But he also thought, back then, that she was a real pill. An entitled bitch, even. Eminently dislikable.
Now he didn’t know what to think.
“All right, thanks. Sounds fun,” he said, and realized, incredibly, that it kind of did.
Adrienne signaled the bartender and kept her eyes on the game while Bird ordered.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” he said, and watched with amusement as the bartender said, “Sure,” and plopped a longneck down in front of him without so much as glancing at the minor celebrity sitting in the next seat over. Not a glimmer of recognition. He took a pull from the bottle and looked over to find Adrienne watching him.
“You think it’s weird that he doesn’t recognize me,” she said.
“A little,” Bird replied, and she smiled.
“People see what they expect to see,” she said. “And if they don’t know what to expect, they see whatever you show them. It took me a little while to figure it out. Back when everything happened, reporters were always trying to follow me around, and I used to put on this outfit to avoid the cameras. Big sunglasses, big hat, this big woolly wrap thing, you know, like a sweater made out of a blanket. The ‘incognito’ look.” She mimed the quotes with her fingers. “And for some reason, I thought this would work.”
Bird chuckled, and so did she.
“It was ridiculous,” she said, laying the back of her hand against her face and lifting her chin like a model. “‘Oh no! Please, no photographs! I’m famous! Don’t look at me!’”
“Funny how that works,” Bird said.
“It’s like a secret code. What to wear when you want to be photographed looking like you didn’t want to be photographed.”
“Seems like you worked it out.”
“Seems like it,” she said. “For the time being, anyway. I have this feeling that in six months, there won’t be any attention left for me to dodge.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Bird joked, and she shook her head.
“No, no. It’s what I want. It’s all that I want.” She turned to look at him, studying him. “Detective Bird, what’s your first name?”
“Ian.”
“Ian. Ian, why are you here?”
“Tying up a loose end,” he said. He would not tell her about the knife, still in its bag, sitting in a lockbox in the cruiser’s trunk. She might even recognize it, he thought. According to the police report, she’d woken up around two o’clock in the morning to find Dwayne Cleaves in her bedroom, standing over her, the blade glinting silver in his hand.
“Something to do with—”
“Yeah,” he said.
“I guess you’re not allowed to talk about it.”
“Did you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She took a long drink. “I’d be happy never to talk about it again. Congratulations, by the way.”
Bird drained his beer. “Thanks. What for?”
“Laurie Richter? I read somewhere that you caught the guy. That case was . . .” She shook her head, trailing off. He wondered what she’d been about to say, how she’d even known about it. Adrienne Richards didn’t seem like the true-crime type, but maybe that was a failure of his own imagination. People see what they expect to see, he thought.
“Oh yeah. Well, thanks. I got lucky.”
She gave him a funny look. “I’d guess it was more than that. Do you want another beer?”
He looked at his watch, at her face.
“I will if you will,” he said.
The conversation grew easier as he talked about Laurie Richter, the series of lucky breaks—and yes, okay, the hours and hours of legwork—that had led him first to her body and then to the son of a bitch who’d killed her. He told her about the confession, about how the old man sat up just a little straighter as he unburdened himself, finally free of that weight, a young man’s terrible secret that he’d been keeping for much too long.
“Forty years,” Adrienne said. “Jesus.”
“Long time to carry something like that,” Bird said, nodding. “But what about you? I mean, how have you been doing with everything?”
“The lawyers handled most of it,” she said. “Ethan was pretty organized; he had everything all planned out for, you know, if something happened. Once they identified the body, all I had to do was sign things.”
“Was there a funeral?”