“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said, a tremor in my voice.
His grin was crooked. “Neither are you.”
CHAPTER 34
Wade shook a cigarette from his pack and hunched over his lighter, dropping the tip of it to the bright orange flame. He sucked in a drag, watching me as he expelled smoke through his nose. “You can put your hands down, unless you’re confessing to something.” I lowered my hands, surprised to realize I’d been holding them up. He glanced at the duffel bag. “Does your boyfriend know you’re here?”
I tucked it closer to my side. “Should he?”
Wade shrugged. “Guess that depends on why you followed me. Look,” he said, flicking sparks into the wind. “I’ve got nothing against you, but I didn’t come up here looking for a hookup. I just came to find my stash.” He waved his pack of Marlboros at me. “It’s my last pack. Ortega’s got the whole place locked down. Can’t leave to go to the store.”
“You were up here looking for cigarettes? At three in the morning?”
“We all have our vices. Mine’s no worse than whatever you came looking for.” He took another lazy drag as his eyes made a slow pass over me. “So what’d Nick do to piss you off? Must have been something pretty shitty to make you pack your bag and move out of his room at this hour of the night.”
I followed the jut of his chin toward the duffel under my arm. “Oh! No, this isn’t my bag … I mean, it is my bag, but it’s not what you’re thinking,” I stammered. “Nick didn’t do anything wrong. I just … couldn’t sleep.”
“Welcome to the club.” He held his cigarettes out to me.
“I don’t smoke.”
One corner of his mouth hitched up. “And I don’t screw other cops’ girlfriends on icy roofs in thirty-degree weather. So what the hell are we doing up here?”
“I wish I knew.” I slumped against the back of the pump house beside Wade and checked my phone. EasyClean should have been here by now, and there was still no word from Vero. No one was coming. I should have been relieved to have my suspicions confirmed, but if Joey had really been EasyClean all along, why did I still feel so uncertain about him?
I dropped the duffel bag by my feet. “You won’t tell Nick I was here, will you?”
“If I tell Nick I was up here with you, he’ll probably shoot me, and I prefer to keep my ass in one piece.”
“Thanks.”
He gave a shallow nod, blowing smoke through his nose as it was whisked off by the wind. I remembered back to two nights ago, when I’d caught a whiff of it as I’d crossed the drill field. I wondered if Wade came out here every night. If he didn’t sleep well, the same way Nick hadn’t been sleeping well. Welcome to the club, Wade had said, as if this was a curse they all suffered. No wonder so many of them were in therapy. As much as Stu complained about how little money he made as a department shrink, he probably had no shortage of patients who were … cops.
My mind raced back to the day I’d first met Dr. Stuart Kirby. Nick had thanked him for writing a letter stating Theresa was competent to act as a witness in Feliks’s trial. Sam said Stu had met with Theresa a few times after her arrest. How much had she divulged to him behind closed doors? What details had she confessed to him, assuming the information would be held in confidence between therapist and client? Had she told him about what had happened to Carl? Where she and Barbara had hidden his body?
I pushed myself upright. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put it together before. Nick had been seeing Stu for weekly counseling sessions since the shooting. They probably talked about the case. About Feliks. About me and Steven.
Steven …
I reached inside my pocket for the crumpled business card he’d pushed on me yesterday. My hands shook as I read the therapist’s name. STUART KIRBY, PHD.
This guy’s a therapist. My attorney gave him my number a few months ago.
A few months ago … around the same time EasyClean would have been vetting Steven as a target.
The facts began to crystallize into something tangible and sinister. The longer I sat with them, the more horribly right they felt. Stu had access to the campus Wi-Fi. He had clients and friends here; he could move through this place as easily as any cop. He didn’t have to go to the bar to glean information from Nick’s peers. He gathered all the information he needed in private sessions, one-on-one.
Wade’s posture shifted as he registered the look on my face. During our class, he’d said he taught civilians who worked for the department. If anyone knew what kind of gun Stu carried, it would be the person who had probably shown him how to use it. “Does Stu carry a Glock?”
Wade nodded once. “He’s got a permit. What about it?”
“It was Stu,” I said. “He was the one who sent that photo of the dummy to Feliks.”
I was dimly aware of a vibration in my pocket. At the same moment, footsteps thumped softly up the fire escape. Wade crushed out his cigarette, growing tense as he watched me. We both turned as Stu rounded the side of the pump house.
He froze when he saw us, his eyes wide enough to catch the moonlight. The tails of his trench coat billowed in the wind, the loose cut of it making his shape difficult to define. In hindsight, I could see it all so clearly now. This was the same silhouette I’d seen get out of the sedan on that dark country road. I had no doubt that the rifling patterns made by Stu’s Glock would match the ones on the bullet in my pocket. And I also had no doubt he was carrying that Glock somewhere under that coat.
“’Sup, Doc?” Wade said, his eyes making a furtive pass over Stu. “It’s a little late for a walk, isn’t it?”
Stu’s eyes darted between us. Then down to the duffel beside me. His throat bobbed with a swallow. “I … I remembered I left something up here today. I just came to find it. What are you two doing up here?” The fingers of his right hand twitched. Wade draped his arm casually around me, tucking me close to his side.
“You know me.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Came up for some air. We didn’t think anyone would be here.” When I glanced up at him, he gave me a lascivious wink.
Why wasn’t he doing something? Confronting Stu? Why wasn’t he whipping out his gun and arresting him? That’s what Nick or Joey or Georgia would have done. But as I caught sight of the ghosts of the tattoos on Wade’s neck, I remembered why. He wasn’t like the other cops. He played the bad guy to survive, and if he was acting the part now, with someone who knew him, it was because he sensed that Stu was a threat.
Stu pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and gestured to the duffel bag. “I think that might belong to me. I’ll just take it and be going.”
Wade stepped in front of him as Stu took a few steps toward it. “Pretty sure you’re mistaken, Doc. That bag belongs to—”
Stu pulled his gun and pointed it at Wade’s face. “Step away from the bag.”
Wade slowly raised his hands as he backed us away from the pump house.
Stu reached down blindly for the duffel, dragging it toward him with one hand, his gun steady in the other. He hesitated over the zip tie Vero had fastened around the zippers, darting panicked glances toward the fire escape.