"Well, it did scare the s.h.i.t out of everybody," Laurie said. "The girls started being more careful. They did this little half-serious game of picking out the killer in each shift."

"Yeah? And did they come up with any consensus?" Richards asked, digging right back in.

"Sure. Carmine. That creepy little delivery boy from the Italian place who is under age and is always trying to schmooze a drink."

She laughed at some mental image of Carmine. Richards was not amused.

"So, what? It's a joke and everything goes back to normal?"

"Almost," Laurie said, tightening her mouth back up. "But not until Josie, this girl who worked three different places and then dropped out of sight and n.o.body knew where."

Richards got out a notebook from her jeans pocket to write something down.

"Three weeks later she comes waltzing back in here one night with a big rock on her finger telling everybody how the Chivas Regal guy and her eloped to Vegas," Laurie said, again looking straight at Richards. "Then everything went back to normal."

The table went quiet for a couple of moments.

"Anyone else here close to Suzy we could talk to?" I said, making an obvious motion to the girl working behind the bar who I had been watching in the mirrored wall next to us. It may have just been her curiosity, but somebody she had more than a customer relationship with had bolted out of here when Richards came in and the bartender noticed it, and now she was way too twitchy watching her boss talk to us.

"No. Not really. Marci only worked weekends and didn't come on full until a few weeks ago. They never even met," Laurie said. "Carla worked with her. I think she tried to get Suzy to share rent on an apartment. But like I said, she was kinda shy. Had a place of her own.

"Carla's got the Sunday shift this week. But you're not going to get the girls all scared again, are you?"

Richards put her notebook away and pushed the folder one inch back to the other side of the table.

"I'm sorry," she said as she stood. "But maybe they ought to be scared."

I followed Richards outside and stayed a step behind as she walked down the sidewalk toward the street that ran behind the shopping plaza. She didn't turn or say a word and I was just about to say f.u.c.k it and reverse myself and head back to my truck when she stopped at the trunk of a two-door convertible and leaned her b.u.t.t against the back fender and looked up at me.

"New ride?" I said, trying to cut the tension.

"What do you have for me, Max?" she said, folding her arms in front of her. The paring lights high above put an unnatural shine to her tight blonde hair and a slick paleness to the planes of her face. She looked years older than I knew her to be.

"You're taking this too personal, Sherry."

I put my hands in my pockets. Neutral. Unthreatening. You learn body language when you are a cop.

"Somebody has to, Max. You haven't talked to the mothers of these last two girls, who haven't seen their daughters or heard from them for weeks or even months. They read me their last letters. They send pictures that are years old. High school portraits you get in those same envelopes with the gummy flaps and the sizes and package deals printed all over them. They want to show me Mother's Day cards they got from a completely different state three years ago. They tell me their daughter's hobbies. 'Oh, she loves the beach and horseback riding.'

"They're desperate, Max. And every G.o.dd.a.m.n agency that they get pa.s.sed to next tells them until there's evidence of a crime..."

She lowered her head and I took a step toward her and she put up a palm to stop me.

"I'm sorry, Max." She looked up. "What do you have for me?"

I put my hands back in my pockets. I told her about the trip to Philly and the meeting with O'Shea's ex-wife. Without getting into my background with Meagan, I gave her a rundown on my conversations with IAD.

"Christ, you'd at least think that hard-a.s.s lieutenant up there would want to throw some help into this," she said, and I had to work to sustain a poker face.

"The ex-wife says O'Shea never got threatening. Never physical. In fact, she of all people was sure he wouldn't have the guts to carry something off like this and I gotta tell you, Sherry, I get the same vibe."

She turned her face away and looked down the shadowed street and her lips were pressed into a whitening crease.

"Be objective, Sherry. You've got an ex-cop who liked to bounce from bar to bar, dates some bartenders, has a couple of failed trips with women and the capacity for violence with a.s.sholes on the street," I said. "That's a profile that could fit me and another two dozen guys in the business we're in. Maybe he's carrying some kind of guilty stink from what happened up in Philly, but you've got nothing on him."

"We'll see," she said and pushed herself off the car with a flex of her thighs.

"What does that mean?"

