Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (30 page)

He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “I don’t know who you are. But this is highly inappropriate.”

I nodded. “You still haven’t answered the question. The sooner you start talking, the sooner I leave.”

He sighed. “Introduction to Art History.”

“A beginner’s class,” I heard myself say, bite in my tone.

“More advanced than you’d believe,” he replied.

I was denigrating Nevada and he was defending her, artfully.

“And when exactly did you become lovers?” I asked.

His brow knitted. “Who are you exactly?”

I knew how loquacious Nevada could be with anyone she shared an intimacy, whether friend or lover. I said, “My name is Shell,” and watched his face.

The frown faded and his eyes widened. The rise and fall of his chest became more pronounced.

“Good,” I said. “You know of me.”

“What do you want?” he asked almost breathlessly.

I was preparing to answer, but the whir of a motor interrupted my words and stole his focus. He turned to the entry of the sunroom. His wife was beautiful. Brilliant silver and black hair, trim of body, a subtle touch of makeup she didn’t need. I looked in her face and didn’t glance at the wheelchair she sat in. She looked at me without blinking. The sick feeling I’d felt moments earlier when I realized she’d be disabled quickly disappeared. This wasn’t a woman that inspired pity.

“I’m Cynthia,” she said. “You’ll have to forgive my husband’s rudeness.”

She rolled into the room and I stood to greet her. Professor Wallace “Dev” Devlin hurriedly moved to assist her. She shooed him away like a pesky fly and he dropped down, defeated, into his chair.

She sandwiched my one hand with both of hers. They were as cold as a stiff winter wind. After a moment I realized she had no intention of breaking the clinch. This remarkable woman, I thought to myself, has a surprisingly strong grip.

“Pleased to meet you, Cynthia. My name is Shell.”

“I heard. My husband doesn’t read the newspaper I’m afraid,” she said in the tone of an apology.

Professor Devlin said, “Cyn what does that—”

She waved him off. “Shell is here, Wallace, because your mistress is missing,” she said, and turned her gaze back on me. “Isn’t that correct, Shell?”

I nearly smiled.

“MISSING?” WALLACE DEVLIN’S VOICE was a fossil of its former self, shrunken and fading to bone-gray in color.

“Help me out of this chair and onto the couch?” Cynthia said to me.

“Cyn, that’s not a good idea,” Devlin said.

She zeroed her gaze in on him. “You have a patent on all of the good ideas, Wallace? Should we sit and discuss all of your brilliant ideas at length?”

“Well, I—”

She sniffed and turned back facing me, dismissing her husband once more. “If you place one arm under both my legs,” she directed, “and the other around my torso, I’ll lift rather easily. I’m light, but not at all frail. Don’t be afraid to introduce some of your prodigious muscle into the experience. I promise I won’t break…unless you’d like me to.” The smile lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth defied description.

 “Cyn…”

She kissed my hands after I’d placed her down on the couch.

“Jesus, Cyn…”

“What’s your relationship to Nevada?” she asked me.

“We were close at one time,” I said. “We lived together. I suppose we thought about marriage, but the relationship fizzled out. About a month and a half ago we got together and…”

“Got together?” Professor Devlin said.

“That’s euphemism for hot, sweaty sex, Wallace,” Cynthia explained.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

“Because you’re quite the stud?” she said. “The Viagra has truly changed you, Wallace.”

“You know about that?” he stupidly asked.

“
And
the porn collection,” she said. “Your libido seems to be in overdrive. I suppose the shine of my hand jobs has completely dulled.”

I smiled as Professor Devlin blew air through his mouth and nostrils.

Cynthia turned back to me. “His video fascination is with small-breasted Asian girls primarily,” she said. “Physically dissimilar from both me and your Nevada. A psychologist would have a field day with my husband.”

“A defense mechanism to disassociate himself from the guilt,” I suggested. “Fetishism of women who don’t remind him of his greatest failing.”

“I’d never thought of that, Shell.”

 “I’m right here,” he said weakly.

