Inherit the Dead

was in the Hamptons was the last time he got shot.

3
MARCIA CLARK
    P erry squinted through his windshield, taking in the barren white dunes to his right, the rolling, black ocean to his left, and the vast, gray canopy of sky. As he shifted his gaze back to the wide two-lane highway that had finally emptied out of traffic, he was suddenly conscious of a strange, unsettled feeling.
    Now that he thought about it, the feeling had begun to creep in a while ago, hovering just below consciousness. He again scanned the austere landscape searching for an answer. And found it. Openness. That’s what it was. The sense of near-limitless space. And quiet. No concrete canyons that echoed with eardrum-shattering horns, no teeming-humanity sidewalks. It should have been soothing. Instead, it made him anxious, scared. As though he was floating alone and untethered through space. Perry struggled to rationalize the sensation, reasoned with himself that it was just a reaction to the long stretches of lonely road, but the panic continued to surge. He was barely breathing.
    He quickly rolled down the window and gulped cold, wet blasts of air. The sobering slap brought him back to earth, and he huffed with relief. But the relief brought only disgust. What kind of loser gets freaked by some empty sand dunes? A familiar lead weight sankin his chest. As usual, he’d found yet another way to despise himself. And no sooner had that feeling wormed its way to the surface than the march of Perry’s parade of horribles began: his ruined career on the force, his failed marriage, a daughter he loved dearly but saw only on weekends, and sometimes not even then. He gripped the steering wheel in frustration. He didn’t have time for this now. With an effort that was almost physical, Perry forced his mind to push down the lid on that treasure chest and work on the problem at hand: Julia Drusilla.
    What was her angle? After years as a homicide dick, Perry accepted nothing and no one at face value (his ex-wife used to say he’d been that way long before he was a cop—he’d always tell her he doubted that). Julia Drusilla claimed she wanted the chance to reconnect with her daughter. Perry could identify with the sentiment, but that didn’t mean he believed her. Yet he couldn’t think of any other reason for Julia to want to find her daughter. The usual motive—money—didn’t work. If Angel didn’t turn up in time to sign the papers, the entire inheritance would go to Julia. So as far as Julia’s financial empire went, things only looked rosier if Angel stayed gone.
    On the other hand, if Julia was so bent out of shape by her estrangement from Angel, why wait a year to reach out? And why had it taken everyone two weeks to figure out that they should call in the troops to help find the girl? The pieces didn’t fit. But that didn’t worry him. Not yet. The jigsaw puzzle couldn’t come together when all he had were pieces of sky. With a little luck, the interview he was headed for now would give him at least one central piece of the puzzle: Norman Loki, Angel’s father.
    The fact that Norman Loki had wound up with custody of the girl child had surprised him, no matter what Julia said. In Perry’s case, his lawyer had nixed the idea of even trying for custody. Teenage daughter goes with mom, end of story. He didn’t like it, but given his circumstances, he didn’t have the stones to put up a fight. Thatdidn’t mean it hadn’t hurt . . . badly. He’d been a good father. Hell, a great one. At least he’d tried to be. So maybe that was Julia’s angle: having been knocked for a loop after losing custody—even though she denied it—she finally felt strong enough to fight for her daughter.
    Perry sat with that idea for a few moments, then shook his head. That wasn’t it, either. The steely crone who’d hired him didn’t get “thrown” by much, if anything. And certainly not by loss of custody. When he’d met Julia, he’d been prepared for the rage and recriminations that usually swirled through these family dramas. But there’d been none of that. Julia had been as icy cool as a dry martini.
    Even when it came to a discussion of her ex—a topic almost guaranteed to kick up clouds of wrath—she’d barely reacted. She’d handed him Norman Loki’s information as though she were sharing her prescription for a colonoscopy. No anger, just distaste. The neutrality of her response had intrigued him enough to put in a call the moment