Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (12 page)

She paled, eased back into her chair. “That was awful. Happened a week after he…you know. I almost went back to him. In my mind I had mixed it up, thinking that’s why he hurt me, because he was so distraught about the murders. But it happened after, of course. I just wanted to make excuses for him.” Her eyes lit and her gaze screwed tightly to my eyes. “You asked me if something was bothering him that night. Do you think he knew somehow, what was going to happen?”

Even after all this time, she wanted to believe he had some right to rape her. I didn’t want to pity her. She deserved better than that. But I wasn’t a therapist. I couldn’t fix her anymore than I could fix all my own looming issues. Pity was the best I could do. “What can you tell me?”

“It’s like I said. He wasn’t himself. He’d always been respectful of my boundaries. Wasn’t like I was a prude or anything. But he knew how far I was willing to go. It’s like he forgot about all that, and when I wouldn’t go along, he snapped.”

“Did the two of you talk at all that night?”

“When he first came over, he was all sulky. I tried to find out what was wrong, but all he’d said was…how did he put it?”

The shouting and laughing from the kids in the next room cut with an eerie suddenness, as if they had overheard our conversation and now waited for what Amanda would say next. The silence lasted a handful of seconds, then a boy growled like a dinosaur, which triggered the rest of the kids to let loose with their screeching voices and mad laughter.

Amanda swiped her tongue over her bottom lip. “He said, ‘Everything is about to explode.’ Wait, not everything. Every
one
. ‘Everyone is about to explode.’ God, that’s freaky. I never saw the connection until now.”

I wasn’t sure there really was a connection to be made. I did know I had found another corner to peel back. One that Eddie had stood on to keep me from noticing. How many times had he held back key information? The stairs. The rape. Now this. The first two he obviously left out to keep himself from looking like an asshole, though he had to figure I’d find out eventually. Maybe this last meant nothing. If it did, he would have told me about it, right?

The philosophical musing of Warren Keats had proved partially true—you never saw all sides of a person. It took merely a glimpse of an unknown side to change a person before your eyes like a magic trick.

Amanda had proved the other part of his theory wrong, though. People did change. Some of them even for the better.

“You’ve been a great help, Amanda. I won’t take up any more of your time.” I stood.

She followed suit. “How come you became a private investigator? Everyone always thought you’d follow in your parents’ footsteps.”

“My parents thought so, too.” I shrugged. “No one bothered to ask me.”

Chapter 12

The whole drive back, I fumed. Why, I wondered, did clients always have a propensity to lie to their investigators? It reminded me of something Bobby’s dad, Mort Quinn—who hired and mentored me as a PI—used to say.
Assume everyone is lying, then find out why they’re lying.

It didn’t matter what the lies were, he explained. What mattered was
why
.

So I drove straight to Eddie’s to find out why.

When he answered his apartment door, I shoved my way inside and kicked the door closed with my heel. Eddie staggered back, eyes wide, as if he thought I was going to deck him. I hated liars. Unlike Mort, I didn’t want to believe everyone lied—not about the important things at least. If that made me naïve, fine. I could live with naïve. What I couldn’t live with was someone who I was trying to help lying straight to my face.

“Tell me about the stairs,” I said, stalking toward him while he scampered back.

“Wh—what do you mean?”

“How about the rape? You want to tell me about that?”

He held his hands out in front of him and cringed, waiting for that punch. I cocked a fist back for show. I’d let him tell his side of things before I bloodied his nose. He didn’t need to know that, though.

His back eventually hit the wall beside the entrance to his kitchenette, no where left to go. He cowered as I closed in.

“Talk, Eddie, before I lose my temper.”

“I made some mistakes, all right? I’m not proud of them.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that. Raping your girlfriend isn’t a mistake. You can’t accidentally force yourself on a woman.”

“Rape? Is that what Amanda told you?” He parted his quaking hands to show his face. “Do I look like a rapist?”

I let my fist go, striking the wall next to his head. “Why would she make something like that up?”

