Dark Sky (11 page)

And she spotted Ethan getting out of a cab.

She phoned the private security guard the building managers had hired until they could figure out what to do about a new doorman, and vouched for Ethan.

When Juliet opened her door for him, Ethan sniffed the rank air and made a face. “Smells like ultraclean dead fish. Let's get out of here. I'll buy us dinner.”

“Plan on doing some talking.”

He didn't answer, and she noticed that he was clean and not as ragged-looking. He had on fresh jeans, the brown leather coat, the silver belt buckle, the boots.

“I don't know why I trust you,” she said.

“What did you do with the fish?”

“Sent them to a rescue shelter.”

“There's a shelter for fish?”

“They take care of all kinds of animals.”

“Only in New York.”

She thought she heard a hint of humor in his tone, but it didn't show in his face.

“What about your friend who owns this place?” he asked.

“Freda didn't take the news well. She wants me out by the end of next week. The sooner the better.” Juliet nodded to the damp floor. “The couple downstairs got flooded. They're not real happy with her or with me.”

“Never mind the murdered doorman and the traumatized teenager.”

“I don't think they're happy about them, either, but their waterlogged apartment is easier to grasp.”

“You're nicer than I am.”

She almost smiled then. “What have I been saying ever since I met you?”

He took her face in both his hands, catching her by surprise. He'd never touched her that way before. There'd been sparks between them from the first, but he'd been on the trail of his wife's murderers, out of control, breaking all the rules. Juliet had warned herself—she'd warned
him
—that he needed to get a grip before his guilt and regrets destroyed him. He couldn't escape the cauldron of memories and questions and so many things he couldn't change. What he hadn't done. What he should have done. How far he and his now-dead wife had let their marriage suffer because of the demands of their work.

“Damn,” he said. “I'm sorry about what happened today.”

Juliet noticed that his dark eyes were soft in the dim light, perhaps an optical illusion. “It wasn't your fault.”

“I don't know. Maybe it was.” He wound a short, thick blond curl around one finger. “I'm glad your niece is okay.”

He kissed her then, on the lips, gently, but not tentative—nothing about him, Juliet thought, was tentative.

Ethan stood back, studying her a moment. “Sorry. I shouldn't have taken advantage.”

“You didn't.” She straightened, rubbing the back of her neck, awkward, wanting to kiss him again. “I guess it's just as well we're going out for dinner.”

“Or?”

“Never mind. I'm light-headed.” She caught herself. “Not from the kiss, either.”

“Whatever you say, Marshal.”

That laconic Texas accent, that superfit body—she needed air, fast. She grabbed her jacket off the back of a chair and slung it over one arm, not feeling even remotely chilly. “We can go to the place where we met last night.”

“Works for me. Your niece?”

“Safely home in Vermont by now.” Juliet ripped open the door, pictured Tatro shoving Wendy into the apartment. “I don't know what I was thinking, having fish.”

“Juliet—”

“Yet, if I hadn't—I don't know what would have happened to Wendy today.”

“You know better than to go down that road.”

She nodded, pushing out into the hall. “Would have, could have, should have. Yes. I do know.” She banged the down button for the elevator, keeping her eyes on it as Ethan came up next to her. “We can't go back and undo what's done. None of us.”

He leaned against the wall. “Knowing I can't do a thing to change something that's happened doesn't make me feel any better.”

“It's not about feeling better. It's about acceptance—” She broke off, wishing she hadn't gotten herself started. The man had lost his wife. Who was she to tell him how he should feel? All she needed to do was picture Wendy coming out of the bedroom with Bobby Tatro cuffed and muttering things into the floor. “Forget it. I don't know what I'm talking about.”

She stayed a step ahead of him. The night air was cool and clear, with just a hint of autumn, a breath of nostalgia, although for what, Juliet couldn't pinpoint. The life she hadn't led, she supposed. The paths not taken.

At the restaurant, she asked for a table by the window and looked out at the pedestrians walking slowly on the street outside, enjoying the beautiful fall evening.

