Troubleshooter

Chapter 63

Though he doubted that Den would be dumb enough to play Hollywood stalker, Tim entered his house cautiously and safed each room, then double-locked the doors and closed the blinds. He kept the lights off.

He called Smiles and Malane and filled them in, coordinating activities for the morning. He hoped they'd be able to come up with enough leads to construct a new game plan.

The answering machine was maxed out. After the seventh media call, Tim pressed the "erase" button and held it down. When the case settled, he'd change the number. Again.

He opened the refrigerator door, grimacing against the waft of spoiled food. He cleaned it out, throwing away the perishables, and returned to see what he was left with. An onion, a jar of jalapeno mustard, a bottle of Newman's Own, two strawberry Crushes, and one turkey Lunchable.

He arranged the Crush and the turkey crackers on the silver tray as he had for Dray the night before her encounter with Den Laurey, then stood in the dark kitchen, unsure where to take himself. The TV's light would broadcast that he was home, so he ate at the kitchen table in the dark. Though he was accustomed to eating alone when Dray worked P.M. shifts, the new reality of his home life made even this simple activity a painful one. His mood grew heavy; it became evident why he'd spent virtually no time at home since Dray was shot. If he kept moving, he didn't feel as keenly. But now, with the trails gone cold and Pete Krindon working the sole lead on a freelancer's schedule, he had no choice but to be still. A childish longing struck him, but he knew that sleeping beside her at the hospital would be nothing more than an addictive falsehood.

At least half of Tim's child-size meal wound up in the trash. On his walk down the hall, he paused outside the nursery and, without looking over, pulled the door closed. In the bedroom he picked up Dray's sweats, folded them neatly, and set them on a shelf on her side of their shared closet. Each of her outfits, filled out by a hanger and gravity, matched an evening out, a mood, a mental snapshot. Navy blue button-up with a ketchup stain on the right sleeve-Dray pouty after consecutive gutter balls, drinking Bud from a bottle shaped like a bowling pin. Morro Bay sweatshirt-a pre-stirrups grimace before her last OB checkup two weeks ago. Yellow dress with tiny blue flowers-the first night they'd met, at a fireman's charity. She'd worn it again the morning she'd come to meet him at the courthouse to take him home.

An empty house and a full closet were only part of what Den Laurey had left in his wake, but Tim felt it as an utter and profound devastation. Marisol Juarez's grandmother, knocking around her tiny apartment by the dim light of her Advent candles, felt her granddaughter's absence the same way. We'll do our best, Tim had promised her, and Marisol had wound up split open on a warehouse floor. Her death had been a matter of timing and chance, just as countless variables had aligned to land the pellet at the back of Dray's rib cage. He wondered how, if he had to, he'd wrap his mind around the loss of his wife. If he'd learned one thing from Ginny's death, it was that-despite all certainty to the contrary-he'd persist. Like the Northern Alliance fighter he'd seen through the blaze of the midday Kandahar sun, stumbling along a treeless ridge with blood streaming from both ears, carrying his own severed arm. He'd be separated from himself, diminished, but he'd stagger on.

He slid into bed, occupying only his half. His exhaustion was overpowering. He had only a moment to be thankful for that petty mercy before slipping into sleep.

When he woke up six hours later, a stack of computer printouts was waiting on the foot of his bed.