“Leave it!” she said. She was holding a hand over her eyes. It was shaking.
“Zoe,” he said, taking a step toward her.
She turned abruptly. “Get out of here,” she said.
“Zoe, let’s talk — ”
“Get out!” she yelled. She snatched his sweatshirt from the floor and threw it at him. “Get out!” She went stiffly to the windows, holding herself as she stared out at the snow.
Louis watched her for a moment then slowly went back out into the living room. He dressed quickly, stopping at the door to pull on his running shoes. He paused, his hand on the doorknob, listening. He could hear nothing from the other room. Finally, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold.
It was snowing hard. He could barely make out the lake down below and the lights of the town far beyond. He took a few steps off the cabin’s porch and down the hill then stopped. He turned to look back at the cabin. His chest, the entire inside of his body, felt hollow, as though everything had been scooped out. It burned, almost like when he had been shot.
He had fucked it up.
“Goddamn it,” he whispered. Then louder. “Goddamn it!”
He swung and slammed his hand into a tree.
CHAPTER 18
Louis pushed open the door of the emergency room and paused, holding up his right hand to examine the gauze wrapping. What an ass he was, ramming his fist into a tree. The pain had kept him up most of the night — that and the memory of Zoe’s face. Finally, at five-thirty he had gotten up, dressed and walked to the hospital. Just a sprain, the doctor had told him, don’t use it for a couple of days.
He glanced at his watch. Seven-fifteen. Now what? He pulled up the collar of his jacket and started toward the station. There was nowhere else to go.
How could he have been so stupid? He should have told her the truth that first night. He should have been different with her than he had been with other women. Different because she was different, this was different. Even though they had known each other only a few weeks he felt this relationship was special, that it had the hope of going somewhere. But not now. He had blown it big time.
He turned the corner onto Main Street. The town was just starting to come to life. A couple of shop owners were out shoveling walks. The lights were on in Moe Cohick’s bakery, the smell of fresh bread wafting out on the cold air. What day was it? He wasn’t even sure. Worse, he didn’t care.
Deep in self-pity, he didn’t hear someone calling his name. Finally, it penetrated his funk and he turned. A rusty brown Honda Civic slid up to the curb. The passenger window rolled down and a pink face peered out. “Hey, you need a lift?”
Louis stared at the guy dumbly.
“Delp,” the man said. “Doug Delp. Reporter, Argus?”
Louis turned and trudged on.
The Civic followed slowly. “Where you heading?” Delp called.
Louis didn’t turn around.
“Officer? Officer Kincaid? Hey, we should talk,”
“Nothing to talk about, man,” Louis shot back over his shoulder without stopping. The last thing he needed now was some punk reporter gnawing on his ear.
“How about Duane Lacey?”
Louis stopped and stared at Delp, who had leaned over to look out the passenger window.
“What do you know about Lacey?” Louis said.
“Just what I hear,” Delp said, nodding toward the police scanner mounted to his dashboard.
“Get lost,” Louis said, turning away.
“I heard you let him go. That true?” Delp said.
Louis came back to the car. He pointed a finger into the open window. “Stay out of my face, Delp,” he said.
Delp put up his gloved hands. “Hey, just doing my job, just following up. Always a good idea, following up.”
Louis started walking again.
“I found these clips about Lacey,” Delp called out.
Louis turned. Delp was holding a manila envelope out the window.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Delp said. “Why would my newspaper have a file full of old articles about some dirtbag from the U.P.?”
Louis came forward. “Let me see that.”
Delp pulled the file back quickly. “Quid pro quo.”
“What?”
Delp smiled and opened the door. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Come on. I’ll buy you breakfast. You look like you need it.”
Five minutes later, they were seated in a booth in the back corner of Dot’s. Louis waited until Delp had ordered breakfast and the waitress had left.
“What did you do to your hand?” Delp asked.
“Nothing,” Louis said, putting his hand below the table. “Now what do you have on Lacey?”
Delp smiled and held up the envelope. “This is hot, man, it’s so fucking hot.”
It took all of Louis’s patience not to reach over and snatch the envelope. “Show me,” Louis said.
Delp leveled his brown eyes from beneath the brim of his Lions cap. “First tell me why you let Lacey go,” he said.
“I can’t share the details of an ongoing investigation.”
“Bullshit.”
The waitress appeared with two steaming mugs. Louis dumped in a stream of sugar and awkwardly picked up the spoon with his bandaged hand to stir it in.
“That much sugar’s bad for you,” Delp said.
Louis set down the spoon. “Look, are you going to show me what you have or do I have to go over to that rag of yours and pull this myself?”
“You can’t. Closed ‘til tomorrow,” Delp said with a smile. “But I can save you a lot of time. It’s all in this envelope.”
Louis took a drink of coffee. “What do you want from me?”
“Just information.”
“I can’t tell you anything without clearance.”
“I know that. I just want to be in on everything you get.” Delp’s smile faded. “Because when this comes out, the big papers are going to be on this like stink on shit and I want it first.”
Louis studied the young reporter. What did it matter? The kid was an idiot and Lacey wasn’t a suspect anymore.
“Why’d you let Lacey go?” Delp pressed.
“Because he was in prison at the time of the murders.”
Delp frowned. “Man, that doesn’t figure.”
“What do you mean?” Louis asked.
Delp sifted through the clips and held one out. Louis patted his shirt and let out a sigh. He had left his glasses at work. “Just tell me,” he said impatiently.
“Duane Lacey had good reason to be pissed at you guys,” he said.
“Why?”
“You killed two of his kids,” Delp said.
Louis stared at him. “What?”
“Well, not you. You weren’t here.”
“Where?”
“Right here in Loon Lake. Nineteen seventy-nine.”
“What do you mean, ‘killed two of his kids’?”
“It’s right here, man.”
Louis took the clipping. He couldn’t make out the small print of the story but the headline made him pull in a breath.
TEENS KILLED IN LOON LAKE RAID
There were two thumbnail black-and-white photos of the kids, probably high school yearbook pictures. Louis squinted to make out their features. Jesus, one was a girl.
“What happened?” Louis asked.
“The kids broke into a tourist cabin up on the north end,” Delp said. “At least one of them was wanted by the cops for gang stuff and they tracked them to the cabin. The cops called them out but the kids had guns and fired back. Cops threw in gas but two of the three kids were killed.”
“Two?”
“Yeah. The twins. The youngest survived.”
Louis took a slow drink of coffee, thinking of the letter from Lacey’s son at Red Oak. “How’d you find out about Lacey?”
“Well, I wasn’t working here then but when I heard Lacey’s name on the scanner yesterday, I mentioned it to my editor and he kind of vaguely remembered hearing the name before. So I ran it through the morgue and came up with all those clips.”