“Joe Collins and Mike Rivera both want to talk to you,” she said without looking at Ethan.

He ordered Jack Daniel's on the rocks. “I figured as much.”

She almost seconded his order, then opted for sparkling water. “How was Washington?”

“I slept for twelve hours in a comfortable bed.”

“You weren't there to catch up on your sleep.”

He pointed to the menu. “I think you should order the mac and cheese. Comfort food. It'll be easy on your stomach.”

“I'm not sure it goes with chardonnay.”

“Mac and cheese goes with anything.”

“Or chardonnay does,” she said. “Collins and Rivera both think you're trouble. So do
I,
for that matter. Gee, I wonder why.”

“You told them—”

“Everything. I play by the rules.”

“No, you don't. You'd never have been in Tennessee that day if you played by the rules. You'd never have let me into your apartment last month. You wouldn't have told me about Bobby Tatro—”

“What I told you didn't help you. Don't pretend it did.”

“It will yet.”

She leaned over the table. “Stay out of this case, Brooker.”

He shrugged, obviously not particularly affected by her intensity or her authority. “You're a little late with the orders, Marshal.”

Calling her “marshal” was just to tweak her, to pull her out of her unfocused anger. But thoughts of Juan, Wendy, Tatro, the fish, the dead dog's ashes on her counter, the frustrated and terrified neighbors, the soon-to-be ex-friend in L.A.—began to weigh on her, and she knew she should be off on a five-mile run, not sitting in a restaurant with a man who'd spin her around until she collapsed before he told her one damn thing he hadn't meant to tell her.

“You've been through SERE training, haven't you?” Juliet asked him.

“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Yes, ma'am.”

“Ever been captured by the enemy?”

He didn't answer.

“Not something you want to talk about in an Upper West Side restaurant.” She didn't feel her tension easing. “I'm not playing games with you, Brooker. I don't care what you can't or won't tell me. I'll find out what I want to know. A man was murdered today.
I'm
responsible.”

His eyes flickered with sudden intensity. “You're not responsible.”

The water and bourbon arrived. He ordered a steak. When Juliet couldn't make up her mind—couldn't concentrate on the damn menu—he told the waiter to bring her the macaroni and cheese.

Ethan picked up his drink, took a small swallow, then set it back down. “I thought by coming up here yesterday I might stop something from happening, not cause something.”

“You had no idea Tatro was in New York?”

“No.”

Juliet squeezed the juice out of the lime that came with her water, briefly wondering what it would be like to have a normal dinner with Ethan, if that were even possible. “Wendy ran into him yesterday afternoon, before I even knew she was here.” She relayed what her niece had told her, watching him for his reaction. But there was none. Whatever he felt, he kept it under the surface, out of sight, out of her reach—perhaps out of his own. “When you saw Wendy at my building—”

“I didn't see Tatro.” He picked up his glass and stared at his bourbon, as if it held answers he didn't have. “I was fucking clueless.”

His emotion—his guilt—caught Juliet off guard. “You weren't alone.”

“Doesn't help.”

“Wendy can put Tatro in the area yesterday, but we don't know he actually overheard her with Juan and learned her name that way.”

“How else?”

“A dozen different possibilities, none of them any more enticing. I'm trying to deal in facts, not speculation.” Except she'd been mired in speculation for hours, frustrating herself, berating herself, getting nowhere. “From where you were standing yesterday, could you hear Wendy give Juan her name?”

He shook his head. “I was too far away. If I'd realized she was your niece, on her own, I'd have stayed put. Hell, I could have followed her to the diner. Either Tatro would have thought better of sitting next to her or I'd have caught him—” He set his glass down, bourbon splashing onto his hand. “A moot point now.”

“I don't know why Tatro had to kill Juan. He could have just knocked him out cold.” Juliet focused on a young woman, maybe twenty, walking a cocker spaniel. Living a normal life. “Killing him seems extreme.”

“Tatro's an extreme person.”

Juliet looked away.

