The Third Victim Part 50

"Who gives a f.u.c.k? Legally, I'm free as a bird. Now, give me my jacket back. As much fun as this has been, I got places to go and people to see."

"Sure," Rainie said. She smiled at him. Then she raised the switchblade and sliced the collar clean off his coat.

Charlie shrieked. Quincy took a shocked step forward.

Rainie retrieved the severed piece of leather. A moment later she squeezed the long plastic bag of white powder from the collar onto her palm.

"Heroin. About three ounces of it, which would make a little more than simple possession. Congratulations, Charlie. Legally speaking, your troubles are just beginning."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n c.u.n.t! How dare you! You're no better than me! You're no better than any of us!"

"Sure I am, Charlie. There are two choices for angry people in this world, and only one of them wears a badge."

Charlie shrieked again. Rainie enjoyed loading him into the car. Thursday, May 17, 51:05 p.m.

It took Rainie four hours to process Charlie Kenyon. She had to catalog the heroin into evidence. Then she had to store it in the safe that pa.s.sed as the department's evidence locker. She'd just finished fingerprinting Charlie when his father's lawyer arrived and tried to tell her she'd used entrapment to find the drugs. Rainie volunteered an FBI agent as her corroborating witness. FitzSimons turned downright abusive. She'd had no right to search Charlie Kenyon, no justification for mutilating his jacket, and she'd violated every const.i.tutional law ever envisioned by the forefathers and then some.

Rainie took it in her stride. It amazed her how comforting the drug bust felt after the relative chaos of the past three days. She knew Charlie, she knew FitzSimons, she knew Charlie's dad. All the usual suspects, all the usual paperwork, all the usual crimes. She could've done this arrest in her sleep.

She spent two hours carefully wording the arrest report and building the file against Charlie. Then the paperwork was done and she returned to the task-force center, where the shadows had grown long and the attic office was eerily quiet. Well past ten o'clock; another long day in a long, strange case.

Luke Hayes had gone to Portland, where he would hopefully interview Melissa Avalon's parents. Sanders was out doing G.o.d knows what Sanders did. Maybe arranging the soup cans in the grocery store or crashing a Tupperware party for more stay-fresh seals. Quincy was following up on No Lava. Or maybe he'd started in on Shep. Whatever he found, she'd probably be the last to know. She was both frustrated by that and grateful.

Now there was just her and the hum of the old computer and the buzz of all the thoughts still crowding her head.

Charlie had rattled her today. Not just with his accusations against her. Rainie knew what people thought and said. She accepted that salacious rumors would always be more appealing than cold, hard fact.

It didn't get to her.

He had spooked her with his comments about Danny.

"Only after he told me he wanted to hack his father into twenty different pieces and run him through a blender."

Rainie couldn't let the statement go. So much violence. So much rage.

She knew these things happened. G.o.d knows, some nights ... Huddled in the closet, bruised and shaking and still tasting the blood on her split lip. Wishing it would go away. Wishing she'd have the strength to make it stop.

The fantasies. That she'd rise up and her mother would finally cower before her. That just once she'd strike back, maybe slap her mother hard, and then her mother would repent, weeping, "I never knew how much it hurt. I swear I never realized. Now I know and I'll never do it again."

Maybe that was the difference. Through all of her pain, Rainie never forgot that Molly was her mother. And the kernel of her fantasies was still about love and forgiveness. That her mother would realize what she was doing. That she'd give up the bottle. That she'd take her little girl in her arms and swear never to hurt her again. That for once Rainie could relax in her mother's embrace and feel safe.

Even at the worst of it, she had not wished her mother dead.

It had taken a great deal more than that to push her over the edge.

Rainie paced the tiny attic. Her body ached and her mind ached and she couldn't stand being alone with her own thoughts anymore. She needed sleep, a decent meal, a good hard run. It was too late to jog, she had no appet.i.te, and she was honestly afraid to close her eyes. "What would you have done with Danny? Mail him a shotgun?"

