Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (79 page)

They’d just turned onto Brooklyn Avenue when Dan felt the stirrings of fear. He stopped and looked around. The street was noticeably darker than the rest, but that wasn’t it. Ralph gazed at him curiously. Dan listened, but heard nothing unusual. Cars whizzing past on the pavement; the wind blowing in the branches above. Still, something was telling him to be wary.
Watch out
, it said.

“Do you feel it, Ralphie? Is something odd happening?”

His cell beeped. The display showed a call from Germ. He’d check his messages when he got home. For now, the hair was standing up on his neck like a werewolf with a full moon eclipse coming on.

They continued up the street, with Dan throwing occasional glances over his shoulder. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved. Paranoia was striking a home run all by itself. At the intersection, he stopped and looked back. He had a clear view of the entire block. Nothing.

By the time they returned Dan was sweating. Still no patrol car. Let off the leash, Ralph bounded for his water dish. Dan looked for Trevor. No sign. Ked should have been back by now, too. The house was silent.
It was odd.

Just then he heard splashing above. He slipped up the stairs and peeked around the bathroom door. Dan peeled off his clothes and slid into the shower. Trevor grinned at him through the steam like a gremlin.

Making love in water was one of Dan’s few kinks, but one not so odd as to label him damaged. He felt free to indulge. They had just begun to kiss, erections jammed together against their thighs, when they heard Ralph making a fuss downstairs.

“Must be Ked,” Dan said, cocking an ear to listen through the running stream.

The barking continued. If it had been Ked, Ralph would have settled down as soon as he stepped in the door. But Ralph seemed to think it urgent, whatever it was.

“It’s probably just a raccoon,” Trevor said. “He’ll stop in a moment.”

He didn’t. In fact, his racket grew louder. Dan shook his head. “I’d better go look.”

He towelled himself off briskly and threw on a robe. Ralph’s uproar continued even after he’d reached the bottom landing. Maybe the officer on patrol had been told to introduce himself.

“This better be good, Ralphie,” Dan said, heading for the door.

At first, nothing registered. Ralph stood, hackles raised, staring out at the backyard. Then it hit him. Flashing lights, the revolving strobes of an emergency vehicle. What was it doing in his backyard?

What he saw didn’t make sense at first. It wasn’t an emergency vehicle. It was his garage engulfed in silent, eerie flames. Inside the house, there was no corresponding soundtrack, nothing to tell him the fire was real. He started to open the doors then checked himself.

Somewhere out there was a killer waiting for him to show himself.

“Is everything all right?” Trevor called from upstairs.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Trevor came up behind him, dripping and tying his sash. He looked out at the blaze.

“Oh, no,” he said softly.

Ten minutes earlier all had been peaceful. Now the living room was awash in reflected flames.

Dan lunged for the drapes, yanking them across. “Keep out of sight,” he commanded. “There could be someone outside with a gun.”

He put in the 911 call under Trevor’s watchful eyes.

“Shouldn’t we do something to stop it?” Trevor asked.

Dan shook his head. “We’re safer in here.”

“What’s happening, Dan? This is crazy. Who would be out there with a gun?”

Dan went around to the kitchen and peered through the window. A figure stood in the driveway staring at the flames. For a moment, Dan thought it was Little Boy Blue. Then he caught the profile, the longish hair.

It was his son.

“No!”

He yanked open the doors and called out. Ked turned to him.

“Stay inside!” Dan told Trevor.

He dashed down the steps, looking around crazily in an attempt to see whoever might be taking aim at him or Ked.

“Ked!” he yelled again. “Get down!”

His son looked at him as though he were deranged. Dan tackled him and brought him to the ground just as a siren screamed in the distance.

“Keep your head down!” he yelled, trying to cover his son’s body with his own.

They lay there in a confused pile, getting up only after the police car stopped right beside them in the driveway. An officer herded them both into the vehicle, closing the door and reassuring them they were safe.

“Dad…?”

“Where were you?” Dan demanded. “What the hell were you doing?”

