Tell Me Where He Lives

Tell Me Where He Lives – Excerpt

Chapter 1

Rain came at me in sheets, every drop sharpened by wind, working the seam of my coat and pooling above the tongues of my boots. I stopped just inside the fieldstone wall, shoes sinking half an inch with every step, each toe finding the season’s first leaves already mashed to pulp beneath the surface mud. The Mustang’s blue flank glared against the dullness of a hundred black umbrellas, sticking out in the lot like a neon sign at a wake. I’d parked beside a Prius crusted with environmental stickers and a Lincoln so new its leather still looked tight enough to squeak. Across from me, the city’s flint-gray skyline threw geometric shadows into the sprawl of the cemetery. Straight lines, mirrored glass, a middle finger extended at every stone angel between.

I took inventory of the crowd as I went. First, a tight knot of city hall strivers, teeth already bared in campaign grins, using their umbrellas as shields but glancing over to make sure they were being seen. Next, two dozen activists in what passed for funereal drag: Doc Martens slick with oil, pinned leather jackets soaked dark, the reek of fresh smoke never quite defeated by the rain. Network t-shirts under slickers, a paper sign held above a head to keep the runoff off dyed green hair.

Closer to the open grave, the press. Freelance reporters worked the margins, phones tipped horizontal, pretending at reverence while cataloging every soggy mourner for posterity. I knew three of them. One had spelled my name right in the Morgan coverage. The other two had settled for “a local private investigator,” which was worse, because it meant they’d be back to get it right. A guy with a telephoto lens loitered by the stone cherubim, using his bulk to block the worst of the wind and getting no resistance from security. He wasn’t shooting the grave.

I caught the black SUV again, engine idling, windows tinted too dark for a funeral, wipers smearing a gloss of water that refused to clear. It had been two cars behind me on Mercer. My notebook was in an evidence room on County Road 7, along with three years of legal pads and everything else Burton had carried out of my office, so I uncapped a ballpoint inside my pocket and wrote the plate on the back of my hand. The ink was already running.

The air had the stink of city wet: lichen, rotting leaves, faint tang of gasoline, undertone of earth turned over for business. I sidestepped a pair of union organizers, one in plaid, one in suit slacks tucked into mismatched boots, trading low remarks about a county judge whose name floated across from the politicos. “Can you believe she showed up?” muttered the suit. “Her office wouldn’t piss on Tanya if she was on fire.” If people in Riverview still respected the dead, I’d yet to see evidence.

The minister, jacket plastic-wrapped and umbrella black as new asphalt, stepped to the plywood at the grave’s edge. The rain flattened her voice until all that reached me was mouth shapes and the wet thud of water against wood. Tanya’s casket, pale oak, cheapest finish in the catalog, rain already lifting the varnish in slow blooms, sat balanced on nylon webbing above the drop. No roses. A pile of flyers, limp with weather, littered the grass at the foot of the grave: FIGHT FOR TANYA, scrawled and bleeding ink.

I leaned against a listing monument and worked the perimeter. A man in a thrift store raincoat stood by the fence, fingering a badge just far enough from his lapel to suggest off-duty Riverview PD. Twenty feet down from him, a uniform I’d shared a car with once, years ago, huddled under the dripping oaks and made no move to signal recognition.

Cops came for their own. Even dead, Tanya Helen Thomas wasn’t their own.

So they hadn’t come for her.

I counted again to be sure. The SUV. The lens. The off-duty with the itchy badge. The uniform who wouldn’t look at me. Four that I could see, which meant more that I couldn’t. Uncharged, unconvicted, a person of interest, and worth the overtime. The old current ran through me, low and hot. I turned away before it could settle into something I’d have to name.

The official gave a short nod. Two gravediggers shouldered closer and let the straps down slow. The casket’s belly settled toward the earth, no sound but the thump as a corner hit a root, listing, then settling into its angle. Mud spattered up from the ropes onto a pair of four-hundred-dollar Oxfords on a junior senator’s aide. His face twitched. The shoes, not the dead woman.

The casket sank, and so did the mood. Nobody rushed to cover the grave, not yet. The moment stretched, waiting for some social permission to end. I flicked a glance over the umbrellas. The telephoto had swung my way and stayed there.

I shifted my weight, mud sucking at my boot heel, picking out the fastest exit. Two routes: one past the politicos, one through the older section where the headstones were close enough to clip a hip. Someone moved in close behind me, and my shoulders squared before my brain caught up.

A dark umbrella shoved into the margin of my view, a shoulder snug against my arm. Some people crept into shared shelter apologizing for it. This one stepped in like she’d claimed a right. Cheap nylon, handle taped where it had cracked, water sluicing off in small streams right between us and the grave.

“How well did you know Tanya?” the woman asked, voice clean through the rain. Not shouting, not pretending shyness. Just speaking in a tone built for rallies.

I let myself appraise her openly. Younger, barely in her twenties. Good posture, boots bought for utility not show. A long navy coat, worn but holding the shape of its last hanger. A badge reading “Mich,” printed, not sharpied. No perfume, no patience for it.

