The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,42
stays here alone. I want the curtains drawn morning and night and all the cars parked at the back. We don’t want to make it obvious who’s here and who isn’t. Until this is over, we’ve got to take care of each other.”
I stood, trying to think of something to tell my people about the loss of Marni that would help them in their hour of pain and confusion. But all I could see around me were the memories that tied them to our lost girl. I remembered Vinny sitting in the morning sun telling Marni about champion boxers from New York in the fifties. Marni and Clay watching Red Sox games together, eyes locked on the screen, munching cheese balls and swearing under their breath. Marni shaking the ladder jokingly as Effie climbed up to clear leaves from the roof gutters.
“I can’t bring her back,” I told them all. “All we can do right now is try to weather the storm. This is our house. We need to be ready if he comes at us again.”
There was a ripple of something in the room, fear or sadness, maybe. I heard the truth in my own voice, and I think they did too. I beckoned Effie from the dark corner, planning to take her to Nick so we could strategize.
In the hallway, Clay stopped me. “I need to talk to you,” he said. Effie left us together, and the big man turned his hat in his hands. “I know what you’re going to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I PUSHED THE door to the living room closed behind me. Clay looked exhausted in the light from the stairwell. In the tight space I could smell him; he’d spent forty-eight hours pounding the pavement, running down useless leads.
“I don’t know what you think my plan is,” I said, “because I haven’t fully formed it yet.”
“That’s why I want you to listen to me now.” Clay pointed a finger at my chest. “I know what kind of man you are, Bill. After what happened in Boston—”
“What do you mean, you know what kind of man I am?” I squared my shoulders and looked at my friend. Clay sighed. He had probably heard a version of what had happened to me in Boston from other cops. That version probably had all the major details correct, and I knew, even before he went on, what he was going to say.
“You’re a man who wants justice whether it’s inside or outside the law,” Clay said. He filled his chest with air and immediately seemed inches taller. “Well, I love the law. It’s why I do my job. I think it’s … it’s beautiful. And yes, sometimes it actually prevents people from getting what you think they probably deserve. But that’s the system. It’s all part of something bigger. And it’s my job to protect it. I don’t care if I have to find somewhere else to live. I’ll make you uphold the law if I have to.”
“You said you wanted me to put people’s heads in vises if I felt the need. Those were your words.”
“Maybe in Boston it’s literal, but up here, it’s a figure of speech,” Clay said.
“Mitchell Cline deserves to be dragged from the back of a crab boat,” I said. “The law and the beautiful system isn’t going to give us that.”
“I know.” He put his hands up. “But it’ll give us something if we’re patient and careful enough.”
“I don’t have any patience right now.” I waved my hand. “Marni is dead. She’s dead. Do you understand that? Do you feel it yet?”
“Of course I do. You’re upset,” he said. His voice was gravelly with emotion. “I am too. Everyone is. She was our little baby in the house, like Ange said. It’s too quiet without her.” The silence, like a fog, fell around us. Clay looked toward the stairs as though he thought he’d see her rushing down the steps to the front door. “But don’t let the anger drive you to do something stupid.”
“Whatever I do, it won’t be stupid,” I said. I turned to go, but his voice followed me.
“Don’t stray outside the lines again, Bill,” he said. “You know what happened last time.”
CHAPTER FORTY
SQUID WAS SCARED of Dogtown.
It wasn’t often that he acknowledged his fear. Living and working with Mitchell Cline had burned his nerves down to nothing, so terror was something abstract. He had enough difficulty just feeling the regular everyday emotions, and fear was an effort. Maybe the numbness