before speaking. Crazy was not a good place to start.

“I have to ask you something,” she said.

Kurt shrugged, wiped a glass. “Sure.”

“Do I look like Daisy Hollander?”

Now he put down the glass to study her.

“I mean … you have similar hair. Same color, length. And she was thin as well. Long legs which she loved to show off. Even in the winter she would wear short skirts with no stockings. But I wouldn’t have thought it if you hadn’t said something.”

Nic sat on a stool. She felt her nerves calm. Kurt had that effect on her.

“Why are you asking that?”

“Roger said I looked like her. Or reminded him of her.”

Kurt scrunched his face. “That’s a little creepy.”

“And he showed me the letter,” Nic said.

“Ah!” Kurt said, his eyes wide with sarcasm. “The infamous Dear Roger letter.”

“Do you know about it? What it says?” Nic asked. Booth had told her that no one else knew about the baby.

“Just that he got one. He had to explain why he suddenly stopped looking for her, harassing her family. People were curious. He went from this frantic lunatic—hounding the police, her friends, her poor sister in Boston—to this eerie state of calm. Everyone knew he’d found out what happened to her.”

“He’s pretty sure Chief Watkins drove her out of town, wherever she was going.”

“Yeah, I told you that before. He had this thing about helping kids get out of here.”

Kurt’s voice hinted of disdain. Nic hadn’t picked it up before.

“You don’t like him,” she said.

He smiled then, a big happy smile. “Everybody loves the chief,” he said. Again, with the sarcasm. “Especially his mini me.”

“Reyes?”

Now he looked surprised again. “Haven’t you noticed it?”

“Not really. Not like that,” Nic thought about the casino, those four drinks. The story that had kept her glued to her seat, drinking those drinks late into the night.

“I know Watkins helped him get a job here.”

She didn’t know what more to say. How much was public knowledge. How much Reyes had spilled out over drinks right here, at this bar. Reyes had been here for eleven years—that was a long time to hide a story from the past that changed your life.

Kurt answered her question before she could ask it.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We all know the story. How Reyes was a rookie up in Worcester. Shot and killed an unarmed kid.”

“Wait a second,” Nic said, feeling an urgent need to defend Reyes. “The kid had a toy gun. And he wasn’t a kid. He was almost twenty. Untreated schizophrenia. Living in the bus station—he drew the gun outside a school and wandered around until the police showed up.”

Now Kurt studied her face, the way she’d expected him to do before, when she asked about Daisy Hollander.

“He’s gotten to you, hasn’t he?”

“What?”

“He is a charmer. I’ll give him that.” Kurt’s tone turned bitter and Nic had a sudden realization that the things she knew about this town and the people who lived here were next to nothing. Like background music distracting her from what was really going on.

“That has nothing to do with the story. And, no, I have not been charmed or ‘gotten to.’”

“But he got you drinking, didn’t he? With his sad tale? I can still smell it on you.”

Stunned by the truth that had just left his mouth, Nic continued with her defense. “What does that matter? If I had some drinks? It doesn’t change the facts—four cops came to the scene. He was just one of them. They were waiting for the SWAT team but the kid kept pointing the gun at them, and then at the glass windows of the school. Three of the four opened fire. It just happened to be Reyes’s bullet that caught him in the chest.”

“I know the story.”

“It was suicide-by-cop. It wasn’t his fault, but it messed him up.”

“And there was the chief, coming in for the save.”

“No—that’s not what happened. At least, not how Reyes told it.”

“Look,” Kurt said, leaning on the counter so he could get closer to her. “I know all of it. He needed a new start. Applied for the job. The chief took a chance on him, got him all straightened out in his head. But that’s the point. That’s why Reyes has his back, whatever the hell he does.”

Nic had a flash of Chief Watkins with that prostitute, pushing her out of the truck. Calling her a cheap whore.

The dark gray pickup truck.

“And what is it he does?” Nic asked.

Kurt stepped back, threw his hands in the air. “Doesn’t matter. He helps kids, right? He helped Reyes. They run the town. The cops with their authority. And Roger Booth with his money. People like me working two, three jobs. I just left the Gas n’ Go after an all-nighter—and now I’m here. It’s all a fucking joke. Because this town’s a fucking joke.”