Prayers for Rain (Kenzie & Gennaro 5)

I chuckled. “Lapsed, Siobhan. Permanently lapsed.”

She rolled her eyes at that, leaned back, and smoked for a bit without saying a word.

The sun drifted behind some greasy white clouds, and Siobhan said, “You’re looking for a reason, yeah? Start with the man who raped her.”

“Excuse me?”

“She was raped, Mr. Kenzie. Six weeks before she died.”

“She told you this?”

Siobhan nodded.

“She give you a name?”

She shook her head. “She said only that she’d been promised he wouldn’t bother her, and then he did.”

“Cody fucking Falk,” I whispered.

“Who’s that?”

“A ghost,” I said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

10

Cody Falk rose at six-thirty the next morning and stood on his back porch with a bath towel around his waist and sipped his morning coffee. Once again, he seemed to be posing for envisioned admirers, his strong chin tilted up slightly, coffee cup held sturdily aloft, his eyes slightly dewy through my binoculars. He looked out at his backyard as if surveying his fiefdom. In his head, I was pretty sure, a voice-over for a Calvin Klein commercial played.

He raised a fist to stifle a yawn, as if the commercial had begun to bore him, and then he sauntered back inside, closed the sliding glass doors behind him, and threw the lock.

I left my spot and drove around the block. I parked two houses down from Cody’s and walked up to his front door. Three hours ago, I’d found his backup keys tucked away in a magnetic Hide-a-Key caddy attached to the underside of his drainpipe, and I used them to let myself in.

The house smelled of those potpourri leaves people buy at Crate & Barrel, and it looked like Cody had ordered the rest of the house from the same catalogue. It was rustic, Santa Fe mission chic right down the line. A cherry-wood dining set sat just off to my left. The seat-cushion prints were faux Native American and matched the rug underneath. An oak chest and hutch with Aztec moldings served as Cody’s liquor cabinet, and it was fully stocked, most of the bottles only a third full. The walls had been painted dark gold. It looked like the kind of room an interior decorator would try to sell you on. Step out of Boston and into Austin, Cody, you’ll feel so much better about yourself.

I heard the shower turn on upstairs, and I left the dining room.

In the kitchen, four high-backed bar stools surrounded a butcher-block table in the center of the floor. The blond oak cabinets were half full, mostly goblets and martini glasses, a few canned vegetables, some Middle Eastern rice mixes. Judging by the stack of takeout menus to gourmet supermarkets and restaurants, I determined Cody didn’t cook in much. The sink held two plates, rinsed clean of food, a coffee cup, three glasses.

I opened the fridge. Four bottles of Tremont Ale, a carton of half-and-half, and a container of pork fried rice. No condiments. No milk or baking soda or produce. No sense that there’d ever been anything in there but the beer, the half-and-half, and last night’s Chinese.

I went back through the dining room and entrance foyer and I could smell the leather in the living room before I entered. Again, a southwestern motif-dark oak chairs with hard straight backs supporting cranberry leather. A coffee table on stubby legs. Everything smelled well-oiled and new. A stack of magazines and glossy circulars on the coffee table seemed typical of the owner- GQ, Men’s Health, Details , for Christ’s sake, and catalogues to Brookstone, Sharper Image, Pottery Barn. The hardwood floors gleamed.

You could photograph the lower half of the house and put it in a magazine. Everything matched, yet nothing gave any discernible clues to the owner himself. The gleaming hardwood floors only accentuated the warm, dark coldness of the place. These were rooms meant to be looked at, not enjoyed.

Upstairs, the shower shut off.

I left the living room and climbed the stairs quickly, tugging gloves over my hands as I went. At the top, I removed the lead sap from my back pocket, listened outside the bathroom door as Cody Falk exited the shower stall and began to dry himself. The plan, such as it was, was simple: Karen Nichols had been raped; Cody Falk was a rapist; make sure Cody Falk never raped again.

I lowered myself to one knee and looked through the peephole into the bathroom. Cody was bent at the waist, drying his ankles, the top of his head pointed directly at the door. He was roughly three feet away.

When I kicked the door in, it hit Cody Falk in the head and he stumbled back and then fell on his ass. He looked up at me, and I hit him with the sap about a quarter of a second before I realized the man on the floor wasn’t Cody Falk.

He was blond, and large, a bit overly defined in the arms and chest. He flopped back on the Italian marble and arched his back and then wheezed like fresh tuna tossed to a loading dock.

There were two doors leading into the bathroom-the one I’d come through and one to my left. Cody Falk stood in the one to my left. He was fully clothed and held a lug wrench in his hand, and he smiled when he swung it at my head.

I took a step back, and the guy on the floor wrapped his arms around my ankle. Cody’s swing missed my left eye socket by a whisper, but it tagged my ear, and a holy city’s worth of cathedral bells rang in my head all at once.

The guy on the floor was strong. Even in his weakened condition, he yanked back hard on my leg. I stomped on his head and punched Cody in the mouth.

It wasn’t much of a punch. I was off balance, and my ear was buzzing, and I never was much of a boxer in the first place. Still, it caught Cody off guard, lit up something surprised and self-pitying in his eyes. Most important, it backed him up.

The guy on the floor screamed when I stomped his head a second time. I pulled my leg from his grasp, and took a step toward Cody. Cody touched his lips and raised the wrench again.

The guy on the floor managed to snag my pant leg and twist it, and I stumbled.

Cody gasped in surprise as the stumble served up my head like a tethered balloon.

With the second hit, everything in the room turned a squishy gray, and my shoulder spun into the wall.

The guy on the floor got up on his knees and rammed his head into the small of my back, and Cody beamed as he raised the wrench over his head.

I don’t remember the third hit.

What exactly should we do here, Leonard?”

“Just what I’ve been saying, Mr. Falk. Call the police.”

“Ah, Leonard, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

I opened my eyes and saw double. Two Cody Falks-one solid, the other transparent and ghostly-paced the kitchen. He drummed his fingers on the countertops and kept licking at the cut on his swollen upper lip.