“Can you back off so I can explain?”

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Eddie. I want to know why you lied to me.”

He tipped his hands away from his face, palms up, making him look like an obsequious beggar asking for alms. “Because of this. You’re reaction. I didn’t think you’d help me if I told you about that.”

“And pushing Warren down the stairs?”

“He bullied me. All the time. Relentlessly. I got sick of it. He deserved that push.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I deserved to know about it. You can’t send me out chasing clues when I don’t have all the facts.”

“I’m sorry. From now on, I’ll tell you everything. Promise.”

I shook my head. Already with the lies. The anger flushed out of me. Now I felt tired and heavy. It didn’t matter, though. He could lie all he wanted. I was done. “I don’t work for rapists, Eddie. It’s not good for the conscience.”

“Jesus, you make me sound like some lowlife criminal.”

“How unreasonable of me.” I backed off of him. “Have a nice life, Ed.”

He lurched toward me, grabbed at my coat like a drunk trying to stay on his feet. “What about the killer? He’s killed so many people I care about. You can’t let him get away with it.”

“That was a running theory. So far, I haven’t found anything to support it. Time to face facts,” I said, slightly aware of what I would say next, but not enough to stop myself. “Your dad went postal, and the only reason you’re alive to doubt it is pure dumb luck.”

His wet eyes stared at me with an intensity I could feel clear to the back of my skull. “You don’t believe that. What about the sticker? The killer knows about that.”

He kept pawing at my coat. I shoved him away. “For all I know, you’re making that stuff up to string me along.”

He shook his head emphatically. “I’m not. I’m not.”

I should have walked out at that point. I couldn’t trust anything that slithered out his lying mouth. Which rendered further conversation pointless. Unfortunately, like many investigators, I had the curiosity tic, the one that demanded pieces fit where it looked as though they were missing.

“How could you do that to Amanda?” I asked.

He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. “What difference does it make? You’ve already made up your mind about me.”

“All right. Think of it as me being curious how you’ll lie to me next.”

“Fuck off. If you don’t want to help me anymore, I don’t have to listen to you judge me.” He turned back to me, a cold calm on his face. “You have no idea what I was going through.”

Get out of here. He’s a lost cause. Doesn’t deserve your time.
“Do you know Amanda’s forgiven you for what you did? She even thinks you might have had a good excuse.”

He blinked the cold off his face. “She does?”

“She told me you were distraught the night you raped her. Something was bothering you. You weren’t yourself.”

He chuffed, rubbed his face with his hands. “That’s no excuse for what I did.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“You have to believe me, though. I’ve felt terrible since that day. Warren might have deserved what I did to him, but not Amanda. She was just…collateral damage.”

“No, Eddie. She was your victim.”

“I know that.” He drifted over to the worn spot of his carpet and paced. “I know. But she’s right. I wasn’t myself that night.”

“Because everyone was about to explode.”

He jerked to a halt and gaped at me. “How do you know about that?”

“Amanda told me.”

“Well, how did
she
know about that?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Because you told her. What does it mean?”

He resumed pacing. “God, I don’t remember telling her that. I shouldn’t have told her that.”

I skirted the sofa and coffee table, planted myself in his path. He turned at the end of one pace and drew up short when he saw me in the way.

“You have one last chance at keeping me on.” I couldn’t believe I was saying that. My investigative curiosity had cleverly managed to short circuit my morality. “Tell me what ‘everybody exploding’ means.”

“Nothing that has anything to do with the case.”

“You should let the professional here decided that.”

“Look, no offense, but it’s none of your business. You want to keep investigating for me, that’s awesome. But I’m not getting into any of that with you. It is not relevant.”

Morality tried to get out from under curiosity’s claws, but curiosity kept its grip for another second. “What you did to Amanda is unforgivable, no matter what she says or what was going on with you. But if you can put things in context for me, maybe I can look past it enough to continue the investigation.” I would have to avoid mirrors for a few days, because I didn’t think I could stand looking at myself. But Mort’s advice rang like a struck tuning fork—find out the why behind the lie. Everything would follow from there. “Is that a fair deal?”

