ONE MONTH TO MIDNIGHT- Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Excerpt from ONE MONTH TO MIDNIGHT
A novel by C. William Boyer


THURSDAY, AUGUST 4th

SQUINTING THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD and the head-squeezing haze of a first-rate hangover-snake, Dent cut the engine and frowned.

It was a sprawling beach-front home with a paramedics van out front. The van's rear doors were open and a bunch of bullshit lookie-loos loitered outside the police ribbons with their arms crossed, the curious little pricks wondering when the news-vans would arrive and about the best place to stand in order to get on the 4:30 early edition. And all of it beneath the glare of a fat, pitiless lemon sun.

Dent threw open the door and, whammo, felt thick hot air go for him, nearly knocking him over with the sheer brute force of it. Simultaneously, the hangover-snake coiled a little more tightly around his pulsating skull, clenching and unclenching. Dent sat at the wheel . . . This is bullshit . . . before he glanced about, checking on the goddamn lookie-loos. A couple were watching him, so he scoonched over in the seat, pretending to grab something off the floor, and gunned down a hard swig of scotch from the flask. Then sat blinking at the dazzling sun.

“Another day, another goddamn dead body.”

Dent climbed out of his Chevy Sprint with the electric-blue factory paint-job. Soon as he did, that pitiless goddamn lemon sun started beating down on his head and the hangover-snake— Snake? Hell, it felt like a goddamned python wrapped round his skull— the snake surged with the heat and clenched a little harder. Squinting into the merciless sun, skull crushed by the hangover snake, Dent started to the back of the car . . . It’s gotta be a hundred, easy . . . stuck the key in the hatch’s lock . . . Goddamn Santa Anas, whole summer’s practically been one long heat wave . . . and popped the hatch. Standing strategically, so the raised hatch-back lid was between himself and those nosey goddamn lookie-loos, he ate three Tums and took another swig, then slammed the hatch lid closed . . . Sweet Jesus . . . and endured a wave of nauseating pain as the hangover-snake shifted its grip.

Dent popped a peppermint and stood cursing silently until the snake’s coils eased some, before stalking across the street and past the lookie-loos and their greedy eyes.

He entered the house into a long entryway lined by recessed display cases. The metallic scent of blood was strong and, beneath it, something sweet, like incense.

Least it was cool inside.

In the display cases, soft light caressed colored beads in wooden bowls and pottery. The glass in the last case was smashed out. Dent studied chips of safety glass scattered across the shelf along with three wire stands; whatever the stands once held was gone. Beside the stands lay a finely crafted gold clock with the word Tiffany etched into the base.

The entryway spilled down four steps into a sitting room populated by Navajo rugs, couches and two- dozen cactuses of different sizes and shapes of the Federally-protected variety filling more zig-zaggy pottery. A well-stocked wet-bar was on one wall, back of the bar buttressed by a 300-gallon aquarium— blue damsels doing flybys over coral and sea anemones. Beyond 70-foot picture window stretched the Pacific, surfers skating the faces of far off waves while golden bodies reclined on the sand.

In the main room, McClain was talking with Sheila Simpson from the coroner’s office and deputy D.A Harvey Dunkel; McClain, other side of a couch, gesturing at a sheet-shrouded body soaked, top to bottom, crimson. Bloody footprints surrounded the body.

“Gonna love this one, Vinnie,” Harvey Dunkel said, smirking. “Ape took part a her home in a doggy bag, maybe on account he wanted an open-face sanwich or something.”

Careful not to step on any bloody footprints, Dent squatted beside the body and raised a corner of the sheet. Pentagrams were carved into the skin starting at the belly button and radiating out, like the arms of a starfish, to spikes pinning the woman’s feet and hands to the floor. The arms and legs were severed at the shoulders and hips but left unmoved and though there was lots of cutting done to the face, the pale blue eyes were unscathed, free to sightlessly and lifelessly stare.

McClain said, “She was found this morning by the maid, Juanita Gonzalez. Says she left Mrs. Parks at 5:30 last night and when she returned this morning, found her like this and threw up. Officer Peña says she had chorizo for breakfast. Extra salsa.”

“Anybody see the rest of Mrs. Parks laying around anywhere?”

Harvey Dunkel said, “You mean like the missing Parks parts?” Smiling.

Not smiling, Dent said, “Anybody see the rest of her?”

