Shattered Glass(129)
“So?”
“See how he didn’t cut all the way through?”
“He could have scooted his foot out after he got partway,” Darryl rationalized.
I knew he was upset. He wasn’t thinking right. I was familiar with denial. But that didn’t stop me from getting irritated. “And then he took the time to unlock the anklet properly? After it was removed?”
“Maybe it unlocked after his foot was out. Or maybe he cut a wire and—”
“They don’t work like that,” I tried to explain.
“You want the kid to live?” Luis asked.
“Just when I thought cops couldn’t get more stupid.”
Luis and I simultaneously leaned our heads back on our seats and exhaled. If we didn’t need Darryl, I might have flipped Luis for who got to shoot him. Luis must have read my thoughts. “You’re a lousy shot,” he said. “You’d miss, and we’d have to listen to his whining.” He pulled over and flipped off the air-conditioning.
“Find him first. Not the stupid evidence! You’re more concerned with that than my brother.”
“We are concerned about the kid,” Luis said. “And we’ll find him. But we’re doing it in a way that doesn’t endanger him. What do you think they’ll do to him if they know we’re close? Listen, kid—”
“I’m twenty-two,” Darryl sneered.
“Act like it,” I said. “And think. Where would Cai have hidden something?”
“I already said that I don’t know!”
“How long do we have?” I asked Luis.
“Maybe an hour until he’s lucid enough to answer questions.”
My phone rang. I answered it immediately in order to avoid popping Darryl in the face. “Glass.”
“Canada is cold, but this lady says she’s his mother,” Officer Hutcherson said.
I covered the mouthpiece. “Did you tell Rosa about Peter?”
“Of course I did. While you were getting spiffy for your job as a waiter—”
“It was the only suit he had hemmed.” Maybe I should remove the cummerbund?
“—I was calling hospitals and Rosa! And you look idiotic.”
I shrugged off the insult and moved my hand off the mouthpiece. “Describe her.”
“Which one?”
“There’s more than one?”
“Yup. One says she’s Rosafa Strakosha. No ID.” Of course Rosa had a WitSec name that she was not going to flash to random cops. I didn’t interrupt with that information though. “5’9 or 5’10. Black hair, brown eyes. Early forties. 115 lbs. The other has I.D. Zhavra Dyachenko…” He paused. “Sir, the FBI is with them. I may have to let them through when he’s out of surgery.”
My head was spinning. Peter’s mother? ”Go ahead and—”
“Mister Glass,” a heavily accented, stern voice said into the phone.
I hung up in horror. The phone rang again a moment later. I turned it off. “So…we were…the drugs…” I cleared my throat. “An hour until they find a way to get the info out of him. Will we be ready?”
Luis nodded and gave me a sideways squint. “We’ll be ready. Are you flaking out?”
“Detective,” Darryl said gently.
I avoided Luis by turning to Darryl. “What?”
“I know where he hid it.”
Never Ending Story
“You know?” I asked. “Or you think you know? Because if you’re wrong…”
“I’m pretty sure.” He nodded. “No, I’m positive. Last year Joe found an X tab. He went ballistic and searched Cai’s room. I mean seriously searched. Cai comes in right in the middle of it, and then they have a blowout. Cai takes off.”
“Does this story end?” I asked. “Ever?”
“I’m explaining so maybe you can make up your mind, dickwad! Rabbit had to skip classes to find him. Cai finally picks up his cell phone after forever, and Rabbit said that they’d work out a lock for his room. Because Rabbit felt guilty ‘cause the tab was his.”
“That’s it? In his room? I need more than—”
“My point, dickwad, was that Rabbit couldn’t get Joe to agree to a lock on his door. So he bought this crappy little safe where Cai could hide—well, whatever he was hiding.”
How I went from prettyboy to dickwad in a week was a mystery. “Where?” I asked, leaving out the obvious question of why Peter would give a kid who was using drugs, a place to hide them.
Darryl shrugged. “His room somewhere.”
“Which is toast,” Luis pointed out. “Metal?”