“And how many texts,” Jack said wryly.
The guy was like a bloodhound for voice inflection changes. “Three. One was a picture of me leaving my brother’s stationhouse.”
“I don’t like this, Anne.”
“I’m going home with a bunch of work and I’m staying indoors with the doors shut and the drapes drawn. I live in a neighborhood full of people.”
“That didn’t matter when they shot your window out.”
“They’re just trying to scare me.”
“Wonder if that’s what Ollie Popper thought as they hung him up by the throat from a pipe. In a prison. With a hundred guards around.”
* * *
So much for a slow day, Danny thought as he sat down with the crew for dinner. Four box alarms, two car crashes, a kid who got his head stuck between the iron bars of that fence over at the cemetery, and Moose losing his ever-living mind. The only good news was that at least for once Danny hadn’t been the one being a hothead and getting suspended.
It was early yet, though.
Taking out his phone, he checked to see if Anne had called him back. Texted him back. Anything, anything—nope.
Fuck.
Pushing his plate of reheated ribs and room-temperature slaw away, he sat back. Around the table, the other men were resolutely looking at their plates, the clinking of silverware the only sound in the room.
The last time they’d had a meal like this was after the Patriots lost to Eagles in the Super Bowl.
He got up and took his plate to the trash, scraping off the food and putting it into the dishwasher. Then he left out the back door, got a cigarette, and lit it. The night was cold and he was just in his NBFD T-shirt and work pants, but he didn’t feel a thing.
After trying Anne again, he decided, Fuck it.
Calling a number out of his contacts, he put the phone to his ear. “Jack. Wassup.”
“My man. I just talked to your girl.”
“Anne?” He frowned. “She answered her phone?”
“Yup. I had news to share. That suspect she questioned yesterday was found dead in the prison shower. I told her she needed to have you over at her house again tonight, but you’re on shift.”
“Yeah. On shift. Listen, could you do me a favor. Could you do some drive-bys of her house tonight?”
“I’m doing one better. Two of my boys who’re off duty volunteered to stake out her house. They’re each doing a four-hour shift, the first starting at ten.”
Danny exhaled. “Thank you. That’s awesome.”
“We take care of our own, Dannyboy. And I told her to call me if she needs anything. I guess that asshole with the unknown number is still texting her.”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause. “I don’t usually say this, Danny, but if there’s any way you could talk to her about backing off of Ripkin, it might be a good idea. This is not to say that she can’t handle herself or that justice doesn’t need to be served. But there are a lot of bodies around anything that threatens that asshole in his ivory tower in Boston. I don’t want her to be the next one floating in the ocean or buried in a landfill.”
“Neither do I.”
After they hung up, he stared at the phone. And called her one more time. He didn’t think she was going to answer—and she didn’t.
As voicemail kicked in, he cleared his throat. “So I’m guessing by the fact that you’ll talk to Jack and not me that Moose called you about the drama this morning between him and Deandra. I just want— It’s got nothing to do with me. Deandra was just shooting her mouth off about shit because she pissed off about money. I really hope you’ll call me so we can talk about it. I love you, Anne. I wanted to tell you in person this morning, but I lost my nerve. I really . . . I love you and we were headed in a good direction. I want to keep going like that, for the rest of my life. Anyway, call me. Please.”
Ending the connection, he stared at his phone until the lock screen came on. Then he looked at it some more.
When it stayed black, he didn’t know what he expected.
Bullshit. He’d thought she’d listen and call him back and tell him she loved him and Moose was in a bad relationship with a bad woman and it was all just a misunderstanding.
Putting the cell phone back in his pocket, he smoked and thought of the nightmare that had woken him in Anne’s bed.
It had been him back at that apartment where the old lady had been gutted. He had walked into the room, taken a look at the mutilated body, and started to throw up.
And then everything had morphed and he had been the one with hands and feet tied, screaming as a shadowy perpetrator had cut him open and removed his internal organs.
That had been a party compared to what he was feeling right now, stuck at the stationhouse while what little glimpse of a good life he’d had dimmed . . . and disappeared into the night as if it had never existed.
He was going to fucking kill Moose.
Chapter 49
Anne sat back on her sofa and closed her eyes. It was going on ten o’clock and she was surrounded by printouts of reports on those warehouse fires, the papers like the snow cover of winter, a December of documents on the floor, the coffee table, the cushions.
Except for where Soot was curled up next to her.
She had been going over the same information and nothing was sticking anymore. Good distraction, though. It had gotten her through dinner and past the dead zone before bedtime.
“You want to go out one last time?”
