I rushed into the bedroom, and couldn’t hear the rest. Standing in that room again, my breath caught. Someone had pulled the sheets from our bed and flipped the mattress up against the wall. The dresser drawers were all hanging open.
It looked even more like a crime scene than it had the last time I was here.
The cold white of winter still glared through the window, though. Bright. So bright.
The discount bin blue curtains that had hung there, that had been pulled down and puddled up on the floor on my last visit, were gone.
I turned and raced back through to the kitchen, where Alex was explaining that he had discouraged Joey from seeing me.
“And how did youdiscouragehim?” Aycock said.
“The curtains!” I yelled, bursting back into the room before Alex could dig himself any deeper.
Cam jumped.
“Joey was wrapped in our bedroom curtains,” I said. “I knew they were our curtains as soon as I—in the alley.” I couldn’t quite make out what it meant and my head spun, trying to sort it out.
Aycock turned to face me.
I took a breath and started over. “I saw those curtainshere, on our bedroom floor,” I said. “When I was here last. The last time I was allowed in. But Joey was wrapped up in them, in the alley. Does that mean…?”
Aycock frowned. “You were here when?”
“Wednesday. That afternoon, before my show. Cam let me in to get a few clothes, just a few things I could… Joey must have…”
I looked at my feet for a second, then raised my eyes to Cam. “What have you done?”
Cam held up his hands. “Whoa, now,” he said. But underneath a few days of patchy facial hair growth, he was pale. “I didn’t hurt that kid.”
“Then how did he get to bedead, wrapped up in our bedroom curtains, and halfway across town?”
Cam blinked at Aycock. “I didn’t hurt that kid. I swear to it.”
Aycock’s stance shifted. He was somehow taking up more space than he had before. “I believe you told us you hadn’t seen Mr. Hartnett in two weeks,” he said.
“Yeah,” Cam said. “I mean, no. Yes, I mean… Okay, I saw him. Wednesday. He banged on my door a few hours after this one had already come through. Banging and carrying on about the keys not working. I explained to him how not paying the rent was a surefire way to get the locks changed.”
“And then what?” I demanded.
“Miss Devine, I’ll handle this,” Aycock said. He turned hisattention to Cam, and I could see him wrestling with how to phrase what I’d asked differently. Professional pride. Finally, he gave in. “And then what?”
“He left,” Cam said, swallowing hard around it. His hands didn’t seem to know where to be, and he kept thumbing his nose. “He said he had my money, but not in his pockets, of course,” Cam said. “They never have it in their pockets. He said it was inside the apartment, but I wasn’t falling for that.”
Because everythinginsidewas Cam’s already. I kept my mouth shut this time. Aycock said nothing, so we all watched Cam fidget and sweat.
“I didn’t do it,” Cam said.
Aycock shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The floorboard beneath him gave the tiniest creak. Oh, he wasgood.
“Okay,” Cam said. “Okay. I found him like that, okay? Wednesday, he was here, but, then later, he turned up dead. I didn’t know what to do. I… I panicked.”
I pulled out the nearest chair from our kitchen table and sank into it.
“Go through it,” Aycock said. “Start from the moment you found Mr. Hartnett dead.”
“He was in the back,” Cam said miserably. “Tucked up, hidden in, well, I’ve got some stuff needs hauling away. The city won’t do it—”
“Keep to thenecessary, please,” Aycock said. “Did you check his vital signs? Pulse?”