"I've got a warrant to search his place," she said, walking around to open the driver's door. "One of your muggers from the other night is filing charges saying your buddy tried to kick him to death. He was bleeding and we think we might get some forensics from O'Shea's boots to match it."

I hoped my face didn't look as stunned and stupid as it felt.

"What the h.e.l.l does that have to do with missing women?" I said.

"You know the game, Max. Maybe we can squeeze him. You never know what a little pressure will bring out once you have somebody inside."

She got in her car and started the engine and I stepped back as she pulled away. Maybe my former girlfriend hadn't just used me. But that's what it felt like.

After Richards left I walked back to my truck and sat in the parking lot watching the door to Kim's, grinding, nowhere to be and not feeling like going back inside. At eleven I walked over to Big Louie's, the Italian restaurant and pizzeria at the front corner of the strip mall. I got some manicotti and coffee to go. I may have even seen Carmine the delivery boy, an angular kid with coat hanger shoulders and a definite acne problem. He had a horselike face and a patch of peroxide blonde hair. He actually had some kind of tattoo on his calf that was impossible to decipher as it wrapped around a leg the diameter of a garden hose. If he tried to abduct one of the bartenders they would have slapped him silly.

Back in the truck I lowered the window to let the gathering odor of red sauce and garlic escape and had my dinner off the pa.s.senger seat. On occasion a lone man would approach the door of Kim's and I would focus my small field gla.s.ses from the glove box on him. What the h.e.l.l was I on surveillance for? Had walking around on my old beat for a couple of days put me back in the zone?

I took another bite of pasta and watched a couple bend their heads together at the corner, instantly thought drug deal, and then chastised myself when I saw the flare of the man's lighter as they shared the flame to light their cigarettes. It was then that I realized the new fissure I was grinding was the man I'd seen slip away from the bar in Kim's when Richards had walked in. I'd caught the white glow of his skin between his hairline and collar as he disappeared into the dark and the smooth, athletic grace that got him to the hallway without a stumble or hesitation. There would of course be lots of reasons for someone to bail out of the back of a bar when a detective walked in the front, even if she was plainclothes, even if she just looked the part, and we both probably looked the part to someone paying attention. But the bartender had added to the feel that it wasn't right. If young Marci had some kind of drug dealing going on under the bar, even small-time stuff, they'd be careful. But there had been something in her eyes that lit my suspicion. Whether it was a carryover from my walk down South Street or not, here I was and it didn't necessarily feel wrong. Nice warm night. Box of manicotti. Hot coffee. s.h.i.t. I used to hate surveillance.

At one in the morning I decided to move. The lot was clearing and I had counted three times that a city patrol car had cruised through the center and now he was back. I watched the cop pull into a darkened spot almost in a direct line between me and the windows of Kim's, obstructing the view I'd had of Marci's bobbing blonde ponytail. It looked like he was going to stay awhile. Maybe he was there purposely to look after employees of the restaurants and the bar who were getting off work. Maybe some shift sergeant was paying attention to Richards's concerns after all. I did know that if this cop was smart he was going to notice me before long-single male in a pickup truck parked for hours and up to no good.

I started the engine and pulled out of the lot through the back street exit and swung west. There was another parking area used by movie patrons of the multiplex next door. With the right angle, I could still see Kim's front door and would hopefully see when Marci left and if she was picked up by a six-foot athletic man who shied away from the smell of cops.

An hour later my coffee was long dead and cold. The movie had let out and I'd watched couples stroll to their cars and head home, chatting about the merits of plot and pyrotechnics and performances. The last movie I'd been to was with Sherry and the d.a.m.n thing was out on DVD and could have been having its broadcast debut by now. The night had settled into that long after- hours feel when the city drops in decibels and the streetlights take on a more noticeable presence and the cut of headlights across a brick facade sends shadows moving that you would not have seen at ten o'clock.

At 2:20 Marci walked out through the wide wooden door. An older man was behind her and had his fist up against the deadbolt on the inside. We both watched the girl go to a late model, light blue two-door parked right in front and unlock the driver's side. She waved at the old guy who stepped back and pulled the bar door shut. Marci backed out of her spot and came my way, her lights flashing off my truck windows as she bounced over a speed b.u.mp and then turned onto the street. All right, I thought. It was an old cop's hunch. Sometimes that's all they are. I sure as h.e.l.l wasn't going to follow the girl home. I pulled out of my own parking s.p.a.ce and as I approached the street another set of headlights met mine. They jounced over the speed b.u.mp and I caught the opaque blue tint of the light bar on top. It was the patrol car. Done for the night. Everybody out safe.

