“God, Iwish,” I said to the dogs. “I could murder a doughnut right now.”
But the wordmurdertasted terrible in my mouth.
I wouldn’t be going to sleep anytime soon. I watched out the peephole another minute, deciding. Then I turned toward the connecting door to the pub and led the parade to the office.
Alex had shut down the computer as promised, but it booted up with a reassuring washing machine churn while I yawned into the back of my wrist and sorted through the mail that Sicily had knocked over. We’d been getting a lot of mail for some guy named Michael Jordan. Funny! But not just Costco coupons, real documents. Clerical error? Prank? Or was some dude claiming McPhee’s as his address?
Not that we shouldn’t charge some of these guys rent.
Lemon pressed herself against my bare leg. Bear’s nails clacked on down the hall to the pub. An optimist, our boy Bear. He always took the odds on dropped food.
And he might score, actually. With all the excitement, no one had swept the pub, second night in a row. No one, meaning me.
Once the computer was ready, I went spelunking for the tax file where I’d stowed the security footage from Wednesday. I almost hoped it would be gone, and I would have to forget the whole thing. But it was there, exactly where I’d put it. I double-clicked the file and let it play at actual speed, scratching Lemon’s neck idly.
The footage was boring, just as Sicily had said—but from the vantage point of two days and one death later, it was also comforting to watch the day unfold just as you expected it to, or as I expected it to,since I’d seen it all before. The bumper nudged, the car parked in by the beer truck, and the car’s owner seeking justice, blocking a prospective customer from coming in—a meaty guy who could have put away some beer, too.
I hated to admit it, but the guy stranded by the beer truck had a point, actually. Kyler should have used the alley to deliver instead of double-parking on Milwaukee Ave. With all the empty storefronts, we didn’t have all that many neighbors to complain, but eventually someone would, and we’d get a note from the alderperson’s office, reminding everyone to be mindful to keep our stretch of Milwaukee Avenue safe and clear of obstructions, blah blah.
I found a granola bar in a desk drawer. At the barest sound of crinkled wrapper, Bear came down to investigate, and both dogs watched me eat.
On the screen, Primary Jim—Quin—came out and turned to the left out of the frame. Was he a smoker? He didn’t seem the type, now that I thought about it. It must be a girlfriend, checking in. Or did he have some kind of remote job that required so little of his time that he spent all day at the pub? Weird that he had, like, a name. An identity.
And then along came a slip-sliding chick dressed for a honky-tonk.
That idiot with a heavy plastic bag throwing off her balance didn’t have acluewhat was awaiting her. Here was video evidence of the last time I was my regular self, before Marisa parachuted back into my life, with Sicily crash-landing behind her, before Joey—
I had been half watching people come and go from the bar on the screen—Bern off to get his cigarette, the dogs dragging me out of the alley and back—kind of almost forgetting why I was watching the footage at all.
But then I saw a flash of something at the alley. A blur, some of it wearing plaid.
I reached for the mouse and hit rewind, then play.
It was Alex, hustling someone out of the alley and down the sidewalk. The reach of the camera cut out before I could see much more. Itwas not rare that Alex might have to escort some drunk off the premises. I hadn’t even bothered to slow the video from quadruple-time when I was watching it with Sicily. But now that I was watching in real time, I could see details I hadn’t been looking for. The set of Alex’s jaw. The shine of a leather jacket on the other guy, a beanie cap with hair curling from under the band.
Wait.
I rewound it again and progressed it frame by frame—
Sharp cheekbone. Curling hair.
Joey.
“Oh, Alex,” I whispered. “What did you do?”
19
I stashed the video even deeper into the random folder, my hands shaking, then saved another copy elsewhere on the drive. Safekeeping.
Safe from… who?
I might never find that file again. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what I would do with the footage—nothing?—but I needed time to think it through.
I pointed the dogs back up the stairs. I hadn’t brought my keys and had to pop the lock on the apartment door, old school. Pull and jiggle the handle, lift and push.
Once in my room, we all piled onto my mattress and all the feelings I hadn’t been able to release earlier finally welled up. Joey wasdead? That was impossible enough to take in, but Alex—
Alex couldn’t have done something to Joey. He hadn’t liked Joey—but not, like, enough to kill the guy. Right? He was just protective of me.
