5
11:22 a.m., Friday, October 25
Christian Blight would never pass for an upstanding citizen. It wasn’t just the neck tattoos. Or the shaved head, with the exception of the blond rattail at the base of his skull. Or the twenty pounds of muscle he’d put on under his orange Camp Hill prison jumpsuit.
It was the calculation in those cold, blue eyes.
Those eyes bored into Nick as a guard removed the cuffs.
“Nicky Santiago. Back again so soon?” Blight asked, taking the seat across the rickety table from him.
Prison visitation rooms created a creepy Venn diagram that brought both the prisoner and the visitor uncomfortably close to the other’s world.
“Maybe I missed you,” Nick said flippantly as the guard left the room.
“Or maybe you and your cop buddy don’t have anything better to do than harass an innocent man.”
“You had a dozen baggies of X in your cargo pants when you were arrested, smartass,” Nick pointed out.
He opened his palms, the picture of calm. “I told you they weren’t my pants,” Blight said.
It was a familiar tune that Nick had been listening to for the last six years. “I’m not here to talk about your pants.”
Blight met Nick’s gaze. “Let me guess,” he said with a smirk. “You and your cop boyfriend think today’s the day I’m going to confess to setting the fire and tell you I had something to do with your girl disappearing.”
“Something like that,” Nick said.
Blight gave him a humorless smile. “Unfortunately for you, today is not your lucky day.”
Nick wasn’t about to tell a prisoner that his psychic girlfriend’s psychic grandma had told them Beth wasn’t dead. “That missing girl has a name, and you know it. You knew her. But for some reason, you’re still too chicken shit to tell the truth.”
“Going with the ‘provoke a defensive male reaction’ technique again today?” Blight asked.
Nick crossed his arms and stared at the man.
Blight had landed on Nick and Kellen’s radar a few days after Beth’s disappearance, thanks to a video from the scene of the fire that had surfaced. The footage not only showed the warehouse explosion but it also revealed Christian Blight having a heated conversation with a glow-stick-wielding Beth Weber.
The fire had started during an illegal rave attended by Beth and some of her giggly girlfriends. She and her posse had given their initial witness statements to officers on scene before being sent home. Beth had disappeared the very next day.
The fire had been ruled an arson and never solved.
What was supposed to have been a polite conversation with a potential witness had turned into an arrest for a parole violation when Blight had pulled a gun on them and tried to jump out of a second-story window.
From day one, the man had infuriatingly maintained his innocence in both Beth’s disappearance and the arson. What further infuriated Nick was the fact that if he hadn’t been sure Blight knew something about Beth, he might have actually liked the man.
“Santiago, you have got to be the most optimistic, tenacious motherfucker in the world,” Blight said with a rare smile.
“I see that word-of-the-day toilet paper is working out for you,” Nick observed.
Blight flipped him the middle finger. “Fuck off. I got degrees in English, philosophy, and business in here.”
“Congratulations, Jane Austen. Did you murder Schrödinger’s cat and then set up an online swag store to launder money?”
Blight dipped his chin. “A layered insult that shows active listening. Maybe you’re not the same idiot bacon you were six years ago.”
“Look, pal.” Nick crossed his arms. “I’m smartex-bacon. Which is bad news for you because that means I don’t have to play nice.”
Blight shook his head, still managing to look amused. “Are you aware of the definition ofinsanity?”
