part0036

‘NOT HERE,’ GUILLORY SAID. ‘I can’t talk about it in the middle of all this . . .’ She waved her arm in a broad sweep, took in the diner full of everyday people going about their everyday lives. It was no place to talk about the deviants and the degenerates of the world and the death of one of them, however little the planet might mourn his passing. Or however eagerly the diners might raise a glass of juice or cup of coffee in celebration if they knew.

It made him wonder, worse, it made him dread how bad it could be. Because they’d had many a serious discussion propping up the bar in the Jerusalem with liquid backbone on hand. Instinctively, he knew where she wanted to go. To a place perfectly suited to thoughts and talk of death and depravity.

Known to everybody as Teardrop, he’d been a police officer himself, working undercover until his recklessness betrayed him and the gang he’d worked to infiltrate had butchered him, his death a lesson in cruelty. Guillory had called Evan Teardrop for a while in recognition of his own reckless and pig-headed nature. And as a reminder of what happened to those who rushed in blindly, who ignored all sensible advice.

She nodded. That small dip of the head and the soft smile that accompanied it made him think that things could still be good if they could only get over their current problems. He didn’t dwell on the question of whether that would still be the case if she admitted to him in the next five minutes that she had indeed killed Robert Garfield in cold blood, slitting open his throat as he lay in his bed.

He couldn’t get out of his mind the way she was on the morning after the night he now knew she’d been in Garfield’s house. The freshness of her hair and body as if she’d scrubbed herself clean for hours. The quickness of her temper, understandable in a person with a weight on their mind and another scar on their conscience. Or soul, if you prefer.

Not surprisingly, they walked to the cemetery in silence. Side by side, separated by an inch or two that might as well have been a wide ocean, one filled with doubts and recriminations and what should have been.

Neither of them was surprised when a car pulled to the curb beside them before they’d gone a quarter mile. The passenger door flew open, blocking the sidewalk.

She stepped around the door, carried on walking as if nothing had happened. Ryder stared after her for a couple of beats, then turned on Evan.

There was no point in denying it. Lydia had told them Ryder had been watching from across the street.

He didn’t bother to add what he felt. That he didn’t want to find out either. Ryder wasn’t prepared to be brushed off so easily. His gaze flicked back to Guillory disappearing down the street. Then he seemed to become aware of where they were, the direction she was headed. His face fell.

‘Jesus. It’s something to do with that pervert Garfield and all the other deviant bastards, isn’t it?’

Again, Evan said nothing. Ryder didn’t bother to repeat that he just knew it. They both knew he knew it anyway.

Ryder looked like he wanted to bite something. The steering wheel. Evan’s head. Anything. He held his breath which only made his face redder.

Then, in the twenty seconds it took for Ryder to make up the distance between them and Guillory striding out up ahead he told Evan exactly what he’d do to him if whatever half-assed scheme they were up to backfired and ended up making her worse than she already was.

But Evan wasn’t letting him have it all his own way, told him he’d like to see him try and there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if Ryder and the rest of her fair-weather colleagues got a bit more behind her and didn’t treat her like a pariah.

So the windows were misted by the time they caught up with her, both men having done nothing more productive than let off steam in frustration at their own inability to help. Neither of them felt any better for it.

Guillory stopped as they pulled up alongside her so Evan didn’t have to pull the same stunt with the car door. That was a lucky break for the car door. He climbed out and Ryder leaned across.

Then he was gone in a squeal of rubber and black smoke. It would have been a lot better all-around if he’d insisted that she get in the car and told her then and there. But things don’t work like that.

She gave an uninterested shrug, started walking again. He fell into step beside her. The unexpected interlude had failed to break the tension between them. It was back to silence for the rest of the way.

‘I had the name Liverman,’ she said once they’d wound their way between the graves to stand in front of her brother’s small plot.

She laughed, a strangled sound that didn’t do justice to the screwed-up way things had turned out.

‘I heard our friend Lydia’s brother Todd say it when he came to pick me up. To take me for a one-way ride out to the woods. It was careless. But they didn’t think it was going to matter.’ Her voice sounded as full of satisfaction that she’d proved them wrong as it was for staying alive. Then it dropped a notch. ‘That’s one mistake they’re going to regret.’

Evan reckoned that if he’d been one of the residents of the graves that surrounded them, he’d have been looking forward to welcoming a new neighbor or two in the near future. Ones who’d met a very violent end.

‘Like Lydia said, I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. There aren’t many people called Liverman and none of them fit the profile. I was starting to think it was a fake name myself.’

She shook her head, stared through the grave marker in front of them, her thoughts somewhere he could only guess at.

‘I told you. They treat me like I’m making it all up. I wasn’t about to say I thought I heard a name while I had the hood over my head and they were beating the shit out of me. It would’ve been straight back to that patronizing bitch of a psychiatrist to see if we could work through my feelings of anger and confusion.’

For a moment he thought she was going to spit her mouth was so twisted. Whether in disgust with herself or the psychiatrist bitch he couldn’t say.

She pulled her eyes away from her brother’s grave, turned them on him. He felt as if he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, strayed into a different part of the cemetery and was looking down into an open grave. One that seemed to have no bottom. Only darkness, thick and welcoming.

He didn’t say what a non-answer that was. Or that it was a stupid thing to say. Because if Lydia gave her Liverman’s real name as she’d promised, she’d be faced with that exact same decision once again.

‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Then she laughed again. A proper laugh this time, one that made him feel good inside. ‘Maybe Donut’s right. I spend too much time with you. The half-assed must be rubbing off on me.’

Good as her laughter had made him feel, it was time for him to spoil everything, drag them both back to the question that stood between them like something that had crawled out of one of the graves.