Black Feathers (34 page)

“And nothing,” Ali said, looking toward the kitchen door. Through the crowd, Cassie could see Hong and May at the table, serving up plates of food. “Happily ever after,” she said.

Part of Cassie wanted to tell her that there was no such thing, but the other part of her, the part that was warm and safe and happy, wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Everybody’s got a past, Cassie,” she said. “Everyone’s got a history.” She smiled as she said it, a warm, happy, safe smile. The lights of the tree flashed against her cheek.

For the first time, it felt a bit like Christmas. Looking up at the world from the floor, Cassie remembered being a little girl, sitting at the kids’ table when all of her relatives got together, being sure to eat everything on her plate on Christmas Eve so she wouldn’t upset Santa at the last minute. The blinking lights on the tree, the carols on the stereo, the loud, confusing hum of voices in conversations that she couldn’t follow: she winced against the pang that arced through her chest.

“What’s wrong?” Ali asked in a whisper.

Cassie just shook her head.

Ali put her hand on Cassie’s leg, squeezing it gently. “It’s all right,” she said.

It was almost overwhelming, but she could tell, looking at Ali’s face, that she knew exactly what was going on in her head. She hadn’t said anything, but Ali understood.

She laid her hand on Ali’s and squeezed.

Harrison began to feel his exhaustion near the bottom of the stairs to the basement. He had to cling to the railing as his ragged breath echoed off the concrete stairwell, sweat stinging in his eyes. The faces of the murdered girls swam in his mind.

His jacket was only making it worse. He wished he could have left it in his locker, but that wasn’t really an option.

He knocked on the heavy door at the base of the stairs, peering through the wire-reinforced window, waiting to be recognized.

There was a faint buzz and the clicking of the lock. Harrison turned the handle and opened the door to the holding cells.

Boris, working the desk, looked up from a magazine at Harrison, his back to the bank of video monitors, one for each cell.

“You draw the short straw?” Harrison asked as lightly as he could. He knew Boris well enough to joke with him.

Boris looked him up and down, taking in his boots, his winter jacket. “Hey, at least I get to be inside tonight, if you want to talk about drawing the short straw.”

Harrison grinned and leaned on the ledge at the top of the desk. “True that,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “Busy in here?” Harrison cocked his head toward the second heavy door, the end of the hallway to the holding cells.

Boris turned slightly to check the monitors. Harrison’s eyes followed, focusing on Cliff Wolcott, still sitting on his bed.

“Nah, it’s pretty quiet. Couple of drunks. Crackhead seeing visions. Usual stuff.”

“Folks taking time off for the holidays, you figure?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? Not likely, though. We’ll get a
pretty heavy run of domestics and public disturbances, starting tomorrow afternoon.”

“Right around the time folks get home to spend the holidays with their families, right?” Harrison knew the answer: he had worked enough Christmases to know what it was like.

“Fa la la la la,” Boris said drily. “So, you down here ‘cause you don’t have anything better to do or what?”

“Actually, I was just up talking to Donofrio—”

Boris rolled his eyes at the name.

“And he suggested I might want to have a word with his Mr. Wolcott.”

Boris turned back to the monitors. “This guy?” he asked, tapping the screen on Cliff Wolcott’s head. “Fucking freak.”

“That’s what I hear.”

Boris took a closer look at Harrison, studying him. “Are you on the task force?” Harrison shook his head. “Nobody’s supposed to see him except task force members and his counsel. Looks to me like they’re trying to keep something quiet.” He looked guilelessly at Harrison, as if hoping he might have information to share.

“Donofrio didn’t say anything about that,” Harrison said, watching every word. “He just suggested I come down and talk to him.” He started to turn away. “But if you’ve been told that it’s task force only—”

“Jesus,” Boris muttered, and Harrison stopped, stifling the smile he felt coming on before turning back around.

“What the fuck do I care who sees him, right?”

Harrison hesitated. “Are you sure?”

Boris shrugged. “It’s nothing to me,” he said, dropping a clipboard on the desk. “You sign in, it’s your problem. You and—” He raised his eyes toward the third floor, where Donofrio was
probably still sitting in the conference room. “Here,” he said, tapping the clipboard. “It’s all on you.”

Harrison took his pen out of his pocket and filled out the line on the sign-in sheet. He checked the clock on the wall behind him for the time.

As he tucked the pen back into his pocket, Boris stood up, hitched up his pants. “You’ll need to check your side arm,” he said, going through the steps exactly as the policies and procedures dictated.

Harrison forced a smile. “This ain’t my first rodeo, Boris,” he said. He held his breath as he held his jacket open so Boris could see he wasn’t wearing his gun belt. “Left it locked up,” he said. “Figured I’d save you the hassle.” Prayed silently that he wouldn’t be asked to turn around.

When Boris nodded, he lowered his jacket, waited.

Harrison tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to come around the desk. He wasn’t going to ask him to turn around or lift his coat.

Instead, Boris spun the clipboard to face himself, checked it carefully and nodded, initialling the line.

“All right,” he said, tucking the clipboard back down behind the ledge. “He’s in three. I’ll buzz you through.”

“Thanks, Boris,” he said, as he stepped toward the door to the cellblock.

“Pfft,” he grunted, and the door buzzed and clicked.

