Josh Lanyon - The Mermaid Murders

“Aren’t those stupid, snotty kids the same age as your girlfriend?” Kennedy inquired.

McEnroe shook his head without looking up.

Kennedy studied him as though deciding on the best angle of approach. “Tell us about the party. Walk us through the evening again.”

McEnroe raised his head, glowering. “There isn’t anything to tell. I showed up about nine thirty, which was when the party started. Becky was in a bitchy mood. So after an hour of it, I left. That’s it . That’s the entire night right there. I went home and went to bed. The first I heard she was missing was when you knocked on my door this morning.”

“Alice Cornwell contacted you before she phoned us,” Gervase put in.

“Well, okay. Whatever. I just mean I didn’t see her again. She didn’t come here.”

“You don’t seem particularly broken up over your girlfriend going missing,” Gervase observed.

“She’s not missing.” McEnroe’s gaze was defiant.

Gervase looked at Kennedy.

“What does that mean?” Kennedy asked.

“She’s just doing this for attention. I know Becky. This is her idea of getting back at me.”

“Getting back at you ?” Kennedy repeated thoughtfully. “Why would she want to get back at you?”

McEnroe seemed to struggle to put his thoughts into words. At last he said bitterly, “Because she can’t stand it when everything doesn’t go her way. When she isn’t the center of attention. When she’s not the one in control.” Absently, nervously, he stroked his arms through the soft material of the flannel shirt.

“I see.”

Jason could tell Kennedy wasn’t buying it. Personally, he wasn’t convinced either way. For sure, McEnroe wasn’t telling them everything. Most people didn’t tell them everything. Not at first anyway.

McEnroe wiped his pale and sweaty face on his shirtsleeve. “Is that it?”

It was a hot summer day. Too hot for long sleeves. Too hot for flannel.

Jason asked, “How did you get those scratches on your arms?” He felt rather than saw the quick look Kennedy threw him.

It was a shot in the dark, but McEnroe gaped at him, instinctively tugged at his sleeves, although the cuffs were already covering his wrists, and Jason knew he was right.

“What? I don’t—I was playing with the cat. Becky’s cat. Snowball. She scratched me. The cat scratched me.” He looked frightened.

“You know what I think,” Gervase said suddenly, heavily. He placed his hands on his thighs, as though about to push to his feet. “I think we’d better finish this conversation back at the station.”

“ What ?”

As McEnroe jumped off the sofa, Jason tensed, ready for anything. He did not reach for his weapon—he would have been the only one who did—but it was close.

McEnroe was babbling, “You’re crazy, old man! I already told you I had nothing to do with Becky running away. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. There are still questions that have to be answered.”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Son, you can cooperate and come in voluntarily, or I can arrest your ass,” Gervase said. “Up to you.”

“This is crazy !” McEnroe was trembling, wild-eyed as he looked from face to face. “I didn’t do anything.”

Kennedy looked his usual stony self. Gervase looked pained.

“What are you getting so worked up about, McEnroe?” Gervase’s tone grew fatherly, almost reassuring. “It’s routine. You’re the boyfriend, you’re going to be questioned. If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s a couple of hours out of your life.”

McEnroe stared at the police chief and seemed to calm at whatever he read in his expression. He stopped trembling. The wild-eyed look faded.

“I’m not under arrest?”

“Not so far.”

His Adam’s apple jerked. “Can I at least put my pants on?”

“Please do,” Gervase said cheerfully. “Please do.”

McEnroe shuffled out of the room and down the hallway. A door creaked open. They heard the scrape of drawers opening and shutting. The back and forth of footsteps. The slide of a closet door.

“You won’t need your toothbrush,” Gervase said to the ceiling.

Jason said, “I’m going to cover the back entrance.”

Kennedy nodded. Gervase smiled, leaning back in his chair. “Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere.”

The chief was probably right. He’d lasted a long time at his job, so he probably knew his constituency pretty well, but this go-put-your-pants-on-and-come-with-us method seemed a haphazard way to bring in a suspect. Jason could tell by Kennedy’s expression that he too was listening closely to the sounds of McEnroe moving around his room, so maybe they were on the same page here.

He opened the front door and slipped outside, jumping from the steps and moving quietly along the side of the house, carrying his pistol at low ready.

The mowed weeds ran right up to the foundation of the building. They whispered beneath his feet as he passed the living room window and turned the corner of the house.

No screens on any of the windows.

The back of the house faced the woods. There was a half-constructed deck that looked like someone had got bored playing with giant Lincoln Logs, and a brand new hot tub still in its plastic wrappings. Reassuringly prosaic. The back door screen leaned against the red siding, and the door itself was boarded up.

Nobody was leaving that way. Maybe Gervase knew that.

Those windows without screens made him uneasy. Jason crossed the back of the residence, heading for the east side again—in a minute he’d be going in circles—and turned the rear corner in time to see black curtains gusting in the breeze and McEnroe crawling headfirst out the bedroom window.

At the same instant, McEnroe spotted Jason and brought up his arm.

Jason found himself staring down the barrel of a semi-automatic pistol.

Chapter Four

Time stopped.

“Drop your gun,” McEnroe whispered.

Jason did not move a muscle. He could not have moved if his life depended on it, and there was a good chance it did. A perfect and boundless stillness washed through him as he waited for the shot. That terrifying bang that always came a split second after the worst had already happened.

“ Drop it ,” McEnroe hissed. His hand was rock steady.

It wasn’t even fear Jason felt so much as numb inevitability. He knew he needed to think past the pistol aimed at him, but he could not tear his gaze from the black hole of the barrel pointed at his face. A suicide special. A cheap, compact, small-caliber weapon. Equally special when used for homicide.

Getting shot in the chest with a .22 or a .25 was almost always fatal. That high velocity bullet would ricochet around tearing up organs and everything else in its path like a murderous pinball machine. Getting shot in the head…

Jason let his Glock slip from his fingers. It hit the ground in front of him with a dull thud.

McEnroe slid gracelessly the rest of the way out the window, pistol trained on Jason. There was no more than three feet between them. Too far—and not far enough.

“Don’t move,” McEnroe whispered. “I’ll blow your head off if you even twitch.”

Jason said nothing. There were no coherent thoughts in his brain to speak. He had already done the unthinkable by dropping his weapon.

McEnroe began to walk backward, still leveling his pistol at Jason. Jason stayed motionless, hands at his sides. McEnroe should have made him lock his hands behind his head. Like this, he could tackle McEnroe, wrestle him for the gun.