There was a tentative knock on the door and Neagley stuck her head round.
“Hi, Charlie,” she said. “We wondered when you were going to surface.”
I looked round, but there was no clock in the room. “Why? What time is it?”
“Nearly ten,” she said.
I gave a guilty start and threw back the covers, only for various parts of my body to bring me up short. By the time I’d finished gasping and my vision had cleared, I found Neagley was crouched alongside the bed, a guarded expression on her face.
“Well, I’m guessing that wasn’t a good move,” she murmured.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, forcing myself up slowly. “Just pass me my crutch, would you?”
“Do you want me to give you a hand to the bathroom?”
“I’m fine,” I said again, through gritted teeth.
“O-K,” she said, drawing it out, dubious. She got to her feet, an easy swift movement I envied instantly. “I’ll leave you to it, then. We got Detective Young coming over in about a half hour. Sean wants Matt to tell her his story and see if we can’t get her fighting in our corner.”
“I’ll be ready,” I said, and hoped it was true.
In the end, I made it out with about five minutes to spare. I’d managed to dress myself only because Sean had been out and bought me a couple of pairs of sweatpants with elastic in the waistband that I could pull on with one hand, unlike my jeans.
The entry and exit wounds in the skin of my thigh had closed up without any apparent problems, leaving deep indentations where part of the muscle had been destroyed by the path of the bullet. With time, the physio had told me, I could build the bulk up again, but I was always going to have an interesting set of scars. At the moment, where it wasn’t wasted it was swollen. It looked and felt like a deformity.
When I hobbled out into the living room, the conversation paused while they watched my halting progress from the bedroom door to the sofa.
“Feel free to break into spontaneous applause at any time,” I said, narked.
“Hell, Charlie, you probably deserve that just for standing up,” Nea-gley said, her voice neutral. “You want coffee?”
“Oh yes,” I said, grateful, easing myself down onto the sofa. Matt had clearly been the one who’d slept there last night, and now he piled his blankets and pillows to one side for me to sit, shifting over himself into one of the other chairs.
I saw Sean watching Matt carefully moving out of my way and realized that he was not entirely comfortable around me. And who could blame him? The first time we’d met Fd humiliated him, in public. But, worse than that, I’d humiliated him in front of Simone and Ella. And then I’d been responsible, one way or another, for their safety. Strikeout on both counts.
Neagley handed me my coffee and turned to Sean, obviously picking up the conversation exactly where it had broken off at my arrival.
“The answer’s no, Sean,” she said. “If you were caught with it-never mind firing it-I’d lose my license. Besides, since Barry died, I’ve had it on me at all times.”
“Really?” Matt said. “You’re actually carrying a gun right now?”
For an answer, Neagley picked up her shoulder bag and pulled out a.357 Smith amp; Wesson Model 340 PD Centennial revolver.
“Only five shots,” Sean murmured.
“Yeah, but with Magnum loads — if it doesn’t go down with five, it ain’t going down at all,” she said, tucking it away again. “Damn thing kicks like the proverbial mule, but it’s light and easy to conceal.”
“You must have a backup piece,” Sean persisted. He had that dogged, head-down, nothing’s-getting-in-my-way air about him.
“Yeah, I have a Glock nine,” Neagley said, starting to bristle, “but there is no way in hell you’re getting your hands on it, so back off.”
They’d just dug in for a full-scale glaring match when there was a knock on the front door. Sean put his coffee cup down and went to answer it. When he came back, the stringy, dark-haired detective who’d interviewed me in the hospital was with him, and she didn’t exactly look happy to be here.
Today she was wearing black trousers and a polo-necked jumper, with a rust-colored tweed jacket over the top. Her gaze went round the mismatched group, resting briefly on Neagley as if recognizing the cop in her.
Sean introduced her and let Matt repeat the story he’d told us about Lucas. Young sat and listened without any emotion showing on her thin face. She didn’t fidget in her chair and she didn’t make notes. When Matt was done she was silent for a moment before she looked at the assembled faces.
“So,” she said, “let me get this straight. You’re talking about the possible disappearance of an adult, more than twenty years ago, in another country, that Mr. Lucas might just have had something to do with, but no charges were ever filed? Heck, you don’t even know for sure there was a crime committed. Am I understanding this right?”
“That about sums it up, Detective,” Sean said evenly
“And just what is it that you want me to do about it now, Mr. Meyer?”
Matt glanced at Sean, as if for courage, before butting in. “I’m worried about my daughter,” he said. “I just want her to be safe and how can I be sure of that when she’s with a man who could be a murderer?”
Young made a gesture of impatience with her left hand. “Sir, you can’t possibly know that Mr. Lucas is guilty of any crime. If anything, he was an intended victim in all this. Now, he and Mrs. Lucas have a perfect legal right to care for his granddaughter and unless you can provide a good reason-and I mean a.good reason-we’re happy to leave her in their care until the courts have come to their decision about her future.”
Matt started to object but she cut him off with nothing more than a stare. “Mrs. Lucas has already made us aware that you have tried to gain entry to their property and that you made certain threats against them. She is in the process of filing an official complaint, and I should warn you, sir, that any further attempts to see your daughter would be inadvisable at this time.”
Matt’s face went from angry disbelief to anguish in one turn. Young rose, straightening her jacket so that I caught a flash of the gun on her hip, and regarded him with a flicker of something that might even have been sympathy
“If I can offer some advice, sir, if you want to see your daughter again soon, you need to get yourself a fancy lawyer,” she said, looking down at him. “We’re still investigating the events leading up to the death of Si-mone Kerse, but at the present time all the evidence shows that she entered the property and attacked Mr. Lucas, during which time Mr. Jakes fell and died from his injuries. Mr. Lucas, fearing for his life, went to his gun store in the basement to arm himself. But during the argument that followed, it was Miss Kerse who got hold of a gun-we’re still not entirely clear how-and attempted to use it to shoot Miss Fox when she arrived.”
“But why?” Matt burst out. “Why would she do any of that? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“When people get killed it rarely has a whole lot to do with sense,” Young said shortly. “I’ll be in touch.” She nodded sharply to us in dismissal. “In the meantime, stay away from the Lucases. If there’s anything going on here, we’ll take care of it. We do not need some goddamn vigilantes stepping in, you hear me?”
Sean rose, effortlessly, his face carefully expressionless. “Loud and clear, Detective.”
He showed her out and the rest of us sat and listened as the front door slammed behind her.
“Simone must have remembered something,” Matt said, almost to himself. He lifted his head, focused intently on me. “You told us she said that he’d killed him-but killed who? Her mum’s boyfriend?”