Fear the Night

22

Alex Reyals came to the door this time wearing faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and in his stocking feet. He needed a shave, so his dark beard seemed almost as long as his buzz-cut hair. He smelled not unpleasantly of turpentine and raw wood.

“Been upstairs in your workshop?” she asked.

He smiled. “Yeah, but it’s nothing that can’t wait.” He moved back so she could enter.

The apartment was neat and clean today, squared up in a way that reminded Meg of military quarters. Definitely the place could use the application of some simple decorating basics. Meg thought Repetto’s wife, Lora, should see this. Lora understood interior decorating and would know a man lived here alone and devoid of color sense.

On the other hand, Alex must have some sense of color and design. He was more than a simple craftsman and furniture maker; he was an artist. She glanced again at the example of his work in the apartment, the massive, multilayered desk.

“It’s mahogany,” he said, noticing where she was looking. “Inlaid with teak.”

“It looks futuristic,” she said, of the desk’s sharply angled planes, “and yet it doesn’t.”

“It’s the present,” Alex said. “Stuck right in the middle of now.”

“Waxed slippery and full of angles?”

“Aren’t you perceptive?”

“My job.”

“Sit down,” he invited, motioning toward the sofa. “Want some coffee?”

“Kind of late for coffee.”

“I drink it all day long.”

She declined the coffee, but she sat. “Speaking of my job, I’m interested in where you were two nights ago.”

He rubbed his unshaven chin. Meg could hear the friction. “I was here.”

“Alone?”

He looked at her in a way that was unsettling. “Ah! Two nights ago. I know what you’re up to, Detective Meg.”

“Doyle.”

“Two nights ago was when that woman was shot in the park. The editor. .”

“Candy Trupiano,” Meg reminded him.

“Yeah. I had the Candy part. Listen, do I need an alibi? If I’d known you were coming I would have made something up.”

“You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

“It’s wearing a little thin, trying to keep track of my life in case I might be questioned about the who, where, what, when, why.”

“You should know how it is. We’re both stuck with the routine. You said you were here two nights ago. Were you alone?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I didn’t choose that night to have a party.”

His joking manner was beginning to aggravate Meg. “Feel like talking about why you left the NYPD?”

That caused a dark cloud to pass over. She was instantly sorry she’d brought up the subject when she saw the look of pure pain cross his features.

“I think you know that, or you wouldn’t be here.” His voice had changed, too. If she wanted serious, she’d gotten it.

“You’re not the first person to shoot and miss,” she said. God! Now I’m trying to cheer him up.

“I didn’t miss.” He turned away from her. “I hit. Trouble is, what I hit was the hostage instead of the suspect.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It’s the kind of shit the bumper stickers say happens. How were you supposed to know someone was going to move at the same time you squeezed the trigger?”

“It was my job to know, just like it’s your job to be here and work at making yourself a pain in the ass. Which, as far as I’m concerned, you are not.” He wasn’t looking at her. Staring out the window. “I didn’t do my job. A woman died. Case closed.”

Without realizing she’d crossed the room she was at his side, touching his shoulder. “Then let it be closed. Stop torturing yourself about it.”

He turned slightly so he could look at her, his smile faint and sad. “It isn’t that easy. Guns can kill or maim in a lot of ways. Isn’t that the hypothesis-rogue cop tortured by guilt goes crazy and starts shooting people?”

“Not my hypothesis.”

“What’s yours?”

“I don’t have one yet. I’m doing my job, like you were doing yours when you got unlucky.”

“We talk an awful lot about the Job.”

“People are what they do,” Meg said.

“Did. Now I create things out of wood.”

“With sharp tools.”

He glanced at her. “Somebody been murdered with a band saw?”

“I don’t even know what a band saw is,” Meg said. “But I can’t imagine you murdering someone set to music.”

He moved away from her and sat down in a chair, crossing his legs. “Then you’ve never really listened to the blues.”

“Oh, but I have.”

He regarded her without changing expression. “What I sensed about you from the start is you might lie to me, but you’re honest.”

“Of course. I’m a cop.”

The sad smile again. “We keep things light so we don’t sink in quicksand.”

“Lots of us play it that way,” Meg said. “The cop’s world is a kind of swamp.”

He didn’t answer and wasn’t looking at her now. She knew where he was. Back in his personal swamp he could never quite escape, where he would eventually fall prey to the thing he kept alive there.

She walked to the door. The motion stirred enough air to raise again the acrid but pleasant scent of turpentine and freshly hewn or sanded wood. She imagined his muscle-corded arms and powerful hands working the wood, shaping it, creating …

“Interview over?” he asked, sounding disappointed.

“For now.”

“Learn anything?”

“Yeah.”

“Got any wise words for me?”

“Yeah.” She opened the door and looked back at him before stepping into the hall, giving him a mock serious expression. “Don’t leave town.” A touch of humor to show he could get out of the quicksand if only he’d try hard enough.

It hadn’t quite worked. She felt as if she were slowly sinking with him.

He nodded as if giving her instruction careful consideration. “Okay. Don’t be a stranger.”

Back in the unmarked she sat squeezing the steering wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead at nothing beyond the windshield.

I’m falling for him. A suspect in a serial murder investigation.

Be careful here. Be careful.