The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli Page B

forward from the center before splitting apart, first in half and then into quarters and many pieces afterward, the orchids coming closer, proffered, as she rose up onto her tiptoes to meet him, lifting further and vaulting into his arms, and then he could see nothing because her brains were in his eyes.

FOUR
    The Suffolk County homicide dick looked like a stiletto blade with eyes. The black nerve inside Flynn started throbbing away as he picked up a serious threat vibe. He’d expected to see one of the cops he’d talked to before. Now he’d been turned over to a hard-ass, someone who’d make something stick. Even before the detective introduced himself, he squinted like he thought every word that would ever come out of Flynn’s mouth was bound to be a velvet lie.
    Flynn had met a lot of cops. The front line of the donut brigade. The hard-core men of justice who put solving crimes before spending time with their families. The scuzzballs with badges who busted teenage girls so they could spook them into backseat favors. The ones who were a hair away from being career criminals, who liked to pal around with the goombahs and hustlers on their off-hours.
    So far, he didn’t know what to make of this one.
    They were in the emergency room. The storm had worsened. All the sick folks were pressed together in one half of the waiting area while cops and forensic photographers kept swinging in and out of the hospital nabbing hot chocolate and stomping snow off their shoes.
    The sick people kept staring at Flynn. He didn’t blame them. He’d bolted in grabbing at his face and immediately vomited on the floor. The security guy kept calling, “Sir! Sir!” behind him. Flynn had found the bathroom on a blind run and practically drowned himself in the sink washing himself off. His forehead stung with two parallel scratches from flying skull splinters. The dead girl was in his mouth.
    Flynn’s clothes were still covered with her blood. A janitor had cleaned up his puke but the stink of it remained heavy in the room.
    The security guard was bitching to the police, gesturing to Flynn with his chin and keeping his arms crossed over his chest.
    The stiletto stood about five-seven, went maybe one-fifty. He looked light enough to pick up and sail across the room like a paper plane. He was padded in a black raincoat with heavy lining, black gloves, the top third of his black three-piece suit on display. The tie he wore was double-knotted. Hair black, eyes a hazy gray, skin the off-white of a dirty motel sheet.
    “I’m Raidin,” the detective said. He had a priest’s soft voice. The name lingered there in the draft. Flynn knew he was supposed to respond but had no idea what to say. He just nodded and hoped it would be enough. The cop continued with a polished politeness. “Could you please go over what happened in detail one more time?”
    Flynn did. He told it exactly as it happened, starting with waiting to speak to Shepard and the circumstances with the kid choking in the ER. He wasn’t going to be able to make himself look good. He was going to appear unhinged, which maybe he was. He wasn’t discounting anything. Raidin made heavy, sustained eye contact as Flynn laid it out. Flynn didn’t let it shake him. He realized that as soon as he was done telling his story Raidin would try to knock it down.
    “Did you know her?”
    “No,” Flynn said. “Who was she?”
    “You never met her?”
    “No.”
    “You never slept with her?”
    Flynn gave it a five count, trying to shrug back into his cool. Raidin was going to be one of those cops who wore away at you like Chinese water torture, one drip at a time. “Wouldn’t that constitute knowing her, in its broadest definition?”
    “Yes, I suppose it would.” Raidin offered a grin that looked sharp enough to slice paper. “Her name was Angela Soto. Twenty-one. She grew up out here on the Island but she’d been working Manhattan the last couple of years. A known prostitute, both