“You be the good cop and I’ll be the bad cop,” said Cordelia.
“Not a good idea,” said Jane, striding down the hall toward Faye’s loft. They’d already tried Milan’s place, but he was either out or refusing to talk to them. “We want answers. That means we need her cooperation.”
Jane knocked on the door, glad Cordelia didn’t own an Uzi. “She’s in there,” whispered Cordelia. “I can smell the smoke. Carcinogen city. We should get hazard pay for going in there.”
Jane knocked again. The door finally cracked open, revealing a thin slice of Faye’s face.
“Cordelia?” she said, a question mark in her voice. “I thought … I mean, how are you feeling?”
“Me? Fine.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause I thought …” Her voice trailed off.
“Thought what?”
“Oh, nothing. I guess … I guess I’m confused.” A cigarette dangled from her mouth. She took a drag, then blew smoke out her nose. “Kind of late for a social call.”
“Can we come in?” asked Jane.
Faye regarded Cordelia a moment more, then said, “’Spose so.
You’re in luck, ladies. Just took some chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. I always bake when I can’t sleep.”
“Cookies,” said Cordelia, sniffing the air, then coughing as the Chesterfields clogged her airways.
On her way to the kitchen, Faye said, “Did you know Joanna and that piss bag ex-husband of hers left the building ’bout half an hour ago?”
Cordelia did a double take. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope,” said Faye, piling some of the warm cookies onto a plate. “Here, I got milk.”
“No thanks,” said Jane. “Did Joanna tell you why she was leaving?”
“Since the piss bag arrived, she hasn’t had much time for me.”
“I wonder where they went?” said Cordelia, helping herself to the biggest cookie on the plate.
“I saw them get into a limo together,” said Faye, staring hard at Cordelia for a long moment, then shaking her head. “Watched out my back window, I did. Wouldn’t think she’d leave the safety of the building since she got another flower delivery this afternoon.”
“Look, Faye,” said Jane. “We know you have a key to Joanna’s loft.”
“Who told you that?”
“Tammi Bonifay.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. I got one. So what?”
“You ever go in there when Joanna wasn’t around?”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Someone broke the mirror in Joanna’s bathroom earlier this evening, and then wrote a message in lipstick on what was left of it.”
“Yeah? So?”
“You don’t act very surprised,” said Cordelia, her right hand hovering next to the plate, waiting for Faye to look away so she could snatch another cookie.
“I’m not surprised by anything that happens to that woman.”
“Whoever wrote the message didn’t break in,” said Jane. “The person had a key.”
“Tammi probably gave keys to other folks.”
“Just one,” said Jane. “But the man gave it back.”
“What did you mean when you wrote, ‘I own you’?” Cordelia asked.
Go right for the jugular, thought Jane.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Faye.
“And the flowers. You sent all of them, right?”
“No law against sending flowers—if I did, which I didn’t. Most people’d look upon it as a kindness.”
They tried a few more questions, but Jane realized they were getting nowhere, so she yanked Cordelia away from the cookies and said good night.
“We could have pressed her harder,” said Cordelia on the way to the elevator. “She knows more than she’s telling.”
“I get that same feeling, but we can’t beat it out of her.”
Cordelia grunted. “I could have leaned on her a little.”
“Cordelia!”
They returned to her loft. As Jane sat down at the computer and Cordelia retreated to the bathroom to soak in the tub, her cell phone rang again. She checked the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. “Hello,” she said, checking the e-mail at her office.
“Is this Jane Lawless?”
It was a man. She didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes?”
“We met yesterday at the Brass Rail. You showed me a picture of a guy. David Carlson. I know where he is.”
A gust of hope blew into her chest. “Where?”
“I want two hundred bucks, okay?”
“No problem. Just tell me where to come.”
He repeated the address. It was a hotel on Hennepin, one she’d never heard of. Most of the downtown hotels on Hennepin were flophouses. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Room two oh four. Knock twice.”
“Is David okay?”
“You’ll see when you come.” The line disconnected.
Jane shot off her chair and grabbed her car keys and her jeans jacket. “Cordelia, I’m leaving. Take care of Mouse, okay?”
She didn’t wait for a response. She charged down the back steps
and jumped into her Mini. She found a parking place in a lot half a block from the hotel and rushed up the steps to the second floor. The smell of stale smoke, sour sweet, ancient dirt, and urine hung in the air. She tried to swallow back her revulsion, but with all the emotions swirling around inside her, she felt like she had a basset hound stuck in her chest. She knocked twice on the door and waited.
The man with the tin-colored hair opened the door a crack, then slipped out into the hall. “You got the money?” He was excruciatingly thin, with the kind of yellowish skin that came from spending every waking moment indoors, probably sitting at a bar. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt, as if he had biceps he wanted to show off.
Jane pulled her wallet out of her back pocket.
