Lazaro's face loomed over Ethan. “Wake up.”
Ethan's head throbbed to the rhythm of his blood flow. His tongue felt like a sheet of balsa wood. When he sat up, the muscles in his neck clenched. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, head propped against the armrest without a pillow.
“How much did we drink last night?”
“You've turned into a light weight.”
Trying to swim through the soup that was last night, Ethan recovered small bits of memory and pieced together what he could. Mostly he remembered Graham taking off with the car, arguing with Rain, and returning home to find Sadie waiting for him.
He covered his face with his hands. “Aw, shit.”
“What's wrong?”
“Laz, it's time to go. I've got to do some damage control.”
Lazaro crossed his arms. “What about the boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?”
“Alison's. While you were snoozing away the morning, I called up Rain and convinced her to tell me where the fucker lives.”
Slats of sunlight cut through the blinds and projected a pattern of bars on the carpet. The light sparked a John Bonham drum solo behind Ethan's eyes.
“Let me get some aspirin and check on Graham.”
It took a moment for Ethan to stand, the effort sending his head into full Tilt-O-Whirl mode. Once up, he staggered into the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap. He drank too quickly at first, his body hungry for the fluid but his stomach not ready for the intrusion. He had to stand by the sink until he was sure he wouldn't throw up.
When his stomach settled he took a couple of aspirin with the last of his water then shuffled into Graham's room.
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed and listened to Graham's steady breathing. He was curled into a fetal position, the covers tight around his body as if his tossing and turning had twisted them until they finally restrained him.
Ethan hesitated to wake him. Letting him sleep might be the best thing Ethan could do for him at the moment. If Ethan meant to go with Lazaro to see Alison's supposed boyfriend, he didn't want to bring Graham along. He wasn't about to leave him alone, though. Which meant calling Sadie and begging for forgiveness.
Graham's visible profile looked flushed, but otherwise peaceful. He didn't appear lost in a nightmare or even wrapped up in a dream. If not for the color in his cheeks, he might have looked dead.
A dizziness twisted Ethan's surroundings, but it wasn't the effects of a hangover. Something else brought on this vertigo, a shift. Ethan knew a lot about how life could change.
Nothing would ever be the same.
“Thanks for coming.” Ethan kept his head down while Sadie came inside.
“Where is he?”
“Still in bed.”
She looked down the hall, mouth a straight line.
“I'm letting him sleep,” Ethan said. “Figured that was best.”
Sadie returned her attention to Ethan.
Although he aimed his eyes low, he could feel her studying him. He had showered and changed his clothes before she arrived, but he still felt disheveled. He needed a shave. He'd done his best to clear up the circles under his eyes, splashing his face with cold water a few dozen times. A lack of clean laundry had forced him to rummage through the bottom of his dresser drawers to find something presentable to wear, only his shirt looked like it had spent the last six months forgotten at drawer's bottom. Two fossilized creases formed a cross on his chest.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like an ass.”
“Told you so.”
He looked up. “You did?”
She frowned. “That was the last thing I said before leaving.”
“Oh.”
Lazaro sauntered into the living room scratching his armpit. He had neither showered nor changed, yet didn't carry a whiff of a hangover.
Sadie's frown turned to a scowl. “He's still here?”
Lazaro smiled and gave her a small salute.
“I really appreciate you watching Graham for me,” Ethan said. “Really.”
Sadie arched an eyebrow. “Where are you going anyway?”
“We, uh, we're going to go talk to Alison's boyfriend.”
“She had a boyfriend?”
“Apparently.”
“Do the police know about him?”
Lazaro grunted.
Sadie ignored him, waiting for an answer from Ethan.
“I'm not sure,” Ethan said. “I didn't even know about the kid until yesterday.”
“Should you call them?”
Another groan from Lazaro.
She turned to him. “Is there a problem?”
Before Lazaro could open his mouth, Ethan said, “No.” He was lucky enough to have Sadie over; he knew anything Lazaro said wouldn't help keep her there. “After the run around those detectives gave me, I'd rather find out a few things myself before going to them.”
Sadie folded her arms. She watched Lazaro for a moment, then turned back to Ethan. “What do you want me to tell Graham when he wakes up?”
He wondered if Graham knew anything about this supposed boyfriend. Wouldn't he have mentioned something about it? Graham and Alison got along well enough, but from what Ethan gathered, they hadn't had much contact at school or among their friends. The way Alison had kept her personal life so closeted, Graham probably knew as much about her as Ethan did.
