After a lot of waving and too much baby talk, Elise and David drove away, heading back toward civilization and a higher crime rate.
"You have no intention of showing up, do you?" David asked.
"I don't know… I might. Depends on what's going on at work."
"Sure." He made a sound that implied he knew better than that.
Was she getting more transparent with age? "I love Vivian dearly," Elise said, "but I'm no good at that kind of small talk. I hate it."
"What you really mean is you're afraid of it."
"I can't believe you're lecturing me. You. Mr. Antisocial."
"I'll go if you go. That way we can talk shop if things get too awkward."
"Oh, that would be a hit. Maybe we should bring along some crime scene photos to pass around while we're at it."
"Eight-by-ten color glossies. I can see it now."
Elise veered to the left and pulled into the parking lot of a sporting-goods store. "I need a glove," she explained in answer to David's look of inquiry.
Inside, David made a tight fist and punched the center of the leather baseball glove.
"This one seems pretty decent." He pulled it off. "Here. Try it."
Elise wiggled her fingers into the glove. Her hand was healing nicely. The butterfly bandages were gone, replaced by two small Band-Aids. "It doesn't go all the way on."
"It's not supposed to."
"It's stiff."
"It'll soften up. You have to work with it. You don't want to get one that's too soft, or it'll start folding up on you. How does that feel?"
She made a fist and smacked it against the padded palm of the glove. "I don't know. How's it supposed to feel?"
"Okay." He let his shoulders sag, his arms dangle. "I can accept that you never played softball, but you surely played catch."
She smacked the glove again. "Nope." The ball fit so nicely in the glove. She rolled it around, pressing her fingertips against the stitching.
"What'd you do instead? Don't tell me you actually played dolls with those Barbies."
Elise thought about the time she'd tried to put a spell of silence on her sister. She'd found a doll with brown hair. She cut the hair so it resembled Maddie's. She superglued an X of black thread across the mouth, burned some herbs, and read a spell she'd been taught by the old lady conjurer down the street. It had been one of her many early failures.
"Yeah," she told David. "I played with dolls."
"Hmmm." He squinted his eyes and appraised her. "There's something you're not telling me."
"So, you think this glove's okay?" She pulled it off and tucked it under her arm. "What about Ms one?" She lifted a red glove from the shelf hook. "I kind of like it. Or what about that pretty blue one?"
"The brown glove is better."
"It's more expensive."
"With a glove, you get what you pay for."
She put the red glove back and picked up a ball.
"That's a hardball. You need a softball. Here." He plucked two from a wire barrel. "One more thing…" He perused the shelf until he found a small brown bottle. "Glove oil. You have to oil the glove, put the ball inside, then tie it closed so it will get a good shape to it."
"How has this gotten so complicated?" She shook her head in bafflement. "We're just going to play catch. Play"
"Play takes work."
David picked out a glove for himself. Something that took a little longer, because he was even more particular about his purchase than he'd been about Elise's.
"Stay where you are."
He gave her a slow, lazy throw.
She had no choice but to try to stop it, just snagging the ball with the top of her glove. She didn't toss it back.
"I'm assuming you played a lot of ball, so why don't you have a glove that already fits you?" Elise asked as they walked to the checkout area. "That's already formed to your hand?"
"I do, somewhere. It could be at my mother's in Ohio, or in storage in Virginia."
"I can't imagine my life being that scattered."
"They're only things. Material possessions."
He tossed the ball straight up and caught it in the glove. "You don't strike me as materialistic."
"No, but I become attached to my possessions in an emotional way. Like my car. It has over one hundred fifty thousand miles on it. I know I should get a new one, but emotionally I'm not ready. I can't let it go. I've had it so long that it's a part of me. An extension of who I am."
He got in line and put the glove with the ball inside on the conveyor belt. "Your car is a piece of shit."
"But it's my piece of shit." She thought over what she'd just said. "Figuratively speaking."
"Of course."
"I'll probably get attached to this ball glove if I use it long enough. Especially if it eventually forms to the shape of my hand and only my hand."
She was already feeling herself becoming fond of it. She particularly liked the way it smelled.
Their items were rung up separately.
"Some people believe objects take energy from their owners," Elise said once she'd paid and grabbed the noisy plastic bag. "And when they absorb so much, they begin giving it back."
David paused as the automatic door opened. "So does that mean there's a part of me packed away in the bottom of a box, in a shed in my mother's backyard along with my Matchbox cars and microscope?"
The image he suggested gave her a strange, sorrowful feeling in her chest. "I think you should find the glove."
He laughed.
"I'm not kidding."
"I know you aren't."
Elise's phone rang.
Headquarters. Their brief foray into normalcy was over.
James LaRue had been caught and was at that moment being escorted back to Savannah.
Chapter 32
"Your visitors are here."
James LaRue stuck his hands through the small rectangular opening in the cell so the guard could slip a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. The heavy cage door was unlocked, the sound of metal against metal reverberating hollowly.
LaRue shuffled out, his slippers making a shushing sound against the glossy cement floor. He was led through a series of locked doors to a small, brightly lit room with surveillance cameras high on three walls and an inner observation window of reinforced glass.
Sitting at the table was Detective Elise Sandburg. With her was a guy with dark hair and an angry face.
They were both dressed like they were ready for a funeral.
An omen?
He sat down across from them, annoyed to find that the chair was difficult to get into gracefully because of the short chain used to anchor it to the floor.
So. There she was. The woman he'd drugged.
For a moment he found himself distracted by her strange eyes. They were multicolored, with dark lines going through them.
She was attractive, something he didn't recall because he'd been so fucked-up at the time. She was also very cool. Very together. Just like you'd think a detective would be, only prettier.
The guy… he was rougher around the edges. With the look of someone who needed some kind of fix. Maybe alcohol. Maybe drugs. Maybe even legal medication prescribed by a doctor who liked to keep his patients happy.
LaRue experienced a wave of panic.
He'd been panicking a lot lately.
What a stupid thing for him to do. A stupid, stupid thing. But it had seemed so logical at the time. Funny how that kind of thing worked. The guy-he would surely understand that. He'd surely done some stupid things while under the influence.