Jack fired up a Camel and pushed it all out of his head. What was the use? If you didn’t shrug, you went nuts. If you let yourself care, you were finished. Those were the rules.
Then the thought crept back: Veronica.
It wouldn’t leave him alone. Loss? Rejection? He didn’t know what it was. He tried to be mad about it, because that seemed the macho way to be. Sad was pitiful. There’d been tears in his eyes on the way home that night. Yeah, real macho, he thought. Just a big crying pussy.
She was the only girl he’d ever loved.
They’d been friends for nearly a year first. It was almost formality; they’d meet at the Undercroft several times a week, they’d drink, shoot the shit, joke around, talk about their problems, like that. Jack had needed to talk — this was right after the Longford case — and Veronica was always there to listen. He doubted he’d ever have gotten over it without her. But he liked listening to her too. He liked hearing about the joys in her life, the sorrows, the quagmires and triumphs, the ups and downs. Her art isolated her; she’d never been in love, she’d said. She even talked about her scant sex life, which made him secretly jealous. “Nobody understands me,” she’d said so many times, her face wan in confusion. I understand you, he’d thought as many times. The fact was this: they were both misfits. That was their bond. Jack the reclusive long-haired homicide cop, and Veronica the desolate artist. Their friendship was perfect in its mutuality, but after so many months, Jack realized it was more than friendship. He realized he loved her.
That’s when the weeks had begun to pass in slow masochism. His love continued to grow, but so did his certainty that he could never tell her that. If he told her, he might lose it all. “Stewie’s always saying that you and I should be lovers,” she often joked. Jack didn’t laugh. First off, he couldn’t stand Stewie (“a silly, stuck-up, fairy-clothes-wearing asshole,” he’d once called him) and second, he agreed. Now she was talking about her disgruntled romantic life. “Guys think I’m weird,” she’d complained. “They never call me back.” What could he say? “There must be something wrong with me,” she’d say. “Maybe I’m not attractive. Am I attractive?” Jack assured her she was attractive. But how could he tell her the truth, that she didn’t fit into the regular world for the same reasons he didn’t? Each night she’d recount her latest broken quest for love, and each night Jack wilted a little more behind his Fiddich and rocks.
And just as he thought his turmoil would tear him apart, the moment exploded. He remembered it very vividly. She’d been sitting there at the bar, right next to him as usual, and out of the blue she’d said, “You know something? All this time I’ve been looking for something, and it’s been sitting right next to me all along.” “What?” Jack said. “I love you,” she said.
Jack had nearly fallen off his barstool.
It had been a wonderful beginning.
Now it’s the end, he thought. His despair hollowed him out as he drove the unmarked down Duke of Gloucester Street. He’d dated more than his share of women in his life; none of them had been anything. Only her. Only Veronica. Her weird uniqueness, her spontaneous passion, her love. All gone now. Had it been all his fault? Had he pressured her? Had he moved too fast? Craig had often suggested that he wasn’t giving her enough room to live her life. “She’s an artist. Artists are weird.” Bartenders knew people better than anyone. Jack wished he’d listened a little harder now.
And now this retreat thing. What the hell was that? Some candy-ass hippy rap session. Let’s drink wine and pooh-pooh about art. A retreat, for God’s sake. She hadn’t even said where it was. And now this guy, this… What had she said his name was?
Khoronos.
More barkeep philosophy. Long ago, Craig had told him, “No matter how much you love a girl, and no matter how much she loves you, there’ll always be some other guy.”
Khoronos, Jack thought.
The throbbing lights afar caught his eye. Red and blue. Don’t think about it anymore, he pleaded with himself. Just…don’t…think about it.
The high-rises stood like an arrangement of gravestones. In the center lot a pair of county cruisers sat nose-to-nose. One cop stood smoking, staring off. Another was down on one knee with forehead in hand. The red light on an EMT truck throbbed like a heartbeat.
“Put the fucking butt out and put it in your pocket,” Jack said. “This is a crime scene. And tuck in your shirt.”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said. His eyes looked flat.
“Evidence here yet?”
“Upstairs and out back. We’re still waiting on the M.E.”
Jack pointed to the cop on one knee. “What’s his problem?”
“See for yourself. Fifth floor. Lieutenant Eliot’s there.”
“Any press people show up, tell them it’s a domestic. And get yourselves squared away. You’re cops, not garbage men.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack stalked toward the high-rise. He was one to talk: long hair, ragman clothes, unshaven. Uniforms hated brass. You usually had to be a prick to get anything out of them. But these two guys looked like they just seen a ghost. Maybe they have, Jack thought. He stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor and headed down the hall.
The familiar scent touched him at once. Faint. Cloying.
Fresh blood.
Randy Eliot leaned off the wall. He always wore good clothes, like a TV detective. But tonight the face didn’t match the fine, tailored suit. Randy Eliot’s face looked cracked.
“You’ve never seen anything like it,” was all he said.
“Who reported it?” Jack inquired.
“Old guy in the next unit. Said he heard whining, and some ruckus. The super unlocked the door for us.”
Jack looked at the doorframe. The safety chain was broken.
“That’s right,” Randy confirmed. “Locked from the inside. We broke it to get in. The perp went out the back slider.”
Jack eyed the chain, then Randy. “But we’re five stories up.”
“The perp must’ve rappelled down. He left through the slider, over the balcony. That’s all I know.”
The apartment was quaint, uncluttered. It made him think of Veronica and then he knew why. Framed pictures hung all over the walls — pastels and watercolors, originals. An artist, Jack realized. A lot of the pictures looked first-rate.
Flashes popped down the short hall. A tech was fuming the handle of the slider, squinting over a Sirchie UV light. He said nothing as Jack stepped onto the balcony.
Five goddamn stories, he thought, peering over the rail. Two more techs mounted field spots below, to check for impressions in the wet ground. It had rained all afternoon. The perp had either worked his way down terrace to terrace or had used a rope and somehow unhooked it afterward. Jack tried to visualize this but drew only shifting blanks.
Randy took him back through the unit. The place had “the feel.” Any bad 64 had it, the mystic backwash of atmosphere projected into the investigator’s perceptions. Its tightness rose in Jack’s gut; he felt something like static on his skin. He knew it before he even saw it. The feel was all over the place.
“In there,” Randy said. “I’ll wait if you don’t mind.”
Another stone-faced tech in red overalls was shooting the bedroom with a modified Nikon F. The flash snapped like lightning. New blood swam in the air, and a strangely clean redolence. Death in here, the feel itched in Jack’s head. Come on in.