After Midnight, page 11
He stayed seated, though, and made just enough eye contact with Crafowski to keep the guy talking. If half of what the financial planner was saying was true, Matt thought he might be on the verge of one of the biggest drug busts the city had ever seen.
His eyes wandered back to the drunk. The man was middle-aged, maybe ten years older than Matt, dressed casually but conservatively. Just a regular guy.
But after leaving the bar area, the drunk did something unexpected. Instead of turning left, toward The Crow’s Nest’s front entrance, he turned right. Matt thought maybe he was heading to the men’s restroom but remembered there was only one.
And it was in the other direction.
He began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Matt Coyle had been a cop a long time and that feeling was like radar, a sixth sense that veteran law enforcement officers tended to develop after years spent dealing with trouble day in and day out.
Something was wrong; he was certain of it, although he had no clue what that something might be.
The man walked/shuffled/staggered forward and Matt had the absurd thought that the guy looked like an extra from the movie Zombieland.
He sat up straighter in his chair and paid even less attention to Stan Crafowski, who hadn’t noticed anything amiss and who continued to vomit information like there was no tomorrow. Now that he had started speaking, it seemed he had no intention of stopping until he had given up everyone in Boston’s financial community.
Matt barely noticed.
The drunk seemed to have zeroed in on a table for two located across the room. A pretty young lady, maybe a few years younger than Matt, shared the table with an older woman who was clearly her mother. They were spitting images of each other. The two women were engrossed in an intense conversation and thus far had not noticed the man’s bizarre actions.
The drunk moved toward the two women as straight as an arrow—or as straight as possible, given the funky configuration of the dining room and his extreme inebriation. He banged against tables and spilled drinks and bounced off patrons. They bitched and complained but he paid them no attention.
Matt started rising from his chair. Maybe the guy was an ex-husband or former boyfriend who had been sulking about a bad breakup, drinking himself into oblivion when his ex happened to walk into the restaurant and now he was planning to…Matt didn’t know what the guy might be planning to do, but he was certain it would not be good.
Crafowski noticed Matt getting to his feet and stared at him in jittery junkie surprise. “What’s…” he started to say but Matt ignored him and he shut his mouth.
Matt’s eyes focused on the drunk. The man had by now almost arrived at the table where the two ladies were dining. The younger woman finally spotted the guy and her eyes grew wide, whether with fear or recognition Matt didn’t know. Maybe both.
Matt picked up the pace, moving to intercept the man and lead him out of the restaurant, by force if necessary, when the man surprised him again. An empty longneck bottle of Budweiser sat on top of the table next to the ladies, and the man plucked it up with his right hand, a surprisingly adept move for someone who had been staggering across the dining room so awkwardly.
Then without taking his eyes off the pretty young lady, the drunk swiveled his wrist and smashed the beer bottle against the edge of the table. It shattered, stopping conversation in the dining room like someone had flipped a switch.
A split second of perfect silence was followed by a single scream from across the room. Then another patron joined in and chaos erupted. People scrambled away from the drunk, spilling out of their chairs and scrabbling across the floor in a mad rush toward the exit. A waitress dropped a tray of food and it fell with a clatter, dishes shattering and food and drinks spilling, splattering the legs of those closest to her.
And Matt broke into a sprint, shoving aside frightened diners heading the opposite direction like spawning salmon swimming against the tide. The drunk lifted the shattered beer bottle, now half its previous size, its brown glass spiked with deadly glittering shards.
He lifted his arm and slashed at the young woman’s neck. She threw herself backward in her chair with the reaction of an elite athlete, and the weapon whizzed past her neck, somehow missing her entirely. Matt wouldn’t have thought it possible.
But the woman was going to be helpless and exposed, unable to defend herself. Her body flew backward and she landed in a heap on the floor as the drunk stumbled, off-balance from his wild lunge. He banged into the table and the older woman bravely stood and slapped him hard across the face.
She was older, though, and weak, clearly ill, and the blow bounced off the drunk like a pebble clanging off a large boulder. The drunk reared back and shoved the overmatched elderly lady with his free hand, apparently saving the broken beer bottle for the younger woman.
The older lady flew backward and smashed into the wall, sliding down it and crumpling to the floor. The drunk paid her no more attention. Instead, he turned toward the young woman. She struggled to get clear of the chair she had fallen onto and tried to scramble backward and away from the threat.
But there was nowhere to go. She made it maybe three feet before smashing into another of the restaurant’s tables and a now-empty chair. The man lifted the beer bottle high, above his shoulder, and leaned forward, bringing the bottle forward and down at the young woman, again aiming for her neck or throat.
And Matt launched himself.
He dived headfirst over a table, leaving his feet and driving his two-hundred-pound frame at the glassy-eyed drunk, who was still so focused on his deadly attack he was utterly unaware of Matt Coyle hurtling at him from his blind side.
Matt wasn’t going to make it. He had been too slow.
