Envy

CHAPTER 44

As Reilly sat at her desk and stared at her phone, she didn’t think de la Cruz was going to pull it off.

Yes, he was the only person she could think of who could get into a sealed juvenile file that was fifteen years old and no doubt buried in the basement of some suburb of New York City. But that was a tall order, even for a miracle worker like him.

For one thing, “sealed” meant “lose your job” if you went there. For another, most old records were tossed after a number of years, given that computerized files were not all that prevalent in the nineties, especially in smaller municipalities. And finally, the guy hadn’t worked in Manhattan for years and years. Who knew if he had any contacts left down south?

Still, it had been a relief to lay everything out to the detective, even the stuff about Bails: She didn’t like feeling crazy all by herself. And at least he didn’t seem to think her suspicions were totally unfounded.

Glancing at the clock across the office, she knew that he wouldn’t be getting back to her tonight . . . so it was probably time to go home before she ossified in her chair.

Rising to her feet, she stretched hard—which was less about loosening her body and more about finding an excuse to look behind herself. Again.

Man, you knew panoia was bad when you had to make excuses for it to yourself.

After shutting down her computer, she picked up her coat, pulled it on, and grabbed her purse. Before she left IA, she checked her gun in its holster under her arm and got out her cell phone.

Just in case.

As she stepped out into the hallway, she looked both ways and took a listen. Off in the distance, past Homicide, she heard a vacuum running, and down below in the foyer someone was using a floor buffer.

She glanced behind her. There was no one around.

Walking fast for the main stairs, she reminded herself that even though it was after hours, the lights were still on everywhere and there were twenty or thirty night-shift people working in the building—

When her phone went off, she nearly dropped the damn thing. And then almost lost it again when she saw it was de la Cruz. Accepting the call, she whispered, “Don’t tell me you found the juvie record?”

“That’s what you asked me to do.”

Her feet slowed. “My God . . .”

“My brother-in-law’s cousin’s husband, actually.”

“Tell me.”

“Truancy. That’s it.”

She stopped at the head of the stairs, and kept her voice low. “What do you mean ‘that’s it.’ ”

“The Garrison County records department has a single listing in ‘ninety-six for a Thomas DelVecchio Jr. He was brought in for skipping school repeatedly.”

“And there is no other reference? No psych evals? No—”

“Nothing. The backlog of cases were digitalized in two thousand five—and they saved ten years of files, so we just made it inside the safe zone. DelVecchio was fourteen at the time he was brought in—and if he’d had earlier trips through the justice system, they would have been noted in that entry.”

“And there was nothing afterward.”

“Not a thing.”

There was a long silence. And then she felt compelled to ask, “There is no way something was missed?”

“If for some reason he got into trouble in another jurisdiction, well, then yeah. But real estate records show that his mother owned a house in the same town for twenty years and I know Veck’s résumé’s been vetted—and he has on it that he graduated from the Garrison County High School in two thousand. So I think it’s safe to assume he stayed in that area.”

Reilly put her hand on her head as her mind reeled. “He’s being framed.”

“Sure looks that way.”

“Goddamn it.”

Now she got moving, racing down the stairs, her heels clipping loudly on the marble.

“Another thing,” de la Cruz said. “While I was waiting for the callback, I got on that Facebook page that you sent me the link to.”

“And you saw Bails?”

“Yup, I think that’s him, too. Where are you?”

“Just leaving the station house. I’m going over to Veck’s right now.”

As she passed by the housekeeping thinf, she watched her footing on the wet marble and then shot down the back hallway.

“There’s only one problem,” de la Cruz said. “We can’t use the juvie record to prove anything. We should never have gotten this information.”

She punched the bar on the rear exit and burst out into the night. “I have the Bails images on Facebook—I took screen shots of them in case they get taken down and I found the alias he’s using. I think we have enough to get a warrant to force Facebook to give us the account details and the Internet service provider. We can link him that way.”

“Proving that he’s a fan of DelVecchio Sr. isn’t enough.”

“It’s a start.”

“Agreed, but there has to be something more. And before you ask, yes, I’ll call the sergeant—unless you want to?”

“I’m going to be busy with Veck. Maybe he’ll have some ideas.”

“Roger that—”

“I don’t know how you pulled this off.”

“Officially, I didn’t.”

“Well, I really owe you. You’re a lifesaver.”

She ended the call and got out the keys to her unmarked—

“Actually, that’s not quite the word I would have used.”

Reilly didn’t get a chance to spin around. A hand grabbed the back of her head and slammed her face-first into the car’s hard contours, the top of the door catching her right at the browline.

As her lights went out and her knees buckled, all she heard was Bails’s voice in her ear: “You really should have looked behind you.”

