The Prettiest One: A Thriller (14 page)

She shook her head. “So what do you think?”

“Kind of sounds like you shot somebody.”

“Sounds that way to me, too,” Caitlin said in a quiet voice. Bix looked into the rearview mirror. Caitlin was gazing blankly out the side window at the passing storefronts, all of them dark at this late hour.

“But hey,” Bix said, “if you did shoot someone, I’m sure you had a good reason. Self-defense or something like that.”

Caitlin met his eyes in the mirror. “So you think I should turn myself in? Let the police investigate?”

“What?” he said. “God, no. Why the hell would you do that?”

“If I’m innocent,” she said, “or if what I did was at least justified, they’d figure that out, right?”

“Katie, despite what Josh here probably thinks, I don’t have anything against cops personally. I’m sure most of them do damn fine work. But on the off chance your case landed on the desk of one of the less dedicated or even less trustworthy officers of the law, the kind more interested in closing cases than in getting the right bad guy, I’d rather you not waltz into a police station and tell them you probably shot that guy in the warehouse but, gosh darn it, you just can’t remember doing it.”

“But—”

Bix shook his head. “This case would be a dream for them. They’d have a suspect, and physical evidence, and you’d give them the murder weapon, I’m sure. And not only don’t you have an alibi, but you think you actually might have pulled the trigger. So how hard do you think they’d work to prove that it was self-defense? And with you not remembering anything and the dead guy dead, who’s gonna tell the cops it wasn’t your fault?”

After a moment, Caitlin said, “So what do we do?”

Bix looked into the mirror again. Caitlin was looking back at him. She looked so tired. Tired and scared. But mostly tired.

“For now, we go back to my place,” he said. “You get some sleep. In the morning, we’ll decide what to do next.”

“Thanks, but we can find a motel,” Josh said.

Bix nodded. “Sure you can. Is that what you want to do, Katie?”

After a moment, she said, “It’s late. If Bix will let us stay there, I think we should. Besides, spending the night where I lived for seven months, surrounded by things that were once familiar to me . . . well, who knows? Maybe it will help me remember something.”

Bix thought he could hear Josh’s teeth grinding.

Bix dropped a blanket, two pillows, and a set of sheets on the sleep sofa in the second bedroom. “You sure you don’t want to sleep in your own bed, Katie?” he asked, smiling. “More comfortable than this pullout.”

Caitlin thought for sure that Josh would rise up and take the bait, but he let her answer, and his restraint surprised and impressed her. “No thanks, Bix,” she said. To make Josh feel better—which Caitlin thought he deserved, given how hard this all must have been for him—she added, “Josh and I will be fine here.”

“Well, I’m right across the hall if you need me for anything during the night,” he added, looking at Caitlin with what was probably his most devilish smile.

“Thanks,” Josh said with a smile of his own. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I need anything.”

Bix chuckled and closed the door behind him as he left.

“He’s a dick,” Josh said as he removed the cushions from the sofa and pulled out the bed. The mattress was thin, and the top and bottom rose a few inches from the frame as it tried to relax after God knew how long folded and crammed into the sofa.

“He’s probably hurting a little,” Caitlin said. “Or maybe he just feels like a fool. He may act like a tough guy, but this can’t be any fun for him, either.” She began putting the fitted sheet on the mattress. “And even though this is a lousy situation for him, he’s helping us.” She spread the top sheet over the fitted sheet, smoothed it out, and tucked it in at the bottom.

“He’s helping you, not me,” Josh said. “And he’s still a dick.”

Caitlin didn’t have any other counterarguments, so she let it go. Josh took the other side of the blanket, and together they laid it on top of their bed. They each stuffed a pillow into a pillowcase, then finished getting ready for bed before sliding under the covers. Josh reached over to a wall switch and turned off the overhead light. Caitlin could see him in the dim moonlight leaking into the room between the slats of a venetian blind. He was lying on his back, his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

“You okay?” she asked softly. She was on her side, facing him.

He turned his head toward her and frowned. “Stop worrying about me, okay? You shouldn’t have to worry about anyone but yourself right now.”

“Hey,” she said, “this is affecting you, too.”

“I know, but I don’t want you worrying about me.” After a moment, he added, “It’s just that guy . . .”

“I know,” she said.

“But I’m okay, hon,” he said. “Really.” He took his arm from behind his head, reached over, and rested his hand on her upper thigh. She liked the contact, so she scooted closer to him and laid her hand on his stomach. She heard a small intake of breath from him and realized that, while it seemed to her like just two days ago that they had slept in the same bed, shared this kind of physical intimacy, for Josh it was more than seven months. She considered sliding her hand lower on his belly, and lower still—he probably wanted her to, and she wouldn’t blame him—but she was so very tired. Still, she loved him. She tried to imagine him spending all those nights alone in their bed. She looked into his eyes and moved her hand down past his belly button.

He kept one hand on her leg but reached down with his other and placed it over Caitlin’s hand, stopping its movement. He held it tight.

“It’s okay, honey,” he said, smiling. “You get an A-plus for effort, but you’re exhausted and we have the rest of our lives.”

