The Husband

Taggart asked again, "Anything, Mr. Rafferty?"
    At some point during the questioning, the bumblebee had flown away. Only now, Mitch realized that the buzzing had stopped.
    If he kept the secret of Holly's abduction, he would stand alone against her kidnappers.
    He was no good alone. He had been raised with three sisters and a brother, all born within a seven-year period. They had been one another's confidants, confessors, counsels, and defenders.
    A year after high school, he moved out of his parents' house, into a shared apartment. Later, he had gotten his own place, where he felt isolated. He had worked sixty hours a week, and longer, just to avoid being alone in his rooms.
    He had felt complete once more, fulfilled, connected, only when Holly had come into his world. I was a cold word; we had a warmer sound. Us rang sweeter on the ear than me.
    Lieutenant Taggart's eyes seemed less forbidding than they had been heretofore.
    Mitch said, "Well..."
    The detective licked his lips.
    The air was warm, humidity low. Mitch's lips felt dry, too.
    Nevertheless, the quick pink passage of Taggart's tongue seemed reptilian, and suggested that he was mentally savoring the taste of pending prey.
    Only paranoia allowed the twisted thought that a homicide detective might be allied with Holly's abductors. This private moment between witness and investigator in fact might be the ultimate test of Mitch's willingness to follow the kidnapper's instructions.
    All the flags of fear, both rational and irrational, were raised high in his mind. This parade of rampant dreads and dark suspicions did not facilitate clear thinking.
    He was half convinced that if he told Taggart the truth, the detective would grimace and say We'll have to kill her now, Mr. Rafferty. We can't trust you anymore. But we'll let you choose what we cut off first—her fingers or her ears.
    As earlier, when he'd been standing over the dead man, Mitch felt watched, not just by Taggart and the tea-drinking neighbors, but by some presence unseen. Watched, analyzed.
    "No, Lieutenant," he said. "There's nothing more."
    The detective retrieved a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.
    In the mirrored lenses, Mitch almost didn't recognize the twin reflections of his face. The distorting curve made him look old.
    "I gave you my card," Taggart reminded him.
    "Yes, sir. I have it."
    "Call me if you remember anything that seems important."
    The smooth, characterless sheen of the sunglasses was like the gaze of an insect: emotionless, eager, voracious.
    Taggart said, "You seem nervous, Mr. Rafferty."
    Raising his hands to reveal how they trembled, Mitch said, "Not nervous, Lieutenant. Shaken. Badly shaken."
    Taggart licked his lips once more.
    Mitch said, "I've never seen a man murdered before."
    "You don't get used to it," the detective said.
    Lowering his hands, Mitch said, "I guess not."
    "It's worse when it's a woman."
    Mitch did not know what to make of that statement. Perhaps it was a simple truth of a homicide detective's experience—or a threat.
    "A woman or a child," Taggart said.
    "I wouldn't want your job."
    "No. You wouldn't." Turning away, the detective said, "I'll be seeing you, Mr. Rafferty."
    "Seeing me?"
    Glancing back, Taggart said, "You and I—we'll both be witnesses in a courtroom someday."
    "Seems like a tough case to solve."
    "'Blood crieth unto me from the ground,' Mr. Rafferty," said the detective, apparently quoting someone. '"Blood crieth unto me from the ground.'"
    Mitch watched Taggart walk away.
    Then he looked at the grass under his feet.
    The progress of the sun had put the palm-frond shadows behind him. He stood in light, but was not warmed by it.

Chapter 5

     
    The dashboard clock was digital, as was Mitch's wristwatch, but he could hear time ticking nonetheless, as rapid as the click-click-click of the pointer snapping against the marker pegs on a spinning wheel of fortune.
    He wanted to race directly home from the crime scene. Logic argued that Holly would have been snatched at the house. They would not have grabbed her on the way to work, not on a public street.
    They might unintentionally have left something behind that would suggest their identity. More likely, they would have left a message for him, further instructions.
    As usual, Mitch had begun the day by picking up Iggy at his apartment in Santa Ana. Now he had to return him.
    Driving north from the fabled and wealthy Orange County coastal neighborhoods where they