And got silence. “Alright, this Gonzalez lady, she touch anything? We got any contamination?”

“Just the phone,” McClain said. “Says she came in, saw Mrs. Parks and immediately called 911. After the yak-attack. She’s still pretty spin-billy, back in the guest bedroom.”

Dent dropped the sheet. “Is there a Mister Parks?”

McClain said, “Away on business in Miami. Registered at the, uh . . . ” paging through his little notebook “ . . . at the Fisher Island Club. Hotel manager says Parks was in the bar last night sometime between 9 and 10 putting down whiskeys and that he was at breakfast this morning. His secretary’s got him booked on the first available. In like 8, 8:30.”

Dent jerked a thumb back at the entryway. “What was in the display case?”

Sheila Simpson said, “Maid said Indian masks. Super rare, high dollar stuff.”

Dent wandered over to the couches and a coffee table fashioned from marble, McClain following. Two glasses, highball and a zombie, rested on the coffee table, the zombie with lipstick along the rim and two inches of liquid; the highball was maybe whiskey and looked untouched. A gold or gold-plated ashtray beside the zombie held three skinny, half-smoked cigarettes, lipstick smearing the ends.

Dent followed bloody footprints into the bathroom. On the marble counter-top was a picture of an attractive, middle-aged couple. Dent peered at the blood-smeared handle on the walk-in shower door. Using a handkerchief, he opened the door; the shower within sparkled with antiseptic sterility and there was a noticeable smell of bleach. Dent watched a drop of waterfall from the showerhead to the floor. Reached down, using the handkerchief, and gave the shower-handle an experimental turn. Bamp, just like that, the drip stopped.

McClain said, “We’re supposed to use gloves, not hankies. This ain’t Murder She Wrote or Colonel Mustard killing the Mister Plum dude in the frigging conservatory with a lead pipe.”

Dent closed the shower door. Balled up the handkerchief and shoved it into his pocket. “FYI, Sport? It was Professor Plum.”

The guest bedroom? More Indian crap—cactuses and tricked-out zig-zaggy Indian pots. A small Mexican woman in a neatly pressed dress, white like a nurse would wear, sat hunched on the bed’s edge, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. A silver crucifix dangled from her neck.

“Ms. Gonzalez?”

The woman looked up at Dent with death-shocked eyes. “Mrs. Parks as me iron a dress for her when I almost leaving. Now she dead. She wearing the dress I iron. Now she dead.”

Dent nodded. “Did she mention who she was meeting?”
“No, she never tole me nothing like that.” Ms. Gonzalez chewed on her lower lip. “She did tell me put clean sheets on the bed when I get here this morning.”

“Clean sheets?”

“Sí. She always say that, chew know, when she have friends over.” Ms. Gonzalez twirled the crucifix nervously around a finger. “Chew know . . . Man friends? Sometimes they stay over. She tole me no tell Mister Parks nothing about no clean sheets.”

“Do you recall if the front dead-bolt was locked when you got here?”

“Locked. I remember looking in my purse for the key and think I left it at my sister’s when I watched her niño yesterday. I think maybe he took the key to play but then I fine it.”

“The side-door was open. Did Mrs. Parks use the deck at night?”

“Si. But she always lock it after. She very careful.”

“You see anyone suspicious in the last week, someone watching the house?”
Ms. Gonzalez shook her head, still playing with the crucifix.

“Did the Parks ever use the hall shower?”

Ms. Gonzalez shook her head again, “Never,” and suddenly glanced past Dent and down the hall. Her dark eyes grew wide and the crucifix-fidgeting intensified.

Just in time, Dent turned to see a gurney pushed by a paramedic. Looking to Ms. Gonzalez, now three shades paler, he said, “The Parks fight much, Ms. Gonzalez?”

“I never saw Mr. Parks yell or hit Mrs. Parks. I never see them fight, ever.”

“Hunh.” Dent started to hand a business card to Ms. Gonzalez, then pulled it back. “Ms. Gonzalez, where were you last night?”

“At my sister’s. I left at 11.” Looking puzzled. “Why chew ask? I doan kill no one.”

Ms. Gonzalez took the card and twirling her crucifix round her finger, started timidly down the hall. Watching her, Dent said to McClain, “Take the shower apart. If there’s a hair, a toenail clipping, a goddamn loogie, I want it. Get down in the trap and get anything’s in there.”



McCLAIN SAID, “This is the door. It was just like this.”

