Nightbird by Edward Dee Read Free Book Online

knew that the broken hearts in this story resided not only in the lights of Broadway, but also in the Arizona desert,
     where the tale began. He planned to make airline reservations as soon as the funeral date was announced. He’d talk to Gillian’s
     friends. Visit her high school, her drama professors at ASU. Her parents. Maybe see her room. He’d ask to see a pink blanket
     she’d told him about, one she’d carried as a child, worn so thin that light shone through it. A writer knew that heartbreak’s
     permanent home was in the small, personal details.
    He tried to recall Gillian’s face last night, the way she’d acted. Had he missed something? She’d seemed stressed and more
     subdued than he remembered, but that was understandable; she’d said she’d been betrayed by someone she loved. She’d been a
     little drunk, not bombed, not staggering sloppy. Joe Gregory had implied Danny should have been more observant; he should
     have seen a girl in trouble. He kept replaying the evening over and over in his mind. Had he been so concerned about himself
     that he’d missed something? The one thing Danny swore he’d never be was a self-centered man, a man like his father, who found
     it so easy to walk away from a wife and son.
    Cameras zoomed in on the tired face of Evan Stone. The couple slowed up at the security checkpoint. Reporters kept pushing,
     wouldn’t take no for an answer. Danny poured another chillable red as a security guard stepped in and ordered the TV crews
     back. About time.
    Safely through the checkpoint, Evan Stone snatched his carry-on from the short conveyor belt beyond the X-ray machine. His
     wife faded into the distance, walking quickly out of camera range. He turned to the cameras.
    “Do something about your city,” he said.
    Danny held up his glass, toasting the TV. “I’ll make it right, Mr. Stone. I’ll bring that bastard to his knees.”
    T his is a damn shame,” Leigh Ryan said as her detective husband walked through the door of their aging Cape Cod in Yonkers.
     Leigh sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, dozens of theater
Playbills
scattered around her. She was watching the news, Evan and Lynnette Stone fighting their way through a handful of reporters
     at JFK. “Why didn’t someone go to the airport with them, Anthony?”
    “Because Evan Stone told us they were staying overnight,” Ryan said, lowering himself next to her. “They must have checked
     out right after we left.”
    “We need a hands-off rule,” Leigh said, waving at the TV. “A forty-eight-hour grief moratorium, something like that.”
    Anthony Ryan focused on Evan Stone, his arm around his wife, whose face was hidden in her jacket. Ryan saw the anger boiling
     in him, and he understood. At that moment he wanted to be at JFK with them, to lay his hands on someone, to shove a cameraman,
     to knock some goddamned reporter on his or her ass.
    “The mother looks terrible,” Leigh said.
    “She was heavily sedated.”
    For all the deaths he’d seen as a cop, he’d never understood the shock that enveloped people on the unexpected death of a
     loved one. Now he did. It was a good thing, a state of grace, a protective sac. A state of floating disbelief that God wrapped
     us in as he slammed us against the bare stone walls of grief. Especially the waves of bottomless grief that followed the bewildering
     deaths of the young.
    “Danny called his mother a little while ago,” Leigh said. “Told her all about Gillian.”
    “I’m glad to hear that. I was hoping I didn’t have to break the news.”
    “You don’t, but Nancy wants to talk to you anyway. I told her we’d take her to dinner.”
    “Why?” Ryan said, sighing. “I’m sure Danny told her everything.”
    “She just wants reassurance.”
    “Dinner with Nancy, and a cross-examination? I don’t know. Tell her he’s not in any trouble. Nothing to worry about. I’ll
     call her tomorrow.”
    “He’s her son,” Leigh said, and