DETECTIVE GUERIN KNOCKED BACK the last of his coffee. I sat across from him at the kitchen table, holding an ice pack behind my ear.
Guerin’s people hurried in and out of the rooms around us. They were hunting for any bits of wire or other evidence that the burglar had left attached to the power outlets in the house. As the crime-scene crew found each bit, they bagged it as evidence and brought it back and laid it on the table in front of Guerin. Like timid cats offering dead mice to their owner.
They had screwed up. After Dono was shot, the CSU should have seen the same scratches on the vent covers that I’d found and uncovered the bugs.
Guerin didn’t offer any excuses. Their mistake was his mistake.
He nodded at the ice pack in my hand. “You sure you shouldn’t be at the hospital?”
“I’ve had concussions before. This is just a headache.”
He inclined his head a fraction. “Maybe call a friend to stay with you instead.”
“How many other cases are you carrying?” I said. “Besides Dono’s?”
Guerin picked up a larger plastic evidence bag, which held one of the two bugs on the table. The third bug was rolled up in a sock in my coat hanging by the door, where I’d hidden it before the cops had arrived.
He looked at the bug through his bifocals. “Your grandfather has my full attention.”
I got up and walked over to the window. Dawn hadn’t touched the sky yet. Every light in the house was on. The cluster of cop cars and lab vans on the street in front of the house had their parking lights blinking, per regulation. A Christmas display.
“Did he have your attention before he was shot?” I said.
“If you’re asking me whether Dono was under investigation, I can’t answer that.”
I pointed at the evidence bag. “The guy who planted those went to a lot of trouble. There’s money somewhere in this.”
“Which means crime, when your grandfather is involved. Weren’t you the one telling me you didn’t know anything about Dono’s life nowadays?”
“I didn’t. But I can make some guesses. So I’m going to guess that you’re even more in the dark than I am.”
Guerin started to say something and then closed his mouth.
They drill politeness into the Seattle cops with six-inch galvanized screws. It always amused Dono, and I was starting to get the joke.
When Guerin spoke again, his voice was level and hard enough to skate on. “If you go around looking for your grandfather’s associates, firing off any question that comes into your head, then we could lose a chance to build a case against someone. He could walk.”
I took his coffee mug and refilled it from the pot. I traded my ice pack for a fresh one from the freezer—Dono had at least a dozen in there—and sat at the table again and looked at the detective.
Guerin could park me in a cell for a while. Two days, if the law hadn’t changed recently. Then he’d have to let me go. A harassment charge could keep him from doing it again. Ganz could set that up.
But I didn’t want to lose two days. And I didn’t want Guerin distracted, thinking he should keep half an eye on me.
“Okay,” I said. “You handle it. I want Dono’s shooter busted, same as you.”
Guerin frowned. “Are you sure about that? The same as me?”
“Why does everyone assume I’m going to kill the guy?”
He took a long inhale. Then he looked at the bug again.
“We’ll find him,” Guerin said. “These are handmade. There can’t be too many guys running around with that kind of expertise.”
I knew of at least one. Jimmy Corcoran.
*
AFTER THE COPS WERE gone, I left a voice mail for Hollis, asking him to get in touch with Corcoran. I checked the doors and windows in every room of the house and settled in on the couch in the upstairs office to get some downtime.
An hour later I got up and checked all the entrances again.
Eventually I went back to the couch, where I lay and just stared at the textured white semigloss on the ceiling.
I didn’t want to close my eyes. Every time I did, I saw the three flashes of light, just off at my two-o’clock.
It almost always started the same way. Three flashes, the night flares from an enemy’s Kalashnikov. The shots that had kicked off the fight. Then came the blast of an IED somewhere to my left, a slap of wind and a keening buzz that filled my ears and made the rest of the fight nothing but more hot lights and sweat trickle stinging my eyes and slaps on my shoulder to tell me when it was my turn to move and cover the next man as we fell back, rock by rock, out of the village.
It wasn’t a long exchange. It wasn’t even especially bloody. Two casualties on our side, one serious enough to earn a ticket home. The bad guys had lost at least three times as many.
There had been worse nights. Much worse. But that action was one of the times that stuck with me. Maybe because the K fire had surprised us all. Maybe because it had been my first real heat since I’d rotated back with my face patched together. The scars had still been pink.
I fought the urge to get up and check the house once more.
Instead I stared hard at the whorls of paint on Dono’s ceiling, breath whistling fast and shallow over my dry lips. I held it in for a count of five, a three count after the exhale. And again.
My heart beat faster. Nearly up to the pace my stress had set. Like paddling fast on a surfboard to catch a wave. I let my breathing settle down, and my pulse followed like an obedient dog.
The breathing trick was only one step. There were others that the shrinks had explained. Most of them had me focus on the reality of my situation. Telling myself that I was safe.
Those wouldn’t help this time. Because it wasn’t true.
My hometown was one big minefield, just waiting for me to wander back in.