The Blade Itself

40

The scream he’d been strangling for hours was starting to scrabble and tear at his insides. But Danny kept his citizen face up, trying to strike a pose of annoyed politeness as the old cop fumbled in a manila envelope.

“One wallet, leather. One pair shoelaces. One ring of keys.”

He noticed that his toe was tapping impatiently and made himself stop. Almost out. But then, frying pans and fires. Somewhere beyond this police station, Evan held all the threads of Danny’s life clenched in a callused fist.

“And one cell phone. Sign here, please.”

He snatched the pen and scribbled his name on the clipboard. “Where’s my car?”

“Sir?” The officer blinked at him.

“My car. One of the detectives drove it here.”

“Let me check on that.” The man reached for the phone with the alacrity of drying cement.

Danny swallowed the scream, bent down to lace his shoes. He tried to avoid looking at the watch as he fastened it, but couldn’t help himself. Jesus. Five thirty. In a day when every second counted, he’d just lost seven hours.

Karen spent that time with Evan.

The thought made his hands quiver, a pale anger rising in him, the scream almost escaping, making him want to shake the white-haired cop till his eyeballs rattled.

Instead, he took a breath and adjusted the plastic smile on his face.

The cop hung up the phone. “Sir, I believe you’ll find your car in the visitor’s lot in front of the station.”

Danny turned away before the man finished. Everything in him wanted to run, but he forced himself to take measured steps, to move swiftly but not recklessly. He skipped the elevator in favor of a flight of steps he took in four leaps. In the lobby, a fit black beat cop stood behind the desk, patiently explaining something to a finger-pointing Latina. The evening’s crop of homeless and lost filled the benches, staring with wary eyes. Danny hurried past, opened the door, and stepped into the evening air. Traffic on the Dan Ryan buzzed white noise. As soon as he was out of sight, he broke into a run, sprinting past broken-down pickups and old Caddys. In his mind, the slaps of his feet were the ticking of a clock, tick-TOCK, tick-TOCK. He found his truck and had it in gear almost before the engine finished cranking. Roaring out of the parking lot, he swerved across two lanes and jumped on the highway.

The whole time he’d been at the station, his mind had been racing, trying to think of a way to track Evan down. The man didn’t have a cell phone, had carefully kept his address from Danny. The last time he’d needed to get in touch with him, he’d called Murphy’s and left a message with the bartender. Evan wasn’t likely to return his call this time.

Which left only one route that Danny could think of. Slaloming through traffic with his left hand, he flipped open his mobile phone with his right. He pulled up the menu, then the call register, and selected CALLS DIALED.

There it was, dated just three days earlier. Felt like years. He punched DIAL and whispered a silent prayer as he counted rings. The line went to static as he shot under a bridge, swerving to the left shoulder to dodge a long line of traffic. A chorus of honking counterpointed the third ring. “Come on, Debbie. Pick up the phone.”

Her voice truncated the fifth ring. “Hello?” She sounded tense, high-strung with panic.

“Listen, I don’t have much time. I need you to pay attention. Evan has lost it. He went to my house and kidnapped my girlfriend.”

There was a pause. “I know.”

“What?” His ears seemed to ring. He couldn’t process what she had said.

“He… he made me help him. He hit me, told me he’d kill me, that he’d-” She broke off in a choked sob.

The image played out in his mind, Evan caressing the gun, Debbie wanting to do the right thing, but too scared, too weak to defy him.

“It’s okay.” He spoke soothingly. “I understand. I’m coming. Where are you?”

“The bathroom. I needed to pee, and… he just tied her up. He didn’t hurt her any.”

“Debbie, what bathroom? Where are you?” The highway ahead was a parking lot, and he exited to surface streets, scanning for patrol cars as he jumped the light.

She took a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice was an accusation. “You said you’d take care of everything.”

The words cut. He remembered the parking lot the day before. Telling her to go home, telling her he’d end this. Saying it with a certainty, a bravado, which today seemed faint as dawn stars. “I tried.” He paused. “Yesterday was different.”

There was a long pause. “Danny, I’m scared.”

He sighed. “I know.” Stoplight after stoplight was mercifully green. “Me, too. It’s okay. Just tell me where you are.”

“No.” Her voice was at once faint and resolute. “I can’t. If you show up, Evan will kill me.”

His stomach seemed to shrink. Somehow he’d never considered that she might not help him – that she might decide Evan was the safer bet.

“Debbie, I know you’re scared.” LaSalle was oddly quiet, and he gunned the truck, the blocks disappearing under his tires as he tried to be reasonable enough for both of them. “And I know that you’re hoping things will just turn out all right. That you can ride them out. But you can’t. If you don’t help me, Evan will kill Karen, and probably Tommy and his dad, too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.” He sighed. “I used to think I could make this go away by playing along, just like you. But it only keeps getting worse. Sooner or later you have to realize it won’t stop. Unless we stop it.”