The sliding glass door was an inch ajar, sea breeze puffing through the crack and fighting the house’s death stench. Beyond the door was a red-wood hot-tub on a red-wood deck; a gate led off from the covered deck, giving way to the sand that gave way to the sea. Dent left the shade of the deck and sank into deep sand as the pitiless sun began beating down on his head and the hangover-snake clenched.

I need sunglasses . . . Or maybe a goddamn umbrella.

Dent squinted through the glare at the golden people lying on their beach towels, completely frigging immune to the heat. Shook his head . . . Lay around soaking up rays for twenty years . . . and began trudging up the beach . . . Pay through the nose for face-lifts the next twenty . . . slogging through sand, feeling it slithering into his loafers . . . Get polyps the size of Ross Perot cut off your face for the next ten . . . as his squinted eyes flicked from million-dollar beach houses to the sand—

“Hey, Vince, what’re you looking for?” McClain said, kicking up sprays of sand and drawing abreast.

Dent’s eyes flicked from sand to beach houses. He hesitated at a narrow alley leading between two houses. Looked up the beach . . . If the perp uses the back door, this is a good place to get back to the street . . . and started up the alley, eyes flicking left to right, observing, scrutinizing—
“You’re not talking now, are you? Off on one of your super-sleuth freaks, aren’t you?”
— peering down at the sidewalk, over at the fence, back down at the sidewalk—

“You know,” McClain said, “some days you can be a total asshole.”
— studying, memorizing, comparing—
“Right now, this’d be one of those days.”



DENT DIDN’T FIND JACK. He did make it back in time to see Celeste Parks loaded into the ambulance, in time to see the lookie-loos whipped into a frenzy by the sight of a corpse.

Goddamned vultures.

At his car, Dent studied the home’s impeccably landscaped lantana, pansies and African daisies huddling along the stucco wall. You one of those guy’s has a problem with divorce and the 50-50 split-it-up plan, Mister Parks? Dent’s thoughts circled back to Celeste Parks staked to the floor. He said to McClain, “Kahuna, I’ve got one big question.”

“Yeah? What’s up?”
“
Why’d the perp take her face?”

McClain frowned. “Dude . . . I’m not even sure I wanna know.”


DENT SAT ON A COUCH wedged into about a dozen throw pillows. Mrs. Kate Lipschke sat curled up in an armchair like a cat, a glass of Chardonnay in her hand.

“I called because I saw Celeste’s house on the news,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s just a terrible, shocking thing.”

Dent nodded, and the motion knocked several pillows to the floor. Replacing a pillow, he said,

“Were you close to Mrs. Parks?”

“We met at the Bishop’s School in the second grade. Actually, we were competing for one boy’s attention . . . Michael Ryan. He’s a federal judge now, some say he’ll be the next Supreme Court justice.”

Dent pushed a throw pillow away, trying to make some room. “Did Mrs. Parks tell you about anyone she was seeing lately? New friends? A lover?”

Mrs. Lipschke sipped her wine and ran a finger at the corner of her lips, fixing her lipstick. “Detective, this is very hard for me, Celeste and I being as close as we were, but I should tell you that in the last few years she’d had more than the occasional fling.”

“She ever tell you any names?”

“Celeste was a lady, Detective. A lady never talks.”

Dent sipped his water, avoiding the sliced-lemons and thinking: That’s funny, I thought married ladies didn’t sleep around.

“She go anywhere in particular to meet these men?”

“Celeste simply went to a bar and picked out a man. In fact, she called last night asking if I’d cover for her, that if Davis asked, she was playing bridge with the girls all night.”

“Was she?”

“Not a hand.”

“Who else was with you last night?”

“Oh, Helen Meyers-Fitch, Trudy Timken, Babs McCoy. The whole gang.” Mrs. Lipschke glanced at Dent’s empty glass. Said, “More tap water, Detective?” and her tone clearly conveyed her annoyance at his earlier declining of the ‘ginseng-kiwi-papaya extract’ of her own design.

Dent shook his head. “Mrs. Parks say which bar she was going to?”

“No. But I know it was one in La Jolla, on Prospect.”

“Wasn’t she afraid she’d see somebody down there she knew?”

“Celeste liked La Jolla because the men are more cultured.” Mrs. Lipschke swirled the wine in her glass, watching it, saying, “As far as somebody seeing her in a bar—” now looking Dent in the eyes “— Celeste had Davis convinced we spread malicious lies about her. If someone claimed Celeste was with another man she’d deny it. And Davis would believe her, being, as he is, so consumed by his work.”

