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“Yeah? What’s it about, then?” he asked, though he already knew what I thought.
“The rumors are true. Chief Subrinsky has decided to retire, and he wants you to be his replacement.”
Mason shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. “I don’t think so. This feels different.”
He’d already been wined and dined with Chief Sub in the company of a congressman, everyone from the D.A.’s office, the owner of the Press & Sun-Bulletin and the mayor. He was clearly being groomed for the job, even while insisting he didn’t want it.
I could’ve smacked him. It paid six figures. Low six, but still...
“‘Feels different,’ huh?” I asked. “You’re starting to sound like me, Detective Brown.”
“There are worse things.” He sent me a wink and a killer smile. His damn cheek dimples were my undoing. How did I live for twenty years without once seeing a cheek dimple like that? He pulled me close and did a better job of kissing me goodbye, then dropped me on my pillows and headed for the door. “I’ll call you after the lunch.”
“Okay.”
“Night, Rache.”
“Night.”
He closed the bedroom door on his way out. I rolled onto my side, curled up and pulled the covers over my shoulder, while my inner girlie-girl whined that she wished he could spend the whole night.
This is what we both want. It’s perfect. Don’t go thinking if a little is good, more would be better. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just leave it alone. Don’t screw this up.
I waited until I heard his car leave, then got up, pulled on a robe and crouched beside Myrtle, who was still snoring on the carpeted floor. “I hear brownies and milk calling my name, Myrt. What do you think?”
She perked her ears but did not open her eyes. Not that it would matter if she did. She was blind as a bat.
“You hungry, Myrt? You want to eat?”
Her head came up a microsecond before she sprang to her feet and said, “Snarf!”
I scratched her between the ears. “This is good, right? Just you and me and bedtime brownies. Even if you do have to have the low-fat ones from the gourmet doggy bakery. This is the life, Myrt. This is the life.”
I wasn’t really convinced, but I figured if I said it often enough I could make it true.
* * *
Mason walked into The End Zone in the suit he saved for weddings. Overdressed for a sports bar, but if this turned out to be another part of the unending audition for the chief’s job, then it was perfect.
Besides, he’d already worn his funeral suit to a couple of the VIP meals the chief had been dragging him to for the past few weeks.
Grooming him to take over his office when he retired, or so Rachel kept telling him. He hoped to God that wasn’t the case. He didn’t want the headaches of that much responsibility, the hassles of politics or the boredom of a desk job, no matter how demanding it might be.
And yet, he was raising two boys now. Their father was dead by his own hand—as were a lot of others, though no one else knew that besides Rachel—and their mother was in a locked psych unit, after trying to reclaim a bunch of her husband’s donated organs. Including the corneas Rachel was currently using.
Yeah, his family was a mess. And yet Rache still hadn’t run screaming. Well, she had. A couple of times. Just not from him.
The chief-of-police position would bring a massive pay raise and much longer life expectancy. Didn’t he owe it to the kids to take it if he could?
But he couldn’t, could he? He’d lied. He’d covered up his brother’s crimes and destroyed evidence to protect his surviving family members. He didn’t deserve to still be a cop at all, much less chief of police.
He spotted the chief’s boxy flat-top silhouette at a table all the way in the back of the bar, swathed in shadows because the big-screen TV closest to it had been turned off. The only tables near it were empty.
Another man, taller and almost painfully thin, sat across from the chief with his body angled toward the wall and his head down. He was trying hard not to be noticed, Mason thought, and wondered why.
The chief caught his eye and waved him over, so Mason made his way to the table, giving the place a once-over on the way. There were only a handful of other customers, and no one seemed to be paying him any undue attention. But the chief’s companion was nervous, and that made Mason nervous.
Chief Sub rose and shook Mason’s hand, squeezing too hard and pumping too much. It was his standard greeting. The other man looked him up and down but didn’t stand, didn’t shake.
Mason knew his haggard face, had always thought the man looked twenty years older than he probably was. “Judge Mattheson,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
“Wish it was under different circumstances,” the man replied.
He honestly looked like a stiff wind would carry him a couple of blocks. And old, older than Mason recalled. The guy had to be pushing sixty, but he looked eighty-five.