“He was put away on a nonviolent charge,” Ethan continued, “but he's not a nonviolent man.”

“He thinks I broke the rules when I arrested him.” She turned again, facing Ethan. “That's why he hates me so much. He thinks everyone should follow the rules but him.”

“Is he right? Did you break the rules?”

“No. Not really. I just didn't run into him at Wal-Mart by accident. I had a source.”

Ethan leaned back in his chair, studying her a moment. “You protected your source.”

“It was an eleven-year-old girl, his girlfriend's daughter. Carmel. She plays the violin.” Juliet ran a fingertip around the rim of her water glass, remembering the girl's terrified voice on the other end of the phone. “Tatro got mad at the mother. To punish her, he tortured the family dog.”

“That was the last straw for the girl?”

Juliet nodded. “She begged me not to tell anyone. She'll be looking over her shoulder her whole life as it is.”

“Eleven years old.”

“I was climbing trees at that age.”

“Tatro's a sadist. He knows you've seen through him, and he can't stand it.” Ethan sighed, but there was no surprise in his expression—he knew there were people out there who tortured dogs in front of little girls. “Did the dog live?”

“Yes. And last I checked, Carmel was first violin in her high school orchestra.”

“The makings of a happy ending.” But nothing about Ethan looked happy—or finished. “Why did Tatro show up at your apartment when he did? You were at work. If he wanted to get to you, he'd have picked a time when you were more likely to be home.”

“I suppose he could have planned to hide and wait for me—”

“With the dead doorman?”

“Juan was in his office. Given Tatro's grandiosity, he could have thought he had all the time he needed.” Their meals arrived, steaming, giving off good, homey smells that made Juliet want to turn in her badge, pack up her belongings, move back to Vermont and plant tulips. “Wendy returned to my apartment this morning spontaneously—no way could Tatro have expected her.”

“He could have been hanging around on your street and seized the moment when she showed up.”

“Maybe.”

“But you don't think so.”

She tried the mac and cheese. It was hot and gooey, but she knew she wouldn't eat much of it. “He was hanging around yesterday. Could he have followed you?”

Ethan shook his head without hesitation. “No.”

“Well, Tatro's not talking. He might yet, but we've got him for murder—he'll clam up, use whatever he can to cut himself any kind of deal. It won't work, but he's not going to be forthcoming anytime soon.” She set down her fork, the rich food sitting like lead in her stomach.

Ethan dug into his steak with his fork and knife, but Juliet could see he wasn't any hungrier than she was.

“How big a payday did you spoil for Tatro?” she asked.

“I don't have a figure.”

“A guess?”

He smiled. “I'm trying to deal only in facts.”

“Could he have known you came to me for information on him?”

“Possibly, but I doubt it. As far as I know, he was out of the country when you and I were having our chat in the rain.”

She remembered his comment about sun-kissed cafés and roses and bougainvillea, and felt a surge of warmth, but it didn't last. Uncertainty crept in, anger, frustration. It could all have been talk, utter bullshit, manipulation.

“I told Mike Rivera you were solid,” she said. “He knows it. We all do. Rivera just has his doubts about your impact on my life.”

“With good reason.”

“Ethan—”

“I'm sorry, Juliet. Sorry for everything.”

He gave up on his steak, took a small sip of his drink, his eyes shifting to an elderly woman making her way down the street on a cane, smiling broadly at no one in particular. He seemed transfixed. Juliet thought of their kiss, then quickly pushed it out of her mind.

“What happened today wasn't your doing,” Ethan reiterated.

Juliet pictured Wendy scooping up traumatized fish and quickly took a gulp of water, but the wedge of lime somehow landed half up her nose. She almost dropped the glass, fighting tears, irritated with herself because she couldn't think straight, couldn't put together her questions, a time line—anything that would help her figure out what Tatro wanted and what it had to do with the man sitting at the table with her.

She pushed her glass aside. “I have no right to blame you for anything.”

“If Tatro wanted to kill your doorman or your niece, he could have done it yesterday. He didn't have to wait until today.”