Jackie waved at Laurel as she drove away, having refused to let Jackie drive home herself. Up above, a dark shadow leaped down from the kitchen windowsill and vanished. Bickerstaff was hungry. The rain began to splatter with greater insistence upon Jackie’s face. A proper ending to a dismal day. Fishing the keys from her pocket, Jackie unlocked the street side door and walked up to the hall where four apartments had been carved out of the warehouse space above the shops below. From behind the front right door, the cat’s plaintive meows could be heard.
As any cat worth its weight would do, Bickerstaff tangled himself up in Jackie’s legs when she stepped in, fumbling for the light switch. The cat nimbly dodged around her stumbling feet and continued to rub up against her legs.
“Christ, Bickers. Is my baby hungry?” She picked up the purring, orange mound of fur and then slid the dead bolt in place. After dumping a can of food in his bowl and adding a bit of milk on the side, Jackie kicked off her shoes in the living room and proceeded to start water for a bath. If anything, a good, hot soak would wash away the stress of the past few hours. Dropping in a handful of bath beads, she stripped out of her clothes, making most of them land in the hamper, and went back to fill a glass from a half-empty bottle of chilled merlot.
She gulped down half of it with a note of defiance. “I do not drink that much, do I, Bickers?” The cat peered at her from his bowl, licking his lips, oblivious to her mood. He blinked once and went back to his dinner. “Yeah, well, what the fuck do you know, damn cat.”
Back in the bathroom, Jackie stared at herself in the mirror, imagining how her face might look if it were all sallow and deflated, drained of blood. Better, perhaps, given her current state of self worth. For a brief moment, the reflection of the water in the tub rippled, and the all too familiar face of her mother floated there, white as bone, eyes milky and blank. Wisps of hair undulated around her face, a dark halo of death.
Jackie blinked and turned away. “Goddamnit.”
She hesitated before climbing into the now full and steaming tub, making sure the image was not going to haunt her again. For a second, she contemplated draining it and running a shower, but she forced the unease aside. It had been years since she’d given into the feeling, and damned if she was going to do it now. With a ginger first step, Jackie climbed in and slid down into the soothing heat with a groan. The image of the boy still lingered, however.
The question kept creeping in and around every other thought. Why would someone drain the blood from a body? Why a kid? That was even more disturbing. What kind of pathology produced such a desire? And why place the victim sitting against a tree in a park? Was there a message there? More than likely there was, but it could mean almost anything. The Wisconsin woman had been found sprawled in an alley. Jackie made a mental note to take a deeper look at that case tomorrow.
Then there was Nick Anderson and his crew. Jackie could not get an angle from which to view him clearly. Who was he, really? What kind of rich CEO spent his time being a PI dealing in ghosts? It was so far-fetched it had to be a scam of some kind-a cover, perhaps. What did they know? How involved was he? Could he be the killer or know who the killer was? If he did know the killer, why not say? She would nail him for obstruction, if that was the case. And then there was Laurel’s whole take on them.
God, Laurel. She reached over and grabbed the glass of wine from the tubside table and finished it off. The warmth did little to relax the tightness in her throat. The case evaporated into the steam, burned away by Laurel’s accusations and full-on assault. Jackie could never recall seeing her so upset. She was always the calm, cool, and collected one. But, worse, that anger had been directed at her. She had caused that pain.
The equilibrium of the universe had just been knocked off its axis. Was it really possible for her to live out her entire life and never find love? Love did not come up on the radar much these days, but if the need arose, guys were certainly willing and able. But, really, there was no love involved there at all. They were always willing to take advantage. When was the last time she had slept with someone sober? Surely, there was at least one? Jackie dredged through the muck of her memories and could find nothing.
Laurel was right. She could only fuck drunk. “I’m the biggest fucking loser.”
A couple strands of hair floated in the water before her face, and Jackie had the sudden panicked feeling that her mother was creeping around in the water just below the surface. She swung over the side of the tub in a mad scramble and flopped onto the bathroom rug.
Bickers, wondering what the hell was going on, poked his head through the door to stare, mocking in straight-faced silence.
“Get out!” Jackie kicked the door closed on him and climbed back to her feet. “Son of a bitch.”
After drying off and throwing on her robe, Jackie searched the fridge for something to eat and found a two-day-old carton of fried rice from Ho Mei’s down the street. Giving her defiance a break, Jackie poured a glass of orange juice and carried her sad excuse for dinner out to the living room.
One half of the space had a couch and chair squeezed uncomfortably close to a forty-inch television mounted to the wall. The other half of the room was taken up by a Steinway, its finish dulled over the years from neglect. There were books stacked on one side and a bowl of kibble on the other for Bickerstaff, who promptly joined Jackie when she sat down and set her dinner on the bench next to her. He gave a disappointed look at the crumbs in his bowl and decided that licking himself would be the preferred course of action.
“Are you making me watch that on purpose, you perv?” He paused long enough to give her a look that indicated only real cats licked their balls and went back to work. “Just trying to make me jealous, aren’t you?” She reached up and ruffled his ears, and Bickerstaff moved out of the way with obvious annoyance, settling farther back on the piano top. With a firm stretch and pop of her knuckles, Jackie consumed a large spoonful of the rice and settled in to play some Mozart.
It had become a case-starting tradition several years earlier, recommended by Laurel when she had become particularly stumped on a case. “It’s your meditation, your grounding place, Jackie. Playing clears your mind. Give it a try and see if it helps.” It had taken three hours, but the puzzle pieces had rearranged themselves into a more logical order, and a new path to pursue had opened up, leading to a break in the case.
An hour later, nothing was coming to her. Her mind was still too unsettled, constantly losing its track, disrupted by Laurel’s tirade against her. She would have to come to grips with it soon. Somehow.
Instead she decided to go to her bedroom and see if she could make use of her laptop and find out more information on Nick Anderson. She wanted to find out more details about that case involving his father. Her gut, knotted as it was, knew that its ties were more than coincidental.
Thirty minutes later, drink and exhaustion had Jackie falling asleep to an episode of Castle Laurel had e-mailed to her.