Stagger put his hands on her shoulders. “Kat, listen to me.”
She knew what was coming. This was part of it. She’d have to ride it out.
“You said Leburne was drugged up, right? On morphine?”
“Yes.”
“So he hallucinated. Your word. He muttered some imaginary nonsense. That’s all.”
“Don’t patronize me, Stagger.”
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are. You know I don’t buy into nonsense like”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“‘closure.’ I think it’s crap. Even if we nail everyone involved in his murder, my father is still dead. That will never change. So closure, I don’t know, it’s almost an insult to his memory, you know what I mean?”
He nodded slowly.
“But this arrest . . . it never worked for me. I always suspected there was something more.”
“And now you’ve made it into that.”
“What?”
“Come on, Kat. This is Monte Leburne. You don’t think he knew you were there? He’s playing with you. He knows that you’ve had your doubts all along. You wanted to see something that wasn’t there. And now he’s given that to you.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but suddenly, she thought about the Maybe-Jeff on her computer. Want can twist your perception. Was that part of it? Had she so wanted to find a solution—to find “closure”—that she was creating scenarios?
“That’s not it,” Kat said, but her voice held a little less conviction now.
“Are you sure?”
“You’ve got to understand. I can’t let this go.”
He nodded slowly. “I do understand.”
“You’re patronizing me again.”
He forced up a tired smile. “Monte Leburne killed your father. It isn’t neat or a perfect fit. It never is. You know that. The questions about the case—all normal and routine and easily explainable—eat you up. But at some point, you have to let it go. It will drive you mad. If you let it get to you like this, you end up depressed and . . .”
His words trailed off.
“Like my grandfather?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t have to.”
Stagger found her gaze and held it for a long second. “Your father would want you to move on.”
She said nothing.
“You know that I’m telling the truth.”
“I do,” she said.
“But?”
“But I can’t do it. My father would know that too.”
• • •
Kat filled yet another shot glass with Jack Daniel’s and started printing out her father’s old murder file.
This wasn’t the official police one. She had, of course, read that one many times before. This one was of her creation, loaded up with everything in the official file—the detectives who’d closed her dad’s case had both been family friends—plus everything, even rumors, she had managed to nail down on her own. The case had been pretty solid, the two keys being that they had a confession from Leburne himself, plus the murder weapon, found hidden in Leburne’s home. Most of the loose ends had been tied up nicely, with one notable exception that had always haunted Kat: There were unidentified fingerprints found at the murder scene. The lab guys had found a full, clear print on her father’s belt and had run it through the system but got no hits.
Kat had never been fully satisfied with the official explanation, but everyone, including Kat herself, had written that off to her personal connection. Aqua had said it best one day when she ran into him in the park on one of his more lucid days: “You are seeking something in this case that you can never find.”
Aqua.
Here was something odd. She could talk to Stacy about her father’s murder, but Stacy had never met the man. Stacy didn’t know “old Kat,” the Before Kat, the one who dated Jeff and smiled freely and existed before Henry Donovan’s murder. But the first name to come to mind—the one person who would understand more than any other what she was going through—was, well, Jeff.
That didn’t seem like a good idea, did it?
No. At least, it wouldn’t at six in the morning or ten o’clock at night. But right now, at three A.M. with a few belts of Jack coursing through Kat’s veins, it seemed like the most brilliant idea in the history of the world. She looked out the window of her apartment. They say New York is the city that doesn’t sleep. That was nonsense. When she stayed in other cities, even smaller ones like St. Louis or Indianapolis, people seemed to stay up later, though it seemed more out of desperation than anything else. We aren’t New York City, so we will work harder to have a good time. Something like that.
The streets of Manhattan at three A.M.? Still a cemetery.
Kat wobbled toward her computer. It took her three tries to log on to YouAreJustMyType.com because her fingers, like her tongue, were thick from drink. She checked to see if by some chance Jeff was online. He wasn’t. Well, that was too bad, wasn’t it? She clicked the link to send him a direct message.
Jeff,
Can we talk? Something happened here and I would really like to bounce it off you.
Kat
Part of her brain realized that this was a really bad idea, that this was the online dating equivalent of drunk texting. Drunk texting never worked. Never, ever, never.
She sent the message and managed to half pass out, half fall asleep. When the alarm went off at six A.M., Kat hated her pitiful self even before the hangover rushed in and started shooting pain sparks through her skull.
She checked the messages. Nothing from Jeff. Or Maybe-Jeff. Right, hadn’t she realized at some point that maybe it wasn’t Jeff, just some guy who looked like him? Didn’t matter. Who cares? Where the hell is the Extra Strength Tylenol?
Aqua’s yoga class. Uh-uh. No way. Not today. Her head would never take it. Plus, she went yesterday. She didn’t have to go today.
Except . . .
Wait, hold up a second. She ran back to the computer and brought up Jeff’s profile. Other than Stagger, the only person who was really still in her life, who knew her with Jeff and her dad and knew the old her, was, well, Aqua. Aqua and Jeff had grown close via her, even rooming together in that crappy two-bedroom on 178th Street. She hit PRINT, threw on her clothes, made the run over to the east side of the park—arriving, as usual, when everyone was meditating, their eyes closed.
“Late,” Aqua said.