“Tell him I'll be back soon.”
The neighborhood Lazaro directed Ethan to wasn't far from Rain's apartment. It was an older subdivision, many of the houses showing the wear of an economic class that either couldn't afford or didn't care to maintain their property. A lot of these families, Ethan knew, had moved from the sick and decaying neighborhoods of Detroit, only to find that the trouble they tried to escape had followed them, while the middle class had fled the area to safer, whiter ground.
Ethan recognized the pattern because he had once been a part of the cycle, had grown up on the wrong curve in the circle of gentrification. He'd finally managed to push free, but he would never forget the neighbors he'd left behind. No matter what some politicians tried to argue, not everybody had the means to pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps. Many people in neighborhoods like this didn't have the boots, let alone the straps to pull on.
Ethan parked in the street in front of the address Lazaro had given him and cut the engine. He turned to Lazaro sitting in the passenger seat. Lazaro had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a lighter at the ready in one hand.
Ethan said, “I'd ask you to stay in the car, but I know that isn't going to happen.”
“Fuck no.” Lazaro climbed out of the car and had his cigarette lit before he closed the door behind him.
Ethan shook his head and got out himself.
“Let me do the talking.”
Lazaro drew on his cigarette while squinting at Ethan. “What do you think I'm gonna do?”
The question sounded like a challenge. “Just try to stay calm.”
Lazaro smiled around his cigarette. “Yeah, sure.”
They approached the house side-by-side. The porch was merely a cement slab with a network of cracks that had rendered the surface uneven and almost dangerous.
Lazaro made a point of stepping on one of the cracks. “Sorry, Mom.”
Ethan knocked on the door.
The woman who answered had a face so thin her cheeks looked concaved. Her chin jutted out like a hook. Her eyes glared out of deep sockets.
Lazaro dropped his cigarette on the porch and stamped it out. The woman's eyes tracked the gesture, then came up to stare Lazaro in the face. “What do you want?”
Before Ethan could say a word, Lazaro cut in.
“Where's Billy?”
Ethan tried to throw Lazaro a warning look, but Lazaro had his attention on the woman and seemed oblivious to Ethan's presence.
The woman scowled, showing crooked and yellow teeth. “You a cop or something?”
“Maybe.”
“Whatever it is, he didn't do it. And he ain't home.”
Lazaro laughed and shook his head. “That's convincing.”
Ethan cut in. “We just need to ask him some questions.”
“That's a line I hear a lot from you people.”
“We aren't police. My daughter, she was apparently dating your son.”
Her upper lip curled, which deepened certain lines in her face that made it look like the expression was a common one for her. “Did he get her pregnant?” She glanced over her shoulder. “That son of a bitch.”
“He back there?” Lazaro asked.
Realizing her mistake, the woman narrowed the gap between the open door and the jamb. “He ain't got money, so if you want child support or something, good luck.”
Ethan stepped forward in an effort to take command of the conversation. “My daughter is dead, ma'am. Murdered.”
Her deep-set eyes widened, emphasizing her skeletal appearance. “He ain't got nothing to do with that.”
“You sure?” Lazaro asked.
Ethan gritted his teeth. “We're not saying he did. I just want to talk to him, see if he can help us find out what happened to her.”
“When did this happen?”
“Thursday night.”
She shook her head. “Billy was with me that night. He can't help you.”
She started to close the door.
Lazaro shoved forward and put a palm on the door, easily pushing it back open. He forced his way in and used his size to back the woman out of the way.
“Get out of here,” she said without much conviction.
Ethan got the sense the woman was used to being bullied.
Lazaro looked over his shoulder at Ethan. “You coming?”
Arguing with him was pointless. If Ethan wanted to talk to the boyfriend, he would have to play this Lazaro's way for now.
He stepped into the house and closed the door behind him.
The woman looked back and forth between Ethan and Lazaro with panicked eyes bulging in her deep sockets. “I ain't got nothing of value.”
“We're not here to rob you,” Ethan said.
“Where's your son?” Lazaro asked, pushing himself into the woman's personal space.
The woman shrunk back until she came against the wall, nowhere else to go.
Lazaro pinned her to the wall with the weight of his presence. He knew exactly how to use his physical appearance to intimidate. There was nothing conscious to his moves. The act came from pure instinct.
“In the garage.” She flinched as if struck by her own words. “Don't you hurt him.”
