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Her lips and tongue are still stained cherry red.
10
I STAY AT THE GARBAGE house, in my old room, tossing and turning on the bed. Try as I might to not think about the dead guy chilling in the freezer two floors below me, all I can imagine is Janssen’s dead eyes staring up through the floorboards, begging silently to be discovered.
He deserves a better burial than being shut in an ice chest, no matter what he did in life. And God knows what I deserve for putting him there.
Since I can’t sleep anyway, I open up the file the Feds gave me and spread the pages across my mattress. It gives me Janssen’s girlfriend’s name—Bethenny Thomas—and some sketchy details about her statement that night. Nothing all that interesting. I picture her, pressing an envelope of cash against Anton’s chest. And then I picture myself, leaning over Janssen, my bare hand reaching for him, fingers curling.
I wonder if I’m the last thing he saw, a gawky kid with a bad haircut, fifteen years old at the time.
I flop onto my back, scattering papers. None of them matter. They don’t add up to Philip’s murderer. No wonder the Feds are confused. All they want to know is what this big secret is Philip had, but it isn’t here. It must be maddening to get so close to solving something and then have a new mystery on top of the old one. What was Philip’s big secret, and who killed him to protect it?
The first part is easy. I’m the secret.
Who would kill to protect me?
I think of the figure in the oversize coat and the red gloves. Then I think about her some more.
The next morning I pad downstairs and make coffee, never having managed more than a little fitful sleep. Somewhere in the night I determined that the only way I am going to be able to figure out anything is if I start looking.
I figure the best place to start is Philip’s house. The cops might have already gone through it, and so might the Feds, but they don’t know what they’re looking for. Of course, I don’t know what I’m looking for either, but I know Philip.
And I’m on a deadline.
I drink the coffee, take a shower, put on a black T-shirt and dark gray jeans, and go out to my car. It doesn’t start. I pop the hood and stare at the engine for a while, but diesel cars aren’t really my area of expertise.
I kick the tires. Then I call Sam.
His hearse pulls into my driveway not long after.
“What did you do to her?” Sam asks, petting the hood of my car and looking at me accusingly. He’s wearing his weekend attire: a shirt with Eddie Munster on it, a pair of black jeans, and mirrored aviator sunglasses. How his parents don’t see that he wants to work on special effects for movies, I don’t know.
I shrug.
He pokes around for a couple of minutes and tells me I need to replace one of the fuses and probably the battery, too.
“Great,” I say, “but there’s something else I need to do today.”
“What’s that?” Sam asks.
“Solve a crime,” I say.
He tilts his head, like he’s considering whether or not to believe me. “Really?”
I shrug. “Probably not. How about committing a crime instead?”
“Now, that sounds more like you,” he says. “Any particular one you had in mind?”
I laugh. “Breaking and entering. But it’s my brother’s house. So it’s not that bad, right?”
“Which brother?” he asks, pulling the sunglasses down his nose so he can peer over them and raise a single eyebrow. He looks like a cop in a bad TV show, which I think is what he’s going for.
“The dead one.”
He groans. “Oh, come on! Why don’t we just get the key from your mother or something? Doesn’t his place belong to you guys anyway? Next of kin and all that.”
I get in on the passenger side. The fact that he’s trying to think of an easier way to get in is close enough to assent for me. “I think it belongs to his wife, but I really doubt she’s going to come back to claim it.”
