by Greg Rucka
“Miriam Bracca?”
“You found her,” I said, and pulled at the bottle again.
The woman hid annoyance by flashing her badge. “My name’s Hoffman. This is Detective Marcus.”
“Sure,” I said. “So, did you find him?”
Marcus glanced at Hoffman, but Hoffman didn’t take her eyes off me. “Find who?”
“Tommy.”
“Tommy?”
“My. Dad.”
“Why would we want to find your dad?” I thought Marcus was trying to sound very casual, but that it didn’t work, and that he sounded cagey instead.
“ ‘Cause he killed my brother,” I said. “Killed my mother, too, but that was a long time ago. Mikel, that was new. I think he did that today.”
They watched me, so I took another drink from the bottle.
“Maybe you’d better come with us,” Hoffman said, and she came forward to help, but I backed up and waved her off.
“Why? I haven’t done anything.”
“How did you know Mikel Bracca was dead?”
The woman had to be an utter fucking moron. “Because I saw him. I went over there this afternoon to talk, well, not talk, to yell at him, but he didn’t answer the door and it was open, so I went in and he was there and he was dead.”
“Okay, yeah,” Hoffman said. “You’re going to come with us.”
“I’m not,” I said, indignant.
“Yeah, you are,” she said, like she really wasn’t very interested, and she took handcuffs out from beneath her jacket and her partner was now at my side and taking the bottle out of my hand, and when I protested, he didn’t care, and when I tried to back away farther, he tried to grab my arms. I flailed and fell back with a splash, and the bottle fell and didn’t break. Then they were both helping me up, and my hands were behind my back and I couldn’t move them and that hurt.
“I want my lawyer,” I said.
“I’ll just bet you do,” Marcus said, and he led me to their car.
CHAPTER 16
They made me kiss the Breathalyzer, and ran a wet cotton swab over the backs of my hands before putting me in a cell to sober up. I passed out, only to be roused by an officer who dragged me to an interrogation room upstairs. It was cold, and even though my clothes had mostly dried, I sat there shivering. The drunk had gone, leaving me with a thickness in my head.
Marcus came in first, carrying two paper cups of coffee, one in each hand, and a legal pad clamped beneath his arm. Now that I could make him out, he looked parked in his late thirties, not unattractively so. He was maybe five foot ten or eleven, not as big as Tommy or Mikel, but with the kind of broad shoulders that Van went nuts for on a guy. The suit he was wearing was dark, charcoal and black, with a black tie and a white shirt, and even after what was probably a long night, he looked neat and pressed.
Marcus gave me a grin as he reached the table, offering me one of the cups. I decided to thank him.
“Sure. You want an aspirin?”
“Aspirin would be great.”
“I’ll see if we can find you some,” he said, and he went out again, leaving the pad and a pen behind on the table along with his coffee.
I waited and drank coffee and waited some more, and it seemed another long time before he returned. He had a paper cup of water this time, and aspirin, and Hoffman, too. She’d brought a file with her, and held it with one hand as she took a position leaning against the wall, where she could keep an eye on both of us. Marcus took the seat opposite me, and slid over the water and the aspirin.
I took them both, draining the cup, then thanked him again.
“Not what you’re used to, I’d guess, huh?”
“What?”
He indicated the empty water cup. “Tap water.”
“No, it’s . . . it’s great,” I said.
He smiled and leaned back.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked.
“Do you want to be?”
“No.”
“Well, let’s see if you can help us out here, and then you won’t have to worry about that.”
“It’s just that I have a lawyer,” I said. “I’m thinking I should probably call him.”
“If you want to, sure, but it seems like a waste of his time and your money to me. We’ve just got a couple questions.”
I looked over at Hoffman, idly tapping the end of her file against the cinder block wall. The look she returned was utterly flat, like she was looking through me, almost like I wasn’t there at all. Her hair was light brown, and she wore it full but short, and it ended about the middle of her neck. She had navy slacks and a black blouse and a black jacket. Like her partner, she seemed fit, but unlike him, she seemed long, rather than compact. I’d seen enough lately of how costumers dressed women to know that Hoffman knew she was attractive, and didn’t mind letting others see that, too. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and I didn’t see any jewelry on her, either.
I looked back at Marcus, who sat waiting patiently.
“I guess it’s okay,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure it will be,” he agreed, and he uncapped his pen. “So why don’t we start with you finding your brother, okay?”
I told him how I’d found Mikel, what I’d seen. He didn’t interrupt, scribbling on the pad, and when I glanced at Hoffman, she was still looking through me. It was making me uncomfortable.
When I finished, he asked me to tell it to him again, just to make sure he’d gotten it all down right, and after I’d told it all a second time, he nodded and smiled and leaned back in his chair.
“So why were you in such a hurry to see your brother?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, c’mon, Mim. This has been easy so far, why make it hard now?”
“I really would rather not.”
“Was it to score? Is that why you went to see him?”
“Oh, God, no,” I said. “No. Jesus.”
