Jericho Point Read Free

two of them.
    I shook his face between my hands.
    ‘‘Some E,’’ he said. ‘‘And maybe a few lines.’’
    Exhaling, I let my hands drop. ‘‘What happened here? Tell me.’’
    He stared out the door again. ‘‘I don’t know. Me and some guys were here in the kitchen. People were everywhere. I couldn’t get a clear look.’’
    ‘‘What did you see?’’
    ‘‘Something out on the balcony, like voices. But it was so loud, the music—and that sliding-glass door was shut, and the lights here were reflecting. The rain—on the glass it looked so bright.’’ His knee began jittering. ‘‘I don’t know. It just scared me.’’
    He was wired to the ends of his hair, bouncing toward hysteria, and I still didn’t know if he’d hallucinated it or not.
    He began shaking. ‘‘It was freaky. So freaky.’’
    I looked around the kitchen. The phone had been torn out of the wall, leaving a gaping hole. Written in marker beneath it was, No more coffee for Alex.
    ‘‘Give me my cell phone, P.J.’’
    He clutched it like a precious toy. ‘‘You won’t call?’’
    ‘‘No.’’
    Slowly he extended it to me. I closed my fingers around it, waiting. It rang.
    I answered. ‘‘Here. A woman fell off the balcony.’’
    It was the emergency dispatcher calling back. I gave her the address. The last I saw, P.J. was running through the crowd toward the front door.
    Keep it to yourself . Prude. Priss. Got a look at it, and that’s all she could say? Frigid bitch.
    Just like he’d hoped.
    He walked away from the house with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face. Keeping his head down, when he really wanted to laugh and pull off his clothes and sing. The rain felt great, coming down hard now, like it knew , and was showering him with applause. It had been perfect.
    Except for running into that woman. Ice queen. Lady Rudest Home Videos thought she was a comedian.
    But the joke was on her. She saw what he wanted her to see. And she got a good, long, beautiful look, too. Whip it out and they never noticed your face. Wang dangling just blew their minds.
    He balled his hands. They weren’t exactly slick, more sticky. He held them out and spread his fingers and let the rain lick it off. He wondered if it got on his dick when he whizzed on that car. An ache began in his crotch. But he couldn’t pull down his pants and let the sky kiss it all away. Not on the street. But that was okay; it was only blood.
    He walked, feeling his hands turning clean. Perfect, yeah, it had been fucking perfect. And gone in a flash.
    He should have gotten it on film.

2
    The searchlight arced white across the black ocean. A firefighter stood against the balcony railing, swinging the light over the heaving water. Two Water Rescue Jet Skis cruised the surf, looking for the fallen girl. Their engines had cut back, close to idling now.
    The fire captain came in from the balcony, his hat and yellow turnout coat shining with rainwater. He moved like a boulder. In his hand a radio squelched.
    ‘‘Ma’am?’’
    I looked up from my seat at the kitchen table. ‘‘Any sign of her?’’
    Music was still trickling from the stereo, but the house had emptied out. Nothing kills a party like firefighters showing up. With sheriff’s deputies.
    The captain wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘‘Run it past me again. Exactly what convinced you to call us?’’
    ‘‘A friend told me that a woman had fallen off the balcony into the water,’’ I said.
    ‘‘But you didn’t see it happen.’’
    ‘‘No. But—’’
    A deputy came in with raindrops clinging to his crew cut like dew. ‘‘Excuse me, but who are you?’’
    ‘‘Evan Delaney.’’
    He wrote it down. ‘‘And the woman who fell, what’s her name?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said.
    ‘‘What did she look like?’’
    ‘‘I didn’t see her. It happened before I got here.’’
    The fire captain set his radio on the table. ‘‘So you