Winter and Night by S. J. Rozan

Author:S. J. Rozan [Rozan, S. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, Asian American, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Private Investigators
ISBN: 0312986688
Amazon: B000FA5S3O
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2003-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

"I always do. You never know."

Never, I thought. You never know.

It was ten minutes before Lydia's contact showed up and we spent it in silence, sipping from cardboard cups, watching the evening. I wanted to tell Lydia where I'd been that afternoon after she left for Warrenstown, what I'd been thinking about on my slow walk downtown. But I couldn't, right now. Right now all I could do was drink coffee and smoke a cigarette and try to push away the images of Stacie's face, and Gary's, the echoes of their voices asking for help, the echoes of Macpherson's voice and Scott's and Hamlin's and Coach Ryder's telling me to go to hell, and my sister's small bewildered voice saying she didn't understand.

At one point Lydia reached a hand out, kneaded my shoulder. Even through the thickness of my leather jacket I thought I could feel her warmth. I don't know why she did that, but when she did the faces and the voices faded, and the fence and the streetlights and the night became, again, what was real.

Finally an Audi a few years old pulled around the corner, parked behind my car. The driver got out and headed through the playground fence. Lydia slipped down off the table, stood and waved. The figure walked slowly toward us, and now I could see it was a girl, large and heavy; as she neared us I saw the spiky black hair, the moon-pale face, the ring in her nostril and the one in her eyebrow. She came to stand before us, hands in the pockets of her army-surplus jacket. She scowled, and she shifted from foot to foot, looking as though at any second she might turn and leave.

"This is Bill Smith," Lydia said. "My partner. We're working this story together. Bill, this is Kate Minor."

I put out my hand and Kate Minor's scowl deepened. I didn't move and finally she offered her hand, withdrew it after a perfunctory shake.

"Sit down," I suggested, as though this were my office and I was trying to be hospitable. After a moment she did, straddling the bench, hands thrust deeply into her pockets. I sat on the end, where I had been, and Lydia perched on the table again, between us.

Lydia took out her small notebook. "I asked Kate and her friends," she said, "whether they could tell me anything about Tory Wesley, or the party, or the boy who disappeared. Gary Russell?" She said that as if to refresh my memory. "Or anything they think viewers would be interested in. Things people should know."

Kate Minor looked down at her feet, at the tufts of grass drained of color by the streetlights at the playground's edge. Looking back up, her eyes belligerent slits, she said, "I don't want anyone to know I'm doing this."

"Of course not," Lydia said. "Our sources are confidential, always."

"Because I could get in trouble."

"I understand."

Kate looked at me and I nodded.

"It's only— I mean, it's always been really shitty, but now they finally killed someone.

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