There was a moment of silence, and he let it hold, afraid to push too hard for fear of shutting her down. Five seconds stretched into ten, ten into fifteen. He could imagine her thinking about it, weighing his words. He fought the urge to tell her to open her fucking eyes, to remind her of the diner parking lot and the dead man in a trunk at the airport parking lot. Then, in the background of the phone, he heard a sudden banging sound and a muffled voice. “What the fuck’s taking so long, Deborah?”

“I’ll be right out.” She sounded shrill as glass. There was a pause like she was waiting to hear Evan walk away. When she came back on, she was barely whispering. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait!” He yelled. “Debbie, please.” Terrified that he might lose her now that he was so close. “Tell me where you are.”

There was a sniffle, and he pictured her, sitting fully dressed on the toilet of some thin-walled bathroom, the scariest monster she’d ever known stalking outside the door. Her mascara stained and running, a bruise from wherever he’d hit her. The picture killed him. Then he remembered that she was the safest of the people at risk.

“Please.” He whispered the word. “For Tommy.”

He heard a shuddering intake of breath. He waited for her answer, ready to spin the car in any direction. Wherever they were, he’d have the element of surprise. It would put him back in control. All he needed to know was where to go.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

And then hung up the phone.

He held it to his ear for stupefied seconds. She’d abandoned him. The only one who could tell him where Karen was. The only one who could save Tommy’s life. She’d hung up the phone.

Goddamn her.

A honking horn yanked him back to reality, and he spun into a gas station, barely avoiding the front end of a Volvo. He jerked the car into park and looked at the phone. Calling back was a risk to her. It might make Evan nervous, might make him question her loyalty.

Fuck that.

He hit redial, held the phone to his ear.

One ring. Then, “Hi, this is Debbie. Leave your digits and I’ll hit you back.”

She’d turned off her phone.

He was out of options.

He almost threw the mobile through the window. Stopped himself. Dropped the phone on the seat and his head in his hands. For what seemed like long moments he just sat there. Then he put the car in drive and continued up Clark.

By breaking every rule of the road, he’d made amazing time, but it was hard to get excited about the prospect of arriving home. He had no idea where Evan was, no idea how to stop him. All he had was an empty house, a ticking clock, and a head full of useless plans.

He double-parked in front of the apartment and got out. Things were unnervingly normal. Halloween decorations blinked and flashed. Down the block, a couple laughed as they struggled to hoist a pony keg up their front steps.

He took the steps two at a time. Evan had said that he hadn’t hurt her, but there was no way to be sure. No way except to step in and pray not to find her bleeding out on the hardwood floor. The door to their apartment was slightly ajar. He put a hand against it, feeling the touch of the wood, wondering if this was going to be one of those permanent moments. If after this, his life would be divided into the time before he stepped into the apartment and the time after.

He pushed the door open.

The place was a shambles, and it took him a moment to realize that much of it was the mess from the night before. Boxes sat with clothes stacked beside them, and loose pictures were strewn across the floor.

But there were other things wrong. The lamp by the couch was knocked over. The glass top of the coffee table was cracked in spiderwebs.

He stepped in and walked down the hall. The bedroom was empty. So was the spare. There was a broken water glass on the kitchen floor. The back door stood wide open. On the counter was a tuft of brown hair, stained dark at one end, as though it had been ripped out.

But there was no body.

Rage and relief surged through him. Relief at not finding her dead; seething, sun-blind rage at her violation. The animal part of him rose up, made the blood ring in his ears, his vision blur. He forced himself to breathe, one hand gripping the counter as he gulped oxygen. There wasn’t time for this. He had to be able to think. Had to get the anger under control. Had to harness it, to make it a tool he could use.

A weapon.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to count, banishing visions of Evan holding a gun to Karen’s temple. He couldn’t waste time or energy. He needed his faculties at 100 percent. With every breath he pictured his chest filling with cool blue air, and with each exhale forced it all clear, till his lungs were down to their dregs.

Think.

He walked out of the kitchen, down the hall to the bedroom. The bedspreads were tangled from last night, when they’d made love and then dropped off to sleep. Her pillow still had a crinkled indentation. He dropped to the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands.

Think!

He didn’t know where Evan lived.

He didn’t know where Evan was.

He knew the meet would be tonight, but not when. Evan would probably wait for dark, but twilight already bruised the sky outside their bedroom windows.

Debbie wouldn’t help him.

Patrick was dead. Murdered.

Karen was a hostage.

He stood up, kicked the bed frame savagely, the pain ringing up his leg. He was going in circles. He couldn’t afford to keep following the same arguments.

He had to remove himself. Think of it in purely strategic terms.

See the whole situation.

See not just the problem, but the constraints that defined it. Not just the attack, but the weaknesses it was intended to capitalize on. Like those black-and-white drawings of faces and candlesticks, where the negative space was a different picture from the positive.

Ignore the faces. See the negative space.

And then it hit him.

There was another person who knew where the meet would take place.