He stood up and handed her the bag of candy, which she held in her lap. Then he pulled up the chair Lindsay had been sitting in.
“Thanks, Richie.”
He sat down and said, “Welcome. How are you doing?”
“Pretty good. The shot missed the bone, missed the artery. I think it’s what they call in cowboy movies, ‘just a flesh wound.’” She grinned. She had rarely felt better.
“You been drinking?”
She kept grinning, nodded her head. “Dr. Washburn’s orders.”
Richie laughed.
“So, are you in a lot of pain?”
“Not too much. I can take it. They’re checking me out in a couple of days or maybe tomorrow. Made me promise to take Cindy’s Flower Shop with me.”
Cindy wanted him to touch her again. She could still feel his whiskers against her cheek.
He said, “Well, anyway, did you get your story, at least?”
“Hell, no. Lindsay killed it.”
“Uh-huh.” He laughed, like it wasn’t right to laugh but he couldn’t help it.
“There’s a story there, anyway,” she said. “It’s not the one I had planned, but Mackie, Lindsay, and me, intersecting in that way at that place and with that result. I can do a lot with that. I could do a lot with half of that.”
Richie sighed. Leaned back in the chair. Ran his hands through his hair.
“What is it, Rich?”
She knew what. There had been guns and shooting and death. And she wasn’t a cop. And as they both knew full well, she’d never shot a gun off the range.
“That deal could have gone so wrong, Cindy, in so many ways. I don’t like to think about it, but I do.”
“Me, too.”
He sighed, giving her a long, steady look. Cindy thought he was trying to convey to her what exactly she’d done, what she’d been through. And that she’d been lucky.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said at last.
She felt that. Her eyes watered just a little. She kept it together by gripping that white bag of candied citrus peel.
“Thanks, Richie.”
He said, “I’m glad Lindsay is okay.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“I love you both.”
Cindy watched his cheeks color. He cleared his throat. Then he looked at his watch. Oh, no. He just got here.
Richie said, “Hey, the game is on in a little while. Uh. You want me to keep you company and we’ll watch the Niners kill the Seahawks?”
Cindy laughed. “That’s the best offer I’ve had since I got here.”
“I’ll go out and get a pizza. Okay?”
“Excellent.”
“Mushrooms and sausage.”
“Perfect.”
Richie stood up, pointed to the chair, and said, “Keep my seat warm. I’ll be right back.”
When Richie was gone, Cindy opened the bag of candy and bit into a chocolate-covered orange peel. Delicious.
She rolled down the top of the bag and held it for a while, thinking about Lake Street. About Richie. About how she was very much alive.
Hey. It would be really fun to do something with Richie again.
Cindy put the white paper bag on the table by the bed, grabbed the clicker, and turned on the TV.
Acknowledgments
Our thanks and gratitude to these top professionals who were so generous with their time and expertise: Captain Richard Conklin, Stamford Connecticut Police Department; Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, medical examiner and coroner, Trumbull County, Ohio; attorneys Philip R. Hoffman and Steven A. Rabinowitz, New York City; Chuck Hanni, IAAI-CFI, and forensic science consultant Elaine M. Pagliaro, MS, JD. And special thanks to Donna Nincic, Director, ABS School of Maritime Policy and Management, Professor, California Maritime Academy.
We are grateful to our researchers, Ingrid Taylar and Lynn Colomello, and to Mary Jordan, who keeps it all together.
Excerpt from INVISIBLE
The most terrifying threat is the one that is…
For an excerpt, turn the page.
THIS TIME I know it, I know it with a certainty that chokes my throat with panic, that grips and twists my heart until it’s ripped from its mooring. This time, I’m too late.
This time, it’s too hot. This time, it’s too bright, there’s too much smoke.
The house alarm is screaming out, not the early-warning beep but the piercing, you’re-totally-screwed-if-you-don’t-move-now squeal. I don’t know how long it’s been going off but it’s too late for me now. The searing, oven-blast heat within the four corners of my bedroom. The putrid black smoke that singes my nostril hairs and pollutes my lungs. The orange flames rippling across the ceiling above me, dancing around my bed, almost in rhythm, a taunting staccato, popping and crackling, like it’s not a fire but a collection of flames working in collusion, collectively they want me to know, as they bob up and down and spit and cackle, as they slowly advance, This time it’s too late, Emmy—
The window. Still a chance to jump off the bed to the left and run for the window, the only part of the bedroom still available, like the enemy is cornering me, like they’re daring me, Go ahead, Emmy, Go for the window, Emmy—
This is my last chance, and I know but don’t want to think about what happens if I fail—that I have to start preparing myself for the pain. It will just hurt for a few minutes, it will be teeth-gnashing, gut-twisting agony but then the heat will shrivel off my nerve endings and I’ll feel nothing, or better yet I’ll pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Nothing to lose. No time to waste.
The flames hit my flannel comforter as my legs kick over to the floor, as I bounce up off the bed cushion and race the one-two-three-four steps to the window. A girlish, panicky squeal escapes my throat, like when daddy and I used to play chase in the back yard and he was closing in. I lower my shoulder and lunge against the window, a window that was specifically built to not shatter, and ringing out over the alarm’s squeal and the lapping of the flames is a hideous roar, a hungry growl, as I bounce off the window and fall backward into the raging heat. I tell myself, Breathe, Emmy, suck in the toxic pollution, don’t let the flames kill you, BREATHE—
Breathe. Take a breath.
“Damn,” I say to nobody in my dark, fire-free room. My eyes sting from sweat and I wipe them with my T-shirt. I know better than to move right away; I remain still until my pulse returns to human levels, until my breathing evens out. I look over at the clock radio, where red fluorescent square numbers tell me it’s half past two.
Dreams suck. You think you’ve conquered something, you work on it over and over and tell yourself you’re getting better, you will yourself to get better, you congratulate yourself on getting better. And then you close your eyes at night, you drift off into a netherworld, and suddenly your own brain is tapping you on the shoulder and saying, Guess what? You’re NOT better!
I let out one, conclusive exhale and reach for my bedroom light. When I turn it on, the fire is everywhere. It’s my wallpaper now, the various photographs and case summaries and inspectors’ reports adorning the walls of my bedroom, fires involving deaths in cities throughout the U.S.: Hawthorne, Florida. Skokie, Illinois. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Plano, Texas. Piedmont, California.
And of course, Peoria, Arizona.
Fifty-three of them, in all.
I move along the wall and quickly review each one. Then I head to my computer and start opening e-mails.
Fifty-three that I know of. There are undoubtedly more.
This guy isn’t going to stop.
I’M HERE FOR the Dick. That’s not what I actually say, but that’s what I mean.
“Emmy Dockery for Mr. Dickinson, please.”
The woman parked at a wedge of a desk outside Dickinson’s office is someone I’ve never met. Her name plate says “Lydia” and she looks like a Lydia, cropped brown hair and black horn-rimmed glasses and a prim silk blouse. She probably writes sonnets in her spare time. She probably has three cats and likes Indian food, only she would call it cuisine.