“No,” Marlow said after a pause. “Nothing.”
He turned to go. The sound of O’Hara clearing his throat stopped him in the doorway.
“Internal Affairswillfind out what happened,” he said. “Do like Deacon; stay out of it and let them do their job.”
Marlow glanced at O’Hara’s dim reflection in the glass of the door. It hadn’t occurred to him that O’Hara might believe that had worked. Since no one had asked him, though, he guessed it wasn’t his business.
“Sir,” he said and left.
You could always tell when it was a null household that made a call. The coffee was good. Strong, in this case, since Victor Clemons had no creamer in the house, but good.
Marlow took a polite sip from the mug and leaned forward to set it down on the kitchen table.
“Unfortunately—”
“I have a restraining order,” Victor blurted out before Marlow could finish. “He’s not allowed to come anywhere near me.”
“He didn’t.”
Victor shoved himself to his feet. The legs of his chair scraped over the tiled floor as he pushed it out of the way. He stalked across the room and grabbed a folder from the top of the microwave. His hands were shaking as he pulled out grainy printouts of security stills and dealt them out in front of Marlow like cards.
“Tell me he wasn’t here now?” Victor demanded. He slapped one picture down in front of Marlow and jabbed his finger against it hard enough to tear the paper. “That’s him. That’s Barney. Every. Fucking. Night this month.”
Marlow gently slid the photos out from under Victor’s hand and paged through them. He’d seen the grooves in the stucco on the side of the house when he arrived. Now he saw how they had gotten there. A lanky graphite-gray wolf tore at the wall, pissed on a tree, and threw itself against the heavy metal shutter over the door.
“That’s a wolf, Mr. Clemons,” Marlow said gently. “You can’t put a restraining order on a wolf. I don’t see Mr. Lyons in any of these pictures. Unless you saw him in the vicinity of the house last night—”
Victor kicked his chair in frustration and knocked it over.
“It doesn’t matter where he is!” He slammed both hands down on the table and glared at Marlow. “As soon as the moon is up, the wolf comes here. Tomyhouse. To findme.Every month. Every night. I can’t live like this.”
Then he shouldn’t have dated a wolf. Marlow flicked through the images to check the time stamp and date. Dumped in a pile, the wolf’s attentions looked overwhelming, but it worked out to something like fifteen minutes a night over the three nights.
“When did you break up?” Marlow asked.
“Not soon enough?” Victor said tartly, in a brittle voice. He raked his fingers through his dark chin-length hair and took Marlow’s mug as if he’d finished it. The coffee went down the sink, and Victor flicked the tap on to rinse it. “Two months. Three months?”
“How long were you together?”
Victor half turned to frown at him. “What has that got to do with anything?”
Marlow sat back and hooked his arm over the chair. He watched Victor as the man turned to the sink and rinsed the cups with impatient, jerky movements.
“It influences our profile of the wolf’s behavior,” he said. “What we can predict.”
Victor’s shoulders stayed tense for a second and then relaxed reluctantly. He flicked the tap off and dried his hands on his trousers.
“We dated for three months,” he said. “Three and a half. I cheated on him with my boss at work. He acted like a jilted housewife instead of little more than a hook-up and threw a tantrumatmy job. Got us both fired and then came back here to trash my stuff. He left, I got a restraining order, and I thought it was over—until he came back at the end of the month and pissed on my car. So, is that enough information, or do you want to know how our sex life was?”
He asked the last question in an intense, chirpy tone, then grimaced and looked away. The muscles in his jaw were tight, visible under his tanned skin and faint stubble.
“No. That should be enough,” Marlow said. He stood up and tucked his notebook into his belt. It was a grudge, and maybe some leftover lust, not love. That was more volatile but also more likely to pass. “I’ll speak to your ex—”
Victor made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat and shook his head. “Of course you will,” he said. “Andthistime, that will make all the difference. I don’t want you to talk to him; I want you to stop him. Make sure he doesn’t come here again.”
“That’s what the restraining order is for. If he breaches it—”
“He breaches it every month!”
