Chapter One In retrospect, announcing himself in the hallway almost seemed funny. Police. I''m opening the door. The small bedroom in the back of Gwen Mullen''s apartment felt like a meat locker. Worth understood when he reached down and felt cold iron: She''d valved off the radiator in here. She''d also opened the windows. Plastic blinds clattered on the chilly breeze. He raised the Maglite to eye level.
Russell lay naked in a twist of sheets. In the beam of the flashlight, Worth caught glimpses of white amid ragged red pulp. He guessed he was looking at molars. Maybe jawbone. He wasn''t sure. Moving the light around the room, his own breath foggy in the beam, he passed over the nightstand and noticed a dark square centered in a thin layer of dust. He found the lamp on the floor beside the bed, cord trailing, still plugged into the socket near the peeling baseboard. The lamp came on when he flipped the switch by his elbow, throwing shadows up the cracked plaster wall.
By some trick the bulb had remained intact; dark clots of stuff had congealed around the chunky glass base. Worth automatically reached for the mike on his shoulder. The words sat in his throat, pushing their way up: Three Adam Zero, Three Adam Sixty . His sergeant''s car. He wondered how long the guy had been here like this. He wondered how many times she''d hit him with the lamp. At some point, he realized he''d released the call button without speaking. Worth found Gwen sitting on the floor in the living room, staring at nothing, arms around her knees.
A dimestore jack-o''-lantern the size of a Weber grill hulked in one corner, bathing the place in cheap orange light. He slid a stack of magazines out of his way and sat on the edge of the low coffee table in front of her. There was a big ceramic ashtray shaped like Texas, heaped with butts. None of them looked like Gwen''s brand. "In the bedroom." She pointed. "Back there." "Gwen," he said.
"You showed me." No response. "Can you look at me?" If she could, she didn''t. "Can you tell me what happened?" "Didn''t you see?" She drifted again, and Worth let her go. In the reflection of a framed race car poster on the wall he could see the jack-o''-lantern standing sentry over his shoulder, jagged mouth leering. For some stupid reason, he found that he didn''t like having the thing at his back. He stood and took a better look around. Cracked woodwork, water stains on the ceiling.
A fist-size hole in one wall, exposing slats like broken ribs. Between two tall windows, mismatched sheets tacked up for curtains, an enormous, expensive-looking flat-screen television sat on milk crates. Back in the bedroom, standing over the fish-bellied body on the bed, Worth couldn''t decide what depressed him most: the bludgeoned corpse, the image of Gwen Mullen raising the lamp and pulling it down, or the thought that he could, conceivably, wind up playing officer-on-scene to that miserable prick Vargas in Homicide. He keyed the radio. The beep made him think of the checkout scanners at the store. Just then a soft gasp drifted in from the other room, toward him down the short dark hall. Worth followed it back. Gwen had finally lost her grip.
Fat tears squeezed beneath the heels of her hands, leaving slick trails; her cheeks glistened in the gaudy Halloween glow. Worth got down beside her, cuffs rattling, silent radio digging into his side, not sure where he could touch her that wouldn''t hurt. She covered her face and slouched against him. It was as if she had no weight. He felt her tears, her steamy breath. "I didn''t know what to do," she whispered. He stroked her hair. "It''ll be okay.
" "How?" Worth didn''t kid himself. Chapter Two Eddie Tice was officially done fucking around. "You''d better be dead in a ditch," he said into the phone. It was the last message he intended to leave. "You hear what I''m saying, smart guy? Because if you''re walking around out there? Thinking you''re a smart guy? I''ll find you, is the first thing. Don''t even think I won''t find your stupid ass." He longed to slam a phone down and hear its guts jingle like you used to be able to do. Instead, he thumbed the button and threw the Wi-Fi handset against the wall.
Batteries and shards of cracked plastic were still hitting the carpet when Troy Mather stuck his head around the door. "Um . hey?" "What?" "Okay to come in?" Tice took a deep breath. "Come in, Troy. Please. Let me extend a personal invitation." Troy pushed the door the rest of the way open and came inside. Derek Price followed, hung a left, and fell into the sofa sectional in the far corner.
