Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Hank straightened. “Cops?”

Matt Norris nodded without changing expression, as if it were perfectly normal to be standing in the rain on a stranger’s property talking about the cops.

“I go to Hammel College.”

Aw, shit . “Yeah? That’s terrific. But Matt, buddy, I don’t step in front of police, okay?”

“You’re a private investigator.”

“No. I’m in the insurance business.”

“You have a private investigator’s license.”

Hank sighed and rubbed his face with a damp palm. “That’s marketing crap. I’m no detective, I don’t want to play one on TV or in my yard in the rain. You got something to say on that wreck, it should be to the cops, not me.”

“Carlos Ramirez wasn’t driving the car,” the kid said. “How ’bout that ?”

I almost went bowling, Hank thought. It was a coin-toss decision back there at the office — head to the alley or head home. Why in the hell didn’t I go to the bowling alley?

Something told him the kid would’ve waited, though.

“Come on in out of the rain,” Hank said with a sigh. “You’re going to cause me enough trouble without giving me pneumonia too.”

The kid laughed too loudly. As Hank unlocked his door and held it open for Matt Norris to pass through, he was frowning. It hadn’t been that funny of a line, but from that laugh, you’d have thought the kid was at a comedy club.

Something’s off with him, Hank thought, and then he closed the door to shut out the rain and the darkening sky.

Abby was in the shower when her phone began to ring. She let it go, but then it rang again and again, and so she shut off the water, knotted a towel above her breasts, and went out to the living room, leaving wet footprints behind.

It was Hank.

“Can’t leave a message?” Abby said, the phone held against her damp cheek. “I was in the shower.”

“Sorry, kid.” Hank’s voice was strained, as if he were calling in the middle of a workout. “Think you can stop by here?”

Abby cocked her head, shedding a spray of water from her hair to the floor. “Now? What’s up?”

“I, uh... I guess that Ramirez story might have some issues. You were right, I think. Anyhow, uh, Meredith is coming by with some cop from Brighton, and they want the phones.”

“They’re coming by your house?”

“Yeah.” There was a rustling sound, and Hank gave a quick, harsh intake of breath before he said, “And he’s going to want the phones.”

“Sure thing,” Abby said. “Give me twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”

“Yeah. Faster the better. Thanks, Abs.” Hank hung up.

Abby lowered the phone, frowning. Hank had sounded tense, worried. Cops coming to your house could do that, though, especially when one of them was from out of state and working on a murder case.

She thought about that as she toweled off and dressed in jeans, a light base layer, and a fleece. She had the window cracked to let the steam bleed out of the bathroom, and she could hear the laughter of patrons at Run of the Mill, a brewery that shared a portion of her apartment building, all of it the reimagined and repurposed site of what had once been the Pepperell Mill, a textile mill that had at one time employed what seemed like half of Biddeford. Now it was a mixture of condos and businesses, and the roof was lined with solar panels — but the Saco River remained, and Abby enjoyed listening to the water as the town found new ways to thrive around it. The river was the constant, and the river ran steady. She appreciated that.

As she tugged a brush through towel-dried hair, she thought of the police waiting at Hank’s, and when she picked up the decaying shoe box of phones and chargers, some of the cardboard flaked off in her hands. She didn’t relish the idea of explaining to police from Boston that she’d transported evidence in a homicide investigation back and forth through the rain in a shoe box. She found some plastic bags and separated the phones and chargers. Savage Sam had been nearly positive that what he’d taken out of the car was an iPhone, so she separated those too, then put the iPhone chargers in with the iPhones, figuring anything that made it look more official couldn’t hurt. For all of Hank’s jokes about his PI license, it carried legal liability, and Abby didn’t want to put him at risk.

Should’ve just called Meredith to begin with, she thought. But it had been Hank’s idea for her to take the phones to Shannon Beckley, and back then there’d been no questions of guilt and no bullets in Carlos Ramirez’s brain. Or at least nobody had known about them.

Abby found a Sharpie and wrote the date and her name and Beckley case on the three plastic bags. Hardly a proper evidence folder, but better than a soggy shoe box.

She left her apartment and drove away from the mill toward Hank’s house, the bagged phones and chargers on the passenger seat. Usually she avoided the short stretch of turnpike that was the fastest route, but Hank had asked her to hurry, so tonight she took it. Driving was easier for her at night, regardless of traffic. She didn’t feel as crowded in the dark or as exposed. There was no horizon line, and your visual range in the mirrors was limited. The blackness obscured both where you’d been and where you were going. Somehow, that containment helped dull the anxiety brought on by visible obstacles ahead, and it eased the dread of traffic rising up behind.

It was only seven miles on the turnpike before she exited onto the county roads, and she made it without incident, no dry mouth or racing pulse. Traffic was light, but it probably helped that she was distracted too. She didn’t like the idea of sitting down with police on this. David Meredith was fine; Abby knew him a bit, and Hank knew him well. But homicide detectives from Boston? That was different. That brought back memories too. The detectives in California hadn’t been homicide cops, but they’d felt close enough.

Clean blood isn’t everything, Ms. Kaplan. We’re looking at that curve and that guardrail and trying to figure out how exactly you got airborne. And you’re a pretty good driver, we understand. Professional.

She turned off the county road and onto the teeth-rattling gravel that wound through the pines and bone-colored birches that surrounded Hank’s place. It was beautiful country, but isolated. The deep woods were never far from you in Maine. Abby was a native Mainer, but she wasn’t completely comfortable here at night. Her childhood home had had sidewalks and streetlights; this place, deserted except for snowmobile trails and tree stands, had always seemed foreign to her.

As she drove slowly through the ruts, a few untrimmed branches swiped her Chrysler, and even the high beams didn’t seem to cut the darkness. There was a single light on in Hank’s house, a glow from the kitchen. That was unusual, because Hank spent only as much time in the kitchen as it took him to microwave his dinner. He also didn’t use the blinds, but tonight they were closed.

In the narrow driveway, Hank’s Tahoe was parked behind a white Jeep. There was no room to pull up alongside or even turn around without driving onto the lawn. Abby parked behind the Tahoe, and she was about to kill the engine and get out when she felt the familiar warm buzz in her veins that had been her early-warning system for so many years, that rapid pulse of adrenaline-laced instinct that was triggered when you were doing a hundred and fifty miles per hour and saw the cars in front of you shift and knew that something was about to go wrong. That silent alarm had been Abby’s gift on the track. She’d been able to tell when things were going bad just a fraction of a second ahead of most.