Suspended in the air, Matt watched as the razor-edged bottle slashed toward the woman. At the last possible moment, she shoved hard with her feet, spinning sideways, and the bottle ripped through the left sleeve of her blouse, biting into her upper arm but missing her throat.
Blood gushed from the injury and the bottle impacted the floor, and then Matt crashed into the drunk. He body-slammed the man and they tumbled, the force of the tackle driving them both into the side wall. They crashed to a stop next to the older lady, who was just beginning to push herself shakily to her feet.
“Boston police. You’re under arrest,” Matt said, breathing heavily. The broken beer bottle had fallen to the floor next to them and he kicked it away. Then he flipped the drunk onto his belly and yanked the man’s hands roughly behind him. He had no cuffs so he simply leaned a knee heavily into the man’s back, between his shoulder blades, and waited for the cavalry to arrive.
It wouldn’t be long. In the distance he could already hear sirens shrieking. A middle-aged man in a tie with a nameplate pinned to his breast pocket—the restaurant manager, Matt assumed—bent over the younger woman, tending to her injuries, while a small crowd gathered around the older woman and helped her to her feet.
Matt glanced back toward his own table and cursed. Stan Crafowski was nowhere to be seen.
20
“I’ve never seen the man before,” Cait said to the cop who had saved her life. She sat perched on the edge of a hospital emergency room bed as a young ER doctor finished bandaging her upper arm.
The gash opened up by the broken bottle had required more than twenty stitches to close, and although Cait began to wonder if there would be one square inch left undamaged on her arms by her next birthday, she considered herself extremely lucky. The bottle had missed her throat by inches.
“You’re sure about that,” the cop said, not asking a question. It was clear by the tone of his voice he didn’t believe her.
“I’m sure,” Cait repeated. “I live in Tampa, I’ve only been to this area once, last summer, and when I was here, I never had any interaction with that man. I would have remembered.”
“There must have been something,” the cop said. The cop’s name was Matt Coyle and he reminded Cait so much of Kevin it made her heart ache. Roughly the same age, they shared the same soulful, expressive eyes, earnest demeanor and obvious goodness.
Cait shrugged and looked helplessly at the young cop.
“Listen,” he said, sitting next to her as the doctor finished his work. The wax paper covering the bed crinkled under his weight. “The suspect, the man who attacked you with a broken bottle, is named Drew Houghton. Mr. Houghton is forty-three years old, married with two young children, and has never been in trouble in his life. Never been arrested. Never been charged with a crime. He got a parking ticket once. As far as we can determine, that’s the extent of his criminal history. He’s an average guy.
“Now, Mr. Houghton is facing a charge of attempted murder,” the cop continued. “Ms. Connelly, I’ve been a police officer a long time, and I can tell you it doesn’t work that way. Law-abiding citizens just don’t get up one morning and decide to murder an innocent woman they’ve never met.”
“I understand,” Cait said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve never met the man or, as far as I know, ever interacted with him or even seen him until today. I know you’d like to hear otherwise but it’s just not the case.”
The cop sighed. “Don’t misunderstand me, Ms. Connelly, I’m not blaming the victim, nothing like that, I’m just trying to understand what happened.”
“You and me both,” she said.
Changing tactics, he said, “So what are you and your mother doing in Boston?”
Cait wanted to tell him the truth. I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish with this trip, but I have a strong suspicion that what happened tonight is related to it somehow.
Instead she said, “I’m just here to see my…brother.”
“Really. And who’s your brother?”
Cait kicked herself for her honesty. Why couldn’t she be a better liar? She took a deep breath and continued. She knew exactly how the conversation would go from here. “My brother is Milo Cain.”
The young cop opened his mouth to speak and actually got a couple of syllables out. “And wha—”
Then he stopped, jaw hanging open, and fell silent. A second went by, and then two, and then five. The cop closed his mouth and his eyes narrowed and he said, “I knew I recognized you from somewhere. You’re the woman held hostage over in Revere last summer. You…” His voice trailed off.
Cait smiled wearily. “That’s me. We were held inside my mother’s house. She’s since moved to Tampa to be closer to me.”
The cop nodded absently. “I remember the whole thing now,” he said. “I know one of the guys who busted down the door of that house. Not well, but a little.”
He was silent for a moment and then said, “There has to be a connection.”
“What do you mean?”
“On your first trip ever to the Boston area you’re nearly killed by a notorious serial murderer who happens to be your brother, and then on your second trip, you’re almost murdered again. No one is that unlucky, Ms. Connelly.”
She debated telling this cop, with the earnest demeanor and the kind eyes, the truth. Almost did. But then she realized she didn’t know what the hell the truth was, and if she started spouting nonsense about Flickers and comatose suspects, all of her suspicions entirely unsupported from a law enforcement standpoint, she would come off looking not just unbelievable, but downright loony.
So she dropped her eyes and said, “Apparently I am. I’ve never seen that man before.”
