“Nope. The lieutenant does all outside agency contacts,” he said.
Fried was reading from a lined check-out sheet stapled to the front of a file on his desktop. It was lying on top of a second folder.
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘defense,’ detective. I’m in a sort of neutral position,” I said. “I was asked by a friend to offer an opinion because I knew O’Shea, years ago.”
“Yeah, right, you two graduated academy together,” Fried said, unconsciously, or maybe not, touching his fingers to the second file. “You two ever work the streets together?”
I knew the IAD game. Even if this guy was a friend of my uncle’s, his whole existence in this job was give-and-take. Info for info.
“We ran across each other. He was from the neighborhood,” I said. “Know what I mean?”
In South Philly, mention of the neighborhood still had a sense of being synonymous with a tribe of sorts. I was here on my uncle’s honor. It snapped Fried back.
“Yeah, well, the file’s pretty straight up on O’Shea,” he said, handing it across his desk.
“Had some complaints. He was written up for excessive use of force. Then he and a couple others out at the Tenth got stopped on a drunk and disorderly, their sergeant handled it, kept it off the books, warned them to clean it up. But O’Shea stayed on the bottle. Another excessive a year later. Then his wife throws a domestic- abuse charge at him.”
“Any of these excessive-force complaints involve women?” I said, looking through O’Shea’s stats. High number of arrests. Most in districts I remembered as being high-crime spots.
“Naw. Lowlifes mostly. Drug collars on the street. One was a group thing where the bang squad went in on a house full of gang warrants and the hard boys started crying about being beaten afterwards. But I got the feeling that O’Shea didn’t exactly shy away from a little extracurricular activity.”
“You guys ever do any psych screens on him?” I said.
“Not if it isn’t in there,” Fried said.
I closed the file and put it back on the desk. As I did I glanced at what I was sure was my own file.
“I don’t see anything in there about the Faith Hamlin case,” I said, nodding at O’Shea’s jacket folder, making the accusation that Fried was holding out on me as bluntly as I could.
The detective laced his fingers and sat back in his chair, like mention of the case had not surprised him.
“That’s all part of an ongoing investigation, Mr. Freeman. “It’s not public information.”
I lowered my voice and leaned forward just as far as Fried had moved back.
“Oh, I thought my uncle’s word carried more weight than that. There was once a brotherhood and even you guys were part of that,” I said, watching his eyes, their movement, center to right, center to right, giving him away.
He finally leaned in.
“Your uncle doesn’t have the power to hire and fire, Freeman,” he said, showing his allegiance was with his paycheck. “My boss is where she is because of the Hamlin case. She took those guys down, and I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it, but as far as she’s concerned, the real perp got away.”
“O’Shea,” I said, without having to.
Fried nodded and leaned back again.
“Now, you got anything on him from Florida that’s gonna help her nail his ass for the killing of Faith Hamlin, I’m more than happy to forward that information along, Mr. Freeman.”
I sat back as well, more than happy to increase the personal space between us. Fried didn’t know that I had once been married to his boss. Uncle Keith had been more circumspect than that.
I stood up and offered my hand.
“If I should come across anything that I think you can use, Detective, you’ll be the first to know,” I lied. “I appreciate the time.”
“Hey, any friend of the sarge. Maybe I’ll catch you out some night, buy me one,” he said, just one of the boys again.
I grinned the guy grin while he showed me out. In the hallway I found myself shaking my head and thinking some line about six degrees of separation. My ex-wife and now my ex-lover had swapped notes on O’Shea and his connection with the disappearances of Faith Hamlin here, and about the disappearances of the women in Florida. They both had the guy’s ass in their rifle sights. I figured I knew that Sherry Richards’s motive was this hell-bent desire for justice for the victims. Meagan’s I was equally sure of: a premier scalp on her already extensive collection, a step up her ambitious ladder to who the hell knew where, and yet another man-challenge to conquer. I didn’t think either had mentioned my name or my intimate connection to both of them.
“Don’t tell me that God has a plan, Mamma,” I whispered to a pale empty wall. “Or he is one bizarre poet.”
I was waiting for the elevator when I heard her call my name and there was no denying the voice.
“Max?”
I looked back down the hall toward IAD and she was standing in a cerulean-colored suit that I could only imagine her coming up with when the dress code said blue. Even from here I could tell the high cut of her skirt was not regulation. Her head was angled slightly with a questioning look and her honey blonde hair took advantage of the tilt to cascade down over one shoulder. She had called out my name once like that when we were married, late one night while she tried to sleep after a SWAT shooting she’d been in on. Her voice had sounded like she’d needed me, so I’d held her in our bed until she stopped shivering. But the next morning she had no recollection of it and I had been wrong about the needing.
“Max?”
I put my hands in my pockets and took a step toward her. The elevator bell rang and I ignored it. I watched her hand a load of files to a man in a suit next to her and wave him into the office, all without taking her eyes off me. As she approached she looked down once, then raised her eyes and reached up and took a strand of hair that had come loose and in one heartbreaking motion that burned in our past, she tucked it behind her ear. We met halfway.
“Max Freeman, holy shit, look at you!”
