Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [58]
I thought that might be the first place they would look, but for all I knew, the number one place for finding severed heads was under the kitchen sink. I was kind of new at this. Either way, we had no time for anything else.
Detective Dunaway was polite, asking if now was an okay time to talk. He looked large in my doorway, but as I ushered him in, I was surprised to see that he was about average size.
“Can I get you something?” I asked as I waved him to the easy chair.
“If you have coffee made,” he said, “I wouldn’t say no.” Ramon went to fetch some while I sat across from the detective. He looked to be entering his forties in better shape than I ever hoped to be in. His brown hair was short and his jawline clean; he didn’t have to rely on a mustache to intimidate like some cops did. He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t showy, but I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him. I sat on the couch facing him, hoping my hands weren’t shaking, as Ramon handed me a cup of coffee. The detective took a cup as well and was he-man enough to drink it black. I can do without sugar, but I need cream at least, damn it.
The detective took a sip and thanked Ramon. “You boys know why I’m here?” Dunaway, apparently, was not a word waster. He set down his cup without taking his eyes off of us.
Out of habit, my eyes flicked over toward my skateboard, the usual reason for me to talk to the cops. He followed my gaze, and the hard look on his face lessened.
“Nope,” he said. Then he sighed and leaned back into the recliner, facing both Ramon and me on the couch. “Either of you call in to work today? Stop by? Talk to a coworker?”
Ramon shook his head. “No,” I said. “We don’t really go by work unless we have to, and the only people we ever really see outside of work are Frank and Brooke. Not that we saw them this morning,” I added hastily.
“When’s the last time you saw Brooke?”
A few minutes ago, in my closet, but of course I couldn’t say that. I pretended to think on it, but I already knew the last time I could say I saw Brooke. “Tuesday night at work,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck with my hand. “We saw her to her car, then took off. Not really a place I like to hang around.”
He pulled his notebook out and started writing in it. “Why?” Ramon asked. “Is she in trouble?”
“You could say that,” Dunaway said, eyes still on his notebook. “What happened after she left?”
“We went home,” I said.
Dunaway flipped through a few of his pages. “Does it usually take you half an hour to get home? I talked with a”—he stopped and checked his notebook—“Mrs. Winalski, who says you came home thirty or so minutes after the time I have you clocking out.” He let go of the paper and stared at us. I felt my hands go cold against the coffee mug. “She also said you looked a little roughed up.” His eyes went to my face.
Of course she did. Mrs. W would want to protect me, so she’d tell the nice policemen all about how beat-up young Sam looked. It alibied me, sure, but I don’t think she realized that telling them I look roughed up didn’t really help. For all they knew, Brooke could have done this.
“You don’t live that far,” the detective prompted.
“We had a little problem after work,” I said.
“A problem with Brooke?”
“No,” I said, “with some cracked-out dude. He thought I was someone else, and when I tried to correct him, he got a little rough. Brooke was already gone.”
Dunaway tapped his pen against his pad. “He do that to your face?”
The bruises on my face had yellowed a bit, and the scratches were healing. Luckily, they were more like abrasions than anything else, otherwise Dunaway might mistake them for defensive wounds. Brooke had strong nails.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That all he did?”
I hesitated but figured, what the hell? For all I knew, they’d picked up the fight on a mall surveillance camera or something. No, better to be honest now than to be caught in a lie right out of the gate. Especially since I was already hiding something.