Ethan tugged on Lazaro's arm to make him give the woman some space. “We just want to ask him some things.”
Lazaro laid a cold stare on the woman for a couple seconds before relenting his position. Without giving Ethan a glance, he pulled his arm free and strode through the house toward the back.
Ethan followed. He tried to block out the woman's nervous mumbling behind him. Lazaro hadn't hurt her, just scared her. No harm done. Maybe now Ethan could get some answers about his daughter's murder, clear Graham of any suspicion, and send the police in the right direction.
At the back door, Ethan caught up to Lazaro and grabbed his arm again. “You need to take it easy.”
Lazaro looked down at where Ethan gripped him. “Hands off.”
“What's the matter with you?”
“Maybe you don't care what this kid did to Alison?”
“We don't know if he did anything. You can't storm in here and bully everyone.”
“Why not?”
“This kind of thing will only cause trouble.”
Lazaro placed a hand over Ethan's. He wedged his fingers around Ethan's hand and squeezed, folding Ethan's palm.
Ethan's knuckles cracked. He grit his teeth against the pain, but kept his mouth closed and his eyes on Lazaro, revealing nothing.
Lazaro peeled Ethan's hand away, held it a second longer, then released him. “The trouble's already started.”
The line sounded good, like something out of a movie. But Ethan didn't know what it meant. Probably nothing, judging from the self-satisfied jut to Lazaro's chin.
“Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”
“Don’t wuss out on me now. This is your daughter's life we're talking about.”
“Like I need you to tell me that.”
Movement at the edge of Ethan's vision drew his gaze to the woman who had crept up behind them. He didn't know how much she had heard, but she stared at them the way some people gape at the television during their favorite show, eyes wide and glazed.
While Ethan was distracted by the woman, Lazaro slipped out the back door.
“Don't let him hurt my boy,” the woman said.
Ethan followed Lazaro out without promising the woman anything.
Outside, Ethan heard the muffled twang and screech of rock music coming from the detached garage. Lazaro was already halfway there. While the garage had a side door for pedestrian entry, Lazaro strode for the wide main door. In a fluid piston-like motion, he crouched at the door, gripped the handle, then stood and rolled the door up as if it were made of paper.
The metallic rattling of the door in its tracks must have startled the scrawny kid inside. From a crouched position by a stretched piece of canvas propped against a rusted out and wheel-less pickup truck, the kid shot to his feet with a yelp. He held a narrow paintbrush in one hand. Blue paint spattered from the brush like alien blood across the garage's concrete floor.
Lazaro laughed. “Scared ya, huh?”
Billy's shock quickly passed off of his face. His brow wrinkled and his lip curled a lot like his mother's had a moment ago. “The fuck you want?”
“Your throat in my hands.”
Jesus Christ. “Laz, quit it.”
Lazaro ignored Ethan. He entered the garage, walking right at Billy as if he meant to walk right through him.
Billy jerked as if to back away, but changed his mind. Lazaro could easily snap each of the boy's limbs like kindling, and the kid had to know it. Yet he raised his chin and held his ground. Tough little bastard, if not a little stupid.
Lazaro puffed out his chest and got right up against Billy. Billy stood at least a foot and a half shorter, but Lazaro barely bent his neck to look down at him. Instead, he stared down his nose and rocked from foot to foot.
“Enough,” Ethan said.
Billy's eyes flicked toward Ethan with a glimmer of pleading in them. But Lazaro pushed his body forward, demanding the boy's attention stay on him.
“What's your problem?” the kid asked.
“You,” Lazaro answered.
“I don't even know you.”
“You know my niece. You know Alison.”
Again the kid's gaze switched to Ethan. “I didn't do nothing.”
Lazaro stepped to the side, putting himself between Billy and Ethan. “What didn't you do?”
“Nothing!”
“Why you all scared then?”
“I ain't.”
“You're shaking.”
“You're all up in my face.”
Ethan moved into the garage, taking a position between Lazaro and the canvas leaned against the pickup. The painting Billy was working on before they had interrupted him featured a giant robot biting the head off of what looked like a naked woman, though it was hard to tell for sure with all the red paint gushing from the robot's mouth. Nice.
Stomach unsettled, Ethan turned to Lazaro. “Let me ask him some questions.”
Lazaro held out his palms. “Be my guest.”
From the way Billy's hair stuck together in clumps and the dark and crusted paint stains on his pants and in the grooves of his knuckles, it looked like he was three days late for a shower.