Soot knew the cue and obligingly got off his spot. The jingle of his collar was a welcome accompaniment as they went to the back door and she turned off the security system by her remote.
Before she stepped outside, she took the nine-millimeter handgun she’d left on the corner of her desk with her.
The night was cold and dry, and the outside lights were bright and clear. She took comfort that her neighbors were all home, their lights on, their bodies moving in and out of windows as the whole neighborhood settled for the rest of the night.
Soot was efficient. No sniffing around. No investigating what scents were on the wind or the bushes or the browning grass.
Another good sign as far as she was concerned. If anyone was around, she had to believe he’d notice.
Back in the house. Back with the locked door. Back on with the alarm.
She kept the gun with her as she considered going upstairs to bed. In the end, she stayed downstairs. She felt like if someone tried to get in, she’d hear them better.
As she resumed her seat on the sofa, Soot did the same, and she put her hand on his warm flank, stroking his short, smooth fur. When he let out a deep sigh of relaxation, she envied him.
Picking up a random incident report, she tried to get her brain to connect the dots that were refusing to be linked. She had Ripkin. She had Ollie no-longer-Popper. And then whoever had showed up at that warehouse with the trailer—which might have been Ollie or might not have been.
“When was he arrested?” she said out loud.
Back into the paperwork to find the file on Ollie. Nope. Not him. He had been in police custody when the most recent warehouse fire had been set.
Damn it, she wished she had CCTV for those other burns. Maybe she needed to talk to Ripkin’s daughter, although what would she be looking for if she did? The key was the identity of the unknown third person. If she could find out who it was, maybe she could make the tie to Ripkin. Before the bastard killed them, that was.
She thought about Bob Burlington being found in the ocean. Shit, she did not want that to be her.
As her phone rang, she braced herself as she picked the thing up. If that unknown caller was back—
It was Danny.
“Goddamn it.”
She debated letting it go into voicemail again, but she wasn’t some coward to run from confrontation. And he was just going to keep calling until he got off shift and showed up on her doorstep at eight a.m. in the morning.
“Hello,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were going to answer.”
“I’m busy.”
There was a pause. “I left you a voicemail.”
“I didn’t listen to it.”
“Did Moose get in touch with you?”
“Yes.” She put the paperwork aside. “Listen, we’re not going to do this, okay?”
The guy was like a bloodhound for voice inflection changes. “Three. One was a picture of me leaving my brother’s stationhouse.”
“I don’t like this, Anne.”
“I’m going home with a bunch of work and I’m staying indoors with the doors shut and the drapes drawn. I live in a neighborhood full of people.”
“That didn’t matter when they shot your window out.”
“They’re just trying to scare me.”
“Wonder if that’s what Ollie Popper thought as they hung him up by the throat from a pipe. In a prison. With a hundred guards around.”
* * *
So much for a slow day, Danny thought as he sat down with the crew for dinner. Four box alarms, two car crashes, a kid who got his head stuck between the iron bars of that fence over at the cemetery, and Moose losing his ever-living mind. The only good news was that at least for once Danny hadn’t been the one being a hothead and getting suspended.
It was early yet, though.
Taking out his phone, he checked to see if Anne had called him back. Texted him back. Anything, anything—nope.
Fuck.
Pushing his plate of reheated ribs and room-temperature slaw away, he sat back. Around the table, the other men were resolutely looking at their plates, the clinking of silverware the only sound in the room.
The last time they’d had a meal like this was after the Patriots lost to Eagles in the Super Bowl.
He got up and took his plate to the trash, scraping off the food and putting it into the dishwasher. Then he left out the back door, got a cigarette, and lit it. The night was cold and he was just in his NBFD T-shirt and work pants, but he didn’t feel a thing.
After trying Anne again, he decided, Fuck it.
Calling a number out of his contacts, he put the phone to his ear. “Jack. Wassup.”
“My man. I just talked to your girl.”
“Anne?” He frowned. “She answered her phone?”
“Yup. I had news to share. That suspect she questioned yesterday was found dead in the prison shower. I told her she needed to have you over at her house again tonight, but you’re on shift.”
“Yeah. On shift. Listen, could you do me a favor. Could you do some drive-bys of her house tonight?”
“I’m doing one better. Two of my boys who’re off duty volunteered to stake out her house. They’re each doing a four-hour shift, the first starting at ten.”
Danny exhaled. “Thank you. That’s awesome.”
