Part 13 (1/2)

”Valerie and Adelaide.”

”I didn't...” The words echoed in his head, rolling around like bowling b.a.l.l.s on a dance floor.

”'And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.'”

Dan shook his head, which made it ache even worse. He hadn't done anything wrong. He and Val had been kids, fooling around. Val had cried afterward-he'd remembered that-but that was because it had been her first time. At least that was what he'd thought, what he'd told himself for years, and when Addie had accused him, Val had said no. She'd backed him up. She'd sat with him at lunch for the rest of the year, for Chrissake, and was that the behavior of a girl who'd been harmed, who'd been violated? No. No, it was not.

Except, Dan thought as Merry continued to look at him. If that was true, why had Val been so angry at the reunion? You ruined my life, she'd hissed at him, her pretty face contorted. Dan lifted one hand to his head and rubbed at the sore spot there that felt disturbingly mushy, like a bruise on an apple.

”Repent,” said Holy Mary. Her face was flushed, her eyes were alight. She fell to her knees beside the bed with a wall-rattling thump. ”Repent,” she said, and reached for his hands and gripped them, pulling him out from under the covers (he was indeed naked, he saw) and onto his knees. Milk and juice and tea sloshed over the edges of their cups and soaked the quilt. Dan Swansea knelt next to Holy Mary and squeezed his eyes shut.

TWENTY-NINE.

Back at the station, Jordan's patrol-people were hunched over their desks, fingers clattering over the keyboards, telephones tucked under their ears. They'd made progress, he learned as he hung up his coat and went to his office, with the three of them in their blue uniforms (Holly, he was sure, had hers specially tailored to make the most of her admirable a.s.s) following him like something out of Make Way for Ducklings, which the Nighty-Night Lady had read two nights before. Of the one hundred and eighty-seven registered attendees and thirteen walk-ins at the previous night's reunion, ninety-six of them were men, either members of the cla.s.s or spouses of women who were. Of those ninety-six, eighty-four had been accounted for-they'd answered their home phones, or their cell phones, or the phones at their parents' houses to say that they were fine and well and were not missing their belts or a significant amount of blood.

That left an even dozen. Of those, Christie Keogh, reached at her home, post-workout, pre-pedicure, told him that eight were out-of-towners, most likely on Sat.u.r.day-morning flights taking them back to California and Connecticut and an army base in Stuttgart, Germany. Which brought them to four.

Jordan stood in front of his desk as Holly Muoz fumbled with a folder. ”Oops!” she cried as a folder of paper-clipped pages slipped between her fingers. Jordan crouched down, plucked the pages out of the air before they hit the ground, and handed them to Holly.

”Wow,” she said, taking pains to make sure that their fingers touched as she took the folder. ”Fast.” If this kept up, Jordan thought, she'd show up at work one morning with i love you written on her eyelids, like that girl in the Indiana Jones movies. She was adorable, but she was also significantly younger than he was, and his subordinate. She deserved someone better, some-one who hadn't already f.u.c.ked up a marriage and did not have a fantasy life starring an icon of the non-potty-trained.

He sat as Holly read the list. ”Scott Erhlich. Lives in Chicago. Unmarried, no kids, not answering his home or his cell phone. Eric Ramos. Lives in Cincinnati, married to Kelly Granville-she's the Pleasant Ridge grad. They've got three kids. No answer at home, and neither one of them has a cell phone. We're in the process of trying to reach the wife's family. We figure they might have gone there after the reunion. Kevin Oliphant...”

Jordan interrupted, remembering what Jon had said: Kevin Elephant. ”Wait. Who was that last one?”

Holly repeated the name, then spelled it. ”He lives in Pleasant Ridge.”

”He got a record?” Jordan asked.

Holly flipped a page. ”DUI times three, drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. Bar fights, it looks like, and one a.s.sault. Looks like he pushed his ex-wife down a flight of stairs, after she alleged that he'd hit her son with...” She paused, peering at the notebook. ”A cast-iron frying pan?”

”My mother had one. You use them to fry chicken,” said Gary.

”Or bake cornbread,” offered Devin Freedman. ”They're heavy.”

”They sell them at Williams-Sonoma,” Gary said.

”I know what they are,” Holly said. ”I just can't see someone using one as a weapon.”

Jordan pressed his hand against his forehead. ”Who's number four?”

”Daniel Swansea,” said Holly. ”He's not answering his cell or his home number. Single guy, lives downtown in a high-rise. His parents say he doesn't really keep in touch. Day doorman hasn't seen him; we left messages for the night guy. He works at a Toyota dealers.h.i.+p, but n.o.body there was expecting him until Sunday.”

