Out Cold (8 page)

“This is Kayla,” said Misty, putting her hand on the blonde's arm, “and this is sexy Zooey.”

I held my hand to each of them. “I'm Brady.”

They both shook my hand. Kayla might have been a high-school cheerleader. She had a shy smile and blue eyes and dimples in her cheeks. Zooey, who was Asian, didn't smile. She just looked at me without expression. She wore her hair in a long braid. Her eyes looked black.

“You want to tell them what you want?” said Misty to me.

I held out the picture of my dead girl. “Does either of you recognize her?”

Kayla took it from my hand. She squinted at it, then looked at Misty. “Isn't this the girl?…”

“She's the one that was sick the other night,” said Misty. “He wants to know if you ever saw her before that.”

Kayla shook her head and handed the photo to Zooey, who looked at it and shrugged.

I said, “Misty thought maybe that man you were just talking to in the truck was looking for this girl.”

“He said he was looking for a blonde,” said Kayla. “But not me. I was too old.” She looked at me and laughed. “Me? Too old? Not pretty enough is more like it.”

“You're wicked pretty, Kay,” said Zooey. “The guy was just a perv. He wanted a child, not a woman.”

“Does either of you remember seeing that man or his truck before?”

“I saw the truck once, I think,” said Kayla. “Maybe in the fall?” She looked at Zooey.

Zooey shrugged. “I never saw the guy or his stupid truck before.” She turned to Misty. “Look, we gotta…”

“Kayla,” I said, “you think you might've seen it?”

“I remember noticing the cute bears on the side, that's all.”

“Was it around here?”

She nodded. “It was just that once. A long time ago. I wouldn't even have remembered it if I didn't see it tonight.” She spread out her hands. “That's all I got for you. We really have to get going.”

“I told them you'd give them money,” said Misty.

I shrugged. “I would think you'd all want to help. This girl died. If she was…” I waved my hand.

“If she was hooking,” said Kayla. “That what you were gonna say?”

I nodded. “I guess I was.” I opened my wallet. “I'll pay you.” I took out two twenties.

Kayla put her hand on my arm. “Don't worry about it, Mister. We didn't do anything to earn it. Unless you want to party?”

I smiled. “No, thank you.” I held a bill out to Zooey, who looked at it, then waved it away with the back of her hand.

“If you think of anything else,” I said, “I'd appreciate it if you called me. Misty has my card. I'll pay you for anything useful, I promise.”

They smiled and nodded and waved good-bye, then linked arms and strolled across the street. When they got to the other side, they stopped and lit cigarettes. They looked back to where I was standing, and all three of them waved again. Then they started down the sidewalk, heading in the direction of Chinatown, three pretty girls who could have been on the high-school swim team, heading off to work.

I walked into Skeeter's at five minutes of six. I hung my coat on a hook beside the door and looked around. The bar was two-deep with men and women in business attire. I looked them over and failed to spot a college-aged kid with long purple hair and multiple face piercings.

Ethan Duffy might've cut his hair and let it grow natural since the last time I'd seen him. I'd recognize him anyway.

Skeeter was hustling around behind the bar. I tried to catch his eye, but he shouldered his way through the swinging door and lugged a rack of glasses into the kitchen.

Busy Friday night, understaffed. I'd catch up with Skeeter later, when things quieted down.

The bar was mobbed, but only a couple of the booths were occupied. Ethan Duffy wasn't sitting in a booth, either.

I slid into an empty booth where I could keep an eye on the door. I realized the odds were good that Ethan hadn't gotten my message, or that he had something else going on and wouldn't be able to meet me. I hadn't left him a number to call, and I hadn't asked him to return my call.

He'd be here or not. Either way, I'd have a beer and a burger and some coffee, talk to Skeeter, and then go home.

Tonight Mary-Kate was the waitress. Mary-Kate O'Leary was a bulky fortyish divorcée from Southie with a deadbeat husband somewhere in Canada and three teenagers at home. She came over to my booth, swiped at it with her rag, then pulled her notebook from her apron pocket, plucked her pencil from behind her ear, and said, “So what do you want, Mr. Coyne? You gonna have something to eat tonight, or you planning to wear me out bringing you beers, leave a crappy tip?”

