“Frost?” she said.
Reluctantly he straightened, and she was startled to see that his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He turned away, as though embarrassed that she’d glimpsed his anguish, and he quickly swiped a sleeve across his face.
“Jesus,” she said. “What happened to you?”
He shook his head. “I can’t do this. I need to be taken off the case.”
“You want to tell me what went wrong?”
“I fucked up. That’s what went wrong.”
Seldom did she hear him use profanity, and hearing that word from his lips surprised her even more than his confession. She entered the room and shut the door. Then she pulled over a chair and sat down facing him directly so that he would be forced to look at her.
“You were supposed to escort her home tonight. Weren’t you?”
He nodded. “It was my turn.”
“So why didn’t you get here?”
“It slipped my mind,” he said softly.
“You forgot?”
He released a tortured sigh. “Yes, I forgot. I should have been here at six, but I got sidetracked. That’s why I can’t work this case anymore. I need to take a leave of absence.”
“Okay, you screwed up. But we’ve got a missing woman here, and I need all hands on deck.”
“I’m worthless to you right now. I’ll just fuck up again.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’re falling apart right when I need you the most.”
“Alice wants a divorce,” he said.
She stared at him, unable to come up with an adequate response. If ever there were a time to give her partner a hug, this would be it. But she’d never hugged him before, and it felt fake to start doing it now. So she just said, “Oh man, I’m sorry.”
“She flew home this afternoon,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t make it to your barbecue. She came home to break the news in person. At least she was nice enough to say it to my face. And not over the phone.” Again, he wiped a sleeve across his face. “I knew something had to be wrong. I could feel it building, ever since she started law school. After that, nothing I did or said seemed to interest her anymore. It was like I’m just this dumb cop she happened to marry, and now she regrets it.”
“Did she actually say that to you?”
“She didn’t have to. I heard it in her voice.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Nine years we’re together, and suddenly I’m not good enough for her.”
Jane couldn’t help but ask the obvious question. “So who’s the other guy?”
“What difference does it make if there’s another guy? The point is, she doesn’t want to be married. Not to me, anyway.” His face crumpled and he shook from the effort not to cry. But the tears came anyway and he rocked forward, his head in his hands. Jane had never seen him so broken, so vulnerable, and it almost frightened her. She didn’t know how to comfort him. At that moment, she would rather have been anywhere else, even at the bloodiest of crime scenes, instead of trapped in this room with a sobbing man. It occurred to her that she should take his weapon. Guns and depressed men did not mix well. Would he be insulted if she did? Would he resist? All these practical considerations ran through her head as she patted him on the shoulder and murmured useless sounds of commiseration. Screw Alice. I never liked her anyway. Now the bitch has gone and made my life miserable as well.
Frost suddenly rose from the chair and started toward the door. “I need to get out of here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Home.”
“Look, I’m going to call Gabriel. You come and stay with us tonight. You can sleep on the couch.”
He shook his head. “Forget it. I need to be by myself.”
“I think that’s a bad idea.”
“I don’t want to be with anyone, okay? Just leave me alone.”
She studied him, trying to gauge how hard she could push him on this point. And realized that if she were in his shoes, she, too, would want to crawl into a cave and talk to no one. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” He straightened, as though steeling himself for the walk out of the building, past colleagues who’d see his face and wonder what had happened.
“She’s not worth crying over,” said Jane. “That’s my opinion.”
“Maybe,” he said softly. “But I love her.” He walked out of the room.
She followed him to the stairwell and stood there on the third-floor landing, listening to his footsteps as he descended the stairs. And she wondered if she should have taken his gun.
TWENTY-FIVE
The relentless pings of dripping water were like hammer blows to her aching head. Josephine groaned and her voice seemed to echo back, as though she were in some vast cave that smelled of mold and dank earth. Opening her eyes, she saw a blackness so solid that when she reached out, she half expected to feel it. Though her hand was right in front of her face, she could not see even a hint of movement, not the faintest silhouette. Just the effort to focus in the darkness made her stomach rebel.
Fighting nausea, she closed her eyes and rolled onto her side, where she lay with her cheek pressed against damp fabric. She struggled to make sense of where she was. Little by little she registered the details. Dripping water. Cold. A mattress that smelled of mildew.
Why can’t I remember how I got here?
Her last memory was of Simon Crispin. The sound of his alarmed voice, his shouting in the darkness of the museum basement. But that was a different darkness, not this one.
Her eyes shot open again, and this time it wasn’t nausea but fear that gripped her stomach. Fighting dizziness, she sat up. She heard her own heartbeat and the whoosh of blood in her ears. Reaching beyond the edge of the mattress, she felt a frigid concrete floor. Her hands swept the perimeter and she discovered, within reach, a jug of water. A waste bucket. And something soft, covered in crackling plastic. She squeezed it and smelled the yeasty fragrance of bread.
Farther and farther she explored, her dark universe expanding as she gradually ventured off the safe island of the mattress. On hands and knees she crawled, her leg cast scraping across the floor. Leaving the mattress behind in the dark, she suddenly panicked that she would not be able to find it again, that she’d be eternally wandering on the cold floor in search of that pitiful bit of comfort. But the wilderness was not such a large place after all; after only a short crawl, she came up against a rough concrete wall.
Propping herself against it, she rose to her feet. The effort left her unsteady and she leaned back, eyes closed, waiting for her head to clear. She became aware of other sounds now. The chirping of insects. The skittering of some unseen creature moving across the floor. And through it all, that relentless dripping of water.
She limped alongside the wall, tracing the boundaries of her prison. A few paces took her to the first corner, and she found it oddly comforting to discover that this blackness was not infinite, that her blind wanderings would not lead her to drop off the edge of the universe. She hobbled on, her hand tracing the next wall. A dozen paces took her to a second corner.
The features of her prison were slowly taking shape in her head.
She moved along the third wall until she reached another corner. Twelve paces by eight paces, she thought. Twenty-four feet by thirty-six feet. Concrete walls and a floor. A basement.
She started along the next wall, and her foot bumped up against something that clattered away. Reaching down, her fingers closed around the object. She felt curved leather, the bumpy surface of rhinestones. A spike heel.
A woman’s shoe.
Another prisoner has been in this place, she thought. Another woman has slept on that mattress and gulped from that water jug. She cradled the shoe, her fingers exploring every curve, hungrily seeking clues to its owner. My sister in despair. It was a small shoe, size five or six, and with the rhinestones, surely it had been a party shoe, meant to be worn with a pretty dress and earrings, for an evening out with a special man.