“What circumstances are we talking about?” Mason walked around the table to take the chair that faced outward, toward the rest of the bar. This was not about any promotion the chief might be thinking about for him. This was something else. Something private, and something dark. He knew all that before he even sat down.
Chief Sub leaned over the table. “Howard’s daughter—”
“This has to be discreet, Brown.” The judge smacked the table to punctuate his interruption and make it seem just a little bit ruder. “You reading me? Discreet, until and unless we have reason not to be.”
Howard Mattheson’s face was age-spotted to hell and gone up close like this. No, wait, those were the remnants of freckles. He must have been a ginger as a younger man. Little remained of his hair. It was thin and had faded to a colorless shade that couldn’t even be called gray. Tough to tell if it had ever been red. “What is it I’m being discreet about?”
A waitress came by to ask Mason what he wanted. He glanced at the drinks in front of the other two. Chief Sub had a Coke, straight up. He wouldn’t add anything on the job. Judge Mattheson had what looked and smelled like bourbon, neat. “I don’t suppose you have coffee.”
“I just brewed a fresh pot.”
“You’re an angel.”
She winked at him and left them alone.
Silence stretched like a rubber band until the chief stopped it from snapping. “Howard?”
“Yeah. All right. It’s my daughter, Stephanie—Stevie, as she insists on calling herself. She’s disappeared.”
Mason sat up a little straighter. “How old?”
“Twenty.”
“And you’re not filing a missing persons report because...?”
“Because I’m not convinced this is anything other than a temper tantrum. Look, she was in a car accident last September. Drunk driver. It took her eyesight.”
A month after Rachel got hers back. Mason swore silently but didn’t interrupt.
“We kept it quiet. We’re a private family, Brown. We like our space. I’ve always tried to keep my job separate from my personal life.”
“I respect that, Judge.” He slanted a look at the chief. He needed to know what exactly was going on here, and he needed to know now. If there was a twenty-year-old blind girl out there on her own somewhere, they ought to be finding her and hauling her right back home.
Rachel would probably kick his ass for that reaction. He could hear her in his head right then, voice dripping sarcasm like honey. Since when is blind a synonym for helpless? Dumb-ass.
He almost grinned, then bit his lip just in time and pulled out his smartphone to start taking notes. “Give me everything you know, then.”
The judge cleared his throat. “She was told two months ago that there was no hope of getting her eyesight back. She didn’t take it well. She’s furious with the world and everything in it. Moody and morose. She hasn’t accepted her blindness, won’t even try, and resents the help we’ve been trying to get for her.”
“Help?” Mason asked.
The judge took a sip of his bourbon, set the glass down again and stared into the liquid at the bottom. “Therapy, a personal coach to help her learn how to live with it.” He slugged back the last of the bourbon, then held the glass over his head to signal his desire for a refill. “She gives that poor woman so much trouble I’m surprised she hasn’t quit.”
“That woman have a name?”
“Loren Markovich.” Judge Mattheson set his empty glass down, fished a business card from his pocket and put it on the table.
Mason took it and gave it a look. It was one of the judge’s own cards, but it had Markovich’s name and phone number written on the back. He dropped it into his shirt pocket. The waitress came back with his coffee and another bourbon for the judge, then left without a word.
“Loren took Stevie out near Otsiningo Park the day before yesterday. Told her to walk to the end of the block and back, using her cane.”
“Alone?” Mason knew he sounded more shocked by that than he should.
“It’s not that big a deal, Mason,” Chief Sub told him. “Your friend Rachel could tell you that.”
“Well, Rachel could’a done cartwheels to the corner and back, but that’s Rachel.”
“Who the hell is Rachel?” the judge snapped.
“She’s my— She helps me with cases from time to time.”
“No one else comes in on this, Brown,” Mattheson said. “No one.”
“We know, Howard.” Chief Sub nodded at him to go on.
With a stern look at Mason, the judge went on. “Loren says Stephanie was good and pissed. She didn’t want to do it, but Loren pushed her, and she did it. Did just fine, too. Then at the end of the block she flipped Loren off, then kept on going, around the corner and out of sight. Just to be difficult. Just to teach Loren a lesson for pushing her so hard.” He took a big gulp of his bourbon, replaced the glass harder than necessary. “Loren ran to catch up, and Stephanie just wasn’t there. She just...wasn’t there.”
