Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [12]
I didn’t even bother to brush my teeth. I walked into the kitchen, the heaviness still upon me.
They were all drinking coffee, all rumpled and funky, and nobody looked any better than I did.
“We ought to go out and get a paper,” Taylor was saying.
“Why?” I said acidly. “Don’t you remember what happened? Wilt and Mia are dead.” I knew I had no business snapping at Taylor that way. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out, and along with the apology the tears erupted.
Annabeth put her arm around my shoulders, and Cliff poured coffee for me. After I was all cried out, Taylor spoke. “Well, what now?”
“For one thing, somebody’s got to find Dan,” said Annabeth. “The cops are looking for him, and the longer he’s gone, the more it looks like he’s running away. Barry, too.”
“He’s got to hear about it, right?” said Cliff. “I mean, it must be in all the papers, TV.”
Taylor snorted. “I guess you forgot that Dan lives on Planet Zuni. When did you ever know him to pay any attention to the news? Besides, he’s probably fifty miles from nowhere, shitting in the bushes.”
I had an image of Dan then. Lying on his back, looking the way he did when he was high, mouthing the words to “Suzie Q.”
All the what-ifs began to play across my mind. “What if they try to arrest him and he runs?” I said. “Will they shoot him? What if he’s stoned when they find him? What if he thinks they’re not real?”
“Why don’t we take it easy?” Cliff quieted me. “Look, it’s too cold for him to stay outdoors for long. Maybe he’s visiting somebody in the country, like one of his teachers. He’s gonna be okay.”
At the sound of the key turning in the lock, we took a collective breath.
Not Dan.
It was Barry Mayhew. Red-eyed, his goatee scraggly, shaking with rage. Hands down, he looked worse than any of us.
“Get me something!” he exploded.
I pushed my coffee cup toward him, but he swept it off the table. “Get me something to fucking smoke!”
Taylor made a beeline for the stash.
Barry threw himself into a chair. “Fucking motherfuckers, man. I was walking home last night, minding my own business. Next thing I know, pigs everywhere. They put me in a car, man. Like I’m some street trash. Some criminal, man. Morons had me at the pig station since two o’clock this morning. Talking about murder. They said Wilton and Mia—oh, man. What the fuck happened here?”
Barry was still a mess, but his face began to relax as he smoked. Before long, he was narrating his harrowing experience with the true storyteller’s gusto, the center of attention, all of us in a circle around him.
He’d been at an all-night party on Wacker Drive—some rich people he sold acid to—fucking straights, man—when the cops called them to check out his alibi, at first they were too scared to say he had been there—who did the pigs think they were dealing with? some dumb, stoned-out hippie?—he knew a lawyer who’d make them look like clowns—fucking A, they had to release him, or else he was gonna get fucking Kunstler on their asses—And what the fuck is the matter with the phone, man?
“What phone?” Annabeth said.
“I tried to call you assholes a hundred times. The line’s all fucked up.”
I picked up the receiver of the wall phone. Sure enough, it was dead. I went into the living room, looked at the extension in there. It was off the hook. It must have been knocked over during the chaos of last night. I replaced the receiver on the set.
When I got back to the kitchen Barry was passing joints around, still talking. “I gotta find someplace to crash,” he was saying.
“What do you mean, ‘someplace to crash’? You’re splitting?” Taylor asked.
“Damn right. You think I’m gonna stay here and get greased like they did?”
We fell silent for a moment, partly out of embarrassment at Barry’s insensitivity. But there was another element to the stunned silence. Shocking as the murders were, it hadn’t even occurred