Blind Spot (38 page)

She was perplexed by the priest’s words.

Leaning into her ear, Garcia enlightened her: “I told him you had an aunt on her deathbed. You needed to spend some time in church.”

Bernadette had no idea Garcia had cooked up such a lame lie to get the priest out of bed. She whispered out of the side of her mouth: “He opened shop for that? In the middle of the night?”

Garcia whispered back: “I couldn’t tell him why we really needed the church.” His eyes narrowed. “Could I, Agent Saint Clare?”

She stared at Garcia for a few seconds, wondering why he’d suddenly pulled out the formal stuff.
Agent Saint Clare.
She returned her attention to the altar. She approved of Father Pete. He fit one of the two physical profiles she judged proper for a priest; plus, he’d given them some good dirt on Quaid. She raised her voice loud enough for the priest to hear: “Thanks for letting us in, Father Pete.”

“We’re sorry about the odd hour,” said Garcia. He glanced at Bernadette when he added: “We won’t waste your time again.”

“You know me, Anthony,” the priest said over his shoulder. “I never sleep anymore.”

Garcia turned in his seat and studied her face. “Looks like you could use some sleep. Eyes are all bloodshot. Face white as a sheet.”

She smiled weakly. “I’ll live. Let’s get back in that fine ride of yours and head for the woods. We can talk during the drive. Think you can find Quaid’s place?”

“It was all over the old trial documents. His family lived between Dassel and Darwin, off of U.S. 12. A straight shot west of the cities. They had pictures of the outside of the joint.”

She wanted to compare what she’d seen inside the home with photos of the place. “Did you see interior crime-scene shots?”

“A ton of them.”

“Let’s trade notes while we’re on the road.”

He fished his car keys out of his pocket and held them in his hand, but didn’t make a move to get up. “How sure are you about what you saw, Agent Saint Clare? About where Quaid is hiding?”

“What’re you saying?” She scrutinized his face. His mouth was set hard. Plus that
Agent Saint Clare
garbage. What happened to
Cat
? What in the hell was going on with him?

“Let’s talk outside.” Garcia slid out of the pew and started down the aisle.

She got up and went after him. He was waiting for her at the double doors. As he held one side open for her, she walked through and blurted: “He has a gun.”

“We have guns.” He let go of the door and followed her outside. They started down the steps together, each zipping up against the cold morning air. A faded photocopy of the moon was peeking out from behind the clouds.

She stood next to the front passenger’s door of the Pontiac and looked over the roof at Garcia. “We should call for backup.”

“Not yet.” He opened the driver’s door, got in, and started the car.

She hopped inside and slammed the door shut. “Why not? We know he did it. We’ve got enough to take him.”

“Have we?” Garcia put the car in drive and made a squealing U-turn in front of the church. “Let’s see if he’s home before we call in the cavalry and embarrass ourselves. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said in a low voice.

Deflated and exhausted, she stared through the windshield into the early-morning darkness. More than any of her previous supervisors, Garcia had shown an interest in her sight. He’d wanted to watch. Now he was snapping at her and putting distance between the two of them, behaving like a guy trying to kick a weekend fling out of his bed before heading off to work. What had changed?

Garcia braked at a light. “If this doesn’t pan out, Agent Saint Clare, let’s head back into the office and reassess what we have. Maybe we need to take a more conventional approach.”

Turning her head away from him, she slipped into her own formal language. “Yes, sir.”

As she stared outside the passenger window, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirrored surface of a neighborhood hardware-store window. She looked like a worn little woman—nothing special at all. With that observation, the reason for Garcia’s transformation landed in her gut with a sickening thud. He’d watched her using the sight, and it had somehow disappointed him, let him down. Maybe it wasn’t mystical enough or spiritual enough for the nice Catholic boy. He’d hoped to see a halo materialize over her head, or hear a celestial choir. Hear her talking in tongues. After the buildup in his head, he was disillusioned. All he’d witnessed was a small, tired woman sitting on a church bench, her hand wrapped around a bit of jewelry. She told herself it was all her own fault: she’d let down her guard and trusted another human being. Big mistake. Worse, she’d given that person a glimpse of how she used her sight. “I shouldn’t have let you watch,” she muttered, more to herself than to him.

“Watch what?” he asked dryly.

“It wasn’t what you expected,” she said to the glass. “Now you’re pissed off.”

“I’m not pissed off.”

“Skeptical, then.”

She held her breath, waiting for him to deny that he doubted her. He stayed silent.

The light changed, and he accelerated. They didn’t speak as he steered the Grand Am onto Interstate 94 heading west. Traffic was spotty, and with few obstacles to maneuver around, Garcia was able to keep the pedal to the floor. Ten miles after hopping onto I-94, they took the exit for Interstate 394. The Pontiac sped west through a couple of Minneapolis suburbs before the highway turned into U.S. 12. From there, they’d be at Quaid’s place in under an hour.

As they entered the town of Long Lake and passed the narrow body of water bearing the same name, Garcia reached over and snapped on the radio. An oldies rock station was in the middle of an Aerosmith tribute. “Sweet Emotion” filled the inside of the car.

Bernadette stared through the passenger window and felt a headache coming on. She’d already spent too much time listening to Steven Tyler through the ceiling. She didn’t say anything, though. The music was preferable to the grinding silence.