I smiled. “Cheeseburger, fries, bottle of Hibernator. Big tip. How're the kids?”

“Nothing but trouble. Better off in jail. Medium-rare on the burger?”

“Please. And extra Bermuda onion.”

“Salad or something?”

I shook my head. “Did anybody come in earlier looking for me?”

“Some broad, you mean?”

I shook my head. “No. Young guy, early twenties.”

“Nope.” She shoved her pad into her apron pocket and stuck her pencil behind her ear. “You hear about Sunshine?”

I nodded.

“Skeeter's pretty shook up,” she said.

“So am I,” I said.

Mary-Kate shrugged, as if she wasn't particularly shook up and didn't really understand it, and wandered away.

She came back a minute later with my bottle of Hibernator and a chilled mug.

I was halfway through the ale when Ethan came in. I didn't recognize him at first. Not only was his hair no longer purple, but the ponytail was gone and so was the eyebrow stud. He looked more like a young attorney or stockbroker than a college kid majoring in the performing arts.

I waved at him.

He looked my way, waved and smiled, came over, and slid in across from me.

We shook hands across the table.

“You're looking good,” I said.

He smiled and touched his head. “The hair, you mean?”

“Nope. The purple was fine by me. Just, in general. You look healthy and happy. Are you?”

“Yes. Both of those things. I'm doing fine. How 'bout you? How's Evie?”

“Evie's in Scottsdale conferring with hospital administrators and sitting around the pool in her bikini. She tells me she's excellent, and why shouldn't she be, soaking up the Arizona sunshine by the pool?”

“You miss her,” said Ethan.

“Sure I do. She'll be home Sunday.” I waved the subject of absentee girlfriends away with the back of my hand. “Listen. Thanks for coming. I need to talk to you about something. You get a burger and a beer out of it.”

“No need for that,” he said. “You saved my life, remember?”

I shrugged. I remembered, all right. It was hard to forget. It happened a couple of years earlier. Ethan had disappeared, and when I finally tracked him down, I found him doused with gasoline, semi-conscious, and imprisoned in a steel storage shed that was about to explode. I managed to get him out with seconds to spare. We both survived by a whisker.

On the basis of that, he kept insisting that I'd saved his life.

The thing that Ethan kept ignoring was the fact that if it hadn't been for me, he wouldn't have been locked in that shed in the first place.

I waved at Mary-Kate, and she came over. Ethan asked for the Ceasar salad, garlic bread, and a Coke. I kept forgetting he was a vegetarian and still too young to drink alcohol legally.

Mary-Kate called him Honey.

When she left, Ethan turned to me. “So what's up, Brady? What did you want to talk about?”

I took out the picture of the dead girl and put it on the table in front of him. “Do you know her?”

He frowned. “This a morgue photo?”

“That's exactly what it is.”

“She looks young.” He squinted at the photo, then looked up at me. “I'm pretty sure I've never seen her before.”

I shrugged. “I just thought—”

“I'm gay, remember?”

“Sure.” I smiled. “I didn't necessarily think you had a relationship with her. Just that you might know her. You do know girls, right?”

He smiled. “Some of my best friends are girls. So what's the story? Who is she?”

“She showed up at the house the other night. I don't know why. I never saw her before. But she had a scrap of paper with my address on it. It occurred to me that maybe it was you she was looking for. You or your father. Maybe she knew you from when you were living there.”

I told Ethan about finding the girl's body in the backyard.

I didn't tell him about what had happened to Sunshine.

Ethan was shaking his head. When I finished telling him about it, he said, “That's a terrible story. I wish I could help. I mean, if she was looking for me, thinking I still lived there on Mt. Vernon Street, it would've been over two years ago that I knew her. How old is she? I should say, how old was she when she died?”

“Fifteen or sixteen, I'd guess.”