He sighed through his clenched teeth, hunched his shoulders, and twisted from side-to-side at the waist as if deciding which way to walk. “I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

“You’re not going to get this out of me, Ridley. Drop it.”

I stared at him for a moment. In that time, curiosity and morality swapped places. It was official. I was done with Eddie Arndt. Without another word, I left.

Chapter 13

Still no Hal.

We were having a pretty good Tuesday, too. A lot of kids from the university—though they probably didn’t think of themselves as kids. I know I didn’t when I was in my early twenties. I thought surviving my teens meant I had all the answers. If I’d known then that eighteen years down the line I still wouldn’t have even a tenth of the answers, I probably would have broken down and drank myself to death with my freshly minted legal ID.

I suspected I’d feel the same in my mid-forties. Age gave you perspective, but youth’s arrogance kept you alive.

I thought I should call Warren, considering how philosophical I was feeling. But if we got into some theological argument, he would likely break one of my limbs. I kept my phone clipped to my belt.

At least, until Led Zeppelin played to let me know I had a call. The caller ID showed me a number, but no name associated with it. My spider sense tingled. Somehow I knew who was calling.

Three girls on stage belted “Brown-Eyed Girl” through drunken giggles. Not the best environment for taking calls.

I slipped out of my booth and hurried to the stairwell that led up to my office. I closed the stairwell door, muffling the quote, singing, unquote, sat on the steps, and answered the call.

“I’m sorry, Ridley.” Sheila.

“You’re sorry all right.”

“Listen to me, will you? I have something important—”

“Wow. I feel like I’ve had this conversation with you before.”

Her words took on the static of panic. “You’re in danger.”

“Danger from what?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“That’s helpful.”

Through the door I heard enthusiastic applause for the girls’ expert butchery of their selection. When it came to karaoke, taste did not have a seat at the bar.

Sheila said, “It’s Hersch. I think he’s in Hawthorne.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because I called him. I was trying to help you.”

“You have his number? Didn’t occur to you to share that with me?”

“I didn’t have it when we spoke last.”

What the hell? This whole thing with Hersch grew more and more convoluted every time his name came up. “Okay. How did you get it?”

“He gave it to me.”

This was going nowhere at the speed of light. “Start from the top. What the hell are you talking about?”

She cleared her throat. When next she spoke she sounded strung out and hoarse. “Hersch contacted me at the hotel. I don’t know how he found me. I guess he’s better than I thought.”

He was good, I’d give him that. “What did he want?”

“It’s just as you said. He offered to give me back the money he took from me if I helped him.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not,” she barked. “You have to stop second guessing me.”

“You honestly think I can do that? Especially after you skipped out on me again when I thought you were going to help me.”

A shaky sigh. “I left the hotel so he couldn’t find me again.”

“But not before he gave you his number in case you changed your mind.”

“Yes. Instead, I called him to try to bargain with him.”

A cinderblock dropped into the pit of my stomach. “Bargain? Did you give him the names of Rice’s friends?”

“You’re convinced I’m out to betray you.”

In the background on her end I heard a voice over a loudspeaker. I picked up a few key words. Mainly,
gate
and
flight
. “Going somewhere?” I asked.

“I’m flying out of here in an hour. I left Hawthorne for a reason. Surely, you of all people can understand that.”

“The difference is, I came back.”

“For how long? How long will your guilt keep you there before you finally can’t take it anymore?”

“Don’t turn this back on me.” I gripped my phone a little more tightly. “What information did you
bargain
with?”

“None. I offered Hersch more money.”

“For what?”

“To get him to stop all this.”

Through the stairwell door I could hear the faint strains of a ballad, but couldn’t make out the song. Behind the music, a soft, yet powerful voice followed the melody, the actual lyrics obscured by the barrier between me and the singer. I didn’t need to hear the lyrics. The woman’s voice was enough to send a shiver down my back.