“Mrs. Lipschke, were they happy together, in your opinion?”

“Well, they certainly gave it that appearance, yes.”

“Then why was she seeing all these other men?”

Mrs. Lipschke held her glass in two hands, peering over the rim at Dent. “Detective . . . Davis’ passion was architecture and outside that he’s . . . oh, how should I put it? Stodgy? Celeste was a vivacious woman with a passion for men.” Mrs. Lipschke leaned forward, lowering her voice. “And between you and I? I don’t think Davis’ tiger’s got much roar any more, if you take my meaning. Celeste wanted a lion in the bedroom, she had Morris the cat.” Mrs. Lipschke ran her index finger around the rim of the glass before fixing her cornflower eyes on Dent that may or may not have been tinted contacts. “Is it true? About her face?”

Dent nodded.

Shaking her head slowly, Mrs. Lipschke sighed and said, “And after she just got her face-lift.”

Saying it without a trace of sarcasm.



THEY ROLLED SOUTH ON HARBOR DRIVE, Dent driving, McClain riding shotgun.

McClain saying, “ . . . there’s no sign of tampering on the locks and the alarm system checks out.”

“Which might indicate she knew the perp, invited him in and they had a drink together.”

“Drinkie poo before hackie poo. Nice. But it’s possible some dude lurking in the bushes jumped her.”

“Maybe. But instead of punching in the disarm code, she’d hit the silent alarm. So let’s start with the assumption she invited the perp inside. They have a drink. Now, after he does his thing, the tidy little bastard takes a shower, which is a first.” Dent glanced over at McClain. “You look in the garage?”

“Yup. Beemer, Benz and a Jag. No empty spaces. So he didn’t park in the garage.”

Dent rubbed the back of his neck, trying to work out a kink. “Garage door was latched from the inside, right?”

“Right. So he went out the back, onto the beach.”

On their right, three blondes in a convertible VW Cabriolet were grooving to some beat, hair flying in the wind. The driver screamed something at McClain and smiled.

Grinning, McClain waved as the girls blew kisses. The girl in back gestured for McClain to roll down the window. “Would you look at that,” McClain said, rolling down the window and grinning. "Pull up beside them, they probably want my number.”

“Why? You’ve got a fiancée.”

“C’mon, can’t deprive this girl a shot at meeting the next Hollywood heart-throb.”

Shaking his head, Dent edged the Sprint up beside the convertible. The girl in back yelled something Dent didn’t catch and started laughing as the convertible pulled away.

“What’d she say?”

McClain looked over. “She said, Nice car, does your Dad let you drive it on Saturday nights.” Shaking his head. “I can’t believe you drive this piece of shit, this is not a cop car. You’d never see Beretta or Serpico in a Chevy Sprint.”

“Yeah? Well I’m not Beretta or Serpico.”

“No shit, not when you’re driving a car with three cylinders of steam power.”

“You done?”

“Done.”

“Good. So let’s say the perp went out the back door, and it’s a fifteen, twenty-minute walk to the front of the house. Does that mean he didn’t park out front? Maybe he’s afraid someone’d recognize his car, so he parked around the corner?”

McClain, staring after the diminishing convertible, said, “Sure, he didn’t wanna try to get back to his car covered in blood in case a beach-person saw him, so he took the shower. If he parked around the corner, it’d be easier to get to his car going out the back and up an alley. The alleys are how we get back to the street after a wave session. If he parked on a side street, it means he cased it prior and plotted his bail-out.”

Dent shrugged. “Brings us to her date-book. You check it?”

“Last entry was July sixteenth. Said, Masks Arrive.”

“Three weeks ago. Maybe the same masks that were stolen?” Dent considered this a moment.

“No random murderer takes the masks. The perp understood their value. The masks are the nexus.”

“Maybe it’s some sort of freaky, ritual, witch-crafty shit maybe, right. He slashes all those weird-ass Satan-worshiper pentagrams into the body, takes her face, takes the masks. Bet the house he’s talking to God or the Devil. Y’ask me, it’s going serial.”

Out front of San Diego PD, Dent cut the engine, shaking his head. “I hate this crap.”

McClain nodded. “You’re telling me, dude. I’m scheduled to start vacation next week.”



