Knockout

I poked Rob in the chest. “Listen, Crystal didn’t use drugs.” I felt a choked-off sob rising in my throat at the use of the past tense when referring to her.

“I’m not trying to denigrate your friend. But when was the last time you saw her?”

“Today.”

“No, before that.”

“It’s been a couple of years. But we spoke on the phone often.”

“She was living the high life in that mansion. You don’t know whether or not she was also living the high life. She could have been a user and you didn’t know about it.”

I crossed my arms. “Not Crystal. She never even smoked pot. Nothing. She was chicken. In high school, she knew this guy who smoked a joint laced with PCP and he went crazy. And she just never tried drugs. It was totally not her, Rob. Besides…I…I stared at her there on that bed, on my bed. I put a…” Suddenly, what I had been through caught up with me, and I felt the tears starting to come, so I willed them away. “I put a blanket on her. I couldn’t bear to see her there. Cold. And one thing I didn’t see? Track marks. Her arms were as porcelain and beautiful as the rest of her. Unmarked.”

Rob looked at me, then ran upstairs. When he came back down, he said, “I’m not sure what kind of mess you’re in, but you’re right about her arms.”

We heard the sirens approaching.

“Rob, when I solve her murder, I will get even with whoever did this to her. And if I’m right, I think all paths will lead to that snake, Benny Bonita.”

“Look, this isn’t Nancy Drew, Jack. Let me handle this. You worry about Destiny. Poor kid. Do you know what, if anything, she saw?”

“No. She’s shaken up, and she knows her mother’s dead. But at that age…I don’t know if she gets that it means Crystal’s never coming back.”

“Okay, I’m giving this a day or two, tops. At some point, you’re going to have to give up Destiny. We have to talk to her. We have to get her seen by a child psychiatrist. Have to find out who her legal guardian is.”

“And if it’s Tony Perrone, I can tell you, you’re getting her over my dead body. And I mean it. You’ll have to kill me to get her.”

“You’re always saying ‘You’ll have to kill me first to get me to marry you without my father there,’ ‘You’ll have to kill me first to get me to meet your parents.’ One of these days, Jack, I’m going to take you up on that offer!”

“The vein in your temple is pulsing.”

“Shut up!”

We heard several car doors being slammed, and suddenly my house was overrun with police and two guys from the medical examiner’s office.

“Detective Carson?” Another detective, this one in a cheesy gray jacket with stains on the lapels, reeking of cologne, approached us.

“Yeah,” Rob said, and stuck out his hand.

“I’m Louie Palmer. How is it you came to arrive first at the scene?”

“I’m Rob’s fiancée, Jacqueline Rooney,” I said. Rob shot me a look. I knew what he was thinking. Sure, now that you need to get in good with the cops, I’m your fiancé.

“Nice to meet you.” Detective Palmer shook my hand. “You live here?”

“Correct.”

He looked around the foyer at the hurled brass urn, the broken lamp, the bullet holes in the wall, the turned-over coffee table in the den, visible through the archway. “You came home to two unidentified men.”

“Yes.”

“And you were alone?”

I nodded.

“And you surprised them, as I understand it, according to the call Detective Carson placed.”

“Yes.”

“And you—” he gazed down at me “—managed to overpower and chase away a man with a semiautomatic weapon and his accomplice.”

“Yes, that’s precisely what I am saying.”

“I’m not sure I buy that.”

“I’m a trainer. Boxing. They wouldn’t be the first two men I’ve decked.”

Palmer looked at Rob, who nodded. “Trust her on that one. You don’t want to cross her. On our second date, a drunk was harassing this waitress. When Jack here butted in and told him to quit it, the guy grabbed her arm. Jack broke his nose.”

“I see,” Palmer said. “Must make for an interesting relationship.”

Rob nodded. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“And the woman upstairs is?”

“Crystal Lake.” I saw him react to her name. “She had it legally changed to that when she moved here years ago. I only knew her by that name, and I have no idea what her given name was.”

“And she’s a friend of yours?”

“Old friend. Yes. I hadn’t seen her in a while. She lives with Tony Perrone. She’s technically his fiancée. It’s his rock she’s wearing on her left hand. She’s the star of the Majestic show.”

Palmer wiped his brow. “Tony Perrone? Jesus H. Christ, this is going to be a long night.”

For the next three hours, I went over and over my story so much that I started to believe it. I had surprised the two men. But no, I hadn’t seen Crystal’s little girl. I left Deacon out of the entire equation.

Somewhere near four o’clock in the morning, the last of the police left, taking Crystal’s body with them. They told me they’d like me to look at mug shots in the next day or so. Rob and I were the only ones remaining in the house.

“I need a tequila,” I told him.

“You and me both.”

We sat in the kitchen, and I poured us two, neat. “Screw the lemon,” I said, and tossed mine back.

He slammed his back, as well. Rob has dark brown hair cut neatly and those unfathomable gray eyes of his. Sometimes at night, in bed, I had the feeling they glowed in the dark, they were so pale in the moonlight.

“I won’t ever sleep in that bed again. I’m going to replace it. I don’t even know if I can sleep in that room again. She didn’t deserve that. And I know it has to do with the fight. With Keenan. With me and Deacon and my father.”

“But you don’t know that, Jack. Maybe it has to do with drugs, or with an affair she was having behind Perrone’s back. Listen, as a detective, we’re really a lot like archeologists. They go on a dig, and then they sift through sand, looking for tiny bone fragments—”