“Physically dissimilar from both you and Nevada, you said. You’ve seen her?” I asked.

“You’re very perceptive, Shell. You notice details a lot of people miss.”

“Sometimes that’s true.”

“Yes, I’ve seen her,” she admitted, “And talked with her, as well.”

“When?” Wallace Devlin wanted to know.

“My husband can be a very clever man,” she told me. “But sometimes he forgets that my problem with my legs hasn’t extended to my brain.”

“That sounds like a very clear mistake,” I said.

She winked at me. “I’ll say.”

“Nevada…” I said, reintroducing the topic at hand.

“Very apologetic when I spoke with her. She didn’t pretend as if she didn’t know of my existence, and was almost childlike in both her embarrassment and shame. I felt badly, believe it or not. So I asked her out to the house, and she graciously accepted my invitation.”

“Our house, Cyn?”

“What did you talk about?” I asked. I’d decided Wallace Devlin had nothing to do with Nevada’s disappearance, but maybe his wife would have some information to shed light on the situation.

“You’d think the conversation would have been Wallace-heavy,” she said. “But we barely discussed my husband. She was troubled by something altogether unrelated to the affair with Wallace.”

“Did she mention what?”

Cynthia shook her head. “Nothing specific.”

“Does the name Darren Sweet mean anything to you?”

“I can’t say that it does,” she said, and looked up at her husband. “Wallace?”

“You can’t expect me to cooperate with this nonsense, Cyn?”

“I do and you will,” she said.

“This is ridiculous.”

“Do you know the name, Wallace? You know how you get after you’ve done some physical labor. I’m sure your libido will be in overdrive after all of the painting. If you don’t answer Shell’s questions I’ll have you know that my hands can very well go on strike tonight. And my mouth with them, if that adds anything to your thought process.”

“Don’t be crass, Cyn.”

“You want to discuss crass?” she replied. “We surely can. Or, you can tell us if the name Darren Sweet means anything to you.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’ve never heard the name.”

“Uncle John?” I asked. “Cole Enger?”

“Enger, the Councilman in Newark?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard of him, of course.”

“From Nevada?” I asked.

“Our conversations were somewhat limited,” he admitted.

“Great surprise there,” Cynthia said.

Actually, it was. Nevada was a born talker.

Wallace Devlin flared his nostrils and turned away.

“You believe some harm might have come to Nevada?” Cynthia asked me.

“I don’t know what to believe. She was traveling in some circles that definitely raise an eyebrow, though.”

“She really was a very nice young woman,” Cynthia said, and laughed at a thought. “When we finished speaking she apologized for the time she’d spent with Wallace, and told me it wouldn’t happen again. She confided to me that the sex wasn’t that good to begin with, and I let her know that my legs had atrophied but my memory was just fine.”

Professor Wallace Devlin exhaled loudly. I smiled again.

“Would you like me to help you back in your chair?” I asked Cynthia Devlin.

“I’ll take care of that, thank you very much,” Professor Wallace “Dev” Devlin said.

Cynthia smiled. “We’ll leave the task to him, Shell. I’ve emasculated him enough for the day.”

“You’ve tried your best to humiliate me, is what you’ve done,” he said. “This has been very telling, Cyn. Very informative.”

“It’ll get even better once Shell has gone, Wallace,” she said, taking the steam out of his engine. He dropped back down in his reading chair, kneaded his temples. I could certainly relate.

Cynthia refocused on me. “Do you have a way to be contacted if I think of anything else, Shell? Oftentimes extra details come to me after I’ve thought about something for a bit. And I will put some thought into all of this. As I said, I found Nevada to be a pleasant young woman.”

“You have paper to write on?”

“Just tell me,” she said, smiling. “Your company has been invigorating. I’ll have no trouble committing any contact information you give me to memory.”

I told her, and she took my hand again. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. Professor Wallace “Dev” Devlin didn’t offer to walk me to the door. In fact, he didn’t even look in my direction. I left the Devlin home without anything of pertinence regarding Nevada, but with a growing understanding all the same.

