29

Lazarus disliked Sundays. The days were slow and heavy. They reminded him of death. Not that his death much interested him—the randomness of the universe made any prediction impossible—but he was curious about the day before his death. What would he be doing the day before he died? How would he spend his final twenty-four hours? He wanted to believe he would be doing something worthy of the final day, but he doubted it. He would probably be doing nothing in particular.

Rolling out of bed took more effort than he wanted to expend, but he did it anyway. He got into the shower and turned the water cold. He stared into the showerhead, gasping as the frigid water pounded him, but he didn’t move. Not until his skin numbed and the cold didn’t bother him anymore.

Afterward, he dressed in slacks and a white button-up shirt and red tie, loosened at his throat. He rolled down his sleeves and buttoned them before getting his keys and heading to the Dungeon.

The day boiled, and he turned up the air conditioner. The drive took longer than expected on a Sunday because of traffic, and then he remembered he lived in Las Vegas and it was no different here on the Sabbath than any other day. He used it as his day to catch up on paperwork.

Unfortunately, everything he did on any case that he wanted introduced into court later had to be documented, which meant mountains of paperwork. Narratives, supplements, affidavits ... they seemed to never end. He had a partner once, a young woman who loved the minutiae, the details that he never thought about, and she would keep their paperwork up to date. She would hassle him until he got his overtime together, vacation filled, retirement accounts straightened, and everything that Lazarus at least thought a spouse was supposed to do.

One day, while effectuating an arrest on a parolee, she was struck in the jaw when he spun around and clocked her with his fist. While she was on the ground, the parolee struck her again and again, saying, “Sorry, baby, but I can’t go back to jail.”

She had to have her jaw wired shut, and eventually healed, but she never came back. Lazarus heard she became an accountant. Now, because some punk couldn’t do a few weeks in the can, Lazarus had to do his own paperwork.

He caught up as quickly as he could and then left. By four in the afternoon, he was sitting at the saloon drinking his beers. He’d left three messages for Erik Toby and hadn’t heard back. His phone finally rang.

“This is Holloway.”

“This is Erik Toby. Dr. Toby. I took a look at everything.”

“And?”

“I can say with near certainty this alarm was not interrupted on the night of those people’s deaths.”

“What about any other nights?”

“No. No POD was used. But I looked at the false alarms like you said, and there was one that stuck out to me.”

“How so?”

“There was an anomaly two weeks before. This system isn’t like other systems. Moore’s law applies to alarm systems just like computers. They advance very quickly.”

“Dr. Toby—”

“I know, I ramble. You’re young. You can put up with some rambling by your elders. Anyway, this system uses machine learning and pattern recognition. They work together to analyze sensor data in real time and a bunch of other hogwash you don’t care about. But it’s highly unlikely for this system to malfunction and there be no record anywhere. I would say with ninety-nine percent certainty it was working and armed at the time of their deaths.”

“All machines fail occasionally, even if it’s unlikely. So what’s the number? One in a hundred chance it fails?”

“Probably closer to one in ten million.”

Lazarus reclined against the booth’s cushions and gazed at the ceiling. “He got in somehow, Doc.”

“Not my circus, not my monkeys. Have a good one, Detective.”

Lazarus hung up with Toby and then tried to get in touch with the CSI shift supervisor, but it went straight to voicemail. He had requested CSI to join him for a second examination of the Grace home’s crawl space, knowing the value of an extra set of eyes. But their response was still pending. The delay was typical of the bureaucracy he often navigated, but it didn’t lessen his impatience.

Lazarus finished his beers, nodded to Bass, and left.

Lazarus arrived at Judge Dawson’s home in the evening and parked in the driveway. The setting sun cast a glint off the house, making it seem new. It was an elegant bit of architecture, but there were others like it all over the city. He wondered why she chose to stay here after her husband took a header off the balcony.

Getting out of the car, Lazarus heard the front door unlocking as he approached. He nodded once in gratitude to the camera above the entrance.

The house blended in with the desert. It had a large staircase, beige floors, and walls that looked like the red earth outside.

“In here,” she called from deep inside the house.

Lazarus took a few wrong turns before finding her in a room transformed into an art studio. She wore paint-splattered jeans and a white T-shirt. The space was filled with paintings, and the lighting was dim. She had her back to him, looking at a painting of a naked woman reaching up with both hands. The woman looked like a ghost, with the night sky visible through her body.

“I can’t stand that cologne,” she said without turning around. “I think it has pine trees on it if I’m not mistaken?”

“It reminds me of the woods.”

“I forget you’re a country boy.”

She made a small brushstroke and then stepped back for perspective.

“What are you painting?”

“Nyx devouring Helios while he devours her. What do you think?”

“I hate it.”

She grinned. “I can always rely on you to be honest.”

“Honesty’s easier.”

She reached toward the painting and darkened a small portion of Nyx’s breast, making it appear more in the flesh than the rest of the body.

“How’s Ms. Danes working out?”

“I like her fine. She’s smart.”

“Oddly optimistic all the time, isn’t she? Not a common trait in a guardian.”

He stood beside her, observing the painting.

“Why are you here, Lazarus?”

“I can’t figure out how he got into the house.”

“So? Why come here?”

“This is why we didn’t work. You got a heart like ice.”

“It’s not about heart. You’re here to discuss ideas and emotions and theories. That’s what you do with a spouse, or your partner. I am neither.”

She let out a sigh, placing her brush and paints down. “I’m sorry. The futility of it occasionally gets to me. Does it get to you?”

“No.”

She grinned again as she washed her hands in a sink and dried them with a white rag. “You have an amazing flair for self-deception. Just be careful, the easiest person to deceive is ourselves.”

He glanced up to the ceiling, where there were spatters of paint on the plaster. “I think that girl knows something. She gets ambushed and walks away with some cuts and scrapes? How?”

“Ah, and there it is. The real reason you’re here. The answer is no,” she said, beginning to rinse off her brushes.

“To what?”

“To giving you permission to interview her over her guardian’s objection.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No, you’re not that stupid. You’ll make a subtle plea. Something that I might actually say yes to. And then later, when you do what you want, you’ll say that my instructions were vague. No, you do not have permission to interview that girl unless her guardian allows it.”

“She might know how he got in.”

“Tough. Figure it out without her.”

She turned off the light as she left the room. “I’m not going to cheat for you, Lazarus.”

He followed her down the hall. “Yeah, that girl’s alive, but the dead are important, too, ’cause this life is all we got, and whoever killed ’em took everything they ever had and everything they were ever gonna have.”

“See yourself out,” she said, turning a corner without looking back at him.

He stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, and then left.

Lazarus got into his car as his phone rang. It was Piper.

“What’s up?”

“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” she said.

“Why?”

“My grandmother insists on meeting you. She wants you to come over for Sunday dinner.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“Why?”

“Because she already spent the time and money to make a meal for three.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“See you at seven.”