Price grabbed the remote and punched on the wide-screen Eddie had taken off the showroom floor and put in the office. Last year''s model. "By all means," Tice told him. "Be comfortable." Derek held up a thumb, flipping through channels until he landed on SportsCenter . Troy had plopped himself into the discontinued leather glider on the other side of Eddie''s antique desk. "Well," he said. "Well what?" "He ain''t anywhere.
" "He''s somewhere," Eddie said. From the sectional: "Maybe he just forgot to charge his phone." Tice folded his arms and leaned back in the tall chair. He''d already checked with the state cops between here and Chicago. No reports involving the GTO so far. He''d check again tomorrow. Benefit of the doubt. Possibly a whole different set of problems to worry about.
Troy nodded along with the whole cell-phone idea, then said, "But just to be, like, devil''s aggregate?" Eddie Tice sighed. "I''m listening." "Okay, me and Derek got the idea to check his girl," Troy said. He sounded proud of himself. "Right? So I remember she got the Modells a job where she works. The SaveMore there on Saddle Creek. Curtis and Ricky. Remember those guys?" "No," Eddie said.
"Big beefy dudes? Kinda stupid? They worked for me, I dunno, couple months. I think they might be those kind of twins that don''t look like each other." Worked for me . Troy liked to feel as though he had a little authority at Tice Is Nice Quality Used and Discount Furniture. At least in the warehouse. Eddie Tice let him feel as though he had a little. "Keep telling your story, Troy." "Anyway, we go there," Troy said.
"I already know she works Fridays, being Russ normally comes to poker night, but she ain''t nowhere around there tonight. Talked to Curtis and Ricky, nothin'' outta them. Talked to some other dude pushin'' a mop on the way out. He said the girl hasn''t been to work in, like, a couple days." While Troy Mather rambled, Eddie''s mood about the situation began to darken. He realized he still hadn''t taken off the thermal FootJoy Windshirt he''d been wearing on the thirteenth green at Tiburon twelve hours ago. Now his back ran with sweat. "Does she have any other jobs?" Troy opened his mouth, then shut it.
Eddie moved on. "But she definitely wasn''t home." "Um ." Troy said. He glanced over toward the corner. Derek wasn''t even paying attention. "We didn''t know what kind of car she drove." "What happened when you knocked on the door?" "Well, it''s Friday night, man, so we figured .
" "Didn''t go to the apartment, did you?" Troy''s face darkened. He was blushing. "Shit, Eddie. I mean, like, why the fuck would he be at the apartment, right?" "It''s okay," Eddie said. Thinking: Holy Lord . Troy was dependable if you didn''t give him too much to think about; Derek Price didn''t weigh more than a buck twenty, tattoos included, but he had some street sense and knew how to keep his mouth shut. The two of them together didn''t quite equal a Russellwho, until tonight, Eddie Tice had always looked at as a candidate for bigger and better things. "I''ll call Tony.
" "Aww, come on." Troy hopped up out of the chair. "Let us handle it. Seriously. We''ll go back there right now." "I said it''s okay," Eddie told him. "You guys did fine." "Eddie" "Quiet," Tice barked.
When he saw the wounded look on Troy''s face, he softened. "Look. Do you want to help?" "You name it, boss." Troy cracked his knuckles. "We''re on it." Eddie Tice pulled off the Windshirt and tossed it aside. He leaned forward, opened the middle left drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of Eagle Rare and a rocks glass, grabbed his BlackBerry from its charging cradle, and said, "Go down to Electronics and bring me back a new phone." Chapter Three Tiffany Pine had led the news for a sad string of days in December his first year sworn.
Worth had been fresh out of the academy, still rolling with his FTO. She''d been twenty-two, a Metro student, working her way toward a two-year associate''s degree in early childhood education. It was Christmastime. No one who knew her claimed to understand why she''d stayed with the guy so long. By all accounts, he was a hothead with tendencies, nonviolent coping skills not prominent among them. <.