6. Anderson
6
ANDERSON
B y the time June gets home, I’ve already poured a scotch. I’ve gone round and round about all of this, and I’m not getting anywhere, so a scotch was in order. I smile and lift my glass to her as she walks in. “Want one?”
It’s only then that I realize something is very wrong.
Her brown eyes are puffy, and the look on her pretty round face startles me. I set my drink down and go straight to her, wrapping her in my arms. “Baby, what happened?”
She shakes her head, and for a moment, she crumbles against me.
“You can tell me. You know you can.”
“Let’s go for a walk.”
I frown at her. In all the time we’ve been together, we’ve never just gone for a walk, and it’s been drizzling all day. She is freaking me out. I lift her chin with a finger to get her full attention because whatever is going on in her head must be terrible. “June, baby, talk to me. What is going on?”
There’s a firmness to her now. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes shine fiercely. “I want to go with you on a walk. Can we do that or not?”
“Yeah. Let me get my coat.” I don’t know what the hell has gotten into her, but this seems vitally important, and she’s not letting it go. I shrug on my coat and let her take the lead outside. Clearly, she has someplace in mind.
Thankfully, it stopped drizzling before we left the apartment. The air is heavy and chilled, so the walk is still uncomfortable. We end up at the little park a few blocks away, and she doesn’t say a word until she dips to look under the picnic table. Once she’s satisfied, she sits and gestures for me to do the same, so I do. June takes a breath to steady herself. Her voice is barely over a whisper, even though there is no one else in the park. “I think we’re bugged.”
“Bugged, like with a listening device?”
Her lips tighten as she nods.
“You’ve seen too many movies?—
“Do not mock me, Anderson,” her voice cracks.
“I’m not. I just think you’re being a little paranoid, that’s all. What has you so rattled?”
“A pair of homicide detectives came to my office today. They knew things.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “What did they know?”
“That I knew Neil. That I worked at O’Mulligan’s. That he kissed me and put his scarf on me as we left together,” her nostrils flare as she says the words. She’s on the brink of losing her shit—I can see it.
When I reach out for her hand, it’s hard not to be hurt when she flinches, but I get it. She is wound tight, and I don’t blame her at all. But she lets me hold her hand after a pause. Quietly, I ask, “What else did they know?”
“Isn’t that enough?” she snaps.
“It’s enough for them to know you two were involved. It’s not enough to convict.”
“Do … do you think they’re listening? That the apartment is bugged? For them to know all of that … I don’t know how else they’d know about O’Mulligan’s.”
I shrug. “It’s not hard to sort that kind of stuff out, but it is hard to get a warrant to plant a bug. I don’t think they’re listening to us.” I don’t want to say what’s on my mind. I really don’t. But it needs to be said. “Moss thinks that if we don’t talk about things, then this will eventually go away. I’m inclined to agree with him, but since he must have botched hiding Neil’s body, I’m not sure if that’s the right instinct.”
“That’s the plan? Never talk about it again?”
“For now, that’s the only plan I’ve got. As much as I do not think this incident is enough for them to get a warrant for a bug, my father’s shit is. All the stuff I’ve done with Moss is. So, while I don’t think they’d go through the paperwork of getting a bug for one dead guy, I do think it’s possible for everything else, which means, yeah. Not talking in our home sounds like a good start.”
She leans to me, putting her head on my chest. “I hate this so much.”
The defeated tone in her voice kills me. This is all my fault. During the fight, I was mindless. A strange Zen feeling took over as I fought Neil. I wanted him dead. I wanted to feel my fist go through his face for what he had done to her. But then I heard her voice through the violence. It was a fractured sound—Neil had tried to strangle her, and her vocal cords were bruised. But it shattered my focus completely, and I had to get to her, which meant the fight needed to stop. I worked him over to end the fight, but then he cracked his skull on a stud in the wall, and that was that. At first, I’d thought I’d knocked him out.
I wish that were all I’d done.
“I hate it, too, baby.” I hate that they came to her office and that I can’t stop them from doing it again. The only defense we have now is silence, and that has never been my skill. I am a talker, a professional manipulator, as one of my old law professors called it. But silence could be an attorney’s asset, too. Letting a suspect talk was a good way to get an accidental confession. Not that I think she’d say the wrong thing, but I have to ask, “What did you tell them about Neil?”
“That he was just a guy I’d met at a bar. He came to my job to wait for me and walk me home. On the way home, he mentioned some weird shit about how he didn’t like when a woman told him what to do, that he didn’t like mouthy women. So, when we got to my place, I said goodnight, and that was it because it was strange to say misogynist shit like that out loud.”
That’s my fucking girl, right there. I smile at her. “Not bad, Devlin.”
She quirks a crooked smile at me back. “What?”
“That’s a good story, and it could lead them to look for other women he put off. Maybe even find some of his other victims … fuck, if I wasn’t in love with you before, I would be now.”
Her smile goes wide, before she starts to cry. I hold her close until she stills, and it takes far longer than I’d hoped it would. She mumbles, “I can’t take this.”
“I am so fucking sorry, June.”
“I know. I’m not asking for another apology. It’s just … I need to be able to get this out without you constantly apologizing, okay?”
I nod. “Whatever you need.”
“I wish we had called the cops that night, and part of me wonders if we told them now?—"
“We can’t.”
She sighs. “I know. I just mean, I still wonder what would happen if we did, though. If we confess to it and let other lawyers handle this … it might not be so bad.”
“If I thought that even close to true, I’d do it in the blink of an eye just to stop breaking your heart. But it’s not, and neither of us is na?ve enough to believe that would go the way we want it.”
“I know.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I tell her with more confidence than I actually feel. “We are not going to speak a word about any of this in either of our apartments. Not at our offices. Not anyplace we regularly go to. If we need to talk about it or anything relating to it, we go for a walk. Deal?”
“Yeah. And definitely not on any of our phones.”
I laugh and nod. “Agreed. The sun is down, and it’s fucking freezing out here. Are you ready for some supper?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“I haven’t been hungry all day. It was a shame, too. Dad took me to Delvecchio’s. I could hardly eat any of it.”
My poor girl. I take her beautiful face in my hands and plant a kiss on her forehead. “I wish it wasn’t so busy in your head.”
“Me too.”
I help her to her feet and sling my arm over her shoulders. I might not be able to protect her from the law, but I can at least protect her from the cold. She doesn’t say much on the walk back, but really, what is there to say? I fucked us both, and not in the way I like.
But the closer we get to home, the more her steps slow. I ask, “What is it?”
“Just … the thought of being spied on. After everything with … you know, it’s like I can’t get away from being violated.”
There is no curse dark enough for what I’m feeling right now. I gulp against a dry throat. “I know you asked me to stop apologizing?—"
“Please don’t.”
I sigh and stare at our destination. My apartment has always felt like home until now. If she doesn’t feel at home there, then it’s not mine, either. But if we veer off course, now, it’ll look weird if we’re being watched. I swallow my guilt and anger and try to sound comforting. “I’ve got you, baby. Let’s go home.”