Firefly Rain (13 page)

I looked around the room, but my bathrobe was nowhere to be seen. My clothes were in the dresser against the far wall, but the door was open, and there were footsteps coming down the hall. Heavy ones, too, by the sound of things, and my nose told me someone was bringing coffee.

I decided that the better part of valor involved not having my balls flap in the breeze in front of a stranger. So, rather than make a mad dash for my boxers, I just settled in and wrapped those blankets tight.

After maybe ten ticks of the clock, Officer Hanratty came around the corner and stomped into the room. That woman walked like a cat I used to have, which is to say that she might have moved with authority and dignity, but someone had left grace out of the package. In her left hand was a steaming mug of what my nose told me was freshly brewed coffee, and in her right was a paperback novel about as thick as my wrist.

“You,” she said without preamble when she saw I was awake, “are a goddamned idiot. You’re also lucky as hell, and don’t you forget it.”

She shoved the coffee into my hands. I took it gratefully and slurped at it while she dropped herself into the chair in the corner. It groaned in protest, but not too loudly.

“Thank you,” I said, and I took a long swig of the coffee. It
was too hot and too strong and it burned going down, but my, it was wonderful. I came up grinning and saw she was looking at me over the top of her book.

“You seem to be feeling better,” she said neutrally, flipping a page.

“I am,” I said. “Do I have you to thank for bringing me back here?”

“In part.” She looked down, skimmed another few lines, then dropped the book into her lap. “What the hell were you thinking, running five miles along that road in that storm and dressed like you were going down the hall to take a leak?”

I shifted myself backward a few inches so my back was against the wall and my weight helped pin the covers around me. “I had good reason,” I said. “And as much as I appreciate the coffee, I’m a bit surprised to see you in my house.”

“Well,” Hanratty said, leering at me, “it was me or Carl Powell. I figured you’d be happier with me. Besides, the door was open.”

“Funny, I thought I’d closed it.”

“You did,” she said. “At least, maybe you did when you went out. Then again, things have happened since then.”

“Whatever that means, I guess.” I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand, trying to wipe away the headache that had decided to wake up with the rest of me. “Tell you what. You tell me how you got me back here, and I’ll tell you why I was running down the road in my skivvies. Deal?”

“Bathrobe and skivvies,” she corrected, but she was smiling. “Fair enough. Here’s what happened, at least from my end.

“Carl Powell found you laying facedown on the side of the road, damn near dead of hypothermia. I still don’t know why I agreed to let him bring you home, by the way, instead of taking you to the hospital. I may yet change my mind.”

“Carl?” I asked. “Now how about that.”

She snorted. “I’m glad to see you’re taking interest. Don’t go starting with any crazy talk about Carl now, not until you at least put some pants on. You see, he said he’d come out here to talk to you. Said he wanted to clear some things off his chest about what was going on.”

“Must have been pretty important, for him to come out here in that weather,” I said.

“Well, it
is
Carl. Once he sets his mind to something…” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “But in any case, I was telling you what happened. Carl came by and found your door open and the rain blowing in. He stuck his head in and hollered for you but got no answer. So he walked in and poked around, and he still couldn’t find you. That’s when he got worried. He called the station from your kitchen, then he got in his truck to look for you. Since he hadn’t seen you coming in, he kept going out, and that’s where he found you. I got there about three minutes later, and by then, he’d gotten you off the ground and wrapped you in a blanket. Wouldn’t let me take you to the hospital, though, like I said. Insisted you’d do better at home. I tell you, I think when I suggested an ambulance he was ready to haul off and hit me.”

I sipped my coffee and didn’t say anything. Hanratty watched me do it and didn’t say anything either.

“So what happened then?” I finally prompted.

“About what you’d expect. We brought you back here and threw you in a hot shower for a while. It works for the drunks, so I figured it would work for you. After that, we threw your sorry butt into bed, and Carl stayed up all night watching you. I came by about an hour ago to relieve him. That’s about it.”

“He stayed all night?” I blinked. “Seriously?”