Harrison pulled it open and stepped through, waiting for it to shut and lock behind him before he stepped forward.

It was almost like a hospital corridor: wide and white and bright, smelling of heavy antiseptic cleaners. Doors lined both sides of the corridor, each with a small window at face height, all the glass wire-reinforced.

As he walked along the hallway, Harrison glanced behind himself and up at the video camera mounted above the door he had just stepped through, a red light solid and unblinking at its base.

When he stopped in front of the door to holding cell number three, he nodded at the camera.

A moment later, there was a buzz, and the lock clicked free.

Wolcott didn’t even look up as he walked into the cell, as the door closed behind him.

Sitting on the bed, he reminded Harrison of those statues of Buddha in the windows in Chinatown. Not the laughing ones, the serene ones, the ones where he was just sitting there, utterly still.

The difference was striking, though. Those Buddha statues had a calming effect. Hell, he had even bought one for Farrow, as a bit of a joke; she still had it in her locker.

Cliff Wolcott’s stillness made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Wolcott,” he said.

He didn’t move.

The older cops always talked about how they could tell if a suspect was guilty just by watching them in holding. The thinking went that innocent suspects would be stressed and anxious, pacing, working themselves up to a good, distraught frenzy within a matter of hours at most. The guilty ones, though, they were calm, unruffled, like they were protected inside a shell.

Over time, Harrison had come to realize that the theory was bullshit; looking at Cliff Wolcott, he wondered if there might be something to it after all.

“Wolcott,” he said again, a little louder, taking a step forward.

Nothing.

The collar of his uniform pinched his neck, cut off his breath. He tried to calm down: it wouldn’t do to be angry, but he couldn’t help it. There was something about this fucker, just sitting there, calm as could fucking be, like he didn’t have the blood of those girls on his hands, like he hadn’t—

The fingers of his right hand tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed.

The gun was heavy at the small of his back.

He crossed the room in four steps. “Hey,” he almost shouted, kicking at one of the legs of the bed. “Wolcott.”

His eyes opened languidly as he lifted his head. “Hello, Officer,” he said, fixing his gaze on Harrison.

The temperature dropped in the room, and a shudder ran through him.

“This is unbelievably sexist,” Collette called back into the living room. “I just thought you men should know that.” As she turned back into the kitchen, she barked out a laugh. Her pale skin was pink and flushed, her red ringlets limp and sticking to her forehead.

“Men,” she said. “Why do we keep them around?”

“That’s always been my feeling,” Ali said, turning off the water. The sink was full and steaming, bubbles high over the edge. “But you can’t seem to keep away.” She shook her head in mock sadness.

Collette opened her eyes wide, twisted the dishtowel she was holding and snapped it toward Ali.

Ali jumped out of the way, bumping into Cassie. Her eyes were bright, shining.

“That’s enough of that,” Erin said, grinning just as widely despite the mock sternness in her voice. “Don’t make me put you in time out.”

When Collette stuck her tongue out at Erin, both Cassie and Ali had to turn away to keep from cracking up.

Ali started washing the dishes, placing them in the rack in the second sink. Cassie tried to keep up, drying each piece as it came and passing it to Erin to put away, but she quickly fell behind, and the rack began to fill.

“I’m just saying, could it be any more sexist?” Collette asked no one in particular, draining her wineglass. “The men-folk in the living room, burping and farting, while the womenfolk do the dishes?”

Cassie half-turned. “That’d be a lot more convincing if you were actually doing anything.”

Her heart thudded to the pit of her stomach as soon as the words left her lips and she waited for Collette’s reaction. She had meant it to be funny, but it wasn’t funny, was it? She had just insulted Ali’s friend and their host and—

Collette cocked her head, her eyes going wide. “Oh yeah?” she said, as she began to twist her dishtowel again, but a smile was breaking over her mouth.

Cassie wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way, and the towel caught her on the hip with a stinging snap. “Hey!”

Collette looked at her with mock defiance, a come-and-get-me look that she only managed to hold for a moment before she stuck her tongue out.

Even May, putting leftover food into storage containers at the table, laughed.

With all of them working, they made short work of the
dishes. As Ali pulled the plug, the water beginning to drain with a roaring gurgle, Collette stepped back into the living room, her wineglass in one hand, a bottle in the other.

“Oh, not fair,” she called out a moment later. “They started without us!”

Cassie looked at Ali to see if she knew what was going on, and then the smell of pot smoke tickled at the base of her nose.

“Yeah,” Ali said, then took a concerned second look at Cassie. “Oh. Is that—”

“I grew up in a small town,” she said. “Not a convent.”

“So you’re okay with—” She gestured toward the living room. In the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Erin hanging her dishtowel on the handle of the oven door and stepping into the other room.

“Sure,” Cassie said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Ali shrugged and shook her head, smiling a little. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just being overly careful.”

“Why?” Cassie asked, and Ali hunched over the sink, scrubbing the metal walls as the water drained, not looking up.

“Ali?” She touched her at the small of the back, let her hand linger there. “You don’t have to be careful,” she said quietly.

“You don’t either,” Ali said, and the look that she gave Cassie melted her legs. When Ali reached up and brushed Cassie’s hair back from her forehead, tucking it loosely behind her ear again, Cassie trembled.

She glanced toward the living room. “So,” she said. “What happens now?”