He turned left, without a signal, in the direction Marci had gone. My headlights caught the outline of a dark-haired male officer, clean-cut, and then I turned north toward the beach house.

The annoying trill of the cell phone woke me the next day, snapping a dream that had me somewhere in the Everglades, someplace other than my river, someplace where I was unfamiliar and lost in a wooded hammock of gumbo limbo and poisonwood trees. It was night and I was crouched in a cover of fern, watching the glowing red spots of a gator's eyes that were becoming larger, though for some reason I felt no fear of them and as I tracked their movement through the trees they took on the shape of a car's taillights and I suddenly heard the sound of a horn in traffic which became the ring of my phone.

I swung my legs off the bed and blinked away the odd smell of the exhaust and marsh gra.s.s and picked up the cell.

"Yeah?"

"Freeman?"

It was a man's voice.

"Who's this?"

"It's O'Shea, Freeman."

I registered the Philly accent and recalled I'd given O'Shea my card at Archie's.

"Yeah, Colin. What's up?"

"I don't want to say you dropped a dime on me, Freeman. So tell me it isn't true," he said, biting off the ends of accusatory sentences.

"Well, you just said it, O'Shea," I answered, my head quickly clearing. "So tell me what the h.e.l.l you're talking about."

"The sheriff's office just executed a search warrant on my apartment."

I was recalling Richards's squeeze plan.

"Did they arrest you?"

"Not yet. But I would like to know how the f.u.c.k they put me with you when your two muggers tried to take you off the other night and I saved your a.s.s, again, brother."

I felt my anger mix with an unexpected whiff of guilt which tempered my response.

"I didn't tell them you were with me, O'Shea. But you're also not dealing with some dumb-a.s.s detective with Richards," I said. "She was the one who put me onto you at your local hangout and a description by those two a.s.sholes and your patented boot work wouldn't be hard to put together. Your IAD file back home isn't exactly vague on the excessive-force complaints, either."

There was nothing but an empty electronic buzz on the other end of the line for several long beats.

"I'm gonna need a lawyer if this goes any further, Max," he finally said. "How's this guy Manchester you work for?"

Billy was brilliant, but the idea of him acting as a criminal defense attorney for a guy like O'Shea gave me more than a few seconds of doubt. I still couldn't say why I was walking a line with him. But guilty or not, he was going to need a good lawyer.

"Give me a number where I can reach you," I said.

CHAPTER 15.

He followed her home, shaking his head and exhaling a little shot of disgust each time she put on a correct blinker or came to a full stop at an intersection. Marci and her proper driving etiquette. This girl gotta loosen up, he thought. But then, maybe she was doing everything correctly in her little blue Honda because he was behind her, toeing the line in front of the cop like all the other lemmings on the road. He liked that idea. Maybe some night he would pull her over. They could do it in her backseat with the lights flashing. She'd love it. But s.h.i.t, wouldn't that just be asking to get caught? The thought flashed his mind back on the topic of the night. What the f.u.c.k was that BSO detective b.i.t.c.h Richards doing in Kim's earlier? He'd seen her come struttin' in all tight-a.s.sed like she owned the place. He split and was sure she never got a look at him. When he called Marci later behind the bar she said the woman and that big rangy-looking guy were together, that they were talking with her boss. He called her again an hour later and she said the manager, Laurie, told her they were community-watch cops just checking in to make sure the girls were safe at night and that there hadn't been any incidents.

My a.s.s, he thought. He knew Richards. He'd had one of his friends point her out at a crime scene once. The grapevine had it that she was still rattling the cages about missing girls, even when n.o.body paid any attention. It's what happened when you let these broads get a little power, twist you with their f.u.c.king rank. He didn't know who Mr. Tan Man was. He'd watched him come in, take a sniff of Laurie and then checked out Marci's a.s.s for a while. He had the look of a cop, too. But even an off-duty guy wouldn't dress like that and who has time to work the job and get out in the sun like that guy? At least the guy had good taste in beer. He'd be worth watching out for.

