Kevin droned on as she surveyed the room. The dresser had a big mirror with a bunch of curling photos tucked around the edges. Baby pictures, all looked alike. A million little cat figurines, all colors, crowded onto the dresser. Little cats on the nightstand, too.
Kevin, still ignoring her, made check marks on his list of supplies. He always told customers they needed to clean the “death room,” and other rooms that touched it, and the bathrooms, including all the ceilings. They always ripped up all the carpeting, cut it up, and hauled it away. It was pretty expensive, and Kellianne always thought a lot of it was kind of not necessary. People didn’t seem to notice. Once Kev started talking about the “smell of death,” seemed like people began to smell it everywhere.
Looking at the little cat statues again, Kellianne smiled and smoothed her Tyvek suit. “You want me to…” She paused, reconsidering.
“Huh?” Kevin looked at her, eyes mocking. “You saying something?”
“I’m not gonna do the inventory,” she said. She flipped up her mask and planted her hands on her hips to make sure he knew she was totally serious. “Look at all this. There’s way too much stuff. It’ll take for freakin’ ever. I’ll start in the other room.”
Kevin pulled his mask off his face, stretching the white elastic way up over his head, then letting it snap back down so it landed like a hat. “Look who’s giving orders, Keef.”
“Gotta salute,” Keefer said, demonstrating. “Guess she knows who’s boss.”
“Abso-freaking-lutely,” Kev said. “I am. So, Miss Princess, we’ll be taking the other room. And you’ll be doing the inventory here.”
“No way.” Kellianne pouted, big time. She knew he hated when she did that. “You always tell me you have to-”
“Ah, life sucks, doesn’t it, sister?”
“But-” He was such an idiot.
“See ya, sucker,” Kev said. He snapped open his clipboard and handed her some sheets of lined inventory paper. “You should have a pen, right? Come on, Keef, you and me can check out the medicine cabinets.”
“Someday you’re gonna get caught.” Kellianne couldn’t resist it, although she was happy to be rid of them. Talk about a sucker. She’d read some story in grade school about a rabbit and a briar patch. She was the rabbit. She looked at the blank inventory pages, trying not to smile.
Whatever she wrote down was all there was. Kellianne could make reality.
“Someday, you’re gonna get a brain.” Kevin shot the words over his shoulder as he strutted out the bedroom door.
Someday? Kellianne no longer needed to hide her victory smile. That someday, dear brother, has already come. It has al-freakin’-ready come.
“All set?” Jake had dragged DeLuca away from the temptation of Curtis Ricker’s desk drawers. D was placidly “reading” Ricker’s tattered issue of Maxim when the guy shambled back into the living room. The music had flipped to some insistent bass-thumping anthem, still so loud maybe it meant Ricker had a hearing problem. But what he was about to hear would be crystal clear.
Ricker was shoving his cell phone back into his pocket, carrying a huge glass of ice water in the other hand. Take a leak, huh? Wonder who he’d called on that phone. It wouldn’t be long before Jake found out.
“Thanks, needed that,” Ricker hefted his water. “Sure you don’t want-”
Jake reached into his inside jacket pocket, nodded to DeLuca to do the same. “Mr. Ricker? I’m Detective Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”
Jake watched Ricker’s brain struggle with this new reality.
“This is my partner, Detective Paul DeLuca.” They flopped open their badge wallets. Jake held his up a bit longer than necessary. Sometimes this part was fun.
“But you said you were-”
“We didn’t, actually,” Jake said.
“You did,” DeLuca said.
“We’re here to talk to you about the death of Brianna Tillson,” Jake said, stashing his badge. “Want to take a seat?”
“She’s dead?” Ricker lowered himself onto the plaid couch, clanking his ice water onto the coffee table. He pulled out his phone, licked his lips. “How did-?”
If he called a lawyer, they were done. Jake talked fast. “So my first question. Where were you on the night of-?”
Ricker, in one swift motion, took his cell phone, and plopped it into his ice water. And put his hand over the top.
“Dammit,” Ricker said, shaking his head. “Lookit that. Musta dropped it.”
“That’s gonna ruin-” Jake reached for the phone, but Ricker stood, hand still clamped over the top of his phone on the rocks.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Ricker said. “That puppy’s toast. Now I’m gonna have to call my lawyer from the kitchen landline. And you two? Are gonna have to leave.”
“That’s destruction of evidence,” Jake said.
“Evidence of what?” Ricker said.
It was tempting to push him on it. They’d asked him about “dependents.” But you could have children without them being dependents. Maybe Jake’s clever questioning had actually lost them info.
Whatever Ricker said now would get thrown out in court, now he’d mentioned his lawyer. Jake would save his questions for later.
He pulled out his own cell phone, pretended to dial. Pretended to be pissed, which wasn’t that tough. “Guess we’re done here,” he said to DeLuca. “I’ll let our friend in the probation department know about the extravagant sound system and entertainment center Mr. Ricker is enjoying. He’ll wonder where that came from, you know? Mr. Ricker being unemployed and all. I wouldn’t leave town, Mr. Ricker. Your probation officer is about to be very concerned with your well-being. Hello? Probation? This is Detective Brogan from the…”
“You done?” Ricker yanked open his front door. Waved an arm, showing them out. Slammed it behind them.
“What was that all about?” DeLuca muttered as they walked toward the cruiser. “His sound system?”
A curtain moved in a window across the street. A face appeared briefly in the glass, then vanished. The streetlights had come on, the ones that still had bulbs making splotches of yellow in the graying snow.
“It was about bullshit.” Jake tucked his cell back into a side pocket. “Needed him to think I was making a call while I snapped a photo of that cell in the ice water. Who’d do that if they’re not hiding something? It’s consciousness of guilt, no question. Mr. Ricker has given us some fine ammunition for our search warrant application.”
30
“Do people really talk like that, Alex? Except in the movies?”
Jane sat on the city editor’s bumpy old couch, stacks of manila file folders crowding her into one corner. She’d parked her car in the Register’s dank basement garage, looking over her shoulder, wondering why no one replaced the broken bulbs, imagining footsteps in the shadows and picturing bad guys behind every row of cars. By the time the molasses-slow elevator finally arrived in the corridor outside Alex’s office, she’d invented a whole spectrum of explanations for her threatening phone call. None of which was reassuring.
Should she be freaked out? Or dismiss it? She could make a good case either way. She’d gotten her share of nasty calls as investigative reporter at Channel 11, but none before at the Register. She could hear Professor Kindell back in Ethics 101, telling her j-school class “a good reporter comes to town and stays until everyone hates them.” If you weren’t making people angry, he’d said, you weren’t doing your job.
Still, she had to tell Alex. Now. She’d trudged to his office, frowning. Following another j-school rule, she’d keep no secrets from her editor. Except for the Jake thing. Which wasn’t really a thing.