“We take care of our own, Dannyboy. And I told her to call me if she needs anything. I guess that asshole with the unknown number is still texting her.”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause. “I don’t usually say this, Danny, but if there’s any way you could talk to her about backing off of Ripkin, it might be a good idea. This is not to say that she can’t handle herself or that justice doesn’t need to be served. But there are a lot of bodies around anything that threatens that asshole in his ivory tower in Boston. I don’t want her to be the next one floating in the ocean or buried in a landfill.”
“Neither do I.”
After they hung up, he stared at the phone. And called her one more time. He didn’t think she was going to answer—and she didn’t.
As voicemail kicked in, he cleared his throat. “So I’m guessing by the fact that you’ll talk to Jack and not me that Moose called you about the drama this morning between him and Deandra. I just want— It’s got nothing to do with me. Deandra was just shooting her mouth off about shit because she pissed off about money. I really hope you’ll call me so we can talk about it. I love you, Anne. I wanted to tell you in person this morning, but I lost my nerve. I really . . . I love you and we were headed in a good direction. I want to keep going like that, for the rest of my life. Anyway, call me. Please.”
Ending the connection, he stared at his phone until the lock screen came on. Then he looked at it some more.
When it stayed black, he didn’t know what he expected.
Bullshit. He’d thought she’d listen and call him back and tell him she loved him and Moose was in a bad relationship with a bad woman and it was all just a misunderstanding.
Putting the cell phone back in his pocket, he smoked and thought of the nightmare that had woken him in Anne’s bed.
It had been him back at that apartment where the old lady had been gutted. He had walked into the room, taken a look at the mutilated body, and started to throw up.
And then everything had morphed and he had been the one with hands and feet tied, screaming as a shadowy perpetrator had cut him open and removed his internal organs.
That had been a party compared to what he was feeling right now, stuck at the stationhouse while what little glimpse of a good life he’d had dimmed . . . and disappeared into the night as if it had never existed.
He was going to fucking kill Moose.
Chapter 49
Anne sat back on her sofa and closed her eyes. It was going on ten o’clock and she was surrounded by printouts of reports on those warehouse fires, the papers like the snow cover of winter, a December of documents on the floor, the coffee table, the cushions.
Except for where Soot was curled up next to her.
She had been going over the same information and nothing was sticking anymore. Good distraction, though. It had gotten her through dinner and past the dead zone before bedtime.
“You want to go out one last time?”
Soot knew the cue and obligingly got off his spot. The jingle of his collar was a welcome accompaniment as they went to the back door and she turned off the security system by her remote.
Before she stepped outside, she took the nine-millimeter handgun she’d left on the corner of her desk with her.
The night was cold and dry, and the outside lights were bright and clear. She took comfort that her neighbors were all home, their lights on, their bodies moving in and out of windows as the whole neighborhood settled for the rest of the night.
Soot was efficient. No sniffing around. No investigating what scents were on the wind or the bushes or the browning grass.
Another good sign as far as she was concerned. If anyone was around, she had to believe he’d notice.
Back in the house. Back with the locked door. Back on with the alarm.
She kept the gun with her as she considered going upstairs to bed. In the end, she stayed downstairs. She felt like if someone tried to get in, she’d hear them better.
As she resumed her seat on the sofa, Soot did the same, and she put her hand on his warm flank, stroking his short, smooth fur. When he let out a deep sigh of relaxation, she envied him.
Picking up a random incident report, she tried to get her brain to connect the dots that were refusing to be linked. She had Ripkin. She had Ollie no-longer-Popper. And then whoever had showed up at that warehouse with the trailer—which might have been Ollie or might not have been.
“When was he arrested?” she said out loud.
Back into the paperwork to find the file on Ollie. Nope. Not him. He had been in police custody when the most recent warehouse fire had been set.
Damn it, she wished she had CCTV for those other burns. Maybe she needed to talk to Ripkin’s daughter, although what would she be looking for if she did? The key was the identity of the unknown third person. If she could find out who it was, maybe she could make the tie to Ripkin. Before the bastard killed them, that was.
She thought about Bob Burlington being found in the ocean. Shit, she did not want that to be her.
As her phone rang, she braced herself as she picked the thing up. If that unknown caller was back—
It was Danny.
“Goddamn it.”
She debated letting it go into voicemail again, but she wasn’t some coward to run from confrontation. And he was just going to keep calling until he got off shift and showed up on her doorstep at eight a.m. in the morning.
“Hello,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were going to answer.”
“I’m busy.”
There was a pause. “I left you a voicemail.”
“I didn’t listen to it.”
“Did Moose get in touch with you?”
“Yes.” She put the paperwork aside. “Listen, we’re not going to do this, okay?”
