“Rough night,” Fester said to Ray.
“We’ve had rougher.”
“Nah, not really. You remember much of it?”
Ray said nothing.
“Another blackout?” Fester asked.
Again Ray didn’t reply, pouring the coffee instead. They both took it black-at least, they did right now.
“I know what you’re going through,” Fester said.
Fester didn’t have a clue, not really, but Ray said nothing.
“What, you think you’re the only guy who’s had his heart crushed?”
“Fester?”
“Yeah?”
Ray put his index finger to his lips. “Shh.”
Fester smiled. “You don’t need to talk it out?”
“I don’t need to talk it out.”
“Maybe I do. I mean, what happened last night. It brought it back for me too.”
“Your heartbreak?”
“Yep. Do you remember Jennifer?”
“No.”
“Jennifer Goodman Linn. That’s her name now. She was the one. You know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“Some girls, you just lust after. Some girls, you just really want or you like or you figure will be fun. And then some girls-well, maybe only one girl-she makes you think about forever.” Fester leaned forward. “Was Cassie that for you?”
“If I say yes, will you leave me alone?”
“So you get what I mean then.”
“Sure,” Ray said. Fester was a huge man, but like all men, when you talk about heartache, they get smaller and more pathetic. Ray took a breath and said, “So what happened to you and Jennifer?”
The big-haired waitress returned. She asked what they were having. Ray ordered pancakes, nothing else. Fester ordered a breakfast that included every food group on every chart ever made. It took nearly two full minutes to say it all. Ray wondered if the order came with a side of Lipitor.
When the waitress left, Ray went back to his coffee. So did Fester. Ray thought that maybe the moment had passed, that he would now be able to sit and sulk in peace, but it was not to be.
“Some asswipe stole her away from me,” Fester said.
“Sorry.”
“She’s married now-to a plumbing contractor in Cincinnati. They got two sons. I saw all these pictures of them on Facebook. They did some Carnival cruise last year. They go to Reds games. She looks really happy.”
“Everyone looks happy on Facebook.”
“I know, right? What’s up with that?” Fester tried to smile, but it couldn’t make it through the ache. “I wasn’t good enough for her anyway, you know what I mean? I was just a lowly bouncer. Maybe now, with this new business and all, I probably make as much coin as the plumber does. Maybe more. But it’s too late, right?”
“Right.”
“You’re not going to encourage me to go after her?”
Ray said nothing.
“You should see her photos. On Facebook, I mean. She’s still just as beautiful as the day she dumped me. Maybe more so.”
Ray stared down at the coffee a moment. “You know what beer goggles are?”
“Sure,” Fester said. “The more you drink, the better the girl looks.”
“You’re looking at those Facebook pictures through heartache goggles.”
“You think?”
“I do.”
Fester considered that. “Yeah, maybe I am. Or maybe those aren’t heartbreak goggles. Maybe those are true-love goggles.”
They fell into silence for a moment. The coffee was God’s nectar. The headache had become a dull, steady thud.
“The plumber is probably making her happy,” Fester said. “I should leave it alone.”
“Good idea.”
“But,” Fester said, holding up a finger, “if she walked through that door right now-or, for example”-he shrugged theatrically-“if she, let’s say, walked into the Weak Signal looking for me after all these years, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Subtle, Fester.”
He spread his arms. “What about me hits you as subtle?”
Fair point. “She didn’t come back to start up again.”
“So she just wanted a fling? To slum for a couple hours? That sucks.” Then thinking more about it, Fester said, “But hell, I’d take it.”
“She didn’t come back for that either.”
“Then what did she come back for?”
Ray shook his head. “It’s not important. She’s gone. She won’t be back.”
“So she just came back to mess with your head?”
Ray played with his napkin. “Something like that.”
“Cold.”
Ray did not reply.
“But you know what’s interesting, Ray?”
“No, Fester, why don’t you tell me what’s interesting?”
“Jennifer broke my heart, sure, but she didn’t break me. You know what I mean? I still function. I got a business. I got a life. I moved on. Yeah, I drink sometimes, but I didn’t let it destroy me.”
“Again with the subtle,” Ray said.
“I know there are few things worse than a broken heart, but it is nothing that you shouldn’t be able to recover from. Do you know what I’m saying?”
Ray almost laughed. He knew. And he didn’t. A broken heart is bad, but there are indeed things worse. Fester thought that a broken heart had crushed Ray. It had, no question about it. But you do recover from a broken heart. Ray would have, if that had been all. But as Fester had noted, there are a few things worse, more scarring, harder to get over, than a broken heart.
Blood, for example.
Broome didn ’t like confiding in Megan.
He still didn’t believe that she was coming totally clean, but that just made it more important, not less, to hit her with the full horrible, awful facts of the case. So on the drive down to Atlantic City, he told her enough to scare the crap out of her-how he believed that many men, not just Stewart Green and Carlton Flynn, went missing on Mardi Gras, how none of them had ever been seen again.
When he finished, Megan said, “So are these men dead or did they run away or did someone kidnap them or what?”
“I don’t know. We only know of the fate of one-Ross Gunther.”
“And he’s dead.”
“Yes. A man is serving time for his murder.”
“And you think that man is innocent?”
“Yes.”
She thought about it for a moment. “So how many men have you found that fit this Mardi Gras pattern?”
“We are still working on it, but for now we have fourteen.”
“No more than one a year?”
“Yes.”
“And always around Mardi Gras.”
“Yes.”
“Except, well, now you have another body in Harry Sutton. He doesn’t fit the pattern at all.”
“I don’t think he’s part of the Mardi Gras group.”
“But it has to be connected,” she said.
“Yes,” Broome said. “By the way, does that holiday mean anything to you? Mardi Gras, I mean.”
Megan shook her head. “It was always a wild night, but other than that, nope, nothing.”
“How about to Stewart Green?”
“No. I mean, not that I know about anyway.”
“Stewart Green is the only one we have a possible sighting of. You get now why I need to talk to anyone who might have seen him?”
“Yes,” Megan said.
“So?”
She thought about it, but in truth, there was no option but the truth here. “Lorraine saw him.”
“Thank you.”
Megan said nothing. Broome explained how he didn’t want Megan to give her a heads-up, that he’d visit her soon.
“I’ve known Lorraine a long time,” Broome said.
Megan smirked, remembering how Lorraine said she’d thrown him a one-timer. “Yeah, I know.”
Broome parked the car and brought her into the precinct through the side door. He didn’t want Goldberg or anyone else to know she was here. He set her up in a storage room on the ground level. Rick Mason, the sketch artist and all-around computer weenie, was there.
“What’s with the secrecy?” Mason asked.
“Think of it as witness protection.”
“From your fellow cops?”
“Especially from them. Trust me on this, okay?”
He shrugged. Once Megan settled in, Broome headed back to his car. He quickly called Erin. Earlier he had asked her to check for any surveillance cameras around Harry Sutton’s office, see if they could get an image of this young couple. She told him now that she was still working it. He had also asked her to find the whereabouts of Stacy Paris, the girl Mannion and Gunther had battled over.