They cruised past three more lakes and went through four more towns before Garcia lowered the volume on the radio and spoke. “You wanted to discuss the details of what you saw inside Quaid’s home?”

“I saw a bed with twin stains in a bedroom with religious paraphernalia. I saw two other bedrooms. I saw a kitchen and a weird-ass porch salon and—”

He cut her off: “All stuff you could have seen in the file. Sure you didn’t look at that file even briefly?”

“No, I didn’t.” She paused, struggling to keep her temper and voice under control. “Doesn’t matter, sir. All the bureau would care about is that he’s there and that we get him.”

“Let’s hope he
is
there, Agent Saint Clare.” Garcia reached over and turned the volume back up on “Rats in the Cellar.”

She couldn’t take another guitar riff. “Can you switch stations, sir? Augie has been keeping me up at night with that stuff.”

Garcia jerked the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes. He shoved it into park and snapped off the radio. “What did you say?”

She froze. She’d done something or said something that infuriated him. Was it residual anger over their church visit? She didn’t know what to apologize for, so she went with the most obvious. “I’m sorry. The station’s fine. The music. Whatever. It’s your car, sir.”

“Stop with the
sir
crap.”

“Then you stop with the
Agent Saint Clare
crap.”

“What did you say about August Murrick?”

She frowned, confused by his line of questioning. Had he snapped because she’d mentioned Augie again? Garcia obviously had some weird grudge against the guy. She wanted to get off the subject. “Nothing. Let’s keep going.”

“Answer my question.”

She turned away from the window and looked at him. Even by the dim glow of the dashboard, she could read his expression. Garcia was genuinely worried. “Augie and his stupid mutt. They’ve been cranking the Aerosmith late at night.”

“Someone in your building didn’t tell you some inside dirt about August Murrick, did they? Stuff only the cops should know?”

“What stuff? What are you talking about? I told you I bumped into the guy. That he lives upstairs.”

Garcia’s eyes widened. “He
used to
live upstairs.”

“He still does. With that wiener dog of his. Oscar. They’ve been partying upstairs from me. I had to tell him to turn it down.”

“You didn’t mention the dog or the music before. That would have clued me in that it wasn’t another Murrick you saw. That you really…” His words trailed off.

She didn’t like the horrified look on his face or the shakiness of his voice. An icicle shot up Bernadette’s spine and wrapped around her middle. “That I really what? What’s going on? You’re scaring me, Tony.”

Turning his head away from her, he said to the driver’s window: “August Murrick is dead. So is his dog.”

Forty-two

Her heart pounded as her mind frantically backtracked. During their first meeting, she’d been alone with Augie and Oscar in the hallway; there’d been no one else to hear them or see them. What about at the crowded Farmers’ Market the next morning? Had someone besides her interacted with the man and his dog? Taken notice of them? She remembered the woman in line at the bagel stand, staring at Bernadette and nervously wheeling away her stroller. The mother didn’t want to be near a woman carrying on a conversation with thin air. Augie’s warning about the wake had been prophetic, as if he had some supernatural insight. His place had been sparsely furnished and dusty for good reason: no one was living there!

I slept with a…

She couldn’t even finish the thought, let alone say it out loud.

All of it was coming true. The stories they’d told about her in Louisiana. The tales they’d spun around New Orleans about her talking to the dead. The warning from the Franciscan.

Demons twisting your hands and your heart.

She instinctively reached up and put her hand over her chest—the spot where, beneath her clothing, her husband’s wedding band hung from a chain next to her own ring. “That can’t be. How can that be?”

Snapping his head back around to look at her, Garcia barked: “You tell me!”

She bunched her hand over her talisman. While outwardly denying the dead, Bernadette silently prayed to them. She petitioned her husband and her sister and her parents to make it all go away. “You’re wrong or I’m wrong or someone’s jerking me around. It was a different Murrick.”

“His body was found in the basement of his own building. Your building. Murrick Place.”

“Stop.”

“Police figured it was because of a meth case Augie had lost. Not even a federal one—a pissant one. His clients blamed him, and hired someone to execute him and his dog. One bullet each to the head. Cops never caught the guys.”

She put her hands over her face. “No.”

Garcia kept going. “It was all over the local news, but that was months ago. You were down south. I doubt the papers there ran anything.”

“Stop.”

“And the details were never published.”

She was shaking her head. “That’s enough.”

“Murrick was a big rock-and-roll fan. He was wearing an Aerosmith shirt when he died. I only know that because I’ve got a cousin in St. Paul Homicide. Ironic, actually. The tee said something about…”

“Nine lives,” she said through her fingers.

“Exactly,” he breathed.

“Dear God,” she prayed into her palms.

“You’ve been seeing spirits? Talking to a dead guy and his dead dog? Is that what you’re fucking telling me?”

“No,” she said into her hands. “That’s not right.” She couldn’t tell him she’d done more than talk to a spirit; she’d made love with him.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to…”

“I don’t need to do anything.” She pushed his hand away. She didn’t want to hear about how she needed to get some sleep or take some time off or see a shrink. She turned around and threw open the car door and jumped out. She didn’t know where they’d stopped. Somewhere with woods. She didn’t care. She started to run for the trees, her way illuminated by the Pontiac’s headlights. Behind her, she heard his car door slam and his footsteps crunching. His voice.