ANY SECOND NOW, and Val Savage was going to get himself arrested. Chuck, too, maybe, the Savage blood-rarely down-up as all hell now, the brothers shouting at the cops, the cops looking like they'd be going knuckles-'n'-night-sticks any second.
Jimmy stood with Kevin Savage, one of the saner ones, a few yards from the crime scene tape where Val and Chuck were pointing with their fingers, saying, That's our niece in there, you dumb fucking prick pieces of shit.
Jimmy felt a controlled hysteria, a barely suppressed need to erupt that left him numb and just a little addled. Okay, so that was her car there, ten feet away. And, yes, no one had seen her since last night. And that was blood he'd glimpsed on the driver's seat back. So, yeah, it didn't look good. But there was a full battalion of cops searching in there now, and no body bags had come out yet. So there was that.
Jimmy watched an older cop light a cigarette and he wanted to pull it from his mouth, shove the burning coal deep into the veins of his nose, say, Get the fuck back in there and look for my daughter.
He counted back from ten, a trick he'd learned in Deer Island, counting slow, seeing the numbers appear, floating and gray in the darkness of his brain. Screaming would get him barred from the scene. Any outward show of grief or anxiety or the electric fear surging through his blood would result in the same thing. And then the Savages would go nuclear, and they'd all spend this day in a cell instead of on the street where his daughter was last seen.
"Val," he called.
Val Savage pulled his hand back over the crime scene tape and his finger out of the stony cop's face, looked back at Jimmy.
Jimmy shook his head. "Ease up."
Val charged back toward him. "They're fucking stonewalling us, Jim. They're holding us back."
"They're doing their job," Jimmy said.
"Their fucking job, Jim? All due respect, the doughnut shop's the other direction."
"You want to help me here?" Jimmy said as Chuck sidled up beside his brother, almost twice as tall, but half as dangerous, which was still more dangerous than most of the population.
"Sure," Chuck said. "Tell us what to do."
"Val?" Jimmy said.
"What?" Val's eyes spinning, fury pouring out of him like an odor.
"Do you want to help?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna help, Jimmy. Jesus fuck, you know?"
"I know," Jimmy said, hearing a rise in his voice that he tried to swallow against. "I fucking know, Val. That's my daughter in there. You hear what I'm saying?"
Kevin put his hand on Jimmy's shoulder and Val took a step back, looked down at his feet for a bit.
"Sorry, Jimmy. Awright, man? I'm just freaking. I mean, shit."
Jimmy got the calm back in his voice, forced his brain to work. "You and Kevin, Val? You go down the street to Drew Pigeon's house. You tell him what's going on."
"Drew Pigeon? Why?"
"I'm telling you why, Val. You talk to his daughter Eve and Diane Cestra, too, if she's still there. You ask them when they last saw Katie. What time, Val, exactly. You find out if they were drinking, if Katie had plans to meet anyone, and who she was dating. Can you do that, Val?" Jimmy asked, looking at Kevin, the one who'd hopefully keep Val in check.
Kevin nodded. "We got it, Jim."
"Val?"
Val looked over his shoulder at the weeds leading into the park, then back at Jimmy, his small head bobbing. "Yeah, yeah."
"These girls are friends. You don't have to get hard on them, but get those answers. Right?"
"Right," Kevin said, letting Jimmy know he'd keep it contained. He clapped his older brother's shoulder. "Come on, Val. Let's do it."
Jimmy watched them walk up Sydney, felt Chuck beside him, jumpy, ready to kill someone.
"How you holding up?"
"Shit," Chuck said, "I'm fine. You I'm worried about."
"Don't. I'm cool for now. Ain't no other choice, is there?"
Chuck didn't answer and Jimmy looked across Sydney, past his daughter's car, to see Sean Devine walking out of the park and into the weeds, eyes on Jimmy the whole way, Sean a tall guy and moving fast, but Jimmy could still see that thing in his face he'd always hated, the look of a guy the world had always worked for, Sean wearing it like a bigger badge than the one clipped to his belt, pissing people off with it even if he wasn't aware of it.
