Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

As the long day took its toll, and she began to drift, she imagined too well.

Voices bounced off the walls, cutlery clattered at tables while people dug into the nachos, potato skins, rice balls, and drank away the dregs of the workday.

She recognized them—CiCi Way, and Macie Snyder, the boyfriend, the blind date laughing around the table.

Joe Cattery at the bar with Nancy Weaver, Lewis Callaway, Stevenson Vann, the accountant sitting alone with his work waiting for the latte he’d never drink.

The bartender, working the stick and arguing sports with a man he’d soon try to kill.

Joe Cattery turned to her first.

“I’ll be dead in a few minutes. Since you’re here, why don’t you stop it? I’d really like to see my wife and kids again.”

“Sorry. It’s already done. I’m just here to figure it out.”

“I just wanted a couple drinks. I wasn’t hurting anybody.”

“No, but you will.”

She watched Macie and CiCi get up, start toward the stairs leading down.

“We were going to have dinner,” Macie told Eve. “I have a good boyfriend, and an okay job. I’m happy. Still, I’m nobody. I’m just not that important, you know?”

“You’re important to me now.”

“But I had to die for that.”

“They all do, don’t they.” Stella swiveled on a bar stool, a drink in her hand, blood dripping from the slice in her throat. “You don’t give a shit about anybody till they’re bleeding on the ground.”

“I have a man I love. I have a partner and friends. I have a cat.”

“You’ve got nothing, because there’s nothing inside you. You’re broken in there so nothing holds long.” Lifting her glass in a toast, Stella shook back hair matted with blood. “What you are is a killer.”

“I’m not. I’m a cop.”

“The badge just gives you an excuse. It’s your free fucking pass. You killed him, didn’t you? Hey, Richie.”

Her father turned on his stool. Blood poured out of countless holes in his body. Holes she’d put there as a battered, broken child of eight.

“Hi, little girl. Drink up! It’s a family reunion.”

He’d been handsome once, she remembered, hard and handsome before too many drinks, too many cons had softened him, worn at him. They’d made an attractive couple once, she imagined. But what lived in each of them had rotted them—rotten from the inside out.

She couldn’t be theirs. She wouldn’t be theirs. “You’re not my family.”

“You wanna check that DNA again.” Her father winked at her, sipped a foamy brew. “I’m your flesh and blood. I’m in your bones, in your guts, just like Stella here. And you killed me.”

“You were raping me. Again. Beating me, again. You broke my arm. You choked me. You pushed yourself into me and tore me. I was just a child.”

“I took care of you!” He threw the brew down, but no one stopped talking, stopped laughing. “I can still take care of you. Don’t you forget it.”

“You can’t hurt me anymore.”

He smiled, with teeth gone shiny and sharp. “Wanna bet?”

“She killed me, too,” Stella reminded him. “What kind of sick bitch kills her own mother?”

“I didn’t kill you. McQueen did.”