Nick had already seen that in the detective's eyes. He wouldn't be the kind who sat around the desks in the squad room and hashed out his theories with the others. Not once had he written anything down, either while he was inspecting the blood spatter or up on the roof. His were the kind of eyes that absorbed everything and then let those images turn and twist in his head until they started to fit. Nick knew Hargrave's kind. They were the ones who burned out quick, or were damned good because of the experience they gained by not giving in.
"I'll try not to piss him off, Joel," Nick said and hung up the phone. Nick pulled into his driveway at nine, only fourteen hours since he'd left this morning. He turned off the engine and sat in the quiet, trying to set aside the scenes in his head, his internal speculations on who might have dressed in black, positioned himself on a roof and killed a man who was already sitting in prison for life and still carrying a death sentence. And that was if Ferris was indeed the intended target. Suppose some incompetent rifleman had meant to hit the jail guard? Suppose Ferris had just stumbled in front of a bullet? Nick took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
"Don't take it into the house," he whispered to himself. "Don't do this to her too."
When he got out, he fixed a smile onto his face and unlocked the front door. When he stepped in, his daughter was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle laid out before her, half done. The sight stopped him, like always now when he encountered Carly sitting or standing or twisting a strand of her hair in the exact same way that her twin sister had done. Ghosts, Nick thought. Will I always have to live with ghosts?
"Hi, Daddy. I've been saving all this side for you," Carly said in her nine-year-old voice, sweeping her hand over the yet-undone side of the puzzle. She tossed her silky limp hair aside and gave him that face, the mischievous one with the raised eyebrows and the smile made without parting her lips.
"Oh, saved it, huh?"
Nick walked over and reached down with both hands and his daughter took them on cue, and with a firm grip, he lifted and tossed her up with one motion and then caught her against his chest and she wrapped her legs around his waist and squeezed.
"You didn't just slow down so you could stay up later?" he said into her ear and then kissed her cheek.
"No way," she said, leaning back with her hands now locked behind her father's neck. "I could have done your side easy."
"I know you could have," Nick said, starting to move in a tight circle, beginning the spin he knew she expected, and her eyes got wider and brighter and the fake smile he'd carried in became unconsciously real as they went around together. They were both laughing when Elsa interrupted.
"Buenas noches, Mr. Mullins," said the small elderly woman, wiping her hands with a dish towel. "You need something for your dinner, yes?"
Elsa was Bolivian, a grandmother to two young boys, the sons of her immigrant daughter. A decade ago she came to the United States to take care of her grandsons and earned extra money by taking in the children of working parents as a daytime sitter. Kind and matronly and endlessly patient, she had looked after both of the Mullinses' girls from the time they were babies as their daytime nanny. While Nick and his wife worked, Elsa cared for the girls along with her older grandsons in her daughter's home. By the time the boys were old enough to be home alone, Elsa had fallen in love with the girls, and they with her. Nick offered her a live-in position and after the accident she stayed, although Nick had never asked her to. She took it almost as a duty to watch over him and Carly, to protect the child from her dreams and to protect Nick from himself.
"Just a sandwich, Elsa. Please," Nick said and carried his daughter to the small kitchen table.
"Wait, wait, wait," Carly said, squirming from Nick's arms. "You have got to see this, Dad."
When she skipped from the room, Nick sat heavily in the chair near the patio slider and looked out onto the spotlighted pool. The aqua glow rose like a tinted bubble from the water. Nick liked the softness of it on his eyes. After the crash, at the bottom of his breakdown, he'd spent nights staring out into the light, sipping whiskey for hours and trying to let the color wash out the images of white, bloodless skin and torn metal from behind his eyelids. The booze had let him sleep. But the next night he would be back. It had gone on for months until finally he made a decision to stand up and live, for his remaining daughter, and went back to work. Still, on days when he was tired and let down his guard, the lure of slipping into the pale blue light forever would come over him.
"Mr. Nick?" Elsa said and the words snapped him back. When he looked over at her, she was eyeing him and propping up the corners of her mouth with her thumb and ring finger, making a smile. It was her job to warn him when the "grouper" face appeared. The child psychologist had warned him that his own sadness could overtake and eventually empower his daughter's grief. It was something he needed to stay conscious of. When Carly came back into the room with a sheaf of papers and an unframed canvas, he had regained his smile.
"Ta-daaa!" his daughter announced, holding out the canvas, upon which a brightly colored and finely textured painting had been produced. Nick studied the work while Carly posed and held it with the corners balanced in her palms. He felt her watching his eyes. But this time he did not have to pretend. The colors were pastels of pink and orange, the lines soft and flowing.
"It's beautiful, C!" he said, using his pet name for her. "Are these wings?"
"Yes. And here in the corner."
"How did you get that texture in there? That's really cool."
"It's that resin stuff you got me. They showed me how to use it at school, and see, you can peak it just so or really raise it up if you want," she said, pointing out sections of the painting that rose delicately off the canvas.
They propped the painting up against a napkin holder on the table and while Nick ate, Carly showed him homework, her graded papers, and explained in detail how Meagan Marts had been such a pain correcting her and the other girls on the bus that morning when they were discussing what lip gloss was made of. Nick listened. He had set up this nightly ritual on the advice of a divorced friend whose wife had left him. It was invaluable, the friend said, to keep in touch, to keep a semblance of normality, to stay sane.
Elsa had made him one of her famous Bolivian chicken salad sandwiches. Nick couldn't tell the difference between the chopped celery or spring onions, but he truly loved the battle of tastes between the seedless grapes and the rainbow chiles. While father and daughter talked, Elsa stayed busy washing and wiping and straightening a kitchen that Nick knew was already spotless.
"OK, Carlita," Elsa finally said. "It is very late, yes, Mr. Nick?"
Elsa had that wonderful trait of being the boss while using the right phrases to make the man think he was still in charge.
"Elsa's right, babe. Time to get ready for bed," Nick said. "You go, and I'll come in and read."
With a limited amount of preadolescent huffing, his daughter left the room.
Nick spun his chair back to a view of the pool. A random breeze fluttered across the surface, causing the refracted light to dance on the far wall.
"How was she today?" he asked without looking over at Elsa.
"Yo creo que es mejor, Mr. Nick," Elsa said. She too was looking outside through the window over the sink. "She is very smart, though. It is too much to see inside her head."
Nick just nodded, but Elsa went quiet and he turned after a moment to look at her. She was again folding and refolding a dishtowel in her hands, her eyes on the floor now. Nick knew something was bothering her, but let Elsa decide when to tell it.
"She call me Lindsay today," Elsa finally said. "While she is looking for something in the office room she say, 'Lindsay, do you know where the, the thing for the paper staples is?' and I just say, 'No,' like I no hear Lindisita's name."