Forgive Me by Joshua Corin

Author:Joshua Corin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

What Aguirre and Reeves had not told Xana was that there was an unmarked tan van parked outside, and inside the unmarked tan van were a team of three detectives, all of whom had eyes glued to a box of surveillance monitors. One camera, mounted inconspicuously on the roof of the van, depicted the breezeway in front of Xana and Em’s apartment. One camera, affixed to a tree by the apartment complex’s east gate, depicted, currently, a sedan with a Papa John’s illuminated topper idling by the wooden arm. One camera, affixed to another tree by the apartment complex’s other gate, depicted little more than a swath of rain-lined void.

Nowhere in the van were Konquist or Chau. Their LT had made the executive decision to keep the case’s lead detectives following up on other leads. It had not been a popular decision, but the APD wasn’t a democratic organization. And so the three detectives here were all friends of the lead detectives and were performing a job they knew their friends deserved in on. It did not make the job easier, but policing wasn’t meant to be stress-free. If they had wanted stress-free, they could have become circus clowns.

To complicate matters, though, neither Henry Hoyt nor his wife showed up.

Maybe Hoyt had spotted one of the cameras. Maybe he simply had the good sense to remember his browsing history, acknowledge that his browsing history would be searched, and thus he had acted accordingly. Or maybe—and this is what the detectives in the van posited around sunrise—Hoyt had played them. He knew his browsing history would be searched and so he had planted a false clue. Either way, the most promising lead in the case was a no-show, and, as the rain dwindled to a few spare droplets and the infant sun punched mightily through the clouds, painting the apartment complex an innocent orange, none of the sleepless detectives in the van were pleased.

No one inside the apartment was pleased either. Em was asleep in the bed, but her face had taken on a schoolmarm’s scowl. Maybe she was dreaming about hoodlums ransacking her bookstore. Or maybe she wasn’t dreaming at all. Maybe she had fallen asleep with a scowl on her face and the expression had stuck. It was so unusual to see such dissatisfaction broadcast by such an easygoing woman, but Xana, who was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, understood it very well. It had taken a few months, but she had finally poisoned Em’s spirit. Hurrah for consistency.

Xana wanted nothing more than to curl up alongside her Em, hold her, apologize to her, but to do so would have violated a request—a plea, really—which Em had quietly given upon bedtime.

“You’re on the couch.”

And now, as dawn bled through the apartment’s glass eyes, Xana returned to the couch. Officer Reeves sat nearby. He squinted up from his mug of instant coffee. Xana lay down on the couch. She couldn’t stretch out. There wasn’t enough room. And so life imitated metaphors, etc.

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