Cloister looked from the door to Javi and hesitated. He wanted to ask. This morning Javi was fine. Even his usual paranoia that a cup of coffee would send the wrong signals was on hold. Now he was all sharp impatience and icy reserve.
Cloister didn’t know whether he’d get frostbite or draw blood if he kissed Javi.
He wanted to ask, but he didn’t—old habits and the fear he wouldn’t like the answer. Instead he just shrugged and left. The click of the door behind him sounded final as he headed for the elevators.
“Deputy Witte,” Ms. Daly said as he passed her desk. She craned her neck briefly to check at his heels. “No dog today?”
“Going to get her now,” Cloister said as he hit the flat metal button to call the elevator.
Daly sniffed and looked back down at the forms she’d scrawled her signature over. “Try that order again. I’ll have to vacuum less.” She scratched her temple with the butt of the pen and then looked up again. “Although I suppose we won’t be seeing you as much around here in future.”
Cloister might have questioned that, but the elevator arrived a second later. He stepped out of the way to let a clerk with a stack of files pinned between his forearms and his spotty chin sidle onto the floor.
“This is half the case files you requested for review,” the clerk said as he gave Cloister a dubious look and then shifted his attention to Daly. “We still have to pull the rest.”
“For goodness sake,” Daly muttered as she popped up from behind her desk and hurried over to grab some files before they all toppled onto the floor. She sorted them briskly, put three piles on her desk, and kept one in her arms.
The opportunity to ask her to explain had gone. Cloister got on the elevator, hit the button for the ground floor, and waited for the doors to close. Despite the “have some pride” hiss from the back of his brain—it sounded like his mom, her voice hard as she marched down the street past clucking neighbors who smiled to her face and muttered behind their hands—he looked through the glass doors at Javi.
Javi’s head was bent over his desk, his dark hair fallen forward in thick waves. He didn’t look up.
Idiot.
Cloister snorted and leaned against the back wall of the elevators as the doors slid closed. He folded his arm across his chest and braced the plaster cast against his shoulder.
That voice sounded like his mother too. She was always helpful like that. Cloister let the sour feeling gnaw at him on the short ride between floors. Then he banished the self-pity as the doors opened.
So Javi blew hot and cold, but someone had left Janet Morrow to die in the rain like a doll they’d gotten tired of. On any measurable scale, her problems were more important that Cloister’s.
He didn’t need the dry echo of his mother’s voice in his head to tell him that.
If there was a link between Janet and the Lopez kids, he’d find it.
AFTER TWOdays and far too many emojis Cloister still hadn’t found the link.
He sat on the beach, a mile away from the trailer park, and ignored another beautiful California sunset in favor of his phone. He swiped the screen—the sand was gritty under his thumb, and any new scratches were lost in the ones he’d gotten used to—and watched the last seven months of her life play out, one disembodied part at a time.
Janet Morrow’s Instagram was a carefully curated collage of bits—feet in patent leather Mary Janes, a hologram-nailed thumb hooked into a braided belt, a tattooed collarbone, and rolls of textile fabric. The only photo that didn’t match the theme was a blurry selfie taken with a mildly perplexed-looking silver-haired man in a natty suit, where Janet leaned in from the side in a flash of red hair and a long arm. It was an awful picture, but she looked happy.
But it didn’t seem likely that Tim Gunn had been involved in an attempted murder that happened in Plenty.
By comparison, the Lopez stepsons had a dozen social media accounts between them, full of the sort of messy group shots and ill-advised videos their teachers probably warned them against. The Lopez boys liked baseball, the beach, and, surprisingly enough, their stepmom. Girls too, for one of them, but no there was no mention of New York, redheads, or any comments about anger or getting even. He’d pulled their juvie records as well and talked to the school’s principal. The older boy had been caught with an open container in his vehicle, and the younger one had been reprimanded after a fight in school—nothing beyond the pale.
According to Principal Vasser, for two boys whose father had killed himself—a year ago, at his office in San Diego. Cloister had sent for the files just in case—and whose mother showed no interest in reclaiming custody from their stepmother, they were doing as well as could be expected.
That could mean either there wasn’t a link or there was one and Cloister just hadn’t found it. It was possible. He didn’t use social media—no Facebook, no Twitter. His only presence on Instagram was the occasional photo shoot for the sheriff’s department’s official account. Those were mostly of his legs and his dog.
Digital ties were still ties. Besides, what would he put on there? The adventures of a beachside insomniac?
He wasn’t familiar with the online network, so he might have missed something. He wanted to believe he had. If the Lopez car really had been picked at random, their only lead was a dirty, decades-old business card and that bloody scarf Hewitt handed in. It wasn’t much. Janet’s clothes had been all over the street. The homeless man Hewitt focused on might just have picked it up.
Bon barked at him.
“Sorry,” Cloister said absently as he locked the phone. He set it down on the chunk of driftwood he leaned against and bent to grab a long, salt-dried root of seaweed from the sand. It was sandy, slobber-sticky, and too light to throw, but Bon didn’t seem to care. Her new rubber toy, a twist of heavy, textured rubber that was advertised as indestructible, had been abandoned on the beach for an hour. She huffed at him and hopped eagerly from foot to foot on the hard-packed sand as she waited for him to get on with it. “You ready?”
He cocked the stick back over his shoulder, and Bon scuffled backward as she anticipated the throw. Sand coated her paws and lower legs until she looked almost like a black and tan.
“Bleib,” Cloister said sharply as he threw the stick. It arched through the air and dropped down into the surf. Bon quivered with the desire togo, but she obeyed the “stay” command and held her position. She focused on Cloister as he held up his hand, palm out and steady. “Good girl. Good dog. Sit.”
