Free Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan Page B

get to Sutton Bell. They would watch the man now—at his home, at his work. But for how long? Lark could afford to wait. Things would be harder, but it could still be done.
    It was all for the sake of Callie Spencer, the woman with the wondrous smile.
    He needed rest, a good night’s sleep. He put the car into gear and drove slowly out of the parking lot and into the street.

CHAPTER 9
    I n the heat of summer, the front door of the Waishkey house swells in the frame; it takes a solid push to open it. The sound of its opening woke me after midnight. I heard Elizabeth extracting her key from the lock, wedging the door back into the frame.
    I heard her unclip the holstered pistol from her belt. Her footsteps crossing the tiled foyer to the threshold of the living room. She came in and laid the pistol and her bag on the coffee table and sat in the chair across from mine.
    â€œDavid, I thought we agreed you wouldn’t wait up.”
    â€œThat’s not the way I remember it,” I said.
    She turned to look at the sofa where her daughter was sleeping. Sarah Waishkey—tall, slender, sixteen years old—lay curled on her side in denim shorts and a loose white T-shirt. She wore a braided leather band around her right ankle. Her long black hair fell across her forehead onto her pillow, and her hands rested palm-to-palm beneath her cheek. I’d seen the pose before. She slept like a girl in a Renaissance painting.
    â€œShe should be in bed,” Elizabeth said in a hushed voice.
    â€œI tried to tell her she shouldn’t wait up. She didn’t go along.”
    â€œImagine that.”
    â€œShe’s strong-willed.”
    The girl is not my daughter, just as Elizabeth is not my wife and her house is not my house. But it’s a near thing. It’s close. It’s almost .
    A great many things about my life are almost.
    One night a long time ago, I got into a fight with a very bad man on the top level of a parking garage. He died, and I was almost convicted of murder. Last year, Elizabeth and I got tangled up with another very bad man in the woods of Marshall Park, and I almost got her killed, and almost died myself.
    These days I spend most of my nights in her bed. I eat at her table. I’m teaching her daughter how to drive. And though her house is not mine, it almost is. I come and go as I like. I pay half the mortgage every month. I keep a toothbrush and a change of clothes in the Gray Streets office, and on nights when I work late I sometimes sleep there, on a sofa in the storage room. But apart from that, everything I have is here, in this house.
    I try to keep my distance from her work. Her colleagues in the police department have accepted our relationship—almost. But they’d rather not be reminded of me. Crime in the city of Ann Arbor is Elizabeth’s business, not mine. Technically I shouldn’t ask her about cases, and she shouldn’t tell me.
    Tonight, as Elizabeth sat back in the chair across from me, as her daughter slept a few feet away, I almost kept my curiosity in check.
    â€œWhat did you find out about the man in the plaid shirt and the safari hat?”
    Elizabeth touched the string of glass beads at her throat before she answered me.
    â€œHe wore a different hat when he assaulted Sutton Bell tonight,” she said.
    â€œThat’s devious.”
    She gave me the details of the attack on Bell. It didn’t sound like she held out much hope of finding the man in plaid.
    â€œWe could’ve had his fingerprints,” she said, “but the Eightball Saloon has what must be the most efficient bartender in town. He wiped down the bar after Mr. Plaid left, and sent his glass to the kitchen to be washed.”
    â€œMaybe he left his prints on the manuscript I gave you,” I suggested.
    â€œMaybe.” She didn’t think so. I didn’t either.
    â€œI pieced together a description from Bell and some of the other witnesses,” she