“You know your brother dealt?”
I shrugged.
“But he didn’t deal for you?”
“No. I’m fine with alcohol. Anything stronger, I retain water.”
He grinned. “No sign of that.”
“He never gave me drugs, I never bought drugs from him. That’s not what happened, anyway, this isn’t a drug thing. It’s Tommy.”
“So you said. Why do you think that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well, it may be, but I’m asking you.”
“Look,” I said, trying to be patient. “Tommy’s a drunk, okay? It runs in the family. When I was eleven he got loaded and ran over our mother with his pickup, and he did it on purpose, and that’s the worst example of what he did drunk, but not the only one by a long shot. He got out of OSP a little while ago, he was staying with Mikel. Tommy got loaded and angry and shot Mikel.”
“Not the other way around?” Hoffman asked. “Not Mikel got loaded and angry and your father just defended himself?”
“Mikel didn’t drink. He didn’t use, either. He just sold the stuff.”
“Yeah, that makes it so much better,” Hoffman muttered, and went back to tapping her folder.
“Did Mikel own a gun?” Marcus asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Did Tommy?”
“Well, he must have, because he shot Mikel.”
Marcus nodded, as if my logic was unimpeachable.
“Was Mikel violent?” Hoffman asked.
I glared at her. “No.”
“What about your father? Tommy?”
“Of course he’s fucking violent, I just told you, he murdered our mother!”
Hoffman’s expression curled, got a little tighter, and I finally realized what I was seeing. She didn’t like me. Maybe it was principle, maybe she was one of those fuck-you-rock-star types. Whatever. It was fine. I didn’t think I liked her much, either.
“When was the last time you saw your brother alive?” Marcus asked.
“Yesterday morning. He came over to
my house.”
“So you saw him the day he died.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“What’d you talk about?”
I shook my head. “I really can’t say.”
“You can’t or you won’t?” Hoffman sounded snotty about it.
“I don’t want to, how about that?”
She turned her attention to her partner. “This is a waste of time. Let’s get this over and book her.”
“Tracy, calm down,” Marcus said.
“No, she’s pulling this bitch rock-princess act, she doesn’t give a damn her own brother was murdered, she’s holding out on us, the only reason to do that is guilt, far as I’m concerned.”
Marcus appealed to me. “Mim, you’ve got to help us out, here.”
I looked at him, then at Hoffman, then back to him, then figured it out.
“Good-cop, bad-cop, right? That’s what you’re doing now?”
“Actually, we’re both good cops. My partner’s just a little annoyed that you’re holding out on us.”
I considered, then asked, “Have you found Tommy?”
“We’re not talking about Tommy, we’re talking about you,” Hoffman said.
“Why won’t you answer my question?”
“Why did we find blood in your bathroom?” she asked.
The question threw me, coming unexpectedly. “You searched my house?”
“We had a warrant.”
I showed her my right palm. “I cut my fucking hand. I bleed when that happens.”
“Have you disposed of any clothes?”
“Disposed? What, you mean like thrown out?”
“Yes, I mean like thrown out.”
“No.”
“We only found blood on one shirt, not much. Most of it seems to be on the towels and a pillow and its case.”
“That’s because most of my bleeding was on the towels and the pillowcase,” I snapped.
“Lot of blood,” Hoffman said. “I’d think it’d have gotten on some clothes.”
“It didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was naked when I cut myself,” I told her.
If she had a mental image, it didn’t impress her.
“What about Tommy?” Marcus asked. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Thursday morning. First time I’d seen him in fifteen years was Thursday morning.”
“Did your father say anything about Mikel when he came over? Did he indicate that he and your brother weren’t getting along?”
“We didn’t talk about that.”
“What did you talk about?”
I glared at Hoffman again. She took it the way she’d taken everything else so far. “He told me he’d heard my music and that he wanted to be my dad again.”
Marcus asked, “Did he ask you for money?”
“No.”
“Did you give him money?”
“No.”
“I’m asking because you seemed uncertain there, for a second,” Marcus said.
“I offered him money. He didn’t take it.”
“I get the impression you don’t like your father. Tommy.”
I bit off a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“So why offer him money? Did you want him to leave you alone?”
I shook my head a little, then nodded a little. “Yeah. No. I wanted him to leave me alone, but that’s not why I offered him money. I thought that maybe that was what he wanted, but he didn’t take it, he just left.”
Hoffman sighed. “So you offered him money to leave you alone? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, I offered him money to admit that he had meant to kill my mother, that it wasn’t an accident.”
“You said it was murder,” Marcus said.
“I say it’s murder, he says he was too drunk to remember. He pled to manslaughter.”
“Why don’t you tell us what you and your brother talked about?”
I shook my head. “If my lawyer says it’s okay, I’ll tell you, but I really have to talk to him first.”
Marcus shrugged. “It’s your choice, like I said, but—”
“Yeah, I know, but I really want to talk to my lawyer,” I said. “Right now.”