She smiled tiredly back at him, then slid even closer to him and closed her eyes. It had been a long day.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HUNNSAKER’S CELL PHONE WOKE HER. She pulled it from her pocket, groggily checked the time on its screen—2:23 a.m.—and answered the call. Someone apologized for calling her at that hour, then told her that he’d been informed that she wanted to be called immediately when a person of interest named Dominick Bruno had been located. Hunnsaker confirmed that she had indeed wanted to be so informed. The cop on the phone said he’d be arriving at the station with Bruno in about fifteen minutes. He asked whether Hunnsaker planned to come down to the station to interview him tonight or whether they should hold him until morning.

“I’ll be there,” Hunnsaker said.

She disconnected the call and stood up from the two chairs she had positioned opposite each other so she could sit in the first one and stretch her legs across to the second. With her head tipped back, she’d managed to catch almost two hours of sleep after Padilla finally went home for the night. She looked around the interview room, at the photos and reports, and realized she’d need another room in which to interview Bruno.

Less than half an hour later, Hunnsaker sat across an empty table from Dominick Bruno. In front of her was a small tape recorder, which she switched on.

Bruno wasn’t handcuffed. He hadn’t been Mirandized or even arrested. He was there voluntarily . . . or at least Hunnsaker wanted him to feel that way, and she made the voluntary nature of his visit to the station that night clear on the tape.

Bruno looked exactly like the kind of guy who spent his time sleeping while the sun was up, and drinking and wanking when the world grew dark. Midthirties, doughy physique, pasty-gray complexion. Even though the uniform watching the Pit Stop had spotted Bruno on his way into the place, it was evident to Hunnsaker, based on Bruno’s smell and demeanor, that he’d already had a few beers somewhere that night.

She reminded him that he wasn’t under arrest, that she just wanted to talk to him, that his cooperation would be appreciated, and all the other things she had to say to get him talking. The truth was, she didn’t think he had killed Vic Warehouse, though she had to admit she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he did. But her gut told her otherwise.

With the preliminaries out of the way, she explained why he had been invited by the police to come in for a nice, friendly chat.

“We found your fingerprints in the warehouse out on Demerest Road.”

“They aren’t mine,” Bruno said as he sat slumped in his chair.

“They are, Dominick,” Hunnsaker said. “All yours. We pulled them from several beer bottles and from some . . . reading material.”

Bruno picked at a hangnail.

“So we know you’ve been there,” Hunnsaker said. “That you spend time there.”

He looked up. “Is that a crime? I guess it is, right? Trespassing, probably. That wouldn’t get me jail time, though, right? So what’s the big deal, then? I won’t go back there. I swear.”

“Relax, Dominick. I just want to talk about last night.”

Bruno looked down quickly and went back to work on his hangnail.

“We know you were there last night,” Hunnsaker bluffed.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quickly.

Hunnsaker almost smiled. He’d been there, all right. The question now was whether he’d seen or heard anything.

“Well, maybe and maybe not,” she said. “You saw a crime and didn’t report it. That’s a crime in itself.”

Also a bluff, at least with respect to Massachusetts law, but Hunnsaker was pretty sure Bruno wouldn’t know that.

“You see a crime in this city,” she continued, “you have an obligation to report it. Penalty for failure to do so is up to three years in jail.”

Bruno was gnawing agitatedly at his hangnail now.

“Dominick?” Hunnsaker said. “Do I have to read you your rights?”

The last thing she wanted to do was read him his rights, reminding him that he could remain silent if he chose to do so and have an attorney present if he wanted one. Besides, she was lying about his having committed a crime, anyway. But her bluffs had paid off so far.

“I didn’t see a crime,” he said.

“But we know you saw something last night . . .”

He shook his head. She could see him wrestling with something, and she let him fight it out with himself for a minute. Finally, she lifted a pair of handcuffs into view and said, “Okay, put your hands on the table, please.”

“Wait,” Bruno said. “Hold on now. I said I didn’t see a crime. I didn’t say that I didn’t see . . . something.”

Again, Hunnsaker had to suppress a smile.

The Bogeyman was back. He loomed over Caitlin, staring down at her from twice her height, his dark little eyes glinting faintly in the moonlight. Caitlin screamed and tried to run, but the Bogeyman loped after her on legs almost as long as she was tall, and he caught her with ease. His clammy fingers crawled over her bare arms as he pulled her close and wrapped his own arms around her. The rotting garbage odor that clung to him filled her nostrils. She tried to fight, but his bear hug was too strong. His breath was hot on the back of her neck as he said, “You think I’m a monster?”

He had chased Caitlin through her nightmares for twenty years, speaking to her on some nights, pursuing her in terrifying silence on others, but he had never said those exact words before.

The Bogeyman tucked her under one arm and carried her toward a dark, yawning hole in the ground, a troll’s lair or goblin’s tunnel by the look of it. As she passed into its darkness, Caitlin knew if she went in too far she would never leave, never see the moon above ever again, or the stars, or the sun and sky. She had to get out now before she was too deep in the ground. She bit down hard on the Bogeyman’s arm, feeling a greasy film between her lips, tasting salty sweat. The Bogeyman threw her to the floor in anger and she sprang to her feet and ran as fast as her feet would fly.

But which way to run? The mouth of the tunnel was nowhere in sight now. Nearly total darkness was everywhere. She ran, almost blind among the shadows, ran simply to get away. She passed empty shelves. She passed doors, not daring to slow down long enough to see what was on the other side of them. She ran and the footsteps followed fast behind her.

“Where’s my pretty one?” he called as the distance shrank between them.