PARKS STOOD BESIDE THE TABLE, his eyes traveling the length of the corpse.

Celeste Parks’ upper body was bare, a sheet bunched up just below her pubic hair. Pentagrams radiated from her belly button and up her arms, down her legs and disappeared beneath the sheet and her face was a mask of fibrous muscle and white bone, teeth bared in a deadly grin. A chocolate-colored mole shaped like a heart was above her left breast.

Parks' eyes locked onto the mole, staring at that chocolate mole . . .

He looked away. “Yes . . . Yes, that’s her. Now please, for God’s sake, cover her.” Staring at the wall, sobbing softly, he said with the deepest mortal’s anguish: “Please, please for the love of God . . . cover her.”

Dent nodded at the morgue technician, and a sheet was pulled over Celeste Parks’ leftovers.



THEY WERE IN A LITTLE INTERROGATION room off Homicide. Overhead, the fluorescent light sputtered intermittently. Parks sat in a chair beside McClain, across from Dent, cold coffee in a Styrofoam cup on the table before him. McClain had a notebook in hand and lollipop in his mouth.

“Mister Parks, tell me how you and your wife got along.”

Parks silently stared at the wall so long Dent was tempted to ask the question again. Finally, the man said: “We had occasional disagreements, like any couple.”

“You fought about communication, children, money?”

“We occasionally disagreed.”

“How long were you married?”

“26 years next month. They were the best years of my life. I’d never have become what I am without Celeste’s help.”

“You ever think about divorcing her?”

“I guess on a couple of occasions I gave it a passing thought— when Celeste was drinking too much she was tough to handle. Sometimes, when she’d had a bit much to drink, she’d create scenes, say something to someone that was inappropriate, tell them what she really thought rather than just making happy talk. In our social circle, that’s considered bad taste. Plus, Celeste wasn’t exactly herself when she was drinking. She was often angry. But she hasn’t had a drink in over a year. She’s been . . .” Parks stopped. Pursed his lips. “Celeste was seeing her therapist twice a week. Working out her anger.”

Dent scrubbed a hand across his face. “I gather you’re away from home a lot. Traveling. How’d Mrs. Parks feel about that?”

“She liked it. She spent the time with friends. And collecting her artifacts.”

“Did you ever think it was dangerous leaving your wife alone all the time in a house that big? Prime target for a burglary?”

Parks looked Dent hard in the eyes. “I had a top-of-the-line security system installed and a dozen guns hidden throughout the house so Celeste would be safe.” Looking down, he said, “But yes. Yes, I have thought about that all day.”

Dent nodded, sipping his coffee. Carefully set the cup on the table, finger loop pointed at Parks, and said, “How well do you think you knew your wife? Being away all the time?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“I’m asking if you knew who your wife associated with when you were away.”

“Her friends. Her girlfriends. I didn’t hire a private investigator to follow her around taking pictures if that’s what you mean, Detective. We spoke by phone daily. I trusted Celeste implicitly.”

Dent considered this, the words “trust” and ‘implicitly’, considered how he’d ask the next question, then said simply, “Where’d your wife tell you she was going last night, Mr. Parks?”

“She played cards with Mary Kate Lipschke and some other girlfriends. Bridge.”

Dent rubbed his eyes. The flickering fluorescent, a dozen cups of coffee, the hot long day, all conspired to make him feel edgy and very, very tired. “I spoke with Mrs. Lipschke. Babs McCoy, too. Your wife never played a single hand of bridge. Mrs. Lipschke claims your wife wanted her to cover for her, in case you called. Said your wife confided she was going to a bar on Prospect.”

Parks’ face was hard. “They lied. Celeste was at bridge.”

Dent waited.

Parks said, “Listen, let me make you understand something . . . I’m . . . I’m not going to sit here and allow Celeste’s memory to be torn apart by yours or anyone else’s lies—” his voice rising in volume “—by the slander and the jealousies of petty, soulless people. She doesn’t deserve this. She . . .” Parks stared at the wall. Took a breath and let it out slowly. Then said softly, “Celeste was a good woman.”

His eyes were wet with unresolved tears.

Dent studied this, studied the way the muscles in Parks’ jaw clenched and unclenched. Glanced up at McClain, who shrugged, and back at Parks. “Please listen to me, Mr. Parks. I want you to understand that neither Detective McClain nor I want to cause you any additional trauma. We’re trying to find out who murdered your wife. That means I need answers that require questions, and unfortunately those questions can be painful. But I don’t enjoy asking them.”