Marci pulled into the lot of her apartment building and he parked the cruiser across the street. Best thing about this department was that they let you take your patrol car home when you were off. They said it bolstered the perception of more cops on the streets. He liked it fine. It kept people out of his way and made them nervous when he was around. Marci waited at her car door until he joined her.

"Hi."

"Hi? That's it? Hi?" she said, p.i.s.sed. He liked her p.i.s.sed sometimes.

"Hi. How are you?" he said, playing with it.

"Jesus, Kyle. What was that all about today? You go flying out of the bar without a word and those people are there and you tell me Laurie's lying to me. What's going on?"

"Whoa, whoa. Easy, babe," he said and put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed her back. These girls get so emotional. You gotta calm them down a little. They're like wild fillies when you're trying to break them.

"Come on, let's go upstairs and I'll explain. I'm sorry I was so vague, babe. I didn't mean to scare you," he said.

"I'm not f.u.c.king scared. I just don't like not knowing what's going on," she said, stepping away from him. He let her lead the way to her second-floor apartment. When she got to her door he watched her unlock it and walk in, tossing the ring of keys in that little basket on top of the stereo speaker.

He watched her kick off her shoes and go into the kitchen and stand in the light of the open refrigerator staring while she pulled the tie out of her hair and shook her curls loose like she always did. Then she reached in for her bottled water and brought him a beer like she always did. She flopped into the corner of the couch and he joined her.

"All right," she said. "I'm taking it easy. Give."

It sounded like an order, but he let it pa.s.s.

"You know that I don't like people in the bar to know I'm a cop. That's all it was."

"Laurie said they were just community watch," she said. "But that big guy didn't look like community watch to me."

"Well, Laurie was right," he said. "But you meet these people when you're a real cop. You give them instruction and show them around the beat so if they see anything that needs to be checked out, they can call an officer to take care of it."

He watched her take a drink of the water, knew she was thinking.

"So you knew the blonde?"

"Yeah. I've seen her around. And I didn't want to take the chance she'd see me and spoil it. My privacy, you know, my place."

"Oh, so now it's your place," she said, and the grin was sneaking back onto her face.

"Ours," he said. "Our place, our secret."

He knew they liked that sharing s.h.i.t. She was quiet a few moments, watching his eyes with that look like she knew him better than she really did.

"Let's go for a ride," he said, the thought coming on to him, bringing it up just like that, surprising even himself. He saw the winch in her face, like, pained, not scared, not like she knew.

"Come on," he said, putting his hand on her leg. "Mix up some whiskey sours that you like and we'll burn out to alligator alley, see how fast the cruiser can really cruise." He made his voice sound excited. h.e.l.l, it was excited, the thought of doing it again.

"Kyle," she whined, but that smile was again behind her eyes. "You scared the s.h.i.t out of me last time with that. G.o.d, when you turned the headlights off I was freaking." She couldn't hide that glimmer of the wild girl. He did that Groucho Marx thing with his eyebrows.

"Yeah? Come on."

He moved and the leather of the couch squeaked. But she resisted.

"No, come on, Kyle. I'm really tired, babe. That shift was really long. My feet are aching. Can't we just stay here and watch a movie?"

She put her hand over his on her thigh. He didn't like to let her win. But this time, maybe. s.h.i.t, wasn't it always this way? You're nice to them, take 'em out, give 'em all this attention, but you just can't ever trust them. They're finally going to turn on you and try to dominate your a.s.s. They're gonna push and push and push the line until, f.u.c.k it, they go over it. Then you gotta end it. Can't just let 'em walk off thinking they won.

Afterward, after they'd had s.e.x with the blue glow of one of his favorite movies flashing and shimmering off her skin, she lay quiet with her head on his chest. This was all he wanted, so why did they always have to go and screw it up by trying to take over?

"So the tall blonde is kind of attractive," she said. "Ever have to follow up with her as the real cop?"

She was running her fingers through his hair, letting her nails lightly scratch his scalp. He took a quick pull from the beer that was still on the coffee table. Jealousy, he thought. What a lever, man.