Mason nodded. “She couldn’t have gone far. Not on her own.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just it,” the judge said. “I think she had help. I think she set this up somehow. She’s been acting out ever since she went blind.” He lowered his head, turning the bourbon glass slowly in his hand. “I know it’s horrible. I know it is. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but at some point you just have to figure out how to deal with it and go on, you know? It’s terrible what happened to her, but it’s not our fault.”
“Did they get the guy, Judge?” Mason asked.
“You better believe it. And I made sure he got the max. Trial judge was a friend of mine.”
The judge’s free hand flattened itself to the table, and it was shaking. “I just... I want her found. Discreetly and quietly. I want her found.”
“All right.” Mason nodded slowly. “But what if this wasn’t some kind of tantrum? What if she was taken?”
The judge shook his head. “I’ve thought of that. But there’s been no demand, no phone call or ransom note.”
“But you’re a judge. You must have enemies.”
“I’m a family court judge, son. I don’t deal with criminals. Criminally bad parents, sometimes, but not criminals like you’re thinking of.”
“All right. All right. What if she did have help, then? Who would be the most likely accomplice?”
The judge met Mason’s eyes for the first time and nodded. “She had a boyfriend all through high school. She ran off with him once, senior year. But she hasn’t seen him since shortly after that.”
“Name?”
“Jacob Kravitz. Goes by Jake.”
“You know where he is?”
“No. As far as I know she hasn’t seen or heard from him since she graduated. She’s seeing a decent guy now. A law clerk in the D.A.’s office. Mitchell Kirk. He’s a good kid.”
“Anyone else? Friends from college or work?”
“She quit college after the accident. Her friends called and came around for a while, and then they just...stopped.” He shrugged. “My wife’s a wreck.”
“I told Howard I’d put my best detective on this,” Chief Sub said. “And I assured him, Mason, of your absolute discretion.”
“You’ve got it, Chief.”
The judge got up. Mason did, too, and this time the older man extended a hand. Mason shook, then watched Judge Mattheson turn and thread his way around the empty tables and out of the bar.
Mason turned to look at the chief, who was still sitting. “I want to bring Rachel in on this.”
“Sit down. I ordered a pair of burgers, and since Howard left, you might as well eat his.”
Mason sat. As if on cue, the waitress returned with more coffee, and two plates piled high with burgers and fries. She had a much easier look on her face than before. Yeah, it had been tense. It was like a dark cloud left the bar when the judge walked out the door.
“Tell me how you think Rachel can help,” Chief Sub said as he pounded the bottom of the ketchup bottle.
“Well, to start with, she was blind for twenty years. She can give us some perspective on where this girl’s head is at, one we’re not gonna get from anyone else.”
“Mmm.” The chief got the ketchup flowing and made several neat round dots of it along the edge of his plate. “Can she keep this quiet? She is a writer, after all.”
“It’s not like she’s a freakin’ reporter.”
“I know that. The question is, do you trust her?”
“I trust her.” If the chief knew the enormity of the secrets Rachel had kept for him, Mason thought, he wouldn’t ask. “Actually, I can honestly say I trust her more than anyone I know.”
“Is that so?” Chief Sub dipped a fry in ketchup, then ate it whole. “You and she, uh...been seeing a lot of each other, haven’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Some. Not...a lot. Really.”
“Why not?”
Mason looked up, surprised by the question. “She’s only had her eyesight back since last August, Chief. It’s a whole new world for her.”
“For you, too, I imagine, with raising those two boys.”
“Exactly.”
The chief shrugged. “I trust your judgment, Mason. If you think she can help you and you trust her, use her. I want Stephanie Mattheson found. Hell, I’m her godfather. Since this is off-the-books work, de Luca’s an off-the-books consultant. Just don’t let Howard find out you told her. You got that?”
“Yeah.” Mason picked up the gargantuan burger, took a huge bite and knew he would regret it later. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “If I don’t turn anything up right away, you’re gonna have to convince him to make it official. You know that.”
