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“Fuck you, Billy.” She said it in a whisper.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Fuck me.”
Then Dez nodded. Not to Trout. Maybe to herself. A single, curt bob of her head.
Without another word Dez turned and climbed the steps as heavily as if mounting the stairs to the guillotine.
Trout watched her go.
When he was alone, he leaned against the wall and he, too, exhaled. His chest really hurt. Oddly, his back felt a little better, as if falling had knocked something back into place.
“Why, thank you, Billy Trout, for that crucial sanity check,” he said aloud in a bad approximation of Dez’s voice, then switched to his own. “Oh, you’re quite welcome, Officer Psychopath. Anything for a friend.”
Then he pushed off the wall, rubbed his aching chest, and limped up the steps after her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
WHAT THE FINKE THINKS
WTLK LIVE TALK RADIO
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
“We have Borden on five.”
“Borden? Is that a first or last name?” asked Gavin.
The producer spread his hands. “It’s all he gave us. Coming to you now.”
Gavin took the call. “We have Borden from Bordentown. Thanks for calling in.”
“Yeah, okay, I listen to this show all the time and you talk about a lot of really weird stuff but I saw something tonight that’s weirder than anything you ever talked about.”
The man had a thick Kentucky accent and Gavin figured he was right out of one of those deep woods hollers. A good old boy’s good old boy.
“I’m all ears, Mr. Borden.”
“It ain’t ‘mister.’ Just Borden.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m a trucker—”
“You shock me.”
“—and I’m doing a run from Chicago straight through to Baltimore and I pulled off the interstate to get me a cup of coffee. One of them Starbucks places.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“And as I’m walking out I see this car pull up. And who do you reckon I saw getting out of that car just as bold as you please?”
“I don’t think I’d want to hazard a guess.”
“It was Mr. Homer Gibbons.”
“Wait, the serial killer?”
“The very same.”
