Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

I told Diandra we were slightly concerned because we’d received conclusive proof that neither Jack Rouse nor Kevin Hurlihy could have been involved. I told her that because Kara Rider had died shortly after impersonating Moira Kenzie, I wanted to reopen the case. I didn’t tell her that everyone who’d received a photo had had loved ones murdered.

“But he’s okay?” She sat on the couch, tucked her legs under her and searched our faces.

“As far as we know,” Angie said.

She shook her head. “You’re worried. That’s obvious. And you’re holding something back. Please tell me what. Please.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I just don’t like it that the girl who impersonated Moira Kenzie and got this whole thing rolling has turned up dead.”

She didn’t believe me and she leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Every night, no matter what, between nine and nine-thirty, Jason calls.”

I looked at my watch. Five past nine.

“Is he going to call, Mr. Kenzie?”

I looked at Angie. She was peering intently at Diandra.

Diandra closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “Do either of you have children?”

Angie shook her head.

I thought of Mae for a moment.

“No,” I said.

“I didn’t think so.” She walked to a window, her hands on the backs of her hips. As she stood there, lights from an apartment in the building next door went out one by one and pools of darkness spread across her blond floor.

She said, “You never stop worrying. Never. You remember the first time he climbed out of his crib and fell to the floor before you could reach him. And you thought he was dead. Just for a second. And you remember the horror of that thought. When he grows older and rides his bike and climbs trees and walks to school on his own and darts out in front of cars instead of waiting for the light to change, you pretend it’s okay. You say, ‘That’s kids. I did the same thing at his age.’ But always in the back of your throat is this scream, barely suppressed. Don’t. Stop. Please don’t get hurt.” She turned from the window and stared at us from the shadows. “It never goes away. The worry. The fear. Not for a second. That’s the price of bringing life into this world.”

I saw Mae reaching her hand down by the mouth of that dog, how I’d felt ready to jump, to tear the head off that Scottish terrier if need be.

The phone rang. Nine-fifteen. All three of us jerked at once, and Diandra crossed the floor in four strides. Angie looked at me and rolled her eyes upward in relief.

Diandra picked up the phone. “Jason?” she said. “Jason?”

It wasn’t Jason. That was immediately apparent when she ran her free hand up along her temple and pressed it hard against the hairline. “What?” she said. She turned her head and looked at me. “Hold on.”

She handed me the phone. “Someone named Oscar.”

I took the phone from her and turned so that my back was to her and Angie as another set of lights went out in the building beside us and spread the darkness across the floor like liquid while Oscar told me that Jason Warren had been found.

In pieces.

19

In an abandoned trucking depot along the waterfront in South Boston, the killer had shot Jason Warren once in the stomach, stabbed him several times with an ice pick and bludgeoned him with a hammer. He’d also amputated his limbs and placed them on windowsills, left his torso sitting in a chair facing the door, and tied his head to a dead power cable hanging from an elevated conveyor belt.

A crew of forensics cops spent the night and most of the next morning in there and never found Jason’s kneecaps.

The first two cops on the scene were rookies. One quit the force within a week. The other, Devin told me, took a leave of absence to seek counseling. Devin also told me that when he and Oscar entered the truck depot, he’d first thought Jason had run afoul of a lion.

When I hung up that night after receiving word from Oscar and turned to Diandra and Angie, Diandra already knew.

She said, “My son is dead, isn’t he?”

And I nodded.

She closed her eyes, and held one hand up by her ear as if motioning for a room to be quiet so she could hear something. She swayed slightly, as if to a breeze, and Angie stepped up beside her.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, eyes still closed.

By the time Eric arrived, Diandra was sitting on her window seat, staring out at the harbor, the coffee Angie’d made sitting cold and untouched beside her. In an hour, she hadn’t spoken a single word.

When Eric entered, she stared at him as he removed his raincoat and hat, placed them on a hook, looked at us.

We stepped into the kitchen alcove, and I told him.

“Jesus,” he said, and for a moment he looked as if he’d be sick. His face turned the color of paste and he gripped the bar until his knuckles whitened. “Murdered. How?”

I shook my head. “Murdered is enough for now,” I said.

He rested both hands on the bar top, lowered his head. “What’s Diandra been like since she heard?”

“Quiet.”

He nodded. “That’s her way. You contact Stan Timpson?”

I shook my head. “I assume the police will.”

His eyes filled. “That kid, that poor beautiful kid.”

“Tell me,” I said.

He stared past my shoulder at the fridge. “Tell you what?”

“Whatever you know about Jason. Whatever it is you’ve been hiding.”

“Hiding?” His voice was small.

“Hiding,” I said. “You haven’t felt right in this since the beginning.”

“On what do you base—?”

“Call it a hunch, Eric. What were you doing at Bryce tonight?”

“I told you. Tutoring.”

“Bullshit. I saw the books you pulled out of the car. One of them was a Chilton car guide, Eric.”

“Look,” he said, “I’m going to go to Diandra now. I know how she’ll react and I really think you and Ange should leave. She won’t want you to have seen her when she cracks.”

I nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”

He adjusted his glasses, walked past me. “I’ll see you get full payment for whatever remains on the bill.”

“We’ve already been paid, Eric.”

He crossed the loft to her and I looked at Angie, cocked my head toward the door. She picked her purse up off the floor and her jacket off the couch as Eric placed a hand on Diandra’s shoulder.