“So if I knew her from when I lived there,” Ethan said, “she would've been thirteen or fourteen at the most.” He shook his head. “I don't think I knew any girls that age then.”

“My other thought,” I said, “was Walter.”

“I suppose she could've been looking for my father,” he said, “though I can't imagine why. But even if she was…”

Walter was dead. He couldn't help. That's what Ethan was thinking.

“She had your address written down, you said?” said Ethan.

I nodded.

“If she knew where you lived—or where my dad and I lived—she wouldn't need to write it down, right?”

“Good point,” I said. “But maybe she knew one of us from someplace else, had never been to the house, so had to look up the address.”

“You're right,” he said. “Listen, I'm sorry, man. That's a huge bummer. Wish I could help you. You still gonna pay for my supper?”

“I can't talk you into some good red meat?”

“Couldn't get it past my lips.”

“I don't know how you do it,” I said. “No steak? No burgers? No lamb chops?”

“You develop a taste for tofu,” he said.

 

Ethan and I had finished eating. He was telling me how he'd switched majors from drama to communications, and we were sipping coffee and talking about Internet advertising when Skeeter came over to our booth. He wasn't smiling, which was unusual for Skeeter.

He gripped the edge of our booth with both hands, put his face close to mine, fixed me with his spit-colored eyes, and said, “You heard about Sunshine, right?”

I nodded.

“I blame you,” he said.

“I do, too.”

“I mean,” he said, as if I hadn't spoken, “you come in here, you tell her you're going to help her, and then you give her this picture, ask her to show it around, and I can tell you, Mr. Coyne, she was hell-bent on doing it. She felt like she owed you something. For helping her. The rest of the night, she kept taking that picture out of her pocket and looking at it and mumbling about it.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “After she left that night, I never saw her again. She ends up in an alley behind a Dumpster with her throat ripped open. So you tell me.”

“I agree with you,” I said. “I think what happened to Sunshine had something to do with that girl in the photo. I think if I hadn't involved her, given her that photo, asked her to show it around…if I hadn't come in here that night, Sunshine wouldn't have gotten killed. I feel awful about it. I blame myself.”

Skeeter was staring at me. “You saying you agree with me?”

“Yes. It's pretty obvious. She died because of me.”

He touched Ethan's shoulder. “Shove in, kid.”

Ethan slid over in the booth, and Skeeter folded himself onto the bench beside him, put his forearms on the table, and leaned toward me. “Listen, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “I'm pretty upset about this, you know? I mean, I really liked Sunshine. She was making a lot of progress, getting her shit back together. She was a good kid. She had plenty of problems, but she had a lot going for her, too. Best thing that ever happened to her, you taking on her case. That could've turned her whole life around, you know? So it pisses me off. Her getting murdered, I mean. But I guess it probably ain't fair, blaming you for what happened. You didn't kill her. You were trying to help her.”

“No,” I said. “It's fair.”

Skeeter waved his hand in the air. “It ain't your fault, Mr. Coyne. I was outa line. Anyways, I was the one who brought her out to talk to you. As much my fault as yours.”

“Blaming ourselves doesn't do any good,” I said.

“That good-looking police officer,” he said, “whats-her-name, Mendoza, the detective, she came by this morning, talked to me about Sunshine. She seems pretty sharp.”

“Detective Mendoza is extremely sharp,” I said.

“So what about you, Mr. Coyne? I figured…”

“I feel sad and guilty about Sunshine,” I said, “but Detective Mendoza is working on her case. It's the girl who died in my backyard that I'm trying to focus on. Nobody's working on her case. The police will do their best to find whoever killed Sunshine, but I don't think anybody's trying very hard to figure out what happened to the girl. I want to know who she was and why she came into my backyard to die.”

“They gotta be connected,” said Skeeter. “Sunshine and the girl.”

“So it seems,” I said. “Sunshine, showing the girl's picture around and then getting murdered. Seems like more than a coincidence to me.”

“Whoever killed Sunshine did it because of the girl? Is that what you think?”

“I do,” I said. “But what the hell do I know?”