Chapter 24
Dylan walked over and sat down in the chair separated from Mitch’s by the table. She leaned over the chair’s stuffed arm in silent encouragement for him to tell her more.
“I’d been surveilling Malone and his customers for months.” He told her how he’d come to be at Malone’s kitchen door on Monday night. “I only wanted to look inside the place, but, suddenly, there he was, practically filling up the doorway.
“I’ve dealt with plenty of tough customers, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked into a pair of eyes as empty as Malone’s. Soulless. You never noticed? Or is he different with you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Can’t even comment on that?” he asked, hitching up an eyebrow.
“Well, anyway, when I saw that ring, it took more self-control than I knew I had not to shoot him right then and there. Right between those vacant eyes. I wanted to be looking into them when he died, to see if they would register a smidgen of humanity even then.”
“Thank God you didn’t act on that impulse,” Dylan murmured.
“Reason prevailed, but my bloodlust put up one hell of a fight.”
He stopped there, having said as much as he intended to. If she was going to respond at all, now was the time. He looked at her expectantly, hoping she would feel compelled to give him something.
She said, “Granted, Roland’s size and stolid demeanor can be intimidating.”
“Has he ever intimidated you?”
“No.”
“Warned you against telling tales about him?”
“Mitch, I can’t and won’t reveal anything that Roland has discussed with me. But I will tell you what he hasn’t. He hasn’t told me anything about his business affairs other than to complain about the day-to-day headaches of managing a successful restaurant.
“He’s never mentioned any associates, by name or otherwise. Never.” She paused before adding, “He hasn’t confessed to a crime, certainly nothing like the ones you’ve attributed to him.”
“Then what do y’all talk about for fifty minutes, the weather?”
She shot to her feet. He reached for her hand and held on. “Bad joke, bad timing.”
“It was,” she said and pulled away.
He raked his hair back and kept his hands cupped around his head. Jesus, he was tired. He closed his eyes and tried to remember when he’d last slept. He lowered his hands and wearily looked up at Dylan.
“I’ve made my position plain. You’ve done the same. I don’t know what more either of us could say.” He tipped his head toward the main bedroom. “Go to bed. I hope John changed the sheets before he left the last time he was here.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I always change the sheets for company.”
She laughed, then said softly and with concern, “Will you sleep? You look exhausted. Does it hurt?” She motioned toward his middle.
“Twinges, pulls a little, but it’s not bad. I’ll hit the hay after shooting a text to Mary to show to Andrew as soon as he wakes up. I send him silly GIFs. He likes those.” He nodded toward the bedroom again. “Off you go.”
“Good night.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“Ugh! Don’t even joke about that.”
“Wasn’t joking.”
But she knew he was. She smiled a small smile, the kind where your lips don’t separate and it never quite makes it to your eyes. Then she turned and took a few steps before coming back around.
“Mitch, if Malone had confessed to doing something like you’ve alleged, I’d be wrestling with a moral dilemma that would test my professionalism and code of ethics to the extreme. Please believe that.”
Saying nothing further, she went into the bedroom. Within minutes after she closed the door, the light underneath it went out. Mitch stayed as he was and pondered the ambiguity of her exit line.
She hadn’t said that if Malone had confessed, she would heave professional privilege out the nearest window.
She’d said only that her code would be tested.
But she’d referred to him as Malone for the first time, not Roland as she always had before.
He hoped that signaled that she was looking at him through a different lens.
He went into the guest room and fished his phone and its battery from the pocket of the windbreaker. He replaced the battery only long enough to find a GIF he thought Andrew would like. He sent it, ending the text with, Tell Andrew that he’s my rock star and that I love him.
Roland was sitting on the edge of his bed, anxiously awaiting a phone call.
Following his conversation with Oz about getting rid of El Paso, he’d gone up to the luxurious residence he’d created for himself above the restaurant and gotten into bed.
But his brain had refused to shut down and let him sleep.
He’d tried to pinpoint the cause of his insomnia.
Then, in his mind, the events of the past few days had begun to overlap, forming a troubling convergence.
There had been a series of seemingly unrelated disruptions of routine, slight indications of a shake-up beneath the surface of normalcy.
His mother had referred to them as niggles.
“Never a good sign, niggles,” she had declared while shaking her bony index finger at him. “Could mean a quiver or a quake. You never know. So pay attention to them.”
Roland liked things kept smooth. No wrinkles in the tablecloths. No lumps in the chocolate mousse. No out-of-joint occurrences that were seemingly random.