“You let me worry about Howard.”
“All right, Chief.”
“There’s a party at my house Friday night. My fiftieth wedding anniversary. You’ll be there.”
Once again, it wasn’t really a question.
“I will,” Mason said.
“Good. Get a sitter for those boys of yours and bring de Luca.”
* * *
I had Myrtle on a leash, which was a joke, really. She was short and fat and slow, and about as likely to bolt away from me as I was from a glazed sour cream doughnut. We were doing our midday walk along the four-mile-long dirt track that passed for a road. It ran along the back side of the Whitney Point Reservoir, which really was more like a lake. There were a couple of houses at the other end of the road, near the village, but mine was the only one way out this way, just before the dead end. I loved the privacy. The quiet. And now that I had eyes, I loved the beauty of it, too. Trees and woods, all sporting their newborn pale green leaves now that spring had sprung in the Point, and the way the sun would sometimes shimmer on the water, making every ripple wink like bling on a rapper. Damn, I loved where I lived.
I had my cell phone with me in case Mason called. But he didn’t. He interrupted our walk in person, instead, breaking into our solitude with the too loud motor in his “classic”—aka old—black Monte Carlo. He pulled it over, shut it off, locked it up and got out while we stood there. Myrtle was wiggling her backside in delight, knowing it was him and overjoyed about it. (She’d have wagged her tail, but bulldogs don’t really have tails. So they wag their entire asses, which I think is a much more accurate depiction of extreme enthusiasm. Myrtle agrees.)
Mason approached her first, crouching down low to rub her head on either side of her face, and she closed her sightless eyes and basked in his attention. I do the same thing when he touches me like that.
Then he stood up again, but instead of kissing me hello—which would’ve been hopelessly goofy anyway, so I don’t even know why I was hoping for it—he said, “I need your help.”
I sighed my disappointment away. “Hi, Mason. I’ve been having a great day. Thanks for asking. Yes, I slept just fine after you left. Myrtle is a blanket hog, but not as bad as you are. And yes, as a matter of fact, we are enjoying our walk.”
He lowered his head, raised it again, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me in for a long, slow kiss. I let go of Myrt’s leash and got all mushy inside, sliding my arms around his shoulders and really getting into it.
Then he let me go, and when I straightened my knees tried to go jellyfish on me, but I snapped them straight again.
“I missed you,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, for crying out loud, don’t be so emo.”
But inside I was grinning like a kid.
“So what was the lunch meeting about? Or should I ask what you need my help with first?” I picked up Myrtle’s leash, and we went off the road and down toward the shore. This was one of Myrt’s favorite things. The water was still cold, but she loved to put her paws in, and drink and sniff around.
Mason came and stood beside me. “It’s the same answer to both questions. A judge’s twenty-year-old daughter is missing. He thinks she’s just throwing a tantrum and wants me to find her discreetly. Off the books. I want you to help me.”
I nodded slowly. We’d had this whole “police consultant” conversation before. He thought I should work with the Binghamton PD officially. But I wasn’t about to put “uncanny sense of what other people are thinking and feeling” on the application. And I would rather be drawn and quartered than labeled some kind of psychic. Besides, I already had a career. A nice lucrative one, thank you very much.
“It doesn’t sound like anything you can’t handle on your own.”
“You can handle it better.”
“Why?” I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it, because I knew that was exactly what he wanted. And now I’d opened the door. Shit.
“Because she’s blind, Rache.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Drunk driver hit her car last fall. September. Doctors just told her in March that there was no hope of ever getting her sight back. She’s not dealing with it very well.”
“No one deals with it very well.”
“I just want you to come with me to where she was last seen. Walk through the moments before she vanished with me. How bad is that?”
I heaved a sigh. “Myrtle needs her walk, you know. That evil lying vet of hers still insists she’s overweight.”
“He has a death wish. I’m sure of it,” Mason said, and then he shrugged. “Actually, walking is exactly what we’ll be doing. We can bring her along. You’ve already got her leash.”
“You know perfectly well she does not ride in a car without her designer goggles and matching scarf.”
He jogged up to the road to his car, opened the door and leaned in. When he came to the edge of the road again, he held up his gift. “Doggy goggles.”