Ked looked at him in confusion. “Dad, I’m sorry …”

Dan felt tears stinging his cheeks. He reached out and put an arm around his son. “I was worried.”

“What happened to the garage?”

Dan waited to catch his breath before continuing. “Someone set it on fire. I don’t know who.” He took another breath. “Where were you? Why were you out so late?”

“I told you …” Ked began.

“Told me what?” Dan felt himself getting riled again. “You never said you’d be home late. I didn’t know what to think.”

Ked huffed. “Dad, I told you yesterday at dinner. I was going out with Elizabeth tonight. We went to a movie.”

Dan smacked his forehead. The date Ked had told him about.

His son was watching him intently. “Dad, I think you’re cracking up or something. It’s like you don’t listen to me.”

Dan shifted a mop of hair from his son’s forehead. “You’re right. I listen, but I don’t hear you. You did tell me about your date. I’m sorry.”

The officer was on the radio, giving an update on the situation. Dan remembered the call from Germ. He checked his cell:
Mayday, dude! You’re not going to believe what I found. Can you come over tonight? It’s urgent
.

He checked the time: just before ten. He sent back a reply:
Be there by midnight
.

The officer turned and took Dan’s statement before allowing him to go back into his house.

“I would advise for your safety and peace of mind not to stay here tonight, sir,” he advised. “Have you got a place to go?”

“Yes.” Dan nodded. “We’ve got a place to go.”

They went back inside together. Trevor offered him a glass of whiskey and ice. Dan took it gratefully then phoned Kendra and made arrangements for Ked and Trevor to come over.

Ked shot him a look. “What about you? Where will you go?”

“I’ll drive you and Trevor over to your Mom’s.
I have to go somewhere, but I’ll be back tonight.”

Ked’s dark eyes looked at him accusingly. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be fine. Go up and pack whatever you need. Make it for a few days, all right?”

Ked grabbed his arm. The grip was surprisingly strong. “Dad? Please don’t get killed.”

“It’s all right. I promise not to get hurt or killed or anything.”

Ked went up to pack. Dan walked across to the window and stared out at the darkened street. Somewhere out there, the Bogey Man lay in wait.

“When I saw it I couldn’t believe it. I said to myself, something isn’t right here. But it took me a while to piece it all together.”

This was the new Germ talking. Dan had never seen him so animated. Maybe he’d run out of his supply of weed and the real Germ — nervous, gritty, and talking at hyper-speed — had emerged

“Whoa, whoa,” Dan said. “Slow down a bit. What are we talking about?”

“Sequence of events, man. We’re talking about the sequence of events. Remember I told you something was out of sorts with the video?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it wasn’t just one tape. I played the two tapes back to back and I finally figured out what it was.”

Dan waited and watched as he scrolled through the footage.

“We had two cameras on this site, one in the back as well as the one in the front.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“So there’s this, which you saw yesterday …”

Dan watched the clip of Little Boy Blue arriving and flashing his finger at the screen.

“That was an hour before,” Germ said. “Now here’s the other camera.”

He scrolled through a second clip. They watched as the same figure emerged from the back of the building and stood in the shadows then left the frame. Germ let the footage keep rolling.

“What am I looking for?” Dan asked.

“It’s coming.”

They waited. Eventually, they saw it: the spurt of flame that signalled the start of the fire.

Dan sat back. “I’m confused.”

“I was too.”

“Oh,” Dan said, things finally dawning on him.

“I told you you weren’t going to like it.”

Dan put a hand to his forehead, trying to accept what he’d just seen. “How does this work? A boy arrives by the front door then leaves again by the back door …”

“Long before the fire starts.”

“If no one was there then who killed Pfeiffer?”

“Exactly, dude!”

“So there were two of them after all?”

Germ nodded. “Had to be. It’s truly creepy and just the sort of thing you’d expect in a really nasty horror film. They knew about the front door camera, but they didn’t see the one at the back door.”

Dan thought of the empty room in the retirement home, the hair products lining the bathroom sink, the towel, the French science fiction reading matter. The camera hidden inside the home. There were two of them, always switching disguises, each similar enough to the other to fool a security camera.

