The Last Place

“Yeah-I know that’s idiotic. Come on, let’s go eat something, see if it jars anything loose in our brains. I can’t stand sitting in this room anymore, pretending to work.”

“Seafood?” he asked hopefully. Great, Carl had finally consented to eat a midday meal, only to choose her least favorite thing on the planet.

“If you’re willing to drive a ways.”

“Sure.” Then as an afterthought, almost suspicious. “Why?”

“I’m not a big seafood fan, but I like the setting at Jimmy Cantler’s, especially this time of year. Let’s go there.”

“You don’t like seafood, but you like to sit next to water when you eat?”

“Yeah. Do you think that makes me crazy?”

“I don’t know. Ask your doctor. He’s the one who’s getting the big bucks to figure you out.”

They were a few miles north of the turnoff to A

“What-”

“Don’t look,” he said, catching Tess’s neck with his right hand before she could turn her head. “Car’s been on us since we left Pikesville. It didn’t seem too weird at first-a lot of folks head into the city down Reisterstown Road. But he’s following us.”

“He?” Tess asked.

“I think it’s a he. With the glare on the windshield, all I can be sure of is that there’s only one person in the car.”

Tess flipped open the mirror on the visor above her seat, as if to check the makeup she wasn’t wearing. Carl was right-it was impossible to see anything except a shape. The shoulders and the suggestion of a baseball cap indicated it was a man, but that’s all she could say for sure.

They were in Carl’s car, a not-old, not-young Saturn. Gradually, he pushed it to seventy, then eighty, and finally ninety mph. Interstate 97 was sometimes called Maryland’s autobahn, for its smooth, easy curves seduced drivers into higher-than-legal speeds. But the Saturn was almost vibrating as its odometer needle climbed. It felt as if Carl could lose control at any minute. Tess knew the road, knew there was a big curve coming, where 97 turned east and the straightaway led down an old state highway.

“Carl-” she began.

He didn’t seem to hear her. He drove as if all the other cars on the road were stationary objects, and his only goal was to move between them. He slid in the far left lane, pushing the speed higher still.

“He still with us?” Carl said.

“He-”

“Don’t look,” he hissed.

Carl’s Saturn went faster still. Tess looped her hand in the handle above the door and braced the other hand against the dash. They were coming to the turnoff, where the road split and the highway had a long tapering curve that required even the best drivers to slow down. Carl showed no signs of doing this. He seemed to be counting to himself, grimly.

“Almost, almost, almost-now.” With one quick, precise turn of the wheel, he sailed back into the right lane, edging in front of an eighteen-wheeler and taking the straightaway, while a dark blue car- Tess was not sure of the make or model, it was just another foreign sedan, a Toyota or a Nissan-continued down the highway. Carl, belatedly prudent, had taken his foot off the accelerator and was letting his car slow down gradually.

“Do we need to double back to 97, or can you get there from here?” he asked, as if nothing had happened.

“Jesus, Carl, what kind of boneheaded move was that? If someone’s following you, just lead him along, take him to the fucking police station. But don’t try to drive a Saturn like you’re the king of fuckin‘ NASCAR.”

He stiffened, hurt. “If I were alone, I might have risked a confrontation with the guy. But I thought it was better, with you in the car, to lose him.”

“Hey, no fake chivalry bullshit, okay? I’m licensed to carry a gun. I’m good at taking care of myself. My boyfriend doesn’t pull this kind of macho shit on me. Where do you get off?”

“Well, maybe he should.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying-” He paused for a breath, and whatever adrenaline kick he had derived from the little chase was begi

“I never doubted that part,” Tess said. Although, come to think of it, maybe she did. Carl Dewitt was about as paranoid as anyone as she had ever met. “I just didn’t like the way you handled it.”

He was slowing, looking for a place to turn around. “You made your point. Do you have to make it in that tone of voice?”

“What tone?”

“That superior I’m-the-boss tone. I’m a pro too, you know. I deserve to be treated like one.”

She started to point out that he was not, that he was the most amateurish of amateurs. He wasn’t making a nickel off this case, while she was able to bill her time to her consortium of nonprofits. But the thought brought her up short. Why was Carl doing this? What was in it for him?

Instead, she asked, “How do you support yourself, since you stopped working for the state?”

“My knee.”

“Your knee supports you?”

“I fell at work, in the parking lot. I probably was headed that way anyway, but the fall meant I had to have replacement surgery. I’ll live long enough to need at least one more, maybe two. The rehab was hard, and I ended up screwing up my back as well, needing disk surgery. By then, I’d been out six months. I retired at age thirty-five on full disability.”

“Some folks probably envy you that.”

“Yeah, well, in the land of the no-knee men, I guess the one-knee man is king.”

Tess laughed. “That’s pretty good. Is it yours, or is that another movie line?”

“I don’t know.” Carl was driving with an old man’s deliberateness now, as if to make up for scaring her. “Maybe. It should be, don’t you think?”

CHAPTER 22

Tess had taken to sleeping with the case files of Tiffani Gunts and Lucy Fancher, although not intentionally. She crawled into bed each night, intent on reading and rereading the complete files to which she finally had access, only to nod off with the light on. She had done this every night since the trip to Notting Island, and she did it again on this balmy Friday night. The next thing she knew, Crow was kissing her awake, gathering up the photocopies spread around her and placing them in a neat stack on her bedside table.

“How-was-” She groped for the word, her mind blank-“work?”

“It was okay. We brought in the Iguanas for a late Cinco de Mayo celebration. We couldn’t get them for the real thing.”

“Very cool,” she said on a yawn. She adored the Iguanas.

“Yeah, but all these frat boys kept screaming Happy Independence Day.”

“So?”

“It’s not.”

“Well, it’s Mexican Independence Day, Crow. Their independence counts too.”

“It’s not anyone’s independence day.” He stacked her papers, clearing a space for himself, turned out the light, and slid into bed next to her. She liked the warm, smoky smell he brought to bed after a night at work. It made her feel as if she had been out clubbing and dancing.

“Huh?”

“Cinco de Mayo,” he said, reaching around her and finding her breasts, as if she might have misplaced them during the day, as if he needed them to anchor himself at night. “It commemorates a naval battle against the French, near Puebla. Mexican Independence Day is September sixteenth-diez y seis.”

“I love you for knowing that,” Tess said.

“Then show me.”

She did.

Sex, usually the perfect sleeping pill, served only to make Tess more wakeful. There was too much stimulation in her life these days, she thought, staring at the ceiling, where shadows flowed like water. She had been having trouble sleeping for a while now. She tried to pin the begi

Since she had kicked Mickey Pechter in the ribs? Maybe. Or maybe a few weeks later, when Dr. Armistead had started nosing about in her head.