There was that word again. Seemingly. It was an untrustworthy qualifier. You could die within a week after discovering a seemingly benign tumor.
Several strange events had taken place this evening alone: El Paso’s disobedience and defiance; a homeless man who hadn’t moved for over an hour leaping up in self-defense; Dylan leaving the restaurant unobserved.
When he’d returned to it after dealing with the ruckus in the median, he’d asked staff if they’d seen “his guest” leaving, but no one had, not even the ma?tre d’, who’d been outside on the sidewalk shooing diners back into the dining room.
The security cameras around his place were kept permanently disabled for the protection of his clientele, so they were of no help to him now when he needed them.
He’d assumed that she had simply gotten tired of waiting for him to come back and had left. He’d texted her an apology for leaving her stranded. She had replied with a polite thank you and assurance that she’d arrived safely home. He’d taken her at her word.
But, in retrospect, perhaps he shouldn’t have. Since his initial, favorable opinion of El Paso had proved faulty, perhaps he’d also been misled by Dr. Dylan Reede. Maybe he’d been naive to trust her confidentiality.
Like maggots on rotten meat, he’d felt the niggles crawling all over him.
On impulse, and despite the late hour, he’d called her cell phone, but had gotten her voice mail.
Three times. It was unlike her to ignore repetitive calls from him.
Because of his atypical work hours, she’d given him her personal number and had invited him to call her when convenient for him.
She’d never failed to answer, not even in the wee hours or over a weekend, so why wasn’t she picking up tonight?
Adding that discrepancy to the growing chain of niggles, he’d determined that preemptive action was called for. He contacted his mole in the Auclair PD.
“Two things. I want you to go to Dr. Dylan Reede’s house.”
“Haskell’s therapist?”
“Yeah. Right now. I want to know if she’s at home. You don’t need to know why.”
“All right.”
“While on your way to her place, call this car company.” He’d provided the name.
“Identify yourself as a concerned friend. She’d told you she should be home from New Orleans around eleven-thirty.
She hasn’t shown up and you’ve been unable to reach her.
You’d like to know where she was dropped so you can make sure she’s all right. ”
“They may not tell me anything unless I play the cop card.”
“Only if you have to.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ten minutes later, his mole had reported disturbing information: “Dr. Reede never got in the car.”
“Say again?”
“She was at the curb when the driver pulled up.”
“I know that already. Go on.”
“Well, she didn’t get in, and then he lost sight of her in the gathering crowd. He didn’t specify what crowd.”
“I know what crowd. Go on.”
“The driver told his dispatcher that there was some kind of disturbance in the median that was holding up traffic in every direction. He circled the block several times, texting Dr. Reede, asking where she was. He was about to give up and leave without her when she texted him and canceled. She apologized for not notifying him sooner and tipped him an extra fifty for the inconvenience.”
“Are you at her house yet?”
“No, but—”
“Get there!”
And now he was waiting for that report. He was holding his phone in his hand when it beeped. “Talk to me.”
“I’m here, but I don’t think she is.”
Roland’s blood pressure rocketed. “What about a car?”
“None out front. Hers could be in the garage, but the door is down, so I can’t be sure. The house is completely dark.”
“At this time of night, wouldn’t it be?”
“Yes, but there’s mail in the box, plus a UPS package on her front porch. Wouldn’t she have taken that inside if she were here?”
She hadn’t gone home. She’d never even gotten into the fucking car! She had lied to him.
“Sir? Do you want me to keep watching the house? It’s on a cul de sac. I’m afraid staying might arouse the suspicion of neighbors, and it’s only a few hours before I have to be at work. What do you want me to do?”
Roland thought for a moment, then gave the mole another assignment with explicit instructions. “Can you do that?”
“It won’t be easy.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” he growled. “I asked if you could manage it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then report for your shift. This didn’t happen. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You breathe Dylan Reede’s name in connection to mine, I’ll cut out your tongue. Focus on Haskell. Anything regarding him, I want to hear about immediately. Got it?”
“Ten four.”
Roland disconnected but remained sitting on the edge of the bed, rotating his signet ring, literally gnashing his teeth as he ruminated over this unexpected turn.
Tonight, his confidante and a homeless man had vanished at approximately the same time from outside his restaurant. The homeless man had the aggressiveness, agility, and speed of a cagey ex-fed who had, just this week, begun seeing Dylan for therapy. What are the chances?
That was a niggle with the magnitude of a quake that his mother had warned him about.
Roland opened his nightstand drawer and took out his spare rosary.