The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [108]
The cop frisking him finally yielded to temptation and mashed Mel’s face into the grass, stifling him.
Joe stepped out of the building and freed a sobbing Nancy from the police officer pinning her to the ground. Holding her by the upper arm, he escorted her over to where two paramedics were trying to tend to Ellis, starting an IV and readying a defibrillator.
But it was clearly a lost cause. In the blinding new light, it was obvious he was dead, his naked chest, its clothing cut free, already touched with the lifeless pallor that comes like the counterpoint of a blush.
Nancy, all hope gone, collapsed by his side.
Chapter 22
The next time Joe visited Michelle Fisher’s neighborhood outside Wilmington, there was already the tinge of winter’s approach in the air. He still drove with the window down, but only because of the sun. Nights were beginning to declare the need to cover up.
He parked opposite Linda Rubinstein’s ramshackle house and opened the car door to welcome her enormous dog, who this time was on patrol outside. The beast, a mix of perhaps a half-dozen large-headed canines, planted his snout in Joe’s groin to get his ears scratched. Joe didn’t argue with him. He couldn’t exit from the car in any case.
“Bogey,” a sharp command rang out.
The dog paid no attention.
Linda, still in slim jeans and a T-shirt, but with an open men’s dress shirt over the top as well, appeared from around an outside corner of the house. She was carrying a basket with tomatoes in one dirt-stained hand.
“Bogey,” she repeated. “Leave the poor man alone.” She reached and yanked him back by the collar, adding, “I hope all your friends believe you when you tell them how your crotch got wet.”
Joe laughed but couldn’t resist checking. He was fine.
“How are you?” she inquired, leading the way to the sagging porch. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Really?” he asked. “I’ll have to tell Doug Matthews that. He was hoping you and I would get something going.”
This time she laughed, reaching the porch, putting the basket down, and waving him to his earlier perch on the railing. “If you weren’t a cop, he might’ve been right. You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. You don’t like cops? I didn’t get that when we met.”
She settled into her chair. Bogey wandered off. “It’s not a blind prejudice,” she said. “Just something born of my time in the city.”
“Things might be different up here,” he told her.
She smiled. “Is that an invitation?”
He tilted his head and made a regretful face. “No. I’m afraid not. I’m here officially—at least sort of.”
“Ah,” she said, studying him.
He studied her in turn for a moment before commenting, “You haven’t asked about the case.”
She widened her eyes, but the look in them remained careful. “I figured you’d tell me if anything had happened. Has it?”
“In a way,” he confessed. “But not how you might think.”
“Really.” She said it as a statement.
“Yeah. Every once in a blue moon, it ends up that what we had from the start was all we ever needed.”
“Like when a car kills a pedestrian?”
He shook his head. “No. There we need to know if the driver was drunk. Or the pedestrian. Did they know each other beforehand? What was the lighting at the time? And on and on. Those actually get pretty complicated. I’m thinking more about a case like Michelle’s. Before, that is,” he added, “someone changes how everything looks.”
She didn’t respond, but he felt a stillness settle over her, as if she were waiting to hear a distant but telling mechanical click.
“Newell Morgan was pretty awful to her, wasn’t he?” Joe asked.
She barely nodded. “I told you that.”
“Yes, but you phrased it in terms of his being her landlord—wanting her out so he could sell the house. There was more to it.”
“That’s all I knew.”
“You also said you’d never met him.”
She hesitated. “Did I? I might have, once. I was over there a lot.”
“So was he.”
She didn’t answer. She tried to swallow without revealing it