Blue Smoke

now, to wait now. He was too close to the goal for a frigging time-out.
    She locked her things in the trunk.
    “Detective Younger may come up when he’s finished here. John’s on his way back from New York.”
    “What was he doing in New York?” Bo reached for her hand, linked fingers.
    “Looking up Joe Pastorelli. He’s got pancreatic cancer. He’s terminal.”
    “Hard way to go.” Xander flanked her other side. “Is he in treatment?”
    “Didn’t sound like it, and it may be Joey figures he’s got tumors ticking away like little time bombs inside himself.”
    “Is it genetic?” Bo asked.
    “I don’t know.” Fatigue weighed on her like a cairn. “I don’t know. Xander?”
    “Under ten percent of the cases are hereditary. Smoking’s the leading cause.”
    “There’s some irony for you. Smoke, fire, death. In any case, I’ll get the details when John gets back. What it tells us is this is most likely what set Joey off, pushed him to finish things up. Look, I’m going to run home, get some fresh clothes.”
    “I’ll go with you.”
    “There are cops on the house, Bo.”
    “I’ll go with you,” he repeated and walked around to get in her car.
    She rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she ordered her brother. “I’ll drop you at Mama’s. Nobody walks around alone tonight. Tell them I’m fine,” she added as she started the car. “That I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
    The lights were on, she saw, all over the house. She got out for a moment to speak to the two cops parked at the curb. Head cocked, she walked back to Xander.
    “Fran, Jack, the kids, Bella, her kids. You didn’t mention everyone congregated over here.”
    “It’s what we do.”

    She kissed both his cheeks. “Go in, smooth everyone’s nerves. Ask . . . ask Mama to say a rosary for O’Donnell. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
    She got back in the car before someone inside spotted her. She’d never get home for clothes if they started streaming outside.
    “They hold together,” Bo said when she pulled away. “You’ve got granite for a base there, Catarina. They’re scared, they’re sick with worry, but they don’t come apart.”
    “He wants to hurt them. I’m afraid knowing that will make me come apart.”
    “It won’t. I guess if I’m going to do the married thing—hey, I said ‘married’ right out loud. If I’m going to do the married-and-kids thing, I’d want to build that on a good, solid base.”
    “Well, the timing’s odd, but if that’s a proposal—”
    “Uh-uh. You proposed, I’m just giving you an answer.”
    “I see.”
    “Don’t see a ring though. It’s not official until you buy me a ring.”
    She stopped, just braked in the middle of the street, laid her head on the steering wheel. And wept.
    “Oh hey, oh God, don’t cry.” He yanked at his seat belt, swiveled over to try to take her in his arms.
    “I have to, just for a minute. I thought I would lose it in the house, first in that bedroom. Seeing what he did to them. He shot them, then sat them up in bed like puppets.”
    “What?”
    “Carla and Don Dimarco. I didn’t know them well. They only bought the house a few months ago. Young couple, first house. Her mother and Gina’s mom went to school together.” She sat up, wiped at tears. “He didn’t fire the bed. I could see them. I could see the pillows he used to muffle the shots. I was standing there, the fire’s all around and I could see how he came in while they slept, put the pillows over their faces . . . low caliber. Little hole. Just a little hole.”
    Bo said nothing, only took her hand.
    “It’s all around. The fire. The heat, the smoke, the light. It talks. You can hear it mutter, sing, roar. It has speech. It fascinates me. It pulls at me.It always has, since the night I stood on the sidewalk with a glass of ginger ale and watched it dance behind the glass at Sirico’s. I understand his . . . attachment to it,” she said and turned to look at Bo.
    “I understand why he chooses it, or it chooses him. I can see the steps that brought us here, all of us. But now, after O’Donnell, I feel as though I’m standing on the edge of them. I lost my balance up in that room, looking at people who did nothing except buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Looking at them and feeling the fire, I lost it, then my partner’s standing in the doorway, pulling me back from that edge, reminding me we had a job to do. And dying for it.”
    She