“I THINK WATERS did Julia,” Grout said, as he and Rath sat in the Bee Hive, working on their third beers. “I don’t know about Mandy.”
“What happened to your fingers?” Rath said, nodding at the finger splints.
“Waters kicks like a girl,” Grout said.
Rath drank his Molson. Pain spiderwebbed from either side of his spine, so he felt he was cracking open out of his own skin. He needed to stop in and get his Vicodin. The prescription had been delayed another day because the pharmacist had been unable to read Snell’s handwriting, and he’d had to contact Snell to confirm it.
Grout fished a couple pretzels from a wicker basket, crunched them down.
“What makes you think Waters is the doer?” Rath said.
“What doesn’t? Carving up dogs, the Satanist bullshit. I hate to admit it, but your angle looks better than mine about now. Still, I don’t see how Mandy fits. Yet.”
“Is the carving the same on the dog as on the girl?”
“We’re talking flesh carvings here, not paint by numbers. And I still don’t see any damn goat head or whatever. But—” Grout looked at Rath. “What? You don’t think he’s our boy now? As soon as I come around to your line of thinking.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t—.”
“But?”
“It doesn’t feel like something someone does alone. Carve up a girl, torture her, and the fetus thing.” Rath rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “It lends itself to the alchemy of two sickos prodding each other. Two halves of one evil. Like those two who did the professors. Waters did the dog with his buddy, probably because they fed off each other. Now. His buddy is in Afghanistan so is he going to have the guts to act alone?”
“OK. So it was two perps. So maybe Waters got a new recruit,” Grout said, latching onto Rath’s theory. “The kid is evil. The type to prey on weaker, troubled kids, lure them in— I’d buy that, put it on Lay-Away at least. And Waters has no alibi.”
“Whoever did it, won’t need an alibi. Can’t even be expected to have an alibi for eight months ago. There is no fixed time of death.”
“She disappeared March 11, that’s a concrete date.”
“But not a concrete time. And you said yourself she could have run away on that date. Been abducted later. There’s no way we can tie Waters or anyone else without hard physical evidence.”
“Why are you shooting holes in this?”
“Don’t get defensive.”
“I’m not, I’m looking at the facts.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Looking at facts, that’s the problem?” Grout shook his head angrily. “Or is it because I found Waters?”
“I’ll walk now if you want. I’m fine with that,” Rath said, though he wasn’t fine. He wouldn’t extract himself from the case even if he were kicked off it. He’d pursue it on his own. “Look,” he said. “I know you want Barrons’s desk. And should get it—”
“What the hell did he tell you in his office?” Grout said.
“Nothing you have to worry about.”
“I’ll decide what I need to worry about.”
Rath jabbed a finger onto a cork coaster and spun the coaster around. “The only thing you need to worry about is this case. Not politics. Not positioning. Not who came up with what lead first. Not your kids’ basketball games or gymnastics. If you want to get ahead, focus. And take more chances. It’s not just the facts, it’s how you interpret them.”
“You can say that. You can follow any old hunch. You don’t have a career or wife to lose.”
“You think I waste time on any old hunch? I get a hundred hunches a day and ignore a hundred and one of them. You don’t think maybe I’d like to find who’s cutting up girls? You think maybe I haven’t seen enough of that?”
They sat in shrieking silence.
“Of course not,” Grout said. “No.”
“Say it is Waters, and some other degenerate. Do you think lowlifes like that could keep quiet under pressure?”
“I haven’t turned the screws that tight yet.”
“What did the search of his apartment show?”
“Nothing.”
“His truck?”
“Nothing, but—”
“Computer?”
“Larkin’s only halfway there with it. But nothing so far. But he fits. He does. More than anything you have. I don’t give a shit if he’s going to AA. For all I know, maybe he’s trolling the bottom of the barrel for fucked-up chicks to get a girl involved. Maybe this is some sexual thing with a sick chick. It happens.”
It did. Too often. And AA was full of lost types ripe for the picking.
The waitress brought over Grout’s Bud, and he stared at it without picking it up.
“I admit you’re right about one thing. I can spend as much time on more unlikely scenarios of a case because I have no life. Darts and deer hunting.” Rath raised his beer. “Here’s to my thrilling life.”
“Try being married with kids.”
“Married. I haven’t had a date in sixteen years.”
Grout stared in disbelief.
Rath slid his Molson from one hand to the other. “I was never interested. I’d see other single parents bringing home dates, having someone move in with them and their kids. I never wanted to do that to Rachel.” He finished his beer. “If married parents like you and Jen can’t find more than their anniversary to get out on a real date, how could I justify dating as a single parent?”
“Who says we get out on our anniversary,” Grout said, breaking the remaining tension with a laugh.
“There may be a woman now,” Rath said. “Maybe. She works at a dress shop and called to see if Rachel liked the jumper she helped me pick—”
“She called to ask if you liked what you bought? Jen has single and divorced girlfriends cackling all the time about this shit. Women don’t waste a second with any man unless they’re interested. That’s not gut. That’s fact. Call her.”
IN THE PARKING lot, Rath dialed the Dress Shoppe.
“Dress Shoppe,” a woman’s voice said.
Rath realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled. “Is Madeline there?” he said, his voice cracking like a twelve-year-old Peter Brady.
“Speaking.”
“It’s Frank.”
The silence of a nunnery at 3 A.M. He considered hanging up. “Who?”
“Frank Rath. The father who bought his daughter the jumper.”
“Oh. Yes. What can I do for you?”
Christ, what a blunder.
“Hmmm?” he managed.
“What can I do for you?” she said.
“I was wondering. What are you doing Friday?”
“Friday day?”
“Day. Night. Either.”
Silence. Then voices in the background, muffled by a hand over the phone.
“Sorry, customer,” she said. “Friday. Well.”
“Look, I think maybe I got my wires crossed. I—”
“You didn’t.”
His pulse quickened. “No?” he said.
“No.”
“So, are you free?”
“No. But I could change that if you’re asking me out. Are you asking me out?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I am. I am asking you out.”
“So. You’re just shy?”
“Shit no.”
She laughed.
He relaxed. Some.
“So . . . day or night?” she said.
“Evening. Seven?”
“Where?”
“I hadn’t thought that far.”
She laughed harder, a spirited laugh that caused all the stress to flow out of him, leaving him loose. Humming.
“What do you like to eat?” His voice was thick, from the back of his throat.
“Depends on my mood.”
Every word seemed an unintentional double entendre now. It was a sticky web of flirtation, and he felt tangled in it.
“Comfort food,” she said. “So, where do you want to take me?”
“Some place quiet.”
“How about the new place, Bistro Henry?”
Bistro Henry was fine. Bistro Henry was perfect.