The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [59]
Nobody was up at the nineteenth-century farmhouse; nobody except for Stink. Stink was a brown and white mongrelcollie, now officially retired from running the farm. Stink had a friendly, intelligent face, with the softest chestnut brown eyes. Stefanovitch called her to him, puckering and smooching his lips.
Stink began wagging her tail, working it into a blur. She was yipping and circling Stefanovitch and Sarah as if they were farm animals to be herded into a tighter pack.
“Get down, Stink. You been in that brook again, haven’t you? That old creek in back.”
The dog was happy to see Stefanovitch, but also confused. It was the wheelchair—juxtaposed with the familiar face and voice. Stink had never gotten used to it.
“Let’s go inside. Get some sleep if we can,” Stefanovitch finally said to Sarah. “You can meet everybody tomorrow.”
Relax for now, he told himself again.
Forget about Midnight.
Sarah learned all about the Stefanovitch clan over Sunday breakfast. She heard tales of the famous Stefanovitch soup kitchen, which Isabelle and Charles Stefanovitch had maintained at the farm for twenty-five years; which they still kept open for anyone in the area needing a hot meal.
Stef’s father told humorous stories about John and his brother, Nelson, growing up in the small town, both of them local sports deities; both boys also unusually sensitive toward the poor and unlucky, because of their soup kitchen duties.
Most revealing of all, Sarah witnessed a touching and special love between Stef’s mother and father. She had never seen anything like it, especially among people their age. They were obviously best friends, intimate and loving.
“Do they ever fight?” Sarah asked as she and Stefanovitch drove around the countryside later that morning.
“One time when we were kids, she marched off to her sister’s. She stayed for two weeks. Called it a long-overdue vacation. Most of the time, though, no. My parents are amazing people.”
“So what happened to you?” Sarah grinned as she asked the question. Her hair was piled up at the back of her head. Her clothes were early lumberjack. She looked like a local beauty.
“People always ask the same thing. I learned all of their bad habits, none of the good ones. I screwed up so bad, I became a cop in New York. A form of social work, in some opinions. What makes it worse, I have no major regrets.”
58
SARAH AND STEF got back to work before noon on Sunday, finally beginning to talk about what had happened in Atlantic City. The investigation had to move along, to go forward somehow. At least they could think straight after a good night’s sleep.
There had been a horrifying massacre. More than a dozen crime bosses had been murdered in cold blood.
By whom?
For what possible reason?
Strangely, by late Sunday, Stefanovitch was sinking into a black mood, a frame of mind he didn’t understand, much less know what to do about.
He tried to work for a little longer, out on the screened-in back porch, with its view of the farm’s silo and woodshed. He and Sarah kept returning to the same question about the investigation—who stood to gain from the shootings in Atlantic City?
That was the linchpin now, the huge unanswered question. Who would benefit because of the murders?
Stefanovitch’s back ached, and his leg tingled unpleasantly. He hadn’t had any exercise for days. He thought that he needed to go for a long walk; to run across these familiar fields the way he had for twenty-some years of his life. He needed to run full out now, until his lungs burst, until his legs collapsed underneath him.
“Hi there. Hey, are you all right?” Sarah finally picked up on his strange mood, his isolation over the past hour.
“I think I have to go. I have to leave,” Stefanovitch said, absolutely a shot out of the blue.
He couldn’t run; he had to go. Everything was collapsing in on him. The investigation. Coming home. Sarah.
It was too much to handle. He felt like he was finally cracking, a huge fissure starting at the base of his spine.