Stay Close (28 page)

“Come on, Lorraine, this is important.”

“Okay, okay.” He could see now that her eyes were welling up. She quickly closed them.

“Anything?”

“No.” Her voice was soft now. “I’m sorry.”

“You okay?”

She blinked open her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Stewart Green?”

Her voice was still soft. “No. I gotta get back to work.”

“Not yet.”

Broome tried to think it through, then he remembered: Erin had the security footage. That was how they had realized the Mardi Gras connection. Erin could look through them now and search for the man Lorraine described. He debated dragging Lorraine in for Rick Mason to sketch, but Mason was also an expert on age-progression software. He could work that with what he now knew—shaved head and goatee?—and then bring it back to show Lorraine.

“I don’t understand,” Lorraine said. “Why did you ask about Mardi Gras?”

“We see a pattern.”

“What kind of pattern?”

He quickly figured, why not? Maybe she’d remember something. “Stewart Green went missing on Mardi Gras. So did Carlton Flynn.
A man named Ross Gunther was murdered on Mardi Gras. Other men too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we. I have pictures that I want to show you—of missing men. Maybe you’ll recognize one.” He had the file with him. No other patrons had come over to this corner. They sat by the main stage while a stripper dressed as Jasmine from Disney’s
Aladdin
started to dance to “A Whole New World.” The act gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “magic carpet ride.”

Broome took out the photographs and started to spread them on the bar. He watched Lorraine’s face. She took her time with the most recent one, the one that had been sent anonymously to his office.

“That’s Carlton Flynn,” she said.

“That one we know.”

Lorraine put it back and went through the other pictures. The tears were back in her eyes.

“Lorraine?”

“I don’t recognize any of them.” She blinked, turned away. “You should go.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing.”

Broome waited. For a moment Lorraine said nothing. He had always seen her upbeat, always with that sideways smile, the smoky voice, the throaty laugh. She had always been the dictionary definition of the good-time party girl.

“I’m dying,” Lorraine said.

Broome felt something in his chest dry up and blow away.

“I just came from the doctor.”

He finally found his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Cancer. It’s already pretty far along. I have a year, maybe two.”

Broome could feel his throat tightening up. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lorraine tried to give him the crooked grin. “Believe it or not, you’re the only one I’ve told. Pathetic, right?”

Broome reached his hand across the bar. For a moment she didn’t move. “I’m glad you told me,” he said.

She put her hand on his. “I’ve made choices people don’t understand, but I don’t have regrets. I was married once, and yeah, true, he was an abusive son of a bitch. But even if he wasn’t, that life just wasn’t for me. This one was. I’ve loved it here. It’s been a lot of laughs, you know what I mean?”

Broome nodded, met her eye.

More tears came to her eyes. “But this is the part that sucks about having no one, you know? I wish… oh man, I sound like such a baby… I want someone to care. I want someone to be crushed when I go. I want someone to hold my hand when I die.”

Again he wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t want to sound patronizing. He wanted to do something, anything. Broome liked to be detached—emotions were messy—but he hated feeling helpless.

“I’ll be with you, if you want. I’ll hold your hand.”

“You’re sweet, but no.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do, but that’s what I meant. Sure, I could find some people who pity me enough to be with me at the end. But the kind of thing I’m talking about, you only get that through commitment. You only get that through being with someone during good times
and bad, over years, in a real relationship. You don’t just get to ask for it in the end, you know what I’m saying?”

“I guess I do.”

“It’s okay. Like I said, I wouldn’t change a thing. That’s life. You can find joy and be happy—but you don’t get to have everything.”

The simple wisdom that is the truth. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

“Lorraine?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re beautiful, you know.”

“You hitting on me?”

“Maybe.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Would it be a pity screw?”

“For you or for me?”

She laughed. “Maybe both.”

“Even better,” Broome said. “I got this case right now, but as soon as it’s done…”

“You know where to find me.”

Her hand slipped out of his then. She started down toward the other end of the bar. Broome was about to leave when Lorraine said, “I assume Cassie is helping you out?”

“She is. She may have even gotten a look at Harry’s killers.”

“How?”

“She went back to his office last night.”

“Alone or with Ray?”

Broome stopped. “Ray?”

Lorraine’s eyes widened a bit. He could see that she wanted to take it back, but Broome was having none of that.

“Who the hell is Ray?”

N
ATURALLY
, M
EGAN
’
S FIRST WORRY
had been for the safety of her family.

Before she let Broome start going into details, she’d called a few of the stay-at-home mothers. She didn’t want to raise suspicions, so she started chatting about the usual suburban inanities: kid sports, the father-coach who favored his own kid, the teachers who gave too much/too little homework, the new online school-lunch ordering system. Broome just shook his head. Eventually Megan got around to asking the mom for a favor, making sure that both Kaylie and Jordan had after-school coverage and even encouraged sleepovers, so they’d be safe and away from the house. She promised to do all the weekend driving in exchange.

