Prayers for Rain (Kenzie & Gennaro 5)

“Hiss,” I said. “Meow.”

She gave me a rueful smile as she lit another cigarette. “Cat’s got to have claws to make it a fight. What I hear, all she’s got is a nice briefcase, great hair, and tits she’s still making monthly payments on.” Her smile widened and she crinkled her face at me. “Okay, pooky?”

“How’s Someone?” I said.

Her smile faded and she reached into her bag. “Let’s get back to David Wetterau and Karen-”

“I hear his name’s Trey,” I said. “You’re dating a guy named Trey, Ange.”

“How’d you-”

“We’re detectives, remember? Same way you knew I was dating Vanessa.”

“Vanessa,” she said as if her mouth were filled with onions.

“Trey,” I said.

“Shut up.” She fumbled with her bag.

I drank some Beck’s. “You’re questioning my street cred and you’re sleeping with a guy named Trey.”

“I don’t sleep with him anymore.”

“Well, I don’t sleep with her anymore.”

“Congratulations.”

“Back at you.”

There was dead silence between us for a minute as Angie pulled several sheets of thermal fax paper from her bag and smoothed them on the bar. I drank some more Beck’s, fingered the cardboard coaster, felt a grin fighting to break across my face. I glanced at Angie. The corners of her mouth twitched, too.

“Don’t look at me,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I’m telling you-” She lost the battle and closed her eyes as the smile broke across her cheeks.

Mine followed about a half second later.

“I don’t know why I’m smiling,” Angie said.

“Me, either.”

“Prick.”

“Bitch.”

She laughed and turned on her chair, drink in hand. “Miss me?”

Like you can’t imagine.

“Not a bit,” I said.

We moved to a long table in the back, ordered some club sandwiches from the kitchen, and ate them as I brought her up to speed, told her in detail about my first meeting with Karen Nichols, my two run-ins with Cody Falk, my conversations with Joella Thomas, Karen’s parents, Siobhan, and Holly and Warren Martens.

“Motive,” Angie said. “We keep coming back to motive.”

“I know.”

“Who really vandalized her car, and why?”

“Yup.”

“Who wrote the letters to Cody Falk, and why?”

“Why,” I said, “did someone feel the need to fuck with this woman’s life so completely she jumped off a building rather than take any more of it?”

“And did they go so far as to arrange David Wetterau’s accident?”

“Access is an issue, too,” I said.

She chewed her sandwich, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “How so?”

“Who sent Karen the photos of David and the other woman? Hell, who took the photos?”

“They look professional to me.”

“Me, too.” I popped a cold french fry in my mouth. “And who gave Karen her own psychiatrist’s notes? That’s a big one.”

Angie nodded. “And why?” she said. “Why, why, why?”

It turned into a long night. We read through all forty-six statements given by the witnesses to David Wetterau’s accident, and a good half saw nothing at all, while the other twenty or so backed up the eventual police determination-Wetterau tripped in a pothole, got clipped in the head by a car doing everything in its power not to hit him.

Angie had even drawn up a crude diagram of the accident scene. It showed the placement of all forty-six witnesses at the time of the accident, and looked like a rough representation of a football game after a broken play. The majority of the witnesses-twenty-six-had been standing on the southwest corner of Purchase and Congress. Stockbrokers, mostly, heading for South Station after a day in the financial district, they stood waiting for the light to change. Another thirteen stood on the northwest corner, directly across from David Wetterau as he jaywalked toward them. Two more witnesses stood on the northeast corner, and a third drove the car behind Steven Kearns, the driver of the car that eventually clipped Wetterau’s head. Of the remaining five witnesses, two had stepped off the curb on the southeast corner as the light turned yellow, and three were in the crosswalk, jaywalking like Wetterau-two heading west into the financial district, one heading east.

The closest witness had been that man, the one heading east. His name was Miles Brewster, and just after he passed David Wetterau, Wetterau stepped in the pothole. The car was already traveling through the intersection, and when Wetterau fell, Steven Kearns immediately went into his swerve and those in the crosswalk scattered.

“Except for Brewster,” I said.

“Huh?” Angie looked up from the photos of David Wetterau and the other woman.

“Why didn’t this Brewster guy panic, too?”

She slid her chair over beside mine and looked down at the diagram.

“He’s here,” I said and placed my finger on the crude stick figure she’d labeled W#7 . “He’s moved past Wetterau, so his back would have been to the car.”

“Right.”

“He hears tires squeal. He turns back, sees the car plowing toward him, and yet he’s-” I found his statement, read from it. “He’s, quote, ‘a foot from the guy, reaching toward him, you know, sorta frozen’ when Wetterau gets hit.”

Angie took the statement from my hand and read it. “Yeah, but you can freeze up in this sort of situation.”

“But he’s not frozen, he’s reaching.” I pulled my chair in closer to the table, pointed at W#7 in the diagram. “His back was to it, Ange. He had to turn, see it develop. His arm’s not frozen, but his legs are? He’s standing, by his own admission, a foot, maybe two, from car tires and a rear bumper sliding out of control.”

She stared down at the diagram, rubbed her face. “Our possession of these statements is illegal. We can’t reinterview Brewster and let on that we know what his original statement was.”

I sighed. “That do make it tougher.”

“It do.”

“But the guy bears a second look, you agree?”

“Definitely.”

She sat back in her chair, raised both hands to her head to push back hair that wasn’t there anymore. She caught herself at the same time I did, gave my wide grin her middle finger as she brought her hands back down.