Marcus’s smile melted, and he capped his pen and flipped the pages of his legal pad, then got to his feet with a little sigh. Hoffman shoved off from the wall, went to the door, and leaned out to call to someone. A uniformed officer appeared in the doorway, and Hoffman told him that I wanted to use the phone. The officer nodded, glancing at me, then did a double take.
“You go with him,” Marcus said. “He’ll take you to a phone.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s the least we can do,” Hoffman said. “After all, you’ve been so helpful.”
CHAPTER 17
They let me use the phone at one of the detective desks, and I dialed Chapel while my guardian officer stood by, just far enough to stay out of earshot if I kept my voice low, but close enough to stop me if I decided to make a break for it. There were other cops around, too, other people I assumed were detectives, and they each took their turn staring at me.
The clock on the wall said it was twenty-seven past six, and the lightening gray out the windows confirmed that it was in the morning. I had to call Chapel’s office, because that was the only number I could find, and I got an answering service, and the guy who took the call asked if he could take a message.
“No, actually, you can’t,” I said. “You need to call him and say that Miriam Bracca’s been arrested.”
The answering-service guy told me he would do just that, and I hung up, thinking that it wouldn’t be long before Chapel called back. The officer moved me from the desk to a cheap plastic bench on the other side of the room to wait. Hoffman and Marcus went to their desks and proceeded to ignore me.
The clock read three minutes to seven when Chapel walked through the door. His hair was wet, either from his morning shower or the still falling rain, and he was wearing a suit today, and it fit him perfectly. He made straight for me, and he didn’t look happy at all, and Hoffman and Marcus saw him enter, and moved to join us, but he beat them to it.
“How long have you been here?” Chapel asked me.
“I’m not sure, maybe six, seven hours.”
“Dammit, Mim, why didn’t you call me sooner?”
“She couldn’t,” Hoffman told him. “She was drunk off her ass.”
“Repeat that outside of this room, it’s slander,” Chapel told her.
“Actually, Mr. Chapel, it isn’t,” Marcus said. “I’ll swear out an affidavit to that effect, if you like.”
“I’ll let you know if it’s necessary,” he said. “Is she under arrest?”
Hoffman shook her head.
“Splendid. Now I’d like to speak to Miss Bracca alone, if you don’t mind.”
“Be our guest,” Hoffman said.
Chapel and I talked for most of an hour, with me laying out every damn thing, including my reason for storming over to Mikel’s and the large quantity of Jack Daniel’s I’d consumed on getting home. I fumbled some of it, and he made me go over those parts again, and when I had to describe finding Mikel, it made me want to start crying, because it was finally sinking in.
“I didn’t tell them about the pictures,” I said. “I don’t suppose it matters now, but I didn’t.”
“No, it really doesn’t,” Chapel said. “I’m going to have to tell them about that.”
I nodded.
“All right, I’ll talk to them now. You just sit tight.”
I nodded again, feeling my exhaustion.
It took another fifteen minutes, at the end of which all three of them came back.
“Let’s go,” Chapel told me.
“We’re done?”
“For now,” Marcus said. “We know how to reach you if we need you.”
We were in the elevator going down to the garage when Chapel said, “You can’t go
home.”
“But—”
“Mim, the media’s going to climb on this like nobody’s business. They’ll be camping outside of your place, they’ll be dogging you everywhere you go. Unless you want that, and my read on your personality is that you really don’t, you can’t go home.”
“I could stay with Joan.”
“Joan’s your lover?”
“God, what is it with you? Joan’s my foster mother!”
He shook his head. “The press can find her, it won’t be secure enough. I want to check you into a hotel.”
“I don’t want to go to a hotel.”
“It’s either that or meet the press.”
The elevator stopped, and we were in the garage. Chapel led the way to his TT, popping the locks with his remote. He put me in the passenger seat and told me to buckle up, then went around to his door.
“What hotel?” I asked.
“The Heathman.”
At least it was a nice hotel.
“Duck,” he said.
We were on the exit ramp, about to hit the street, and I didn’t get it, just looked at him blankly.
“Duck, dammit,” Chapel said again, and he reached over with his free hand and took my head and shoved me down, and then I got it.
“You’re shitting me,” I said, more to the floorboard than to him.
“Wish I was. All local affiliates have vans, and I’m seeing multiple photographers. Stay down.”
“I don’t have anything,” I said, feeling miserable. “I don’t have clothes or anything for a hotel.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I need to change clothes.”
“Give me your sizes, I’ll have someone pick you up some things.”
“But my guitars are at home.”
“You can buy a new guitar, Mim.” He checked his mirrors. “Okay, you can come up for air, now.”
I sat up, craned around in my seat. We were already a block away, but I could see the vans. He hadn’t been exaggerating. I also saw that we weren’t headed for the Heathman, but instead for the Hawthorne Bridge.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“I’m making certain we’re not followed.”
That seemed to me to be overly paranoid, and I said as much.
“You really have no idea, do you?” Chapel said, reaching over to the mobile phone that was sitting in a cradle on the dash.
