Darkness, Take My Hand Read Free Page B

to her without sounding like a hypocrite, and by early spring she seemed to have bottomed out. She quit bringing warm bodies home and started to participate fully in case work again, even fixed up her apartment a bit, which for Angie meant she cleaned the oven and bought a broom. But she wasn’t whole, not like she used to be.
    She was quieter, less cocky. She’d call or drop by my apartment at the oddest hours to talk about the day we just shared. She also claimed she hadn’t seen Phil in months, but for some reason I couldn’t fully explain, I didn’t believe her.
    This was all compounded by the fact that for only the second time in all the years we’ve known each other, I couldn’t always be there for her at a moment’s notice. Since July, when I met Grace Cole, I’d been spending whole days and nights, sometimes full weekends, with her whenever we could get time together. Occasionally I’m also enlisted into babysitting duty for Grace’s daughter, Mae, and so I’m often beyond the reach of my partner except in the case of an absolute emergency. It wasn’t something either of us ever really prepared for, since as Angie once put it: “There’s a better chance of seeing a black guy in a Woody Allen movie than seeing Patrick in a serious relationship.”
    She caught me watching her at a light, opened her eyesfully and looked at me with a tiny smile playing on her lips. “Worrying about me again, Kenzie?”
    My partner the psychic.
    “Just checking you out, Gennaro. Purely sexist, nothing more.”
    “I know you, Patrick.” She leaned back from the window. “You’re still playing big brother.”
    “And?”
    “And,” she said, running the backs of her fingers along my cheek, “it’s time for you to stop.”
    I lifted a strand of hair out of her eye, just before the light turned green. “No,” I said.
    We stopped inside her house long enough for her to change into a pair of cut-off denim shorts and for me to take two bottles of Rolling Rock from her fridge. Then we sat out on her back porch listening to her neighbor’s over-starched shirts crack and snap in the breeze and enjoyed the day.
    She leaned back on her elbows, stretched her legs out in front of her. “So, we have a case suddenly.”
    “We do,” I said, glancing at her smooth olive legs and faded denim cut-offs. There might not be much good in this world, but show me anyone who has a bad thing to say about denim cut-offs and I’ll show you a lunatic.
    “Any ideas how to play it?” she said. Then, “Stop looking at my legs, you pervert. You’re practically a married man now.”
    I shrugged, leaned back myself, looked up at the bright marble sky. “Not sure. Know what bothers me?”
    “Besides Muzac, infomercials, and New Jersey accents?”
    “About this case.”
    “Pray tell.”
    “Why the name Moira Kenzie? I mean, if it’s a fake, which we can probably assume, why my last name?”
    “There’s something known as coincidence. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s when the—”
    “Okay. Something else.”
    “Yes?”
    “Kevin Hurlihy seem like the type of guy who’d have a girlfriend to you?”
    “Well, no. But it’s been years, really, since we’ve known him.”
    “Still…”
    “Who knows?” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of weird, ugly guys with beautiful women and vice versa.”
    “Kevin’s not just weird, though. He’s a sadist.”
    “So are a lot of professional boxers. You always see them with women.”
    I shrugged. “I guess. Okay. So how do we deal with Kevin?”
    “And Jack Rouse,” she said.
    “Dangerous guys,” I said.
    “Very,” she said.
    “And who deals with dangerous people on a daily basis?”
    “Certainly not us,” she said.
    “No,” I said, “we’re wusses.”
    “And proud of it,” she said. “Which leaves…” She turned her head, squinted into the sun to look at me. “You don’t mean—” she said.
    “I do.”
    “Oh, Patrick.”
    “We must visit Bubba,” I