TWENTY-TWO

THE FIRE WOULDN’T CATCH. That’s how I was able to make him. The slight smile on my face as I left the Devlin’s house had turned to a frown of displeasure the closer I neared Elm Street. I was thinking of all the dead ends I had encountered thus far, the latest memories of Trina that would pervade my thoughts when I went back inside Nevada’s place, and my unsettled business with Siobhan Rubalcaba. In all honesty, Siobhan was foremost on my mind. I strained for an approach I could use with her, but none of my lifetime of rough experiences had prepared me for the disdain of a woman. My greatest fear wasn’t that Siobhan would hate me, but instead that she would be completely ambivalent.

I was stuck at a traffic light, pondering the situation with Siobhan, when the light must’ve flashed green without my noticing it. A discourteous horn sounded behind me. Rather than hurry to drive on, I looked in the rearview mirror. Instead of the car directly behind me, my gaze settled on a little beater two cars back in the next lane.

The fire wouldn’t catch. The driver, the same dead-eyed kid who I’d caught watching me on Elm Street the other day, one I’d dismissed at hand as just a drug-addled thug with a head full of burnt out brain cells, was so engaged with his faulty Zippo lighter, frustratingly trying to get it to set flame to his cigarette, he didn’t notice my recognition. Breathing evenly, I let up off the brake and rolled through the intersection. My mind was immediately in overdrive. Could Dead Eyes’ presence behind me actually be a coincidence? But even before he shadowed my next two turns I knew it wasn’t.

So how should I approach this? I decided to continue on to Elm, park, and let him initiate the next move. He hadn’t been particularly stealth when I spotted him watching me the other day, and, judging by his poor tail now, he was no better prepared today. Who was he? And why was he so interested in my comings and goings? Was there some link here to Nevada? Questions abounded, and I continued driving as I considered them all. There was a strong possibility Dead Eyes would try to gun me down the moment I stepped from Chris Hall’s Accord. Remembering the vacuum in his eyes from the other day I had no doubt he was more than capable of an emotionless murder. Did I really want to leave myself vulnerable to a street drive-by? Or would it be better to corrupt whatever plans he had for me by testing his knowledge of Newark’s Byzantine street plans?

I’ve always had a defiant spirit, so daring him to shoot me in broad daylight quickly forged itself as a strategy. I reached Elm Street, and amazingly found a parking spot available without having to circle the block several times. I backed the Accord into the spot and was preparing to turn the key in the ignition when I noticed Dead Eyes slow at the mouth of the street, watch me from that distance for a moment, then complete an illegal U-turn and head back in the other direction.

I smiled and kept the car running, moving from the space after a quick pause of consideration, reversing our previous roles as I became the hunter of Dead Eyes rather than his prey. I pulled down the sun visor and put on a pair of dark sunglasses I’d discovered in the glove box. There are rules of engagement when it comes to tailing a subject in a vehicle, but it all comes down to two basic principles: don’t get too close; and don’t get too far behind, either.

I caught up with him after only a block, and focused my eyes on his brake lights and tires. Most drivers give a “tell” before they make a turn or switch lanes. A tap on the brakes to slow for a turn, the wheels hedging one way or another a moment before a turn is actually executed. I wouldn’t have any problem keeping Dead Eyes in my sights, even in congested Newark traffic, if I could uncover the rhythm of his driving and mimic it.

As it turned out, I didn’t require very much surveillance skill. Dead Eyes never once looked in his rearview mirror. And he stayed on the same stretch for the majority of his drive. I fell even farther back as he eased off the highway and settled in a maze of deceptively quiet residential streets. We passed houses where I knew nearly naked women were camped out in the basements weighing relatively pure cocaine on fish scales. Dead Eyes flashed his brake lights, slowing to double-park in front of a stately Colonial. I did as he’d done when following me, pulling to a stop at the mouth of the street to watch him. He slid from behind the wheel and moved toward the house. A group of cookie-cutter street thugs were congregated on the porch.