She shoves the bathroom door open and strides to the kitchen, where, over the open lid and packing peanuts of the first box, Simon is holding an even smaller box, about the size of her fist.
His face is ashen. “Nomi, I don’t think you want to—”
She grabs the small box off him and looks. Immediately drops the whole thing onto the floor as she gasps, involuntary, horrified, her hand flying to her mouth.
The small box spills onto the linoleum in a burst of reddened tissue paper; the objects inside bounce onto the floor and settle at her feet. Nomi can see, with shocking clarity even at this distance, the tiny white chips like pale kernels of corn, the neat, clotted stumps.
They’re teeth.
They’re Brittany Jackson’s teeth.
Chapter Twenty-One
October 1987, Friday
Simon can hear that Nomi has finished puking in the bathroom, and she’s now running the faucet to rinse her mouth and wash her face.
He picked the teeth up off the floor and returned them to the small box. They sit innocuously, malevolently, in the middle of the coffee table between Nomi’s bag of cutting paraphernalia and her gun, making quite a grim tableau.
Leaning forward on the lounge chair, forearms on his knees, he looks up as Nomi returns to the living room, holding her stomach. “Are you all right?”
“What doyouthink?” Her eyes are red rimmed—from crying, or throwing up, or a combination of both—and her hair at the front is stringy with damp.
He thinks his continued presence in her apartment is only a matter of expedience, so he’s going to ignore her tone and stick to professional observations.
“I can’t tell if the teeth were pulled or fell out by themselves, but the blood on the root ends is very fresh—they were probably, uh, gathered in the last few hours.” He’s not sure how he knows this. Normally he’d attribute it to working at Gennaro’s, but now he’s wondering if theknowledge was already there, part of an uncomfortably innate bundle of skills related to his history of homicide. Although looking at the teeth makes him feel a weird mix of guilt and anger and sadness: Is a sociopath with a total lack of empathy supposed to feel such things? “This happened because of me, didn’t it? If Lamonte’s pulling out Brittany’s teeth, it’s because of what I did to Ameche at Big Mouth.”
“Probably, yes.” Nomi seems to have decided she’s not here to make him feel better about himself. Then she sighs, shakes her head. “But they were delivered to me, so it’s a double whammy—makes me stop kicking over rocks, makes you feel like shit.”
“Idofeel like shit.”
“Good.” But she can’t quite meet his eyes like she means it. She collects the small box with its horrifying surprise, transfers it to her refrigerator. Trudges past the sofa, around the folding screen, to the dresser near her unmade bed. “Look, I need to go, so you need to leave.”
He squints at her over his shoulder. “Where are you going?”
“Well, Simon, let me think—first, I have to go see Solange Jackson and tell her that I have her daughter’steeth.” She yanks open a drawer, drags her current black T-shirt up and off, stands in her black bra as she hunts for and pulls on another identical black T-shirt. She said she has scars from her strange cutting activities; they’re not visible on her back—maybe she can’t reach there?—but the huge ravens on her shoulder are an angry flurry of inky feathers. “Second, I have to explain to Solange that it’s time to go to the cops, because this is ... This is out of my league.”
Simon stands. “You’re giving up.”
“Yes, I’m giving up!” When Nomi turns, she’s glowering. She grabs a black sweater off her bed and stalks back, pulling on the sweater, tugging her hair out of the collar. “Gaffney was right—I’m fumbling around here, doing this investigation on my own ... and I’m fucking it up. I’d rather chew off my own arm than pass this kid’s welfare over to the cops, especially a slimeball like Balter, but all I’m going to do is get Brittany killed.”
“But you said Solange might lose Brittany to social services if you—”
“Better she stays alive and goes in the system than getsdeadand goesnowhere.” Nomi shoves her arms into the sleeves of her leather jacket. “And now we have evidence she’s in immediate danger, maybe Balter and the Tenth crew will get off their asses and actually do something ... I mean, I can dream. Okay, get out, I have to go.”
“I want my file.” Simon’s aware he’s pressing his luck, but it’shisfile.
Nomi doesn’t seem to care as she finds her scarf, collects her shit. “Everything’s on my desk, as you’re no doubt aware. Just take it. Here—” She pulls her beanie and some random junk out of the tote on the sofa, thrusts it at him. “Put it all in here. This is all my library research notes too.”
He takes the tote and goes into her office, gathers up the gray document wallet, the brown envelope it came in, shoves it in with a seemingly random collection of paper notes. There’s also his pile of stuff—notebooks, cigar box, identification papers—and another file folder marked with his name on top of a pile of newspapers. He gathers everything, slides it in with the rest.
When he emerges back into the living room, Nomi’s chugging a glass of water in the kitchen. She dumps the empty glass in the sink and looks around, preparing to lock the place back up. “Okay, come on, time to go.”
Simon holds up the now-almost-overflowing tote. Everything is in here: his backstory, his past, the man he was. Part of him can’t believe he was so eager to find all this out. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know why you’re thanking me, but sure.” Nomi tugs her beanie on, walks ahead down the hallway for the door. Once they’re both out in the gloomy corridor, she pulls the door closed, uses her key. At the point where they’re about to separate—Simon for the upstairs, Nomi going down—she turns and looks at him. “Simon ...”
“Yeah?” For a second, he feels a stuttering flame of hope.
