The death of Eve’s father, Minneapolis Deputy Police Inspector Danny Mulligan, and her kid brother, Asher. Skinny kid, smart, a hacker.
Asher saw me kiss Eve, and for a second the taste of her is on my lips. I kissed her last night, in her house, the smell of sawdust and summer in the air.
Real. The dream felt, smelled, and tasted real.
“It’s not here.” I set down Danny and Asher’s file and keep looking, just to confirm.
“What’s not there?”
“Ashley—where’s her file?”
Burke is looking at me and now he shakes his head. “Get your head on and get down to the precinct. The Jackson murders aren’t going to solve themselves.” He turns away, runs his hand over his smooth head.
Last time I saw him, he had hair. That thought slides into my brain, and yes, maybe I’m having a nervous breakdown, a split with reality. He looks at me. “I know you’re hurting, Rem, but you’re freakin’ me out.”
Yeah, well, I’m freaking myself out too. But, “Where is Ashley’s file?”
“C’mon, Rem.”
“Tell me!”
“It’s where it’s been for the last two years! With all the other Jackson murders.”
Who’s Jackson? But I don’t ask, because Burke is wearing a thin look. “Listen, I can’t afford to have the head of the task force laying on his bathroom floor, drunk.”
Again, drunk? Although, my gaze goes to my empty glass on the desk. One lousy shot of Macallans and suddenly I’m drunk?
Burke looks a little desperate now and it’s an uncommon expression that unnerves me, too. “We finally caught a break—a survivor—and we need you on your game for this afternoon’s press conference. We’re close, Rem, you told me that yourself.”
I did? But I nod. What I really want to do is bang my head on something, dislodge the memories that are stuck deep inside of a world I don’t know, don’t understand, but have clearly lived in.
He heads for the door. Pauses. “Come in, get to work. Please don’t make me fire you.”
Fire me? Burke is my boss?
I guess that feels right—I always knew he had leadership in him.
He leaves me there, and in a moment I hear his car drive away.
Work? Oh, I’m going to work all right.
To a job I remember quitting three years ago.
So the demons couldn’t find me.
But apparently, I’ll have to face those demons, if I want answers.
2
In my line of work, I’ve met plenty of the mentally ill. People who claim to hear voices, who believe in altered realities, even a few whose illness has split them into different personalities. They become people they’re not, who wouldn’t recognize themselves.
For a moment, as I scan my kitchen, I wonder if I’m in that category. An empty bottle of Macallans—at least I’m consistent if not spendy—sits in my sink, along with an empty high-ball. In a Styrofoam container on the counter are the bones of wings from a takeout place down the street. (It does give me some small comfort that I’m still ordering from Gino’s in this reality. Clearly, I haven’t completely lost my mind.)
But maybe I have lost it, because in the r
ecycling, which emits an odor that might raise the dead, I notice about four too many crushed beer cans.
On another bender, was what Burke said, and a look at my house tells me that I’ve had a rough couple of years. The dining room remodeling project is still unfinished, but now wires dangle from where the light fixture should hang from the ceiling, a pile of unfinished baseboards sit along the wall, and no paint yet on the sheet-rocked walls. A layer of dust films the sheet over the table.