Free Unscrewed by Lois Greiman

nutcase. I chanced a question. Could be I’m the nutcase. “What was she doing there?”
    “At Dad’s house? Funny story,” he said, but his tone suggested that it might not really be hilarious. “She lived with him.” He drew a breath, carefully, as if to keep things from boiling past the lid, from seeping out of control. “For the past few months.”
    “You never told me.” Childish. Childish response. The new Chrissy was ashamed and reached for the carrots to cover her feelings.
    “I always thought he was just seeing her to fuck with me. Get under my skin. Then Mama calls.” His voice had dropped half an octave. “Says he plans to marry her.” He huffed a laugh. “Marriage! And she’s, what? Half his fuckin’ age.”
    “And that disturbed you.”
    “Disturbed me?” He leaned in, tilted on the edge of anger. “Christ. You’re a piece of work, McMullen. Sometimes I don’t know who’d like to see me fry more…you or Graystone.”
    Oh, yeah, he was mad. But I wasn’t so tickled, either. I stowed the carrots in the fridge. “Would now be the time to tell you that love is ageless? Like granite and…” I gave my hand a cleverly flippant twist. “…diamonds.”
    Rage warred with something else in his eyes. It might have been humor. Then again, I thought, it might have been insanity. “I think I’m beginning to understand why Hawkins wanted to kill you,” he said.
    The hair lifted on the back of my neck. Doctor David Hawkins had been one of L.A.’s premier psychiatrists, and my mentor. There had been a time not so long ago when I’d thought he was the cat’s pajamas. That was before he tried to kill me in my own kitchen with a butcher knife. “Professional jealousy?” I suggested, and pulled a bottle of stevia from the bag.
    Rivera snorted and turned away.
    “How long did you date?” I asked.
    “Salina and me?” He ran his fist along the countertop. Thinking back. “A year or so. She worked on the senator’s first campaign. God, she was young. Not long out of high school. I thought I had seen it all by then. Nineteen, just applied to the police academy.” He stopped, glanced at me, drew a heavy breath. “She looked so fragile. I should have known better. Even then. But she was so damned pretty. Not dumb pretty. Smart. Savvy. Not taken in by his crap. God, I loved that about her.”
    “Whose crap?”
    His eyes took me apart, analyzed me. No need for the Rorschach test.
    “You probably think he’s a saint,” he said.
    “I
am
Catholic,” I agreed. It would have been nice to pinpoint his mood, to know exactly which way the wind was blowing, but so far I was feeling buffeted from every direction.
    “And
he’s
an asshole,” he said.
    I didn’t mention the fact that his old man also looked great in Armani. “Why do you resent him with such fervor?” I opened the cupboard and shoved the sweetener inside.
    He shook his head. “Go do your therapeutic mumbo jumbo somewhere else, McMullen. I’m not in the mood.”
    I watched him. “Okay. What makes your dad an asshole?”
    “Murder.”
    I felt my eyes pop, my heart stop. “You think he killed her?”
    He didn’t answer. It was answer enough.
    “Do you have proof?”
    He laughed.
    My mind was humming, dredging up shards of memories. “You said he was there. At the house.”
    “Did I?”
    “Yes.” Maybe. Or maybe my mind was muzzy from lack of sleep and junk-food deprivation.
    He shrugged. The movement was stiff. “Could be I was imagining.”
    “Imagining what?”
    He stared at me for a lifetime, then spoke, voice low and hard. “On my way there I thought I saw…” He shook his head, closed his eyes for an instant. “Him.”
    “Where?”
    “Los Liones.”
    “Alone?”
    He glared.
    He hadn’t been able to tell. A pet rock could deduce that much. “It was dark,” I said, reading his eyes.
    The corner of his mouth jumped. “I realize that, McMullen.”
    “He was inside a vehicle. Could you see what kind of