“Yeah. Someone said it. Laura. Or maybe Lauren. I mean, who the fuck cares, right? It’s just a first name. We don’t have anything else.” Cipriani spread her hands on the tabletop and stared at them.

“Could it have been Lorin? With an ‘o’?”

“How the Jesus fuck do I know? I just said I could barely hear it. What difference does it make?”

Eden reached across the table and grabbed one of Cipriani’s hands. “You on shift?”

Cipriani looked down where Eden was holding her hand. “No. I’m off ’til Sunday. Why?”

“I want you to meet Lorin.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

(i)

(FRIDAY, 10:20 A.M.)

“Where are you now?” Russell’s voice came out of Thackrey’s phone.

Looking out the driver’s-side window, Thackrey could see leaves blowing across a wet parking lot. He was tired—finally. The police interrogation had drained the last of his energy. If he could just close his eyes, he would sleep for days. Thackrey held his phone in his fingertips. “Outside a condo in Santa Rosa. Waiting for someone.”

“Jesus, Ben, are you buying more shit?”

“No…it’s something else. The cops were just at my house.”

“What? From VCI?”

“Yeah, the one called Mahler. The boss. Something’s fucked up with that guy. He’s got this…weird thing about him.” Up close, the cop had surprised Thackrey. The guy had a dangerous raggedness that made him seem capable of something irregular.

“What kind of weird thing?”

“Like he’s sick. Or, he did a couple lines of coke before he came in.”

Russell sighed. “Maybe that was the drugs in your head.”

“No, I’m serious,” Thackrey said. “The other thing, I’m looking at him, and I’m thinking, ‘Fuck, man, I was inside your house last night.’”

“Does he know that?”

“Maybe. I could see he’s thinking about it. The other one was there, too. The girl.”

“Detective Somers?”

“Eden Somers. That girl’s playing some games.” Thackrey saw her face again, refusing to smile.

“Are you on crank right now?”

“I don’t remember. What difference does it make?” Over the last few hours, reality had become unreliable for Thackrey. His memory surprised him, with flashes too vivid for a dream—a woman he recognized, digging her nails into his arm, screaming like a wounded cat.

“What’d the police ask?” Russell said, trying to keep Thackrey on a linear path.

“Usual mangled syntax. What was your relationship with the victim? How do you have a relationship with a victim?”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I was involved. Anyone who came within ten feet of Elise was involved. The cops know about the drug buy Saturday night. That dipshit Peña must have talked.”

“I think we knew that was going to happen.”

“They asked if I have a gun,” Thackrey said. How had he remembered that? He was amazed at this single fact floating to the surface.