Tyler tossed and turned, fighting his own losing battle in the dark. Dawn’s light filtered through his beige paper window shades and he hovered a while in that no-man’s-land of morning, too tired to get up and too alert to fall back asleep. The glow against the shades grew louder, insistent, demanding his surrender. He shoved the covers aside and rolled out of bed.
He kept quiet as he pushed open the bedroom door, not sure if Seelie was up yet. She was more than awake; she was gone, and she’d taken her mobile-home backpack with her. Tyler rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn as he shambled over to the kitchen nook. He paused on his way, tapping the remote control and trading the silence for the morning news.
Seelie had left a note behind, written out on a narrow sheet of hot pink notepaper with a rainbow-maned unicorn at the top. It stuck out under half of a silver-foil coffee bag, crimped and pinned shut.
Tyler, she wrote, sorry to doze and dash but I couldn’t sleep (big surprise) and I know I’ll feel better if I’m on the move. I have a lead to check out, something that might help us. Here’s my number. Text me later? We’ll hook up this afternoon and compare notes.
BTW, I might have tidied up your kitchen a little bit (how do you live like this?) and in doing so, noticed your coffee sucks. This coffee is from a friend of a friend and it does NOT suck. It’s like from the mountains of Sumatra or some shit and you will be so wired you’ll be seeing visions. Okay, maybe it’s not that strong, but still. Pretty strong. Handle with care.
Good advice for most things in life, really.
— S.
He poured out a generous helping of grounds, slid a pot under the coffeemaker’s spigot, and trudged into the bathroom. One shower and a shave later, he started feeling human again. The first cup of coffee threw a lasso around his brain and dragged him the rest of the way.
“You were not kidding,” he said to his mug.
He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew where Seelie was headed. His gut impulse was to outrace her, try to cut her off at the pass, but he also knew that would be the fastest way to lose her trust. His new houseguest was a feral stray; trying to stuff her into a cage would get his hands clawed bloody. It wasn’t until he got to the bullpen at the Brooklyn Standard, after a long and bumpy bus ride, that he found the words to match the angry jumble of his emotions.
“You saw how she reacted last night,” he asked Nell, “when your professor talked about calling her dad?”
Nell had beaten him to the office, like usual. She sat hunkered down at her desk, typing furiously, her unlabeled file folders spread out beside her like facedown tarot cards.
“Hard to miss. She almost bolted. You’re thinking what I’m thinking, right?”
“I’m thinking every adult in that kid’s life has let her down.” Tyler settled into his chair and opened his laptop. “Every last one of them.”
“Between the probably abusive father and the forty-something accountant who was using her for sex—”
The laptop flickered to life. The reflection of the screen shone in Tyler’s eyes.
“Arthur Wendt wasn’t the only one,” he said. “You know that.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew what she was going to say. Nell never took her reporter hat off. She’d respond with something like what you believe and what you can prove are two different things, and all that matters is what you can prove.
Instead, she just nodded and said, “You’re right.”
“We have an obligation here.”
“What do you want to do?” she said.
He ran his fingers through his tight curls and slouched against one arm of his chair. The air had grown heavier since yesterday. The world had grown heavier.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Tyler…”
He glanced her way.
“Is this about—” she started to say. “I mean, you know me. I’m not a touchy-feely person. I always figure, if you want to talk about it, you will, and if you don’t, you won’t. But I’m here for you. Don’t forget that, okay?”
His gaze flicked to the desk blotter, to the paper calendar—a gift from the dry cleaner’s down the block—ringed with old coffee stains. Friday was coming closer with every tick of the clock, a full-steam freight train and he was tied