Parks looked Dent dead in the eyes and said in a weary voice, “Does it really make any difference, Detective?”

Dent decided it didn’t. Sipping lukewarm coffee, he said, “What can you tell us about the stolen masks. The ones in the case?”

Parks shook his head and smiled a bitter smile. “Ah. The masks. Celeste’s pride and joy. She really loved those masks, the whole collection, actually . . . she’d’ve had the whole house done like a tribal teepee if I’d hadn’t said something. Dragged me from a project on deadline to look at the masks when the guy delivered them. Wanted to know what I thought about them. If I could feel their power.”

“So what did you think?”

“I thought they were ugly as hell.” Parks shrugged. “But they were old, more than 200 years old. From some Northwest Indian tribe, Kwah-something or other, I don’t know.” Parks studied his hands, spread across the table. “God, but she loved those masks.”

“You know who she got them from?”

Parks shook his head. “Some antiquities house in San Francisco. She’d heard about them through her contacts in the Native American movement, she sponsored a few research projects. She was real big into the Indian thing. It was an obsession with Celeste. She was half-Cherokee and identified strongly with Native American causes.”

McClain, writing in his notebook, said, “Any idea what the masks are worth, Mr. Parks?”

“She paid 2.8 million for the three masks.”

McClain whistled. “Three of ‘em together?”

“Yes.”

“Wow,” McClain said, shaking his head. “Know what they’d go for on the black art market?”

“No, I don’t. We don’t involve ourselves in any black art markets, Detective.”

Dent said, “We’ll want to know who she paid for the masks so we can talk to them. Did she pay by cashier’s check or what?”

“I don’t know,” Parks said. “Celeste has . . . had her own accounts where she keeps her inheritance. She would have drawn against that. But good luck. She kept the bulk of her liquid assets in the Bahamas and they won’t tell me anything about her money, including how it was spent.”

Dent nodded. “There was a gold clock in the display-case used to smash the glass. Looked expensive. How much was it worth?”

“I paid seventy-five thousand for it, a birthday present for Celeste’s fortieth. A joke, you know .
. . Time and all. Why?”

“We wondered why someone would take the masks and leave something obviously as valuable as that clock. Any ideas?”

“Perhaps the person who stole the masks is an expert in Indian artifacts.”

“That’s what we thought. And your wife knew a lot of people like that.”

“She did. Maybe of those Indian people murdered her.”

“Do you know any of these people?”

“Unfortunately, I was never involved in Celeste’s hobbies, but their names are in her appointment book. I believe you mentioned earlier you’d confiscated it. That is how you located Mary Kate Lipschke and the rest of the witches’ coven, isn’t it?”

“She called us.”

“I see. Well, you might try her date book.”

The room was quiet except for the sound of McClain’s pen and the occasional sputter of the fluorescent light. Finally, Parks said, “Are there any more questions? Or are we done.”

Dent looked at McClain, who shook his head, and back at Parks. “You’ve been helpful. Elevator’s around the corner to your left. Press ‘L’ for lobby.”

“Detective, I’ll be staying at the Marriott in La Jolla if you need to reach me.”

Dent nodded. “Mr. Parks, we truly are sorry about your wife.”

Dent watched Parks hesitate— his back ram-rod straight in the wrinkly blue suit— then tacitly exit, the pneumatic-springed door closing slowly and firmly behind him.

McClain said, “Dude, I hate this frigging job, that’s why I let you do all the talking. I’m either getting transferred to vice or traffic or I’m quitting. I'm getting hypersensitive. It’s supposed to get easier, it’s getting harder. It’s weird.”

“You just have to focus on the job.” Dent shook his head. “But can you imagine hearing your spouse was cheating on you on top of the fact she was hacked up? Who would want to believe it?”

“And pride’s blind.”

Dent took a sip of coffee and set the coffee cup down just so. “Bottom line.”

McClain pulled the lollipop from his mouth, looked at it for a moment, twirling the stick in his fingers, and said, “We follow up, just to be thorough, but I think the bottom line is we’ll find the dude’s legit. He didn’t have jack shit to do with his wife’s getting vaped.”

Dent nodded. Glanced at his watch. 10:00. Took a last sip of bitter, cold coffee. Stretched his back. At 10:02, he got to wondering about those masks.