The cop ran a hand through his hair. Cait could see he was frustrated. “Ms. Connelly, I was in that restaurant as part of an investigation I’ve been working on for months. I was there to meet a confidential informant. In all the excitement, the man disappeared and I don’t know if he’ll ever talk to me again. A whole investigation, potentially down the drain. And it was all worth it. I wouldn’t change a thing. Honestly. But please help me out here.”
“Officer Coyle, I’m not trying to be ungrateful. I’m incredibly appreciative of what you did and I’m well aware of just how lucky I was tonight. You saved my life and I’ll be indebted to you forever for that. But I simply don’t know why that man might have attacked me. Maybe he just snapped. I’m being completely honest with you, though, when I tell you I’ve never met him before.”
Cait could see the man knew he had gotten everything he was going to get out of her. He nodded as if to himself and handed her a card. “I know there’s more to this than what you’re telling me,” he said. “I just can’t figure out whether your silence is because you don’t know the connection between the two attacks or because you just don’t want to say. But there’s something there. If you decide you want to tell me what it is, any time of the day or night, please call me. My precinct number is on there, as is my personal cell number. Use it.”
Cait took the card and pocketed it without looking at it. She was tired and sore and had never felt so hopeless in her entire life.
“I will. And thank you.”
21
Milo could barely control his rage. Once again his best-laid plans had fallen apart through no fault of his own.
He had leapt out of Connelly’s head just as the useful idiot from the bar was driving the broken beer bottle down at her throat. There was no way anything could go wrong. She was cornered, helpless and her panic was obvious.
Although exhausted from the length of time he had spent inside Connelly’s head, Milo had forced himself to stay awake afterward. He waited a few minutes and then, with an extreme effort of will, tried pushing himself into the old biddy’s head. That was how badly he wanted to see The Evil Bitch lying dead on the floor with blood spurting out of her neck and pooling on the floor around her.
He knew Virginia Ayers was his biological mother and supposed he should have felt some attachment to her, some kinship, but there was nothing. It wasn’t surprising, though. Milo felt no attachment to his adoptive mother, either, she was just some bitch who had bossed him around when he was a kid until he had gotten old enough to beat feet and disappear, which was exactly what he had done.
But still, as a member of his bloodline, and a possessor of the unusual ability his family seemed to share, Milo suspected he would be able to inhabit Virginia’s consciousness, just as he had discovered, entirely by accident, that he could inhabit Caitlyn Connelly’s.
And it worked.
He insinuated himself into the old bat’s head, sliding right in and seeing through her eyes, exactly as he had been able to see through Connelly’s. He could hardly contain his excitement. Once satisfying his need for proof that The Evil Bitch Connelly was really gone, he could take his time moving forward, rest and recover and develop a game plan.
The Evil Bitch was the only one who could hurt him. Virginia Ayers might have her suspicions about him—obviously she did, in fact, based on what he had seen through Connelly’s eyes at the restaurant before the attack—but she was irrelevant. She was old and frail and tired, beaten down by life.
The old broad would never pose a danger to him, and besides, he didn’t want to kill her too unless it became absolutely necessary. It was kind of nice having a portal to the outside world, even if his perspective was limited to whatever his unwitting host happened to be experiencing at the time of his “visit.”
But once inside Ayers’s head, when he took his first look through her old, rheumy eyes, the shock had been overwhelming. Almost too much to take.
Impossibly, Connelly was alive.
She was still fucking alive.
Even worse, with the exception of what looked like a decent gash to her arm, she was unhurt.
Some interfering busybody had managed to stop Milo’s useful idiot before he was able to do any real damage. Milo was stunned and angry, confused. He had stayed inside Connelly’s head for absolutely as long as he dared, and things had been moving along perfectly and according to plan.
This was impossible.
And yet there was the evidence, staring him—or more accurately, staring Virginia Ayers—in the face. The busybody knelt on the attacker’s back, keeping him secured until help could arrive, while some other busybody tended to the still very much alive Caitlyn Connelly.
He watched in shock and disbelief for a few more seconds and then jumped out of the old biddy’s head.
And raged.
And ranted.
For one of the first times since discovering his awe-inspiring ability, Milo wished he could move. He wanted to lash out, to slash things and kick things and break them. To set fire to something. To destroy and kill.
He was like a little boy, lost in a temper tantrum, aware it was accomplishing nothing but unable to stop himself.
His anger was justified. No one would have been able to contain his disappointment after once being again denied the way Milo had been. He was only human, after all, even if his version of humanity had evolved far beyond everyone else’s.
After a few minutes spent out of control inside his own head, the white-hot flame of Milo’s fury began to burn itself out, replaced by a bone-tired weariness he had never before experienced.
He was exhausted, even more so than the last time.
Had he been able to move, he knew he would not have been able to move.
Just before sinking beneath the waves of his own exhaustion, a single thought ran through Milo Cain’s feverish mind: This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
22
The alarm went off at eight a.m., buzzing in Cait’s ear like a beehive. She opened an eye blearily and felt around with one hand, slapping at the offending clock, unable to remember how to turn the damned thing off. Eventually the buzzing stopped, but by then the damage was done. There would be no getting back to sleep.
