Chapter 58

SOMEONE TOOK THEsmall boat we’d commandeered back to the marina while Tox and I rode home on a police cruiser with Chris Murray. I stood up at the front of the boat with the squat, ruddy-faced man while another officer commanded the helm. Someone had wrapped a blanket around me. But Tox sat unattended at the rear of the boat on a barrel with his own shirt clutched to the gunshot wound in the side of his face. He was watching the boat’s wake disappear into the dark of the night.

“You did a sensational job out there,” Chris kept saying. Shaking his head ruefully at it all. “You weren’t coming up. I was willing to put money on it. You dived in, and you were down there too long, and I thought, She’s got herself tangled up with that woman. She’s a goner.”

“Cut it out.” I jabbed him in the side. “You know I don’t like it.”

We stared at our feet. I knew the answer to my question, but I asked it anyway.

“The husband. Did he make it?”

“No,” Chris said.

We shuffled away from the officer driving the boat. Chris’s eyes wandered the coastline ahead of us, picking out the clustered lights of Bondi and Coogee and the dark patches where the cliffs met the sea.

“I did look up Tox Barnes,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“Yeah.” Chris glanced at me. “After you called me. I felt bad. I knew some guys in records who could pull some strings for me.”

“I knew you did.”

“I thought I’d get the details, just to arm myself, in case you came at me again. I was ready to cut you down about it.”

“I don’t think I even want to know.” I held my hand up. “I think he’s all right. And if there was a time when he wasn’t all right, well, that seems to have been a long time ago.”

“That’s the thing.” Chris leaned in close. “He is all right.”

Chris told me the story. It wasn’t close to any of the ones I’d heard.