Just one more murder in the brutal drug world.
“Go home,” José told the guy. “Tell that nice wife of yours I want more of her gumbo.”
“I will.”
Trey went to the exit and glanced back, a tall, strong man with smart eyes and a serious expression. “I’m gonna call you after you’re off the force. And not just for coffee.”
“Anytime you need me to look something over, I’m there for you.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
As the last partner he would have in his professional life walked out and hit the creaky stairs, José turned back to the sofa. The bloodstain was still red now, but by the time this ruined piece of furniture ended up in the dump, the mark would be brown. He pictured the couch when it had first been bought from some kind of showroom or depot, the pattern fresh, the cushions perky and pointed at the corners, the feet square on the floor. If inanimate objects could die, then this one had suffered greatly on the way to its final occupant’s occupancy, battered, stained even before the pool of blood, worn out.
José tried to imagine not doing this anymore, not standing in the middle of a murder mess, trying to put the puzzle pieces together—and he succeeded beautifully at the task. He was going to spend more time with his girls, help his wife out around the house, cheer at graduations, cut birthday cakes, light off fireworks, take care of the dogs. No more Christmases being missed or Thanksgivings lost.
Hell, if he wanted to celebrate Groundhog’s Day, he was going to do it.
Fishing in the summer. Homemaking beer in the fall. Cozy winters and cheerful springs.
No more dead bodies.
No more . . . missing bodies.
No more questions with no answers, no trails, no nothing.
Even though he didn’t want to think about his old partner, Butch O’Neal, he couldn’t help it. Coming to the end of his career had brought up all kinds of loose ends, and Butch was the loosest of them . . . maybe because it felt like that cop from South Boston, with his Good Will Hunting accent, and his hair trigger, and his incredible nose for the truth, was still with him.
José could still remember walking into his old partner’s apartment that last morning. As usual, he’d been braced for a body, not because someone had murdered the guy, but because Butch had drank himself into a stupor, fallen down in the bathroom, and cracked his skull open.
Or maybe overdosed because he’d added a prescription chaser to all the booze he pounded at the end of every night.
That particular bright-and-early, José had been aware that he’d gotten addicted to the cycle of peaking anxiety as he knocked on Butch’s door and let himself in, and then the sweet relief when he’d find his partner in that sloppy bed, passed out, but breathing. The ritual of aspirin, water, and throwing the guy into the shower had been part of his day.
Except that last morning . . . there had been no one there. Nobody asleep facedown in the sheets. Or slumped on the couch. Or one-arming the toilet.
And in the days and weeks that had followed, there had been . . . nothing. No clues, no evidence, no body. Disappeared. But given the way Butch had handled himself and the hard life that he’d led? José couldn’t say he’d been surprised.
Nah, he’d just been heartbroken.
He glanced back at that couch. “Nothing worse than trying to save someone.”
As the good Catholic he was, José had spent a lot of time praying for his former partner. He’d also missed the guy, and not just on a personal level. Like Trey, he wished Butch could have been here on this scene, be back at HQ going through files, be knocking on doors and asking questions.
O’Neal had been sucky at real life, but a helluva detective.
What a haunted man.
From time to time, José dwelled on him, and when the memories got too painful—which was almost immediately—he’d switch to imagining that Butch was living in a parallel universe on the flipside of Caldwell, with a beautiful wife and a bunch of strong protectors around him—
As a sharpshooter pierced through José’s frontal lobe, he groaned and stopped going down that rabbit hole. It was just fiction anyway, something his mind coughed up when he couldn’t handle the fact that there hadn’t been a body to bury.
Rubbing his face, he knew he was never going to get over all he didn’t know about what had happened to the guy. And it had always made him feel for those families who never got their justice.
“Where did you go, Butch,” he said out loud.
He was used to talking to his favorite partner, as crazy as he knew that was—but had long ago decided, hey, people used their dogs as sounding boards, right?