José shoved the key into the slot at the steering wheel. «Great, thanks, M.E.»
He took a deep breath and cranked the engine over—
Yeah, I’d like to rahport a dead bahdy. Nah, I’m not giving my name. It’s in a Dumpstah in an alley off Tenth Street, two blocks ova from th’ Commahdore. Looks to be a Caucasian female, late teens, early twenties. . Nah, I’m not giving my name. . Hey, how ’bout you get down the address and stahp worrying ’bout me. .
José gripped his phone and started to shake all over.
The South Boston accent was so clear and so familiar it was like time had gotten into a car wreck and whiplashed backward.
«Detective? You want to hear it again?» he heard Mary Ellen say in his ear.
Closing his eyes, he croaked out, «Yes, please. .»
When the recording was finished, he listened to himself thank Mary Ellen and felt his thumb hit the end button to terminate the call.
Sure as water down a sink drain, he was sucked into a nightmare from about two years ago. . when he’d walked into a shitty, run-down apartment that was full of empty Lagavulin bottles and pizza boxes. He remembered his hand reaching out to a closed bathroom door, the damn thing quaking from palm to fingertips.
He’d been convinced he was going to find a dead body on the other side. Hanging from the showerhead by a belt. . or maybe lying in the tub soaking in blood instead of bubble bath.
Butch O’Neal had made hard living as much of a professional pursuit as his job in the homicide department. He’d been a late-night drinker, and not just a relationship-phobe, but completely incapable of forming attachments.
Except he and José had been tight. As tight as Butch had ever gotten with anyone.
No suicide, though. No body. Nothing. One night he’d been around; the next. . gone.
For the first month or two, José had expected to hear something — either from the guy himself or because a corpse with a busted nose and a badly capped front tooth turned up somewhere.
Days had slid into weeks, however, and in turn had dumped into seasons of the year. And he supposed he became something like a doctor who had a terminal disease: He finally knew firsthand how the families of missing persons felt. And God, that dreaded, cold stretch of Not Knowing was nothing he’d ever expected to wander down. . but with his old partner’s disappearance, he didn’t just walk it; he bought a lot, put up a house, and moved the fuck in.
Now, though, after he’d given up all hope, after he no longer woke up in the middle of the night with the wonders. . now this recording.
Sure, millions of people had Southie accents. But O’Neal had had a telltale hoarseness in his voice that couldn’t be replicated.
Abruptly, José didn’t feel like going to the twenty-four, and he didn’t want anything to eat. But he put his unmarked in drive and hit the gas.
The moment he’d looked into the Dumpster and seen those missing eyes and that dental job, he’d known that he was going in search of a serial killer. But he couldn’t have guessed he’d be on another search.
Time to find Butch O’Neal.
If he could.
Done week later, Manny woke up in his own bed with a stinger of a hangover. The good news was that at least this headache could be explained: When he’d come home, he’d hit the Lag like a punching bag and it had done its job, smacking him back and knocking him flat on his ass.
The first thing he did was reach over and get his phone. With blurry eyes, he called the vet’s cell. The pair of them had a little early-morning ritual going, and he thanked God that the guy was also an insomniac.
The vet answered on the second ring. «Hello?»
«How’s my girl?» The pause told him everything he had to know. «That bad?»
«Well, her vitals remain good, and she remains as comfortable as she can be in her suspension, but I’m worried about the foundering. We’ll see.»
«Keep me posted.»
«Always.»
At that point, hanging up was the only thing he could do. The conversation was over, and it wasn’t like he was a shoot-the-shit kind of guy — although even if he had been, chitchat wasn’t going to get him what he wanted, which was a healthy fucking horse.
Before his alarm went off at six thirty and put paid on the shot-through-the-head routine, he slapped his radio clock into permasilence and thought, Workout. Coffee. Back to the hospital.
Wait. Coffee, workout, hospital.
He definitely needed caffeine first. He wasn’t fit to run or lift weights in this condition — and shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery like an elevator, either.
As he shifted his feet to the floor and went vertical, his head had a heartbeat of its own, but he revolted against the idea that maybe, just maybe, the pain wasn’t about the liquor: He was not sick, and he wasn’t cooking up a brain tumor — although if he was, he’d still go in to St. Francis. It was in his nature. Hell, when he’d been young, he’d fought to go to school when he was ill — even when he’d had the chicken pox and had looked like a connect-the-dots canvas, he’d insisted on heading for the bus.
His mother had won that particular one. And bitched that he was just like his father.
Not a compliment, and something he’d heard all his life — also something that didn’t mean shit because he’d never met the guy. All he had was a faded picture that was the only thing he’d ever put in a frame—
Why the hell was he thinking about that this morning?
Coffee was Starbucks Breakfast Blend. Workout clothes went on while it was brewing, and two mugs were downed over the sink as he watched the superearly traffic snake around the Northway’s curves in the dim light of dawn. The last thing he did was grab his iPod and put it in his ears. He was not a chatter to begin with, but Lord help some chipper chick with a motormouth today.
Downstairs in the workout room, the place was fairly empty, which was a huge relief, but not something that was going to last. Hopping on the treadmill closest to the door, he turned off the CNBC newscast on the overhead TV and got huffing.
Judas Priest carried his feet, and his mind unplugged, and his stiff, aching body got what it needed. All things considered, he was better than he had been coming out of the previous weekend. The headaches were still hanging in, but he was keeping up with his work and patient load, and functioning all right.
It made him wonder, though. Right before Jane had hit that tree, she’d had headaches, too. So if they’d been able to do an autopsy on the body, would they have found an aneurysm? Then again, what were the chances of the two of them both having one within—
Why did you do it, Jane? Why fake your death?
I don’t have time to explain now. Please. I know this is asking a lot. But there’s a patient who needs you, desperately, and I’ve been looking for you for over an hour, so I’m out of time—
«Fuck—» Manny quickly popped his feet off onto the side gunwales and gritted his teeth against the agony. Draping his upper body over the machine’s instrument panel, he breathed slow and steady — or as much as someone who’d been running a six-minute-mile pace could.
Over the last seven days, he’d learned through trial and error that when the pain struck, the best call was to blank out his mind and focus on nothing at all. And the fact that the simple cognitive trick worked was reassuring on the whole aneurysm front: If something was going to blow a hole in the wall of a cerebral artery, ain’t no yoga-two-part-breath shit going to make a difference.
There was a pattern, however. The onset seemed to follow thoughts either about Jane. . or that wet dream he kept having.
Fucking hell, he’d had enough orgasms in his sleep to lame out even his libido. And, sick bastard that he was, the near-guarantee of being back with that female in his fantasies made him look forward to hitting the pillow for the first time in his life.
Although he couldn’t explain why certain cognitions would bring on the headaches, the good news was that he was getting better. Each day after that bizarre black hole of a weekend, he felt a bit more like himself.
When there was little but a dull ache remaining, Manny got back on the treadmill and finished the workout. On his way to the exit, he nodded to the early-morning stragglers who’d come in, but took off before anyone could Oh-my-God-are-you-okay him if they’d seen him take his breather.
Up in his place, he showered, changed into clean scrubs and his white jacket, and then grabbed his briefcase and hit the elevators. To beat the traffic, he took the surface roads through the city. The Northway was invariably jammed this time of day, and he made great time while he listened to old-school My Chemical Romance.