Her lips were sealed in a barely contained smile but her eyes were undeniably bright. She tossed her arms around my neck and I think I put one hand on her back. Her perfume was new. Her cheek soft and the same. I felt my weight anchor in my heels and the hug might have lasted a second too long for a divorced couple standing in a police headquarters who hadn’t seen each other for more than five years. She stepped back, or I did, and she still held my shoulders.
“Jesus Christ, a beach bum? An oil rigger? A damn boat captain? What the hell have you done with yourself, Max?”
“Hi, Meagan. How have you been?” was all I could manage and my face felt stupid and flushed. She cocked her head. She was one of those women whose eyes told you she was smarter and wittier than you, but she was willing to let you try to catch up.
“It’s the Florida sun,” I said. “Plays hell with a guy’s complexion.”
I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t changed a bit. But she did it for me.
“Did you come all this way just to see me?” she said with that teasing smile of hers.
The elevator pinged again and a group got off.
“Uh, yeah, Meg, in a way,” I said, lying again. Home must have brought back that special talent in me. I guided her to a bench in the hall and sat.
“I’m actually working for an attorney in West Palm Beach on a case.”
“You’re a P.I., Max. How perfect for you and that independent streak of yours. Do I know the firm?”
“Uh, I doubt it. He’s a one-man show. Kind of independent himself.”
“It’s just that my husband, Troy Montgomery of Montgomery and Wallace, does a lot of work with real estate attorneys in Florida,” she said. She crossed her legs with the grainy shoosh of fine nylon and rested her left hand on her knee. The ring on her finger flashed, even in the poor fluorescent light.
“I, uh, congratulations,” I said. “I didn’t know you were married.”
&n
bsp; “Yes you did, Max,” she said, fluttering the fingers of her left hand on which a rock the size of Gibraltar clung. “You’ve always been an observant cop.”
“Anyway,” I said, avoiding that trap. “I came up to talk with some folks about a former officer, Colin O’Shea. He was a few years younger than me. I think you might have met him.”
She looked past me, spinning, I knew, the scenarios through her head. Meagan had been a sharpshooter on the SWAT team when we were married. She was tough, accurate and knew through training, and not just a little of her naturally conniving character, how to see a path in her head before taking it.
“Is this the O’Shea some agency in Florida is looking at as an abduction suspect?”
“Yeah.”
Never underestimate a smart woman with skills.
“A detective down there called me. I gave her what we had in the file. You do know I’m heading IAD these days?”
I nodded.
“And I wouldn’t be giving you credit, Max, if I didn’t suppose that you also know about the Faith Hamlin case.”
“Yeah, I do.”
Without physically moving, space of some kind opened up between us on the bench. A step back, without one actually taking place.
“This detective, she was very persistent. Wanted to know more than what we had. Very aggressive.”
I nodded again.
“You know her?”
“I’ve done a couple of overlapping cases.”
“Overlapping?” she said, raising that eyebrow of hers. I’d determined years ago it was a skeptical twitch she must have been working on since childhood. I pretended to ignore it. “So, do you know more, Max? About O’Shea?”
Here came the info for info drill, I thought.
“I guess I know that he was your prime suspect in the Hamlin disappearance and that because he couldn’t be charged he moved to Florida,” I said.
Meagan did not flinch.
“And you also know that your overlapping detective friend is considering him as her main suspect in the disappearance of other victims.”
I fell back on my refusal to answer rhetoric.
“How Republican of your local constable to farm out investigative work to a private contractor, Max,” she said. “Or are you somehow working for Mr. O’Shea as a defensive player?”
Down the hall the suit Meagan had been with stuck his head out the door of her office and looked at us, briefly, no high sign, no clearing of the throat, before retreating,
“She asked me to talk with O’Shea, see what he might say to someone from the neighborhood. It was a favor,” I said.
Meagan’s eyes brightened, the sudden look of enthusiasm catching me, like it had the first time I’d met her.
“Then we’ve got to have dinner, Max,” she said brightly as she stood. “You can tell me about this conversation with our Mr. O’Shea and what that perceptive mind of yours came up with.”
“And you can bring along the investigative case file for me?” I said, playing the info game.
“All in my head, Max,” she said, smiling and touching her hair with an index finger. “Yours for the asking.”
“Tomorrow, eight o’clock at Moriarity’s then?” I said, instinctively tossing out a place we’d gone to many times when we were together.
“Ah, a little slumming, Max,” she said, and I’ll be damned if her eyes didn’t twinkle. “Perfect choice. See you tomorrow at eight.”
When I stood, she leaned into my rising face and caught me with a kiss on the cheek and then turned on a heel and left me standing there wondering if I was an idiot or just a common fool. I gathered enough sense to turn my back to her before she reached her office door where I knew she would turn to see if I’d been watching her legs.
CHAPTER 11
I worked my way onto Race Street and headed east over the Ben Franklin and into New Jersey. The water in the Delaware River looked steel gray. The heater in the rental was still not caught up and I could imagine how cold the water was running below and the thought made me shiver.
