“Yeah, the rental thing.”
“Nobody.”
“Did you hear that, Henderson?”
“I heard,” said Henderson. “Now we got him for lying to a police officer.”
“It’s a shame,” said Ramirez. “He was almost in the clear. Have you seen your father lately, Byrne?”
“My father?” said Kyle. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t believe that maniac, did you?”
“He seemed to know what he was talking about.”
“He also drew his eyebrows in with a Sharpie.”
“Someone was taping the whole scene,” said Henderson. “That someone took the tape. To clean things up, we’ll need it back.”
“Let me get out of here and I’ll see what I can do about getting you that tape.”
Ramirez looked at Henderson, Henderson blew out a cheek and then shrugged.
“Okay,” said Ramirez. “If the techs are done with your car, you can get the hell out of here. But tomorrow you’re going to have to go on up and talk to an inspector named Demerit with the Haverford Police Department about the fire at your house.”
“Deal,” said Kyle. He stepped toward Ramirez and lowered his voice. “Now that this is over, can you see me?”
“I can see you fine.”
He glanced at Henderson and then gently took hold of her arm and pulled her into a corner. Henderson turned his back and pretended to read something.
“You know what I mean,” said Byrne. “Look, let’s say tomorrow night at eight, at the same bar where you found me this afternoon. We’ll have a few beers, have some laughs, talk about something that has nothing to do with any of this.”
“I might be busy.”
He leaned forward, scratched his lower lip. Instinctively she licked her own lip with her tongue. He leaned farther forward, and she was surprised that this soon after the death and the blood something inside her was able to open up so quickly and urgently. She was surprised even more at the disappointment she felt when he pulled away without kissing her.
“Tomorrow,” he said with a smile before he turned and headed out of the house.
“And tomorrow and tomorrow,” said Henderson.
“What the hell is that?”
“Shakespeare,” said Henderson.
“Don’t give me that Shakespeare crap, like you’re some student of fine literature. We got reports to write, a case to close, an IAD shooting investigation to deal with. We’ve got ourselves a mess to clean up.”
“Yes, we do,” said Henderson.
“So let’s keep our eyes on the ball,” she said.
“Absolutely. But he’s a pretty interesting kid, isn’t he?”
“Don’t even,” said Ramirez.
“Pretty damn interesting,” said Henderson, laughing.
And Ramirez couldn’t help but laugh with him.
CHAPTER 58
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, lying awake in the sagging bed in that fetid motel room, still waiting for his father to reappear, Kyle Byrne gradually grew more and more certain that his father had never returned, that his father’s body had fully and truly been rendered unto ash fourteen years ago, that the whole renewed relationship was a piece of wishful thinking hatched in the fevered recesses of Kyle’s own deranged brain.
The evidence of Liam Byrne’s phoenix-like rise was less than scant. When Kyle quickly searched the rental car outside the Truscott mansion, his father’s luggage was gone, along with the cassette tape that he was recording off Kyle’s wire. When Kyle drove rings around the Truscott neighborhood shortly thereafter, he saw nothing on the dark streets but police cars. When he returned to the New Jersey motel room, there was no hard evidence that his father had ever been there, no toothbrush or strange pair of socks or discarded bottle of aftershave, only a few empty bottles of scotch and the light, lingering scent of cigarettes and Aqua Velva. But maybe he had drunk the scotch himself, and maybe the scents emanated from the guy in the room next door.
Oh, things had happened in the last few nights, he knew that. His house had burned down, his car had burned with it, he had recovered one of his father’s old files, and that file had led him to the bloody events at the Truscott house. And that it had all turned out pretty well for him in the end maybe meant that the spirit of his father had been looking out for him, just as it might have been the spirit of his father that had frightened Tiny Tony Sorrentino off his case. In a way it was a comforting thought, because it was considerably less crazy than what had passed for reality the last few days.
Kyle sat up in bed and took a deep breath. He wanted proof, he needed proof, and he knew where he might get it. The door to the motel’s office was locked, the lights off, but that didn’t stop Kyle from banging on the door like an escaped lunatic.
A pimply-faced kid, whose hair was sticking out wildly, as if he’d just been dosed with static electricity, straggled out of the back room and flicked on the light. He scratched the top of his head, scrunched up his face, opened the door.
“Yeah?” he said, eyes bleary and drool slipping down his slack mouth. “Did an old man come by and leave a message for room 207?” said Kyle.
The kid looked at Kyle with an uncomprehending stare, as if he weren’t sure which of the two of them was the idiot here. “No,” he said, having finally decided it was Kyle before starting to close the door.
Kyle stuck his foot in the gap and pushed the door open, shoving the kid back into the office at the same time.
“Do me a favor,” said Kyle, “and let me see the registration card for room 207.”
“I’m not really allowed,” said the clerk with a yawn.
“Dude, it’s my room. I’ve got the key, and I’m staying the night. Let me see the damn card.”
“There are rules.”
BLOOD AND BONE 379
“But if I happened to slip you a twenty?”
The clerk’s eyes brightened. “Well, you know, there are always exceptions.”
“Good, so here’s the way it’s going to work. I’m not going to slip you a twenty. But if you show me the card, I also won’t grab your nose in my fist and kick you in the head either.”
“Just a second, sir,” the clerk said as he made his way behind the desk with surprising alacrity.
The room was registered to a Byrne, all right, but to a Kyle Byrne, with the signature suspiciously like Kyle’s own, and paid for in cash. The son of a bitch hadn’t used his real name. If indeed the son of a bitch had signed the card, as opposed to Kyle himself in a fit of psychotic self-identity theft.
Back in the room, Kyle grabbed the little chair from the desk, put it on the cement walkway outside the door, and sat down facing the parking lot and the Target beyond that and the McDonald’s beyond that. He leaned back, propped his feet on the railing, tried to make sense of things.