Hanratty nodded. “Seriously. Which means if he wanted to do something unpleasant to you, or take something out of this
house, he had plenty of time to do it in.” She looked around. “If you ask me, it doesn’t look like he did, now, does it?”

I shook my head. “It’s just a little confusing, that’s all. I’m not accusing anyone of anything anyhow, at least not until I have another cup of coffee. Don’t you go jumping to conclusions, either.”

She threw her hands up in a gesture of surrender, a thick finger holding her place in the book. “You got me there,” she said, and she chuckled. “Now tell you what—you tell me what on earth possessed you to go running down the road like that, and I’ll get you another cup of coffee.”

“Seems fair to me,” I said, holding out my cup.

“Cream and sugar?” she asked.

“Neat,” I replied, and I got another laugh. She put her book down with the spine cracked, then marched off back down the hallway. I took the opportunity to shut the bedroom door and find myself some boxers and a pair of jeans. No time for socks, though, and I took the first T-shirt I could find, one that read Braintree HS Athletic Department. I shrugged into that, ran my fingers through my hair, and dropped back onto the bed just as Hanratty knocked.

“All decent?” she asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“Well, damn.” She pushed the door open, grinning. “And here I was hoping for a nice view.”

“You could have had all you wanted while you were bringing me back here,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but I get as much of that as I want helping out with autopsies.” She snorted at my expression, shoved the overfull mug into my fingers, and sat herself back down. “By the way, you might want to learn to put away your toys before you go running around in the rain.”

“Toys?” I blinked. “What toys?”

She shrugged and jerked one thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “There was a toy soldier in the middle of the kitchen floor. Aren’t you a little old to be playing with those?”

“They were Father’s,” I heard myself say. “Where did you say the soldier was?”

She thought for a moment. “Middle of the floor, like I said. Facing the doorway, like he was guarding it. Not that it was going to do much good if someone came bigfooting through there.” She lifted one booted foot, then set it down fast, to make sure I knew what she was talking about. “I picked it up and put it on the table, so you can thank me later. If they were your father’s, you might want to take better care of them.”

“I thought I had,” I said mildly, but my thoughts were racing. More than anything, I wanted to go check the box I’d left in the drawer to see if—no, how—it had been disturbed. But I wasn’t going to do that in front of Hanratty. For all her newfound cheer, talking to her was still not something I was all that comfortable doing. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain why I was going through my old socks like a dog digging for a bone. No, better to check later.

If, mind you, I decided I really wanted to check at all.

Instead, I breathed in the aroma of the coffee for a moment, reluctant to start the real conversation. I could feel Hanratty’s eyes on me, questioning.

“Just one question before I start,” I asked her. “Are you listening to me as Miss Hanratty or Officer Hanratty?”

“Didn’t know there was a difference,” she rumbled. “Everyone in this town wears two hats, at least.”

I shrugged and took a drink, barely managing to avoid spilling from the overfull mug. Definitely from the bottom of the pot; I could feel the grounds on my tongue.

Still, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I gulped it down, wiped my mouth on the back of my wrist, and started talking. Hanratty listened, nodded, and grunted a couple of times when that was called for, but mostly she just let me ramble. I told her about seeing the car out on the road and about going after it, and about the start-and-stop chase that we’d had halfway to the county line. I wasn’t proud in the telling, but I didn’t leave anything out, either.

“Did you see the driver?” Hanratty asked, when I finally wound down.

“Nope.” I looked sadly into the empty mug. “Best I got was a silhouette against the lightning.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “And whoever was in there must have had a hell of a time fitting into the front seat, because they were not thin. Not thin at all.” I thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure it was a man. Seemed to be shaped like one, anyway, though you spend enough time in Cambridge and you learn not to make assumptions on that sort of thing.”

She didn’t laugh, nor did she offer to get me another cup of coffee. Instead, she crossed her legs—a damn impressive sight to see, I might add—and scrunched up her face in the sort of “I’m thinking” look you usually only see on small children and Elmer Fudd. When she spoke, she didn’t sound happy.