“Some,” I said.

Some was one night. I’d followed her into Tempo Club on a case and followed her out again through its heavy steel door at two in the morning, back to her loft south of the river. At eight she’d kicked me out of her bed for a conference call, still laughing, still half asleep. Not long after, she was dead, because I’d handed her name to a grieving mother who needed somebody to blame.

“Did you?” I asked.

“I’m Mich.” The hand came out, fingers small, chill, callused at the tips. “We did the housing committee together. Three years. She was my friend.” She said it plainly, like a credential. “You’re—?”

“Granger.” I gripped fast, then dropped. My real name, the one that had run twice last month in the same paragraph as Lydia Morgan’s. One search on the bus home would do it. I didn’t give her a different one.

Under the umbrella the space was close, her breath tasting faintly of black coffee, maybe too much. The rain hammered the nylon above us like impatient fingers on a counter.

“Crazy, how she died,” Mich said. “I mean, two Tanya Thomases?”

I watched the rain trace streaks down the box. “Crazy.”

“At least the police did their jobs for once. I heard they arrested someone.”

“Yeah?” I edged further under the umbrella, hip to hip, a small adjustment that put my back to the wind and my eyes on the fence. “I heard that too.”

I’d heard it from Lydia Morgan herself, before anybody in a uniform had. I killed two innocent women. This is all your fault.

The badge-fingerer hadn’t moved.

“But I wonder why they aren’t giving much information to the public.” Mich glanced past me, scanning faces the way activists did, counting allies, counting witnesses.

“Cops usually don’t,” I said, bored. “Details spook the media. Or whoever’s next.”

“They’re such assholes.”

I almost laughed. “I agree. Used to be a cop. They’re assholes.” The words came out easy. They always did. The part that came after, the why of it, stayed where I put it.

Mich blinked, recalibrating. “No way. Really? What do you do now?”

“Private investigator.” My weight shifted so my shoulder pressed a fraction firmer into hers. I felt the warmth of her through two layers of wet fabric.

Her eyebrows arched, pleased, not threatened. “Really? Are you spying on anyone right now?”

I cut a grin sharp as a beer bottle. “I’d be fucked if I was.”

“Why?”

Over her shoulder, the telephoto lens had found us. Let them have it. I turned full-on, rain shutting out the world at our backs, my mouth near her ear, close enough to catch the soap under the coffee. “Because right now all I can see is you.”

Mich laughed, cheeks pinking despite the cold. Flattered, uncomfortable, glancing away like she’d lost track of her own script. I watched her search for footing and decide to ride the line.

“Are you always this forward, or do funerals bring it out?”

“Depends if the corpse would approve.” I let my gaze drop, then rise. “Tanya liked trouble. Figure I’m safe.”

A pack of mourners pushed past, their own bubble of shelter nudging me closer. I didn’t step away.

“Most people would ask about the investigation,” I said. “Try to figure out what I know.”

Mich’s teeth caught her lower lip. “If I ask, you’d just lie to me.”

“Probably. Or distract you.”

“I bet you would.” She let the umbrella tilt. Water sluiced down my pant leg, filling my boot another quarter inch. We stood chest to chest while the crowd pushed out toward the cars.

From the grave, the first shovel of earth hit Tanya’s casket with a percussive slap. The sound landed in my chest like a door slamming.

“I need to get out of these boots before I start to mildew,” Mich muttered.

“Could help you with that.”

She choked on a laugh and looked away. “Jesus. Don’t waste all your lines at once.”

“Never do.”

The last of the dirt slapped the lid, umbrellas dropping like spent flowers, no one lingering who wasn’t getting paid for it. I put a hand on the ridge of Mich’s back, not tentative, just redirecting. “Would you like to go somewhere dry and get a drink? To Tanya?”

“Yeah.” Rain carved clean paths down her cheeks. “That sounds nice.”

“Did you drive?”

“Bus.”

“My car’s in the lot.” I steered her around a collapsing news crew, past the fence where the off-duty had finally found somewhere else to be. The SUV hadn’t.

The Mustang sat blue as a bruise in the gray wash, sides streaked with road grime, the dented front fender, the silver one that had never matched the rest of the car, holding a puddle in its crease. The Prius next to it had acquired a parking ticket, already dissolving. I pulled the door open and waited until Mich ducked in, curls stuck wet to her face.

“This is a beautiful car,” she said, brushing rain from the cracked pleather before she sat.

“Thanks.” I circled to the driver’s side. The interior reeked of damp wool and warm vinyl, a car that had absorbed too many stakeouts and not enough detailing. The engine coughed, then settled into its old, combative growl, loud enough to announce us to anyone in the lot who hadn’t already noticed the color. Mich’s breath made ghosts above the dashboard. The plate on the back of my hand had bled into a blue smear, but I had it.

I twisted to face her. “Where would you like to go?”

In the mirror, the SUV pulled out of its space with its lights off.

The wipers hit once.

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