No, she would've told him that she understood. She would've taken him to her back deck, where the mountain pines towered above them and owls hooted deep in the shadows and it was difficult to take yourself seriously when you were so small in the general scheme of things. She would've let him talk. Get it all out, angry child to angry child, if that's what it took. Then maybe she would've talked. Perhaps she would've told him things she'd never told anyone else. Sitting on her deck with the trees around them and the clean mountain air fresh on their faces.

Maybe she would've saved Danny O'grady.

But she hadn't done any such thing. She'd seen him just two weeks before the shooting. She'd thought he was pale and jumpy and curt with his father. And in the next instant she'd shrugged it away because, just like everyone else, she thought it was a phase. Trouble happened only in bad families. Not to a nice, ordinary kid like Danny.

She, a kindred spirit, had failed him. And she didn't know yet how she was going to live with that.

Quincy was hunched over his laptop in his cramped hotel room when knocking sounded at the door. He'd been working for two hours, scouring various on-line carriers for any record of a member named No Lava. His eyes were blurry. His shoulders carried knots the size of small boulders. Every time he shifted to get more comfortable, the rickety desk threatened to collapse and take his laptop with it. Thirty minutes ago he'd started cramming crime-scene photos under the uneven legs for better support. He did not want to know what this said about his life.

The knocking came again.

Quincy pushed away from the table, rubbed the back of his neck, and self-consciously checked the mirror. His white shirt, pressed crisp just this morning, was now a wrinkled mess. His tie was somewhere on the floor. His cheeks sported a five o'clock shadow, and his dark hair was rumpled from running his fingers through it over and over again. If memory served, this look had worked for him in his thirties, when it made him s.e.xy in a dark, brooding sort of way. He was in his mid-forties now. He thought he simply looked tired.

Some decades were definitely better than others, he thought. What the h.e.l.l.

He checked the door's peephole and was not surprised to see Rainie standing there.

He opened the door, and for a moment they simply studied each other.

She'd changed out of her officer's uniform. Now she wore faded straight-leg jeans and a loose hunter-green sweater with a turtleneck collar -that framed her face. Her chestnut hair was down and freshly brushed, gleaming gold and red beneath the hotel's outdoor lights. She didn't appear to be wearing a drop of makeup, and Quincy liked her that way. Her pale skin fresh and untouched. No barriers between his hand and the feel of her cheek, or his lips and the corner of her mouth.

He had spent the latter part of the afternoon learning things about Lorraine Conner he had not antic.i.p.ated. Certainly he was starting to understand that her past held a great deal more than met the eye. Maybe nothing, but maybe something. He doubted she would tell him the whole truth yet, and he wondered about the dangers of learning it all at the last minute, when it might be too late for both of them.

He should be careful. He was a smart, logical man who knew better than most the dark potential of human nature. The warning did him no good.

She was here, at his hotel room, and he suspected his face now held a giddy smile.

"Hey," she said after a moment.

"Good evening, Rainie."

"Working?"

"Just finishing up."

"Really?" She stuck her hands in her back pockets and studied the pavement. She was clearly self-conscious, and that touched him. "I was just about to order take-out Chinese," he said politely.

"Would you like to join me?"

"I'm not that hungry."

"Neither am I, but we can pretend together."

She entered his hotel room. He made an effort to clear his paperwork off the bed, since the room was small and there was no place else for her to sit. She studied his laptop while he shoved manila files back into his black leather briefcase/computer carrier.

"Looking for No Lava?" she asked.

"Yes. Most Internet providers have member directories where you can enter your on-line name and vital statistics. Lots of people fill out the forms, so I thought I'd see if we could get that lucky.

Unfortunately, we're not that lucky. Next step is to get a subpoena and contact the carriers "Did you run a background check on Shep today?" she asked.

Quincy stopped, still holding four files, and blinked. She wasn't wasting any time. He put the files in the bag, zipped it shut.

"Do you like lo mein?" he asked lightly.