Contrary to widely held and denigrating opinions of the depressed city of Camden, the sky does not grow instantly darker over there. It held the same shade of light shale, but without as many towers and skyscrapers to break up the monotony. I took the Admiral Wilson and spiraled through the next interchange to get on the Marlton Turnpike. From there I used the driving directions Mrs. Mott had read me over the phone. By the time I found the Majestic Ice Arena I was late for my appointment with Colin O’Shea’s ex-wife.
It took another ten minutes to find a parking spot between all the SUVs and minivans. Inside the corrugated metal building the temperature difference was negligible. I could still see my breath as I walked the front aisle between the protective glass of the rink and the rising stands. On the ice was a haphazard spray of tiny hockey players shuffling in various directions and trying to keep their balance with their sticks. I worked my way toward a group of women who were only occasionally interrupting their conversations with a “Good job, Jimmy!” or “That’s OK, Paul. Get up!”
I stood for a full minute in their view and was one step from going up to announce myself to the entire group when she stood and made her way down the stands.
“Mr. Freeman?”
“Janice?” I said, extending my hand. Hers was covered with a knit mitten and I shook it. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a description over the phone so you would know what I looked like.”
“You look like a cop,” she said, and I looked into her face to see if that agitated her.
“With a tan,” she added and tried to smile.
I showed her my ID and P.I. license.
“Should we wait until your son is done?” I said, nodding out to the ice.
“Hell, no. They’ll be out there another forty minutes,” she said and pointed back toward the entrance. “Let’s go have coffee.”
I liked her already.
We sat at a table in a small snack bar area, both of us with our hands wrapped around large Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee. Kids were running in and out for pizza and sodas and candy and screeching and laughing and arguing. The chaos didn’t seem to faze her. It was giving me a monumental headache.
“You said you were a friend of Colin’s?” she started.
“We worked District Ten around the same time. He grew up near Eighth and Tasker and my parents were down around Snyder.”
“Eighth and Mountain,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Colin was Eighth and Mountain. My family lived a couple blocks away, on Cross.”
“Ah, South Philly girl,” I said, trying to soften her face. I was guessing mid-thirties. Her hair was still black and her dark eyes had a hardness that appeared to have been earned. She was wearing tasteful makeup in the middle of a school week and had on the reddest lipstick I think I’ve ever seen. It marked the edge of her cup with a heavy stain.
“Janice Carlucci,” she said. “My maiden name. I met Colin when we were kids. I was told to stay away from the Irish so, go figure. I do exactly what my Italian parents say I can’t do.” She shrugged. “Shakespeare. Ya know?”
“I’m familiar,” I said, sipping my coffee, letting her go.
“We got married after he passed the academy. If you’re from the neighborhood, you know. Cop, fireman, your father’s plumbing business. Job for life.”
She was right, I just didn’t like the condescension in her voice.
“It wasn’t exactly what you wanted,” I said.
She shook her head.
“I matured, Mr. Freeman. I saw something on the other side of the river.” She raised her palm.
When she’d taken her mittens off I’d ranked the rock on her finger. It was practically up there with Meagan’s. I’d already noted the expensive, fur-lined coat.
“Colin was stuck between proving himself in South Philly, being the tough Irish cop, or getting the hell out, go to college, be something more. Or, no offense,
Mr. Freeman, be something different,” she said.
“He ever take that frustration out on you?” I asked, since bluntness seemed to be the order of the day. She held me with her dark eyes for a few moments.
“I’d heard he was an ass-kicker on the streets,” she said. “You know, the guys sittin’ around McLaughlin’s or in the kitchen on poker night, braggin’ an’ all.
“But never with me, Mr. Freeman. Yes, I filed the damn domestic charge. Because Colin wouldn’t see anybody, not a counselor, not an AA group. He was letting his life rot and mine was going down with it. It was abuse.”
I let her stare into her coffee. She didn’t want to look up at me to reveal the moisture that was in her eyes. It was something I could never figure in women, that range of emotion, pissed and sympathetic, disarming and ruthless, heartbroken and heart-breaking, one to the other in a dumbfounding span of minutes.
“Then they used it against him,” she said and left the statement sitting out there like the steam in the air. I waited until another pack of clomping skaters went by.
“When Faith Hamlin went missing?” I said, catching up to her.
She nodded her head.
“They put it in the papers that Colin had already been accused of beating me when we were married, that he had a history. So of course he must have been in on what those guys did to that girl.”
Out on the rink a horn sounded. A smattering of applause. My time was running out.
“Mrs. Mott, the authorities in Florida are linking Colin with the abduction and disappearance of at least a couple of women,” I said.
As the words left my mouth she started shaking her head no.
“Do you think he’s capable of something like that? Or could have become capable?”
When she looked up at me, the dry hardness was back in her dark eyes. Just like that, tough Philly girl coming right back.
“No way,” she said. “Not the man I knew. Colin was never the kind who ever did something vicious without someone else to see it, to prove that he could do it to measure up, to prove he was as tough as the rest of you. He was always after that approval, from me, from his family. But on his own, push come to shove Mr. Freeman, he was a coward.”
A Killing Night Page 11
