When he was safely out of Port Fontaine and onto I-55, Jenner stomped on the gas pedal. The engine hummed, and the needle crept past the 80 mark, the road underneath hard and flat as an airport runway.
Jenner floored the accelerator, pushing it down until his calf ached from the pressure. The engine pitched up to a high whine as the air blasted in and shuffled the junk on the backseat. And though it killed the sound, and warmed the car, and sent paper skidding into the front compartment, it wasn’t enough to get rid of the image of Marty, lying dead on the shroud beside the drowned car, arms uplifted, so badly decomposed that even his close friend couldn’t recognize him.
Jenner had failed. He’d failed and he knew why he’d failed: because of his attitude. He’d failed because he wouldn’t kiss Tom Anders’s butt. Even before Port Fontaine, he’d always been failing. He’d lost his license and blown his reputation because he hadn’t been smart enough to make nice with Amanda Tucker, or to play ball with fucking Steve Whittaker, now the chief ME in New York City.
It was Jenner’s own fault, his own fucking fault.
And now they were cutting him out of the investigation, riding him out of town while Rudge and Halvorsen and Bartley hunted the people who’d killed Marty and Bobbie. And Jenner knew that, because of his work, in a week or two, Tommy Anders would be appearing via satellite on Amanda Tucker’s American Crime Prime Time, explaining to the nation how he’d tracked down and caught the killers.
And it should be Jenner. Jenner should be moving the investigation forward. Jenner should be keeping his promise to Marty.
It should be Jenner, and he’d fucked it up.
The electric throb of his cell phone at his hip snapped him out of his thoughts. He slowed the car.
He pulled over to the shoulder and called back. The office needed a signature on an out-of-state transport approval for Mrs. Rosenblum. She’d already been removed by the funeral home—if Jenner could stop by and sign the form, Mr. Jones, the funeral director, would pick it up later.
Jenner asked for the funeral parlor address, then said, “If you fax the form over to Mr. Jones, I’ll head back into town and sign it there, save him some trouble.”