It’s like he just disappears into thin air
, Domingo had said.

No one can be nowhere
, Dan reminded himself.

His mind was jolted back to what Kendra had said at dinner the night before, the phrase that had been jarring his memory, trying to get through to him:
I swear sometimes he doesn’t hear a thing I say
. And what Ked had reiterated:
It’s like you don’t listen to me
. Only this time it was coming through loud and clear.

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.

He pulled out his phone and dialled. An answer service informed him that the caller he wanted was unavailable, but that he could press one to leave a message.

“I got the photograph,” he said. “No more fires, okay? I know what you want. I’ll deliver it when you give me the name I want.”

He swung around and faced Germ.

“Now we wait,” he said.

It was nearly morning by the time a name showed up on Gaetan Bélanger’s blog. It meant nothing to Dan. He suspected it would mean nothing to anyone else.

Twenty-Nine

Who Killed Cock Robin?

Dan was poking through the closet, pulling out clothes on hangers and holding them at arm’s length as though he were considering buying them. Only nothing was in his size.

His search was quite tidy, all things considered. If he’d really been with the police and had a search warrant, as he’d claimed when he arrived at the door waving a Rogers cable TV bill without letting her look at it, then it would have been very different: books tossed from the shelves, clothes strewn across the floor, plants uprooted and the dirt spread around. Maybe even a few pillows sliced up for good measure, feathers floating in the air. If he failed to find what he wanted.

“What are you looking for?” she demanded. Her face registered shock and outrage. If she could still feel then maybe she wasn’t that far gone yet.

“There was a fire. You may have heard about it on the news.”

She turned a blank stare at him. It was like it hadn’t touched her at all. Whatever she was on, it barely left her a mind to think and respond with. He thought for a moment she was going to ask him what “news” he was speaking of. He was tired of her spaced-out addict routine, tired of her “bad mother” excuses. Instead, she nodded.

He turned his attention back to the room. For all intents, it was a typical teenager’s room. Posters on the walls, an old-fashioned wooden dresser, shelves with model airplanes, spare linen stacked on top. Bright shadows hiding dark things.

He felt her watching him.

“I heard about the fire. What has that got to do with what you’re doing here at this ungodly hour? You said on the phone you had something to show me, otherwise I would never have let you in.”

Dan took a breath. He’d waited till eight before phoning, and even that had taken all his patience. It was going to be hard to continue with this conversation. “I do have something to show you,” he said. “Just give me a moment.”

He found what he was looking for, yanked it from the hanger and laid it on the bed. “This was his?”

Knowing that it was.

“Yes. Everything in the room was his. I already told you that. I haven’t changed anything since he left.”

He went over to the shelf. It held a few athletic trophies, a handful of photos in frames. There was a silence as he fingered one photograph in particular.

He turned to her. “Do you mind if we have a drink first?”

He saw the corners of her mouth turn up slightly. “Yes, of course. In the kitchen.”

He waited till her back was turned then he pocketed the photograph. With the frame, it barely fit inside his jacket.

They were sitting in the kitchen. Morning sunlight slanted through the blinds and lit up the room with a burnished glow. This was fall light, still rich and radiant, but no longer the full light of summer that seemed to burst open over everything it touched. A rich and possessive light, like the love of a mother for a child.

“I’m sorry for your loss, if I didn’t say so earlier.”

She was staring at him.

“Yes,” she said in a dreamy tone. “They called yesterday. It was a shock. They told me they found his gun at the fire.”

In fact, Dan thought, she looked anything but shocked. Placid, resigned. But not shocked. He wondered how long he’d have to play this cat-and-mouse game with her.

“Did he ever marry?”

She seemed to be struggling with the question, as if she had to make a special effort to retrieve the memory from some long lost corner of her mind.

“No.” She shrugged. “Well, yes, briefly. But it didn’t last.”

“No,” Dan said. “These things never do.”

He watched her fingers curl around the edge of her glass. Arthritic and swollen. Manlike. She’d poured good whiskey. He was thankful for that, at least.