That done, Megan tried calling Dave again. Still no answer. She texted, “Stay in the office until you talk to me”—no reply but even under the most pessimistic of scenarios, he wouldn’t be home for hours.

Then Broome started talking, and her world, already tilted off its axis, took another hit.

Now here she was, sitting in a windowless room in a police station, trying to give descriptions of two people she barely saw to a
sketch artist. She tried to focus. Rick Mason gave her prompts that helped her see that young couple clearer in her mind’s eye.

Megan tried to sort through what Broome had told her, but in the end, no matter how many different ways she tried to approach it, none of it made sense. Broome was trying to connect three seemingly different events. One, a murder from eighteen years ago. Two, a group of men, like Stewart Green and Carlton Flynn, who had vanished annually on or around Mardi Gras over a seventeen-year period. Three, last night’s torture death of poor Harry Sutton. If he was right, if they were somehow linked, Megan couldn’t imagine what part the young couple, for example, could possibly play. They’d have been kids when the first murder and Stewart’s disappearance had occurred.

“His nose was thinner,” she said to Mason.

He nodded and went back to work.

The what-ifs kept raising their hideous heads. What if Megan hadn’t run away all those years ago. What if she had stayed and faced the music and seen what really happened to Stewart Green. Would this all be behind her now? Would all those “Mardi Gras Men”—men who had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth, never to be seen again—from Stewart Green right up to Carlton Flynn, would they still be here and with their families and living their lives?

What if she had just stayed with Ray.

There were no regrets—only what-ifs. There couldn’t be regrets once you had children—it would be too monstrous to contemplate. Would Megan’s life have been happier or sadder with any of these what-ifs? That no longer mattered because any what-if led to a world without her children, without Kaylie and Jordan even being born, and there was no way any parent could ever entertain that
existence being preferable. In the end, whether her life had ended up being exciting or not, fast paced or not, joyful or not, the one scenario she could never embrace would be one without Kaylie and Jordan.

A mother can’t go there.

The door flew open, and a big man with steel-wool gray hair and a dress shirt a couple of sizes too small burst in. The man was beefy and red faced. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted.

Rick Mason jumped up. “Chief Goldberg…”

“I said, what the hell is going on?”

“I’m sketching two possible suspects.”

“Why would you be doing that down here?”

Mason said nothing.

“You have an office, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So why are you down here?”

“Detective Broome suggested that I work here.”

Goldberg put his hands on his hips. “Did he now?”

“He said that he didn’t want this witness compromised.”

Goldberg turned his attention to Megan. “Well, well. If it isn’t Janey from the diner. Another friendly visit?”

Megan said, “I’d rather not say.”

“Excuse me? Who are you really?”

“Am I compelled to give you my name?”

That caught him off guard. “Legally, I guess not—”

“Then I’d rather not. I’m here of my own free will and at the request of Detective Broome.”

“Oh, really?” Goldberg bent down in her face. “I happen to be Detective Broome’s immediate superior.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“Doesn’t it, Ms. Pierce?”

Megan closed her mouth. Goldberg had already known her name. That couldn’t be a good thing. He moved toward the sketch pad. Rick Mason tried to block the view, like a fourth grader who didn’t want to get copied off on a test. Goldberg nudged him aside and put on a pair of glasses. When his gaze landed on the sketches of the young couple, his body convulsed as though he’d been zapped with a stun gun.

“Who the hell are these two?”

No one said anything.

Goldberg turned his attention to Mason. “Did you hear what I asked?”

“I don’t know. I was just told to get the sketch.”

“For what case?”

He shrugged.

Goldberg turned back to Megan. “Where did you see these two?”

“I’d rather wait for Detective Broome.”

Goldberg looked at the sketches again. “No.”

“No?”

“You tell me now. Or you get the hell out of here.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am.”

This Goldberg guy was giving Megan a serious case of the willies. She would indeed get out of here. She’d take a walk, maybe go to the diner, and then she’d call Broome and regroup. There was a reason why Broome wanted to keep her hidden—and maybe it had
to do with more than just protecting her identity. Maybe it had to do with his charging rhino of a boss, Goldberg.

She pushed back her chair. “Fine, I’m out of here.”

“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

Goldberg turned away, troubled. His rudeness surprised her. It was almost as though he wanted her out. This was probably some kind of power play with Broome, but she didn’t like it. Still, it would be best to get out of here now so she didn’t tell him anything she shouldn’t.

Megan stood. She had just grabbed her purse when once again the door burst open.

It was Broome.

When Broome first pushed through the door, she could see something odd on his face: anger—even before he saw Goldberg. The anger, weirdly enough, seemed directed at her. She had a second to wonder what that was about, if something had gone wrong with his visit with Lorraine, but before Broome could act upon it, he spotted Goldberg. When he did, Broome’s face fell.

For a moment the two men just stared at each other. Both were making fists and for a split second, Megan wondered if one of them was going to take a swing. Then Broome took a step back, shrugged, and said, “Busted.”

That opened the floodgates. “What the hell is going on, Broome?” Goldberg demanded.