The man chewed his lips as she counted out ten twenty-dollar bills. She was glad he hadn’t asked for more because the two hundred pretty much cleaned her out.
“Found him in an alley,” he said, pocketing the money. “He’d passed out. He doesn’t belong here. But if you don’t help him, this is where he’ll end up—or under a bridge sleeping on a piece of cardboard. I like him. Figure, with a friend like you, he’s got a chance. I don’t want him here when I get back. Understood?”
Jane nodded.
“Tell him … tell him I said good-bye, okay?”
Jane watched him disappear down the stairs, then turned and entered the room. There was only one light on inside, on the nightstand next to the bed, and it was pretty dim. She glanced around for another one to turn on, but there weren’t any. The bed was made. Two empty gin bottles sat on the window ledge next to it. Squinting into the semidarkness, she saw David sitting in a chair next to a beat-up love seat. His face was turned away from her, but he was awake, smoking.
She let the stillness settle in between them for a few seconds. “David?” she said finally. “I came to take you home.” Moving a few steps closer, she saw that one side of his face was scraped and raw. She felt a sudden sadness expand inside her chest.
She wasn’t sure what he’d say or do. She remembered Nolan’s warning, asking her to contact him before she met with David. But all
that faded away. It was just the two of them. The way it should be. “Did you hear me?”
A rocky moment followed as her words hung in the air.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Remember when we first met?”
He’d given her an opening. It was something she could work with. “Sure I do. Like it was yesterday.”
“It was at a dance. I’d seen you running track, thought you were pretty hot. So I cut in. We danced four more songs together. I charmed you with the wonderfulness of me, then we went outside. It was fall. We walked over to the football field and sat on the bleachers.”
“You tried to kiss me.”
“I did kiss you. Do you remember what you said?”
Jane struggled to recall. “That—”
“You said it was nice. Nice! So I asked you if you wanted me to kiss you again.”
“How did I respond?”
He smiled. “Not really, you said. That’s a quote. I was shattered.”
“I doubt that.”
“And then, just to push a little more, I said, hell, don’t you like guys? For Christ’s sake, I was a football jock. Prime pickings.”
“And I said I liked them well enough.”
“Precisely. Not a glowing recommendation. So, as a joke, I asked if you liked girls better. And there was that long pause. If you hadn’t paused, Jane, our lives would never have connected. We told each other the truth that night. It was one of the most important nights of my life. It’s amazing, really. One minute you’re alone in the universe and then circuits connect.”
When he looked up at her, she knew with total certainty that those blue eyes of his were still wired to her soul. “Let’s tell the truth again. Right now, Davey.”
With a straight face, he said, “Okay. I finally figured it out. I’ve got a vitamin deficiency, Jane. That’s all. Low on my B complex.”
“Don’t start joking around. Not now. Be serious.”
“That’s all I ever am these days. And I’m sick of it.”
“Let me take you home.”
“You don’t like this place?” He spread his arms wide.
“No, I don’t.”
“Whose home are we talking about? Your home? Aren’t you afraid I’ll burn it down? Blow it up?”
“No. I’m not afraid. Are you?”
“Yes!” he screamed. “I’m terrified! You want the truth, that’s it!”
Jane felt a heavy ache behind her eyes.
“And I’ll give you one more piece of truth if you’re interested. I didn’t kill Luberman.” He took a hit off the cigarette. “That’s the one thing I figured out sitting here in this dump. I was awake when I found him in the staircase. Awake when I stomped on him. He was already dead. But I totally lost it when I called you. I couldn’t seem to get my bearings. And then I took off, trashed your bathroom, left you to clean it up. I’m sorry, Jane. Might as well make ‘I’m sorry’ my mantra.”
“What about the knife?” she said, squeezing her hands to fists inside her jacket pockets.
“What knife?”
“The one you took from my kitchen drawer.”
He frowned, looked confused.
“It’s molded stainless steel, all one piece, with a dimpled handle.”
Light came into his eyes. “Oh, that. I wondered where it came from. It was in my duffel when I opened it at Joanna’s apartment. I didn’t want it, so I put it in one of her kitchen drawers. Why? What’s so important about the knife?”
David had never been a good liar. She didn’t think he was lying now, yet her own intuition wasn’t enough. She had to prove he was innocent. “Come on. Let’s go. I’ll explain everything that’s happened on the way back to my house.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. We go to your house and then what? You adopt me? You hire me on as your wine steward? I don’t have a life anymore, Jane. Did we forget that little detail?”
“Come on,” she said, tugging on his hand. “Tomorrow, I’ll drive you over to the university for your appointment. Remember? You’re being tested. And then, we’ll just have to wait to see what the doctors say.”
He looked up at her. “That simple, huh.”
“Yeah. I know what I’m doing. I’ll keep you safe, and I’ll keep me safe at the same time.”
After snuffing out his cigarette, David stood. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he said, crushing her in his arms.