Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

I yield to my own wimpiness.

“Let’s go home.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Burns says. “Obviously. CSU will feed me anything they find right away, and I’ll send it your way. I assume that will be a two-way street?”

“Scout’s honor,” I say, raising my three fingers in the time-honored salute.

“That’s the Boy Scout salute. You’re a girl.”

I smile, in spite of my exhaustion. “We won’t play any games when it comes to cooperation. You have my word.”

“Good.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “You want to hear something awful? I’m excited. All this, and I’m excited. Finally going to break this case open.”

I force another smile, but I don’t share his optimism. “Would you have a problem with letting our computer team go over his PC?”

“I don’t, but computer crimes might. They’re pretty open when it comes to cooperation, but they don’t like having it taken away kit and caboodle.”

“How about a compromise, then? I’ll send my tech over to the LAPD, and they can work together on it. No turf wars that way.”

“That’ll work.”

“Not to tell you how to do your job …” Alan says.

Burns waves him off. “Bull-pen advice is allowed, no offense taken.”

“Your CSU should print the body bag that Dana Hollister came in. It’s a good surface for prints.”

The paramedics had lifted Dana’s slack form out of the bag, which remained upstairs in the tub.

“You think he’s that careless?”

Alan shrugs. “Devil’s in the details.”

“Consider it done. When do you want to try interviewing Heather again?” Burns asks me.

“Tomorrow mid-morning. Ten o’clock?”

“Let’s make it ten-thirty. I’m going to be up to my asshole with this until late tonight. My captain will want a briefing at nine-thirty.”

We agree and shake hands. Burns is still flushed with his grim, hopeful excitement. I understand it, but I can’t find any of it in me right now.

Alan drops me off at my car. The parking lot is emptying out of cars as the sun meanders toward its setting place, getting ready to make the sky bleed.

“I think I’ll go upstairs and rattle James’s cage a little,” Alan says. “You should just go.”

“Thanks.” Alan is my de facto second in command. Yet another reason I will miss him when he retires.

“One thing. In the interview with Hollister, I got the idea he was still holding something back.”

“A lie?”

He squints, thinking. “Not so much lying as, maybe … omitting? Fuck, I don’t know. It’s just a gut thing.”

“I trust your gut.”

He pats it with his hand. “It’s a good gut.”

“Prodigious.”

He grins. I envy his perfect white teeth, as I have so many times before. The last time I had teeth like that, I was fifteen. Then I started smoking, and now they are what I like to refer to as an “eggshell white.” Alan’s sparkle like all-natural veneers. “Good night,” he says.

There’s still a little bit of light in the sky when I pull into my driveway, a minor miracle. It’s almost always the moon that ushers me through my front door. I climb out of my car, trying not to think much about the day.

I’d never have come home this early on a case even five years ago.

The guilt, I reflect, is a little like Catholic guilt. That feeling that you should be doing something or not doing something, even though the majority of the world wouldn’t judge you for either. This is like that. I’m going to walk through my front door, into my house filled with the people who love me. I’m going to have a nice hot dinner, a heavenly cup of coffee, and then some conversation, laughter, television, bedtime, and possibly a little de-stress sex.

Avery Hollister, in the meantime, will be taken to the morgue. Heather Hollister will be picking at her skin and pulling out strands of hair. Dylan Hollister will wake up to a world where his own father killed his brother and tried to kill him. Dana Hollister will be trapped in her dark, soundless world, as will the man I believe to be Jeremy Abbott.

Douglas Hollister is going to jail, though.

I nod to myself. That earns me something.

As I walk to the door, I notice a white envelope, greeting card size, propped against it. SMOKY is written on it in block capital letters. I frown and look around. I pick up the envelope and open it.

Inside is a blank card on white stock, utterly featureless. I flip it open.

ONE LAST WARNING. DON’T COME LOOKING FOR ME. THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES IF YOU DO. LET IT LIE.

My heart stutters in my chest and my hand reaches for my weapon. I scan the front yard. The streetlights are beginning their dim hum as a timer tells them darkness is approaching. I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry.

He’d been here! At my house!

The keys shake in my hand as I turn the lock. My hand shakes as I turn the knob. I can’t help it.

Hold it together. I need to tell Tommy about this, that’s established, but Bonnie doesn’t need to know anything.

I close my eyes and take in a deep breath, hold it for a moment, expel it slowly. I do this again. I open my eyes. Better. I paste a broad smile on my face and enter my home.

Tommy approaches as I walk into the living room. He gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Bonnie comes and gives me a hug and a smile. It’s all very Ozzie and Harriet and surreal. We’re turning into the kind of family that the men I hunt need so much to kill.

“Hungry?” Tommy asks.

I sniff the air and find that, yes, I actually am. “That smells amazing. What is it?”

“Just spaghetti. Secret’s in the sauce.”

“I can taste it from here.”

“You’ll get to eat it hot off the stove this time, instead of heating up the leftovers like usual.” Another kiss. “Dinner’s in twenty.” Bonnie’s returned to the coffee table and what looks like homework.

I go upstairs and change into my relaxed clothes, which can consist of such things as sweats or shorts, depending on the weather, and always—always—socks but no shoes. Tonight it’s sweats. I finish taking the band out of my hair. I wear it up at work, but leaving it up at home can give me headaches. I close my eyes again and breathe. “Tommy!” I call. “Can you come up here for a second?”

“In a minute.”

I wait, thinking as I do that you could set your watch to Tommy’s “in a minute.” He tends to mean what he says. I hear footsteps on the stairs and he enters the room, closing the door behind him.

“So you ready to tell me what’s been bugging you since you came in the door?”

My mouth falls open. “You knew?”

He reaches out to touch my hair. He likes it down, like this.

“Smoky, when I was in the Secret Service, I would spend hours studying a crowd of five hundred people, looking for an indication of trouble. Do you really think I can’t see when the woman I love has something on her mind?”

I scowl, irrationally irritated at being seen through so easily. “Why didn’t you ask me about it, then?”

He shrugs. “Because I trust you. I knew you’d tell me when and if I needed to know.”

“Simple as that?”

He contemplates me with loving eyes. “A lot of people think being together means you always have to know every single little thing that’s going on with your partner. As if not being clairvoyant suddenly becomes a failing when you’re a couple. I think you should know about the important things, and you should be there when your partner needs you. All the rest is trust.”

“That sounds a lot like the relationship between cops who are partners.”

“There are worse relationships to emulate.”