They were hot pink with black peace signs all over them. I almost loved them. “Did you get those on the way over?” It took some doing, but I convinced Myrt to come back up the slope away from the water. Mason handed the goggles to me. Even the lenses were tinted pink. “And if so, where? ’Cause damn.”
“Great, aren’t they? Josh bought them for her on eBay. Used his own money, too. He put ’em in my car yesterday, but I forgot to give them to you.”
“They’re great.” I looked at him, at the goggles, at the car. I didn’t want to get involved in any sort of police work or investigation. And my reason was simple. So far, every time I had, I’d had brutally horrifying dreams about whatever was going on. Vivid, awful nightmares that were mostly true. Now, granted, I’d had weird connections to the killer and/or the victims the other times, due to our common organ donor. There was no reason to think that would continue with a case that had nothing to do with me or my corneas.
Except that I’d had some kind of freaky knowledge happening last Thanksgiving when my right-hand Goth, Amy, had been kidnapped. No nightmares. Just that...
Extra sense.
Not that. It’s not that. I’m not fucking psychic.
“Come on. All I want to do is take you two for a short walk near Otsiningo Park. How bad can that be?”
We both knew how bad it could be, so I wasn’t going to bother answering that one. I crouched down in front of my bulldog. “Myrt. You wanna go for a ride in the car?”
She cocked her head to one side, ears perking up, lower teeth coming out above her upper lip as she stared up at me, waiting for me to repeat her favorite words ever spoken, to confirm she had heard me correctly.
“Ride? In the car?” I said again.
“Snarf!” And the butt-wiggle dance began.
I looked up at Mason and shrugged. “There’s your answer. I guess we’re going.” I adjusted the goggle straps and put them on my dog, told her how gorgeous she was, and promised to find her a matching scarf soon. She followed me to Mason’s car. I got in the front seat and slid to the middle, where newer cars would have a console instead of a supersized bench seat. I was lucky the old—sorry, classic—car even had seat belts. Mason lifted Myrtle to set her on the passenger side, so she could stick her head out the window. He knew the deal.
He came around and got behind the wheel, then looked at me for a second. “Need to go lock up?”
“Amy’s there. I’ll give her a call.”
He nodded but didn’t put the car into motion, and he was still looking at me. So I braved the question. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I, uh... You were a little pissed at me last night. Are we good?”
I blinked. He was checking in on the thing we both hated discussing most. Mucky, murky emotional vomit. The kind of stuff that ruined great relationships. “I’m good,” I said. “You?”
“Mostly, yeah. Pretty good.”
Which meant he could be better. Which was what I’d have said if I’d been honest. But because I was a big fat chicken, I said, “Good, then. We’re good.”
“We’re good. Okay.”
And then he turned the car around, and we were off and running. And I thought to myself that it wouldn’t be so bad to help him out with another case. It really wouldn’t. At least I’d get to spend some time with him in the upright and unlocked position.
This could be fun.
Right. Fun. Like, you know, jury duty. Or a smallpox outbreak. Or seeing murders in your sleep. Fun.
2
By 2:00 p.m. Mason and Myrtle and I were walking the sidewalk Stevie Mattheson had walked just before she’d vanished, which, I’d learned, had happened the day before yesterday. Apparently her devoted daddy had waited a day and a half before going to his pal the chief to not report her missing. Guy was a jerk.
I know, snap judgment. That’s how I roll. Tough times turn people’s masks into windows. Believe what they show you. Yeah, it’s one of mine.
“Nice leash, by the way,” Mason said.
Hot pink, with black skulls and crossbones all over it. “And coincidentally it even matches the new goggles you bought her.”
“Except I went with peace signs instead of the Jolly Roger.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I said.
“Hope she doesn’t get confused about her own identity.”
“What’s to be confused about? She’s a pacifist pirate.”
He laughed. That was what I was going for, eliciting that laugh. I could tell more from Mason’s laugh than from anything he said or any vibe he emitted. He was too much a cop, played things too close to the vest, to let me read him the way I did other people. But I could still read him. It was just tougher. And his laugh was the easiest way I’d found so far.