Adrian slayed the last minion with an arcing slice that went from high to low, the pitchfork’s tines piercing an oily black chest, all knife-through-butter.

At least . . . he thought he was the one who did it.

As the body fell to the ground with a wet thud, he looked around . . . at all the others of him. Who, at the very same moment, turned and looked in his direction.

He spun the pitchfork around and stabbed the ground—and the other dozens of himselves did the same thing a mere split second later.

If Eddie were here, he thought, the guy would have been pissing in his pants. Too many openings for a good assslapping.

Shit, Eddie . . . why hadn’t he been the one with the nine lives?

At that moment, the face of every Adrian grew tight, those mouths that he knew so well flattening out, those pierced brows lowering . . . until he was surrounded, literally, by his own grief.

The sound of slow clapping brought their collective faces up and around. Colin had come out of the apartment and was standing on the top landing of the stairwell.

“Well-done, lad, well-done.”

“I had help.”

Huh. None of the other Adrians spoke up, so this had to be him—and what a thing to be relieved about.

For fuck’s sake, this shit was going to give him a disorder.

“I would have joined you,” Colin said as he floated down the stairs and then walked across the steaminglack-stained ground. “But as you pointed out, I am here to take care of our dearly departed.”

“Eddie okay?”

“Yes.”

Ad shook his head. “Thank God you were here.”

“Indeed.”

As the archangel strode through the remains of all those minions, his boots remained pristine even though the ground was a sloppy mess.

He and the other Adrians all looked impressed. And then he realized that they were steaming: Every Adrian had tendrils of smoke rising from their shoulders and backs, the corrosive blood eating through the leather, heading for skin.

On that note . . . Adrian ripped off the duster—

Not even a split second afterward, a chorus of flapping went off, like a flock of geese had gotten goosed and taken to the sky. And then the Adrians tossed their coats down on the ground with disgust just as he had.

Colin stopped in front of them all. “Would you like to keep your little friends?”

Adrian looked around at himselves. “They’re great backup—I wonder if they do windows? And if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you pull this off?”

Colin extended his hand. At some kind of command from him, the surface of the inky sludge covering the driveway and lawn began to vibrate, and then here and there, tiny objects rose, dripping with—

They were shards, Adrian realized, as they shed their coating of minion. Glass—no, mirrored shards.

“Tricky, tricky,” Ad murmured.

“Say good-bye to your crew, mate.”

He glanced around. And found that he wanted to tell himselves thank you—

In perfect synchronization, all of the other Adrians put their right palms up to their hearts, those dark heads dipping gravely.

And then they were gone, along with their coats.

“Can I have them back if I need them again,” Ad asked. “Like if I have to lay some carpet, or move a piano.”

“You know where to find me.”

“I do.” He reached out, but then dropped his hand when he saw the condition of his gloves. “I gotta know something.”

“What.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“You were going to lose.”

“Are you going to tell Nigel?”

“Probably. I subscribe to the notion that it is better to apologize than ask permission.”

“Know that one well.”

There was a period of silence. “Thank you,” Adrian said roughly.

The archangel bowed with grace. “ ’Twas a pleasure. Now, I think we should get this cleaned up. Not many neighbors about, but it would be hard to explain, don’t you think?”

Good point: If there was just a skirmish, there wasn’t a lot of reason to worry about the icky aftermath. God knew that humans left plenty of oily messes around, and smudges on the ground soon disappeared with enough sunlight. This?

“The only option,” he muttered, “would be to tell people the oil tanker exploded on the front lawn.”

“And does that not require a permit or some such?”

“Probably. As well as a lot of gunpowder.” He shook his head. “Damn, we’re going to need a lot of—”

Cleaning solution was the term he was going to use, as he started to wonder how much of that witch hazel concoction he could pull together. Enough for a fire truck would do the job.

Colin, however, took care of it all: Sweeping his hand in a circle, he disappeared every trace of the tremendous fight.

Adrian whistled under his breath. “You wouldn’t be in the market for a second job, would you?”

Colin smiled with a dark edge. “That would be against the rules, dear boy.”

“And God forbid we bust those bitches.”

Adrian yanked off one of his gloves and matched the archangel’s cynical expression as the pair of them clapped palms and shook hard.

“Jim’s probably waiting for me,” Ad murmured, glancing up toward the garage.

“And at the moment, I have nothing better to do.”

The relief that Eddie wasn’t alone was so profound, he was tempted to hug the motherfucker. “Then I’ll just get back to work now.”

“And so shall I.”

As Adrian nodded and took to the air, he was prepared for Devina in ways he hadn’t been before.

Good thing, as it turned out, considering what he walked in on when he got to Veck’s.