Kiss Of Evil

58

Ronnie’s Famous is fully lighted, empty. Paris had called Ronnie earlier in the day and asked him to put together two dozen doughnuts and coffee for the stakeout team. And damned if there aren’t a pair of bulging white bags on the counter, right next to the register, right next to a tray of large white foam cups and one of Paris’s Thermoses. Even on New Year’s Eve. Paris had said he would be by at nine-thirty, and he is right on time.

Paris makes a U-turn, parks in front of the shop, grabs his empty Thermos, steps inside, his mind afloat on the increasingly bizarre facts of a case that is starting to look like it began twenty-six years ago when a woman named Lydia del Blanco got beaten nearly to death by her ex-husband, a man who once lived at Fortieth and Central.

Is this why Fayette Martin was lured to the Reginald Building?

Is this why Michael Ryan was murdered?

If God is doling out luck this New Year’s Eve, he will begin to get some of these answers in the next few hours. One way or another.

Paris looks around Ronnie’s. No customers at the short counter. No one behind the glass. Paris can hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner in the back, the sound of a television.

“Ronnie?” Paris yells.

Nothing.

“Ronnie?”

Just the mewl of a motor and some kind of sitcom. Paris grabs everything on the counter, drops a twenty, then turns to leave before Ronnie Boudreaux can come out of the back room and object.

“Happy New Year, Ronnie!” Paris yells, but he is certain the drone of the vacuum has drowned him out.

As Paris approaches his apartment building he sees two men standing by the front door. Two familiar shapes. Bobby Dietricht and Greg Ebersole. At his apartment.

A first.

Something must be going down. Why hadn’t they called?

Paris parks on East Eighty-fifth Street, grabs his Thermos. “Hey guys,” he says, climbing the steps, letting the surprise register on his face. “What’s up? We have a name?”

“Hey,” Bobby Dietricht says, reading the surprise, ignoring the question.

The three men step inside the lobby of Paris’s building as an icy gust wraps around the building. “What’s goin’ on?” Paris asks, checking his watch. He is due at the Westwood stakeout in thirty-five minutes. “We starting a doo-wop group?”

Greg laughs a little too hard. Although he is on the task force, he is not part of the raid team. Early that evening, amid Greg’s violent protests, Captain Elliott had taken one look at him and ordered him off duty.

Bobby Dietricht reaches into his overcoat and pulls out a manila envelope. “Full lab reports are in.”

“What?” Paris says. “Why the hell didn’t someone call me?”

“This is it, Jack,” Bobby says. “This is the call. I just got the report ten minutes ago.”

“What’s Elliott’s take?” Paris asks.

“He hasn’t seen them yet.”

Wrong answer, Paris thinks. Wrong, wrong answer. Why not? “Talk to me, Bobby.”

“We’ve got matches. All over the fuckin’ map. Blood, prints.”

“No shit.”

“None. Most of the blood is Fayette Martin’s. But there was also trace evidence of Willis Walker’s blood, too.”

“What about the prints?”

A look passes between Greg and Bobby. “Yeah. We’ve got a match. And we’ve got it a half-dozen times.”

“Do we like someone? Please tell me we like someone.”

“Yes and no,” Bobby says. “Mostly no.”

“What the hell are you saying? We have a hit on the prints or not?”

Bobby nods.

“Great,” Paris says, his stomach starting to centrifuge with tiny needles that soon work their way down to his groin, where the real fear lives. And he knows why. “We’ve got the connection.”

“Not so great,” Greg says, a look of distilled heartbreak on his face.

“The prints,” Bobby says, cop-stare locked in place, cold and unnerving. Paris had never been on this side of it.

“What about them?” Paris asks.

Bobby: “They’re yours.”