Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

aren’t they?” She thought he looked pleased, but wouldn’t swear to it. “You’re a nice girl, Wetzon.”
    “You’re a nice boy, Twoey.”
    He bent and kissed her forehead. “Alton’s a good man.” He stood there looking down at her as if she was supposed to say something.
    She said, “I know. He’s coming to the party with me.”
    “He told me.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okay, then. Do you need help getting up the stairs?”
    “No. I’m going to stay here for a while.”
    He said good night and she lay there until the spinning stopped, then got up slowly and staggered to the bathroom to pee. When she came out, she looked at her watch. It took a while to come into view. Eleven o’clock. Tomorrow night at this time it would be only ten o’clock. She’d have to remember to set it back before she went to bed.
    She put her jacket on and rolled the scarf around her neck, opened the door to the deck, and stepped out.
    The proximity of the Sound gave the night a special grace and a particular loneliness that was not lonely. She stood watching the moonlight glinting on the water, listening to the night sounds. Rock music. Laughter. A child crying. A dog with the shrill bark of a poodle, answered by a yapper. The eleven-o’clock news on TV. Wetzon sighed. Her ears tingled, and the tip of her nose was cold.
    Below her in the wooded brush between the houses, she heard the little night animals, the scavengers, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels. She looked into the darkness and saw lights on the water, glimmers from surrounding houses.
    She hated the country. The dense darkness had always frightened her, made her feel vulnerable. She remembered the isolation on the farm when she was growing up, the chores, the chicken shit on her sneakers, the dust in her nostrils, the lack of water pressure, the cesspool, the hurricanes that turned electricity off for days. The bugs took over in the summer, moths and mosquitoes, ants, Japanese beetles. Green lawns reminded her of blisters. If she ever had a country house, which was highly unlikely, she would cement the lawn and paint it green.
    Stop . Tears were running down her cheeks. The stars were so low she could almost touch them. She wanted Silvestri and their life together back.
    She dropped down on the chaise and heard a car backfire. Something warm flew past her head and landed with a wuhump in the wood shingle behind her.

51.
    W UHUMP. WUHUMP. WUHUMP wuhump wuhump wuhump. She sat immobile on the chaise, listening to the sound ricochet through her consciousness. The silence of the night lay like a moist blanket over her. Finally, she rolled off onto the deck and crawled to the sliding door.
    She tugged at it. It wouldn’t open. It was locked. No, how could it be locked? She just couldn’t get the leverage she needed from down here. Now she was caught in a to-the-death struggle with the goddam door, which wouldn’t let her in.
    God, Wetzon. Paranoia and personification over a door. She gritted her teeth, jumped up, and tugged the door open, throwing herself on the floor of Smith’s living room. Rising, she slid the door closed and dropped back on the floor, limp and giddy. She didn’t dare put on a light and make herself a real target, if that’s what she was.
    Wuhump made her head spin. Cold sweat laced her forehead, her upper lip, rolled down her underarms. Someone was trying to kill her. The undigested lobster, the wine, all those beers, began churning in her stomach like a washing machine on the spin cycle. She scrambled to her feet and raced for the bathroom just outside Mark’s room, losing everything in one long, wrenching convulsion. On her knees on the tile floor, she hugged the toilet bowl, shivering violently, tears pouring from her eyes.
    Miserable, she wished herself dead. No. No, she didn’t. She got to her feet, weak-kneed, flushed the toilet, wiped up, rinsed her mouth and washed her face. She’d drunk too much. Where was her common sense? Drowned in beer.
    Wuhump wuhump wuhump  ... again and again. Get out of my head, get out of my head.
    Too frightened to turn on the light in Mark’s room, she groped her way to the bed, dropped her clothes on the floor, and tried to make herself disappear.
    Eastern Standard Time blew in during the night, and Wetzon should have been rested, having picked up an extra hour of sleep when the clocks were set back. But instead she fell into a pattern of dozing, waking with a jerk, checking Mark’s digital clock