‘She had a bracelet … with a penguin on it.’
He knew there was no easy way to do this, so went straight for the quickest. ‘Then we found her body. I’m sorry.’
Lucia started to cry and he waited in silence, hating this. He could tell she was trying to control it, and wanted to tell her not to bother, but she clearly wanted to talk through it, and made a reasonable job of it.
‘Was she… did she …’
‘There wasn’t a mark on her.’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ Her anger surprised him.
‘Lucia, I swear. She was still strapped in her seat. She looked like she was sleeping – I couldn’t believe it. She looked so alive, I sat and held her hand. That was when I noticed the penguin.’
Lucia sobbed, and suddenly Tom wished he’d flown back to LA to tell her.
‘Are you alone?’
‘… the Sawmill,’ he managed to decipher.
‘Is there someone at home you can be with?’
‘I have to tell my mom.’ She hitched painfully, ‘How can I tell my mom?’
‘You want me to call her?’
‘No. I need to do it. I need to tell her.’ She was crying loudly now, and Tom felt his own throat tighten at the sound of her raw grief.
‘Why don’t you speak to Louis first? Ask him to tell her. He’s right there with her, isn’t he?’
She made a little sound that he interpreted as agreement.
‘Go home, Lucia. Call Louis, then go to bed, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she gasped, between sobs.
‘Get drunk. Something. I’ll call you later.’
‘Okay.’ The word tailed off and she hung up in a burst of fresh weeping.
Tom stared at the phone in his hand, wondering why the hell he’d said he’d call her later. Wondering why the hell he didn’t regret saying it.
*
He went out to get food and ran into Munro, Carling, Potts and Jan Ryland in the lobby. The rain had stopped so they walked to a local steak bar where Tom ordered catfish – the only thing on the menu that wasn’t red meat.
Munro ordered beers and nobody questioned it when Tom ordered another just minutes later.
They’d all found bodies; they all understood.
Carling, Potts and Ryland continued a tease that had obviously been going on all day about another case in another town. Munro barely joined in, but smiled and nodded as he ate, and made sure they all had what they wanted.
Tom ate slowly and quietly, but was glad to be in the company of the others, who were keen to regain normality, if only for a couple of hours before bed. It rubbed off on him: he was soothed by the noises of the bar, the clinking of glasses, laughter from another table, the pan-piped Simon and Garfunkel, which, on any other night of his life, might have led to a scene with a waiter but tonight allowed him to feel like he was drowning gently in middle-American nothingness. It was the land that taste forgot, but it was a warm and cosy land, distant from vomity card-room carpets and guns in mouths and young girls who should have been in LA with their sisters but who were instead being zipped up in black rubber and trucked slowly to the makeshift morgue on the local high-school basketball court.
He even felt a wishy-washy sense of burgeoning goodwill towards Lenny Munro. The guy wasn’t all uptight asshole, after all.
He started to tell him about the Avia Freight connection, to check the batch number on the fan disc when he found it, but Munro waved it away. ‘Tomorrow, Tom. We’ll talk about it then. Have a drink.’
Tom ate half his fish, but drank all his beers, and laid his arm across Jan Ryland’s shoulders to steady himself as they strolled back to the Holiday Inn. Now that the rain had stopped, the returning heat was sucking it off the blacktop in wisps of steam; the humidity and the drink made him feel warm and flushed.
They stopped in the light spilling out of the lobby so Mike Carling could finish his cigar.
‘Hope that’s the end of the rain,’ said Munro.
‘Don’t let these farmers hear you say that,’ said Potts. ‘Round here that’s blasphemy.’
Carling drew on his cigar and Tom watched it glow orange and black like a microcosmic planet, new and molten in the dark. He felt calm and content and knew he’d sleep well in his good-smelling shorts and clean hotel sheets. He’d call Lucia first. He’d done what he promised her he would – he’d found her sister – even if it was a week late. That had to count for something, didn’t it? He thought it did, and that made him feel good.
‘I’m turning in,’ said Jan.
Munro grunted as if in agreement, and stumbled sideways. Tom put out an arm automatically to steady him but Munro’s knees gave way and Tom found himself stumbling too, dropping to the ground with the man in his arms, trying to break his fall.
‘Hey, Lenny, you lightweight!’ said Potts.
Carling laughed and bent to help them both up.
Tom looked down, fuzzily confused by the blood on Munro’s neat blue shirt, suddenly unnerved by the way the man’s head lolled on his thigh.
It was only when he heard the squeal of tyres as a car peeled out of the hotel lot that he realized Lenny Munro had been shot.