“So you’re telling me that out of all this, out of Carl’s story and your story and your run in the rain, we’ve got nothing but the shadow of a fat man to go on?”

“That’s about it, yeah. Unless someone saw the car driving out here, or driving off once I was dusted.”

Hanratty snorted loud enough to rattle the window. “Mr. Logan, you were not dusted. You were
mudded
, not to mention
played. I’d tell you that you did something stupid there, but that wouldn’t be true. You did so many stupid things that I don’t even know where to start the list.”

To my surprise, I felt a genuine twinge of embarrassment. “I know, I know. But I saw the car and…” My voice trailed off. “I just got mad.”

There was no sympathy in Hanratty’s voice as she creaked to her feet. “You nearly got dead, is what you got. Look, here’s what I want you to do if your car comes around again. I want you to call me, and then I want you to lock your damn door and sit the hell down. You got lucky this time, Mr. Logan. Your little friend could have just thrown the car into reverse after you went down, and then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Hell, he left you there to die. Next time, I want you to take this seriously.”

“I had been,” I said mildly. “Last time I was in town, I got the impression that you weren’t.”

Her face got hard, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. “You get a lot of wrong impressions, Mr. Logan. I’ll be going now. Nice to see you back on your feet. If you remember anything else, give me a call.”

I opened my mouth to say something, and a look from Hanratty shut it. “I’ll show myself out,” she said, and she stalked off. The slam of the kitchen door told me she had indeed found the exit on her own, and furthermore, had done so with style. I waited to see if she was really going or was instead going to stick her head back inside my door to yell something else.

The part of me that bet she was coming back in would have lost if there’d been money on the table. Even through the closed door and down the hall, I could hear the thump of a car door closing, and then the angry cough of a big sedan’s engine coming to life. By the time the gravel was spitting out from under her
wheels, I’d already stood up and started heading for the last place I wanted to be.

The door to my parents’ bedroom was firmly closed when I reached it. The floor didn’t show any water, or any footprints. If Carl had been there, he’d mopped up after himself pretty good.

Gingerly, I put the coffee mug down on the hallway floor, then nudged it against the wall with my toe. My hand reached out for the doorknob, then hesitated. It just hung there in the air, not moving where I told it to.

“What the hell?” I said to myself, and I closed my fingers into a fist. They curled themselves into shape easily, but when I tried for the doorknob again, my hand froze in midair. I pulled my hand back, and it went easily. Tried to move it forward, though, and it stopped halfway there.

“Goddamn.” I stopped trying to move and stared at my hand. It didn’t do anything interesting, so I watched it for a minute, and then was struck by a thought.

“Stupid,” I told myself, and I knocked. Three times on the wood of the door, one after another.

There was no answer, of course, not that I’d been expecting one, but suddenly my hand felt lighter and I could rest it on the knob. Moving quickly, before whatever it was that had stopped me could change its mind, I turned the knob—old crystal, something that Mother always fretted over whenever I ran through the house—and stepped into the room.

No looking around this time. I knew what I was after. No words, either. If there was something in that room—and considering what I’d been through, a mysterious dent in a pillow didn’t seem like so much—it would have to get by without my conversation.

Instead, I made a beeline for the chest at the foot of the bed. It was cedar, and filled the air with its heavy scent. Grandfather
Logan had made it with his own hands—had stained the wood and given it to my grandmother on their wedding night. Filled with blankets and lovingly tended, it had been off-limits for hide-and-seek all my life.

“Don’t play in there, honey,” Mother would say, but she’d never mention the real reason.

I flipped open the lid and started digging through quilts. It was a gamble, I knew. If Carl hadn’t taken care of it, if Carl hadn’t known it was there, then the thing I was looking for would most likely be a useless piece of junk. But I was banking that Carl knew more about that house and its belongings than I did, and that he did the same thing for Father’s things as he did for Mother’s legacy.

My hands closed on metal. “Well, look at you,” I whispered, and I pulled the weight up and out.