"Jimmy," Sean said, and shook his hand. "Hey, man."
"Hey, Sean. I heard you were in there."
"Since early this morning." Sean looked back over his shoulder, then around again to Jimmy. "I can't tell you anything right now, Jimmy."
"She in there?" Jimmy could hear the tremor in his own voice.
"I don't know, Jim. We haven't found her. I can tell you that much."
"So let us in," Chuck said. "We can help look. See it all the time on the news, ordinary citizens searching for missing kids and shit."
Sean kept his eyes on Jimmy, as if Chuck wasn't even there. "It's a little more than that, Jimmy. We can't have any nonpolice personnel in there until we've gone over every inch of the scene."
"And what's the scene?" Jimmy asked.
"The whole damn park at the moment. Look"-Sean patted Jimmy's shoulder-"I came out here to tell you guys there's nothing you can do right now. I'm sorry. I really am. But there it is. We know anything-the first thing, Jimmy? We'll tell you immediately. No bullshit."
Jimmy nodded and touched Sean's elbow. "I talk to you a sec?"
"Sure."
They left Chuck Savage on the curb and walked a few yards down the street. Sean squared himself, getting ready for whatever he thought Jimmy was going to say, all business, cop's eyes staring back at Jimmy, no mercy in them.
"That's my daughter's car," Jimmy said.
"I know. I-"
Jimmy held up a hand. "Sean? That's my daughter's car. It's got blood in it. She don't show up for work this morning, don't show up for her little sister's First Communion. No one's seen her since last night. Okay? That's my daughter we're talking about, Sean. You don't have kids, I don't expect you to understand all the way, but come on, man. My daughter."
Sean's cop's eyes stayed cop's eyes, Jimmy not even making a dent.
"What do you want me to say here, Jimmy? If you want to tell me who she was out with last night, I'll send some officers to talk to them. She had enemies, I'll go round them up. You want-"
"They brought fucking dogs in, Sean. Dogs, for my daughter. Dogs and frogmen."
"Yeah, they did. And we got half the fucking force in there, Jimmy. State and BPD. And two helicopters, and two boats, and we're going to find her. But you, there's nothing you can do, man. Not right now. Nothing. We clear?"
Jimmy looked back at Chuck standing on the curb, eyes on the weeds leading into the park, body tilting forward, ready to rip through his own skin.
"Why you got frogmen looking for my daughter, Sean?"
"We're covering all bases, Jimmy. We got a body of water, that's how we search it."
"Is she in the water?"
"All she is is missing, Jimmy. That's it."
Jimmy turned away from him for a moment, his mind not working too well, getting black and gummy. He wanted in that park. He wanted to walk down the joggers' path and see Katie walking toward him. He couldn't think. He needed in.
"You want a public relations nightmare on your hands?" Jimmy asked. "You want to have to bust me and every single one of the Savage brothers trying to get in there and look for our loved one?"
Jimmy knew the moment he stopped speaking that it was a weak threat, a grasp, and he hated that Sean knew it, too.
Sean nodded. "I don't want to. Believe me. But if I have to, Jimmy, yeah. I will, man." Sean flipped open a notepad. "Look, just tell me who she was with last night, what she was doing, and I'll-"
Jimmy was already walking away when Sean's walkie-talkie went off, loud and shrill. He turned back as Sean put it to his lips, said, "Go."
"We got something, Trooper."
"Say again."
Jimmy stepped up to Sean, heard the barely suppressed emotion in the voice of the guy on the other end of the walkie-talkie.
"I said we got something. Sergeant Powers said you need to get in here. Uh, ASAP, Trooper. Like right now."
"Your location?"
"The drive-in screen, Trooper. And, man, it's a fucking mess."