Jordan wrote the names down, then studied them. ”Daniel Swansea,” he muttered, and flipped through his notebook to confirm that Jon had mentioned that name, too. ”Field trip.” He pointed to Holly. ”You take the first guy, Scott Ehrlich.” He pointed to Gary. ”You find Daniel Swansea. Go to his place, and if he's not there yet, talk to the neighbors and the people at the dealers.h.i.+p. Figure out who his friends are, where he might be cras.h.i.+ng. Both of you, bring a picture of the belt. Maybe one of them'll recognize it.” He gave Eric Ramos to Devin and got Kevin Oliphant's information from the computer. An a.s.sault charge, a bunch of DUIs and bar fights, pus.h.i.+ng a lady, hitting a little kid. That sounded to him like a guy who could end his high school reunion minus his belt and some blood.

THIRTY.

Kevin Oliphant lived in a c.r.a.ppy apartment in a subdivided three-story vinyl-sided house behind the Discount Foodmart on the very edge of Pleasant Ridge. Jordan checked the name on the mailbox and located unit 1-C at the end of a dark hallway that smelled like garlic and wet wood. He banged on the flimsy wooden door and called ”Police!” and eventually, Oliphant exited, chest-first. The chest in question was bare, covered by a few spa.r.s.e, dark curls. Oliphant's belly was slack and white, bulging above a pair of brown sweatpants. His bare feet were pale and surprisingly dainty, and he smelled not unlike the homeless men hanging around Jonathan Downs's bus stop: same signature scent of eau de Pabst and puke.

”Yeah?” he grunted, blinking at Jordan's face.

”You weren't answering your phone,” Jordan said.

”Is that against the law?” He belched. Delightful fellow.

”Were you at the reunion last night?”

”So what if I was?”

”We found some stuff in the parking lot. You missing anything?”

Kevin Oliphant scratched his head. ”If you've got papers, just go ahead and serve me.”

”Why would you think I'm here to serve you?”

Kevin cleared his throat, a wet, rumbling sound. ”f.u.c.k do you care?” It happened in an instant. One second Jordan was standing six feet away from Kevin Oliphant, and the next he had the man backed up against the rattling living room wall of the s.h.i.+tbox apartment that smelled like fried food and stale farts.

”How about you answer my questions?”

Kevin struggled, wild-eyed. Jordan shook him. ”If I run your name,” Jordan rasped, ”what'll I find? Couple of restraining orders? Parking tickets? Your child support all paid up, Kevin?” He shook him hard enough to make his head bounce on his neck, but Kevin said nothing. ”Belt,” Jordan said, letting him loose.

The other man stared at him. ”Huh?”

”Show me the belt you wore last night,” Jordan said.

Kevin stared at him for a moment, then skulked down the s.h.i.+tbox's hallway. A minute later, he came out with a black leather belt in his hands. ”Okay? Are we cool?”

”We are not.” Jordan peered around the apartment. The living room had scratchy gray wall-to-wall carpeting, a single stained recliner, and a stack of yellowed newspapers beside it. There was a pair of crumpled pizza boxes in the corner, and a thirty-gallon garbage can overflowing with empty beer cans and Popov vodka bottles beside it.

Kevin Oliphant followed Jordan's gaze. ”What?” he asked. ”I recycle.”

Jordan walked down the hall. The grimy kitchen's sink was piled high with dirty dishes, the counter crammed with Chinese take-out containers and an eight-pack of paper towel rolls (from the look of it, Oliphant used paper towels as plates, napkins, and probably toilet paper, too). The bathroom was exactly what Jordan expected, the toilet seat up, the floor in front of it showered in p.i.s.s droplets, a scroungy blue rug in front of the tub, which looked like it hadn't seen a sponge or a scrub brush in months, if ever. There was a coat closet off the hallway, empty except for a winter coat on a wire hanger, and some dirty T-s.h.i.+rts kicked into a pile. The bedroom closet was a tumbled mess of clothing. The bed was a mattress on the floor. It would have been depressing even if it didn't remind Jordan of his own place, which was cleaner and marginally better furnished but, for all that, still the place of a man who lived alone, a man who'd had a woman once, then f.u.c.ked it all up.

Kevin trailed behind him as Jordan made his way through the apartment. ”What are you doing? Hey, don't you need a warrant?”

Jordan stopped in the living room and glared at the guy. There was a pair of photographs in cheap wooden frames perched on top of the television set. Two kids, a little boy and a baby, wearing swimsuits (the baby's swimsuit bottom was swollen with diapers underneath), and just the thought that this foulmouthed, s.h.i.+tbox-dwelling, kid-hitting a.s.shole had children, and that Jordan didn't and probably never would, was enough to make him want to grab Oliphant and shake him so hard that he'd need a construction-paper chart to remind him to wipe his a.s.s after he took a dump. ”Where's the bas.e.m.e.nt?”

Kevin's mouth hung open. He shut it in a sneer. ”Why? You think I'm hiding something down there?”

”Are you?” Jordan asked.