Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“Dusty,” he said, “as I goddamn live and breathe.”

She was in the shower, talking behind the curtain, the door to the bathroom closed, the mirrors steamed over. He had already gotten out of the shower and was sitting on the closed toilet seat, a towel wrapped around his waist. Two bourbons, ice melting in the glasses, were sitting on the top of the toilet tank.

“So you’re saying, if I’m following this, the person who killed the judge’s kid is still out there? And Sly rigged it that way?”

“More or less.” He liked her being in the shower. He liked listening to her voice and the water and the sound of the spray hitting the soft plastic of the curtain. It wasn’t often there was a voice in the house besides his, and hers, in its softer inflections and higher pitches, in its laughter and warmth, made the place seem better than it was.

“So why? Why would he do that?”

“Needed the cops off the street, or so he says. He knew where the suspects were, so he threw ’em to the cops.”

“Sounds like a setup.”

He was examining his toenails and wondered where the clippers were. “That’s what I just said.”

“No. I mean to cover his own tracks.”

“ His tracks? You’re saying Sly Hastings killed David Reese’s daughter?”

The shower water turned off. She pulled the curtain back and reached for her drink. She took a long draw on it, then set it back down and reached for a towel.

“How should I know? He had time and opportunity, didn’t he? Did you ask him where he was? All that’s missing,” she said, stepping out of the shower, standing in front of him, her breasts at the height of his eyes, smiling playfully down at him, “is motive. Which you tell me no one ever really knows.”

He uncrossed his legs and swept the towel to the side, trying to be, what was the word, present. There was him, a chasm, and then everyone else. When that had come to be, he could no longer say, but he had first noticed it after Nadia’s death. Then, after the shell that had blown him up, it had become a yawning gulf, a canyon, a thing so broad that the other side was out of sight. The assumption he’d made was that this was the new normal and it would never change. But hope was a stubborn thing, and in the eight or nine months he’d been dating Dusty (sort of steadily), there had been times like this when he could feel it closing-the gap. When he was a child, his father had taught him to swim in the Mississippi and told him classes were over when he finally swam from side to side, Louisiana to Mississippi, more than a mile, the old man beside him in a johnboat with an outboard and a shotgun for the cottonmouths. Since then, Sully tended to believe that vast distances could be crossed if you only had the grit for it.

Dusty stepped forward and straddled his lap, sitting across him. He put his hands around her back, at the curve of her buttocks, and pulled her farther up on him. She leaned her head back, leaning into his grip, and used the towel to dry her hair. Then she leaned forward, draping the towel around her shoulders. She gently pressed her breasts into his face, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I missed you, I think,” she whispered into the top of his head.

He nodded, turning his head sideways, his eyes closed. She was warm, the space between her legs and the back of her thighs still damp. The shower dripped.

“I don’t see the percentage in Sly killing the kid,” he said. “Very high risk, for what reward? He’s got no beef with Reese.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Not right now.”

“Why does it matter so much?” Her hands in his hair.

“Because it’s my job.”

“You’re off the clock.”

“Because it’s me.”

She held him, swaying the tiniest bit.

“Okay,” she said, settling her shoulders. She was trying to work him through it, he could tell. “So-so somebody who does have a beef with the judge hired him? He’s setting up the guys in the store to take the fall for him?”

“Well, one, people don’t hire Sly Hastings. He hires people. And, two, if he’s setting them up to take a fall, why tell me they didn’t do it? I don’t see the angle. He was mad Friday night. Somebody did something on his turf he didn’t want done, and he was pissed.”

“So the real killer is out there walking around?”

“I think so. I think Sly wants to find out who it is before the police do. I think he’s using me to help him do that.”

“’Cause he’s going to wipe them out himself? He wants you to help him figure out who to get rid of?”

“Not if I can help it. And I’d rather not think of it that way.”

She coughed, stifling a laugh, he thought. Then she said, “Is this supposed to be foreplay?”

He pulled his head back and smiled up at her, the spell the case had over him broken. “You Miami girls. So impatient.”

“Fort Lauderdale, you moron,” she said lightly. “It’s not the same place. Well? Is it?”

“Only if it’s working.”

“You got to be kidding.”

She stood up, pulling the towel around her body. She started out of the room. “Bring that massage oil, mister. You owe me for running out the other night. And bring my drink, too.”

“You think you’re giving orders?”

“Every day,” she said, voice disappearing down the hall to the bedroom.

He turned out the light and got the drinks. He took three steps before he remembered the oil. “You always talk that smack,” he said, “until I tie you up.”

He heard her getting in the bed in the darkness, saw her lying across the sheets in the slats of light coming in from the streetlights. She lay on her stomach, hair falling across her shoulders, her olive skin, her long, slender legs. She crossed her arms in front of her and lay her head across them.

“Louisiana boys,” she said, “talk too much.”

Dusty stirred. The black silk band Sully had used as a blindfold was pulled down around her neck. He slipped out of bed, looking at the clock-Christ, what was with the early goddamned phone calls?-and picked up the cell before it could buzz again. He didn’t recognize the number. He walked out in the hallway and down the steps, grabbing a pair of basketball shorts as he went.

“This better be spectacular,” he said into the phone.

“Good morning to you, sunshine, and yes, it is.”

“John? Lieutenant Parker? Is that you? What number is this?”

“Borrowed a line. Look. You need to get your skinny ass up to Princeton Place. And hey, nice to see you on the front page. I didn’t think you actually worked there anymore.”

“Princeton Place? Can’t a man have company over every now and then without this shit?”

“It’s a free country for white people, Sully. Stay in bed and bonk like a bunny rabbit, you want. I’d get my ass to Princeton Place, but that’s just me.”

“What am I going to see there?”

“Me, brother.”

The line disconnected.

He swore, standing there shirtless, thinking about it. Then he went back upstairs and found jeans and a shirt. He tiptoed to the bed, leaned over, and kissed Dusty between her shoulder blades. He left his mouth there. The taste of her skin was like peaches, that soft little down brushing against his lips.

“Got to go. Something about this Reese thing.”

“Umm-hmm.”

“Can you stay?”

“Nnnhh. Work in Baltimore tonight.” She was half asleep.

“I’ll call.”

“Mmmm.”

He walked out to the bike, parked on the street, and turned to look at the upstairs window, the smell of her still on him. It was open, the curtain twisting, flitting over the frame, and Dusty asleep a few feet away, unseen in the shadows.