The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(28)

Fishing in the summer. Homemaking beer in the fall. Cozy winters and cheerful springs.

No more dead bodies.

No more . . . missing bodies.

No more questions with no answers, no trails, no nothing.

Even though he didn’t want to think about his old partner, Butch O’Neal, he couldn’t help it. Coming to the end of his career had brought up all kinds of loose ends, and Butch was the loosest of them . . . maybe because it felt like that cop from South Boston, with his Good Will Hunting accent, and his hair trigger, and his incredible nose for the truth, was still with him.

José could still remember walking into his old partner’s apartment that last morning. As usual, he’d been braced for a body, not because someone had murdered the guy, but because Butch had drank himself into a stupor, fallen down in the bathroom, and cracked his skull open.

Or maybe overdosed because he’d added a prescription chaser to all the booze he pounded at the end of every night.

That particular bright-and-early, José had been aware that he’d gotten addicted to the cycle of peaking anxiety as he knocked on Butch’s door and let himself in, and then the sweet relief when he’d find his partner in that sloppy bed, passed out, but breathing. The ritual of aspirin, water, and throwing the guy into the shower had been part of his day.

Except that last morning . . . there had been no one there. Nobody asleep facedown in the sheets. Or slumped on the couch. Or one-arming the toilet.

And in the days and weeks that had followed, there had been . . . nothing. No clues, no evidence, no body. Disappeared. But given the way Butch had handled himself and the hard life that he’d led? José couldn’t say he’d been surprised.

Nah, he’d just been heartbroken.

He glanced back at that couch. “Nothing worse than trying to save someone.”

As the good Catholic he was, José had spent a lot of time praying for his former partner. He’d also missed the guy, and not just on a personal level. Like Trey, he wished Butch could have been here on this scene, be back at HQ going through files, be knocking on doors and asking questions.

O’Neal had been sucky at real life, but a helluva detective.

What a haunted man.

From time to time, José dwelled on him, and when the memories got too painful—which was almost immediately—he’d switch to imagining that Butch was living in a parallel universe on the flipside of Caldwell, with a beautiful wife and a bunch of strong protectors around him—

As a sharpshooter pierced through José’s frontal lobe, he groaned and stopped going down that rabbit hole. It was just fiction anyway, something his mind coughed up when he couldn’t handle the fact that there hadn’t been a body to bury.

Rubbing his face, he knew he was never going to get over all he didn’t know about what had happened to the guy. And it had always made him feel for those families who never got their justice.

“Where did you go, Butch,” he said out loud.

He was used to talking to his favorite partner, as crazy as he knew that was—but had long ago decided, hey, people used their dogs as sounding boards, right?

Heading for the door, he flipped off the overhead light, and closed things behind himself. Picking up a roll of yellow police tape that had been left on the floor outside, he ran it across the portal, stringing the official-business banner between a set of nails that had been driven into the jamb. Then he affixed a fresh seal to the juncture and signed it with his pen.

As he went to the stairs, he jacked up his slacks again and patted his belly. Maybe he’d take up running. Touch football. How about the basketball games at church on Tuesday and Thursday nights?

The stairs were stained and dusty—but what wasn’t in this building—and they squeaked and creaked under his street shoes. Then again, as he considered the roof damage to the crime scene, the fact that the structure was standing at all seemed like a miracle. On that note, he stuck to the wall side of the steps. When he came to the floor below, he—

A shuffling sound, like rats hightailing it across a bare floor, brought his head to the right. The apartment directly below the victim’s had a closed door. Unlike the rest of the units.

Surely someone had checked to see if anybody was in?

He walked over, curled up a knuckle, and went a-rapping. “Hello? Detective de la Cruz, CPD.” He reached into his jacket and got his badge ready to flash. “Hello, do you have a minute to talk to me about your upstairs neighbor?”

It was hard to believe anyone was inside, though. The dealer clearly did so much business here that he’d want to secure the entire premises—which, according to records José had searched on his phone, had been abandoned by its commercial real estate property owners, foreclosed on by its bank, and then been left unpurchased for the last eight years.

José looked across the hall. That door was lolling open. Turning back, he knocked again.

“Hello?” he said more loudly.

A muffled shuffle was all he got in return, which suggested inhabitation by something larger than a medium-sized dog—but if the person didn’t answer, there was no way he had probable cause to enter. It could be a cat, somebody taking cover, a man or a woman just living their life.

Which had to be entwined with that dealer’s.

“I’m going to leave my card.” He took one out of his wallet and pushed the stiff square into the doorjamb. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”