This was supposed to be Alison's boyfriend?
“Were you going out with my daughter?”
“Alison's your daughter?”
Lazaro gave the kid a shove. “Answer the question.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “We hung out some.”
“You beat on her?” Lazaro asked.
“No way.”
“You were with her on Thursday night?” Ethan asked.
Billy's eyes remained locked on Lazaro when he answered. “This past Thursday? No. I mean, I saw her during the day. But I wasn't with her that night.”
“You sure about that?” Lazaro asked.
“I had something going that night. I'm sure.”
Lazaro beat Ethan to the next question. “What did you have going?”
The kid tried another show of defiance. He crossed his arms and raised his eyes to Lazaro's face. “I don't have to tell you nothing.”
Lazaro's hand snapped out and palmed Billy's throat just under the boy's jaw. Billy's face went instantly red and he coughed when he tried to breathe.
“No, Laz. Let him go.”
Lazaro leaned his face into Billy's. “What did you do to her?”
Billy's mouth opened and closed like an air-starved fish.
Lazaro shoved him away, sending the kid down onto his tail bone on the concrete floor.
Billy cried out on impact but recovered quickly enough to scamper back out of Lazaro's reach and return to his feet. Tears streaked his face. His hands shook. He glanced toward the open garage door on the other side of Lazaro. But Lazaro had the kid cornered, the pickup on one side, a tangled mess of rusty scrap metal on the other. Lazaro stood in the mouth of this alley of junk, guarding the gate to freedom.
“This isn't getting us anywhere,” Ethan said. “You aren't even asking the right questions.”
Lazaro turned slightly so he could keep the width of his body facing Billy while addressing Ethan. “What's the right question?”
Ethan regarded the skinny and frightened kid. He looked like a cross between a weasel and a snake. Certainly not someone Ethan would have approved dating his daughter.
“When did you last see Alison?”
“I told you. Thursday. During the day.”
“What time? Where?”
“I don't know. Four? Five at the latest.”
Lazaro closed the distance between himself and Billy. “Which is it?”
“Shut up,” Ethan said.
Lazaro glared at Ethan. “Don't you tell me—”
“Shut up.” Before Lazaro could come back, Ethan asked Billy, “Where did you see her last?”
The kid looked back and forth between Lazaro and Ethan as if trying to decide the consequences of answering Ethan's question. “At the roller rink, okay?”
“The roller rink?”
“She hangs out there all the time. I don't skate or nothing. I just went to see her.”
Lazaro chortled.
Billy curled his lip. “Fuck off.”
“Say that again.”
“Was she with anyone?” Ethan asked.
The kid's face wrinkled up and he looked at the floor as if thinking hard. Too hard, Ethan thought. More like he was pretending to think.
“I don't remember.”
Lazaro must have got the same impression as Ethan. He charged at the kid and grabbed both his arms, shook him. “You're a little fucking liar.”
“Laz!”
“Tell the truth.” Spittle flecked off Lazaro's lips as he shouted in Billy's face. “What did you do to her? You beat her, didn't you? You've been beating her all along and you went too far. Say it. Fucking admit it.”
Ethan rushed forward and tried to pry Lazaro away. The muscles in Lazaro's arms flexed so tightly they felt like steel in Ethan's grip. He couldn't budge the stronger man.
“Enough.”
Lazaro ignored him and gave Billy another shake.
Billy cried and trembled. He tried to speak through his sobs, but the words came out as pathetic moans.
“What?” Lazaro asked. “What are you saying?”
“Her brother,” Billy cried. “She was with her brother.”
Before Ethan had a chance to process Billy's words, Lazaro drew back a fist and slammed it into the boy's face.
Billy staggered backward, crashing into the pile of scrap metal. The garage filled with the ringing of metal against metal, drowning out Billy's cries as he fell. On the floor, Billy curled up into a ball and cradled his bleeding mouth in both hands.
Lazaro loomed over him. “Piece of shit liar.”
“Billy!”
The scream came from behind them. Ethan turned and found Billy's mother standing outside the garage. She gaped at the scene before her. Her curled fingers scrabbled at her chin below her open and shocked mouth.
“Time to leave, I guess,” Lazaro said with an air of boredom. He grabbed Ethan's arm and tugged. “Let's get out of here.”
Ethan let Lazaro drag him along. He looked back at the woman as he staggered down the driveway. “I'm sorry.”
The woman looked toward her son. She didn't seem to hear Ethan's apology.