A Dark and Broken Heart

by R.J. Ellory

  “Well, you could have said something—”

  She raised her hand playfully. “Asshole,” she snapped. “The number of times I—”

  “I know. I know,” Walsh replied. “I was just teasing you. I know what you said, Carole, and I listened. But I figured I knew better.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?”

  Walsh didn’t rise to the bait.

  “Come on,” she said. She glanced at the small LED clock in the hood of the stove. “It’s nearly four in the morning. Get a couple hours’ sleep. We’ll talk about it more later.”

  Walsh got up from the table. At the kitchen door he grabbed the cord of her robe and pulled her back. He just held her for a while, and neither of them spoke, and he knew she was right, and she knew she was right, and that was the main reason they worked so well together. Walsh possessed a sense of humility, an ability to be wrong without feeling challenged or emasculated, and that lack of self-importance had made it impossible for her to give up on him even when he was at his most infuriating. She was a senior nurse. She was good at her job. She had never questioned her purpose to do what she did, but she knew she was in the minority. Some people spent their entire lives trying to figure out who they were and what they should be doing. She’d been one of the lucky ones and got it right straightaway.

  “A devil in the woods,” she said.

  “You what?”

  “You know something’s there, but you try and convince yourself it’s not. That’s the way most people live their lives. They think if they can’t see it, it isn’t real.”

  Walsh said nothing. He felt what he felt. Something had happened in that storage unit, something real and tangible and unavoidable. First time he’d seen a real crime scene in nearly eighteen months. Pictures, sure; there were always pictures. There was the story the duty guys told you, the ones you followed up on when there were officer-involved shooting reports to corroborate, the endless paperwork, the words you heard from so many people about the same damned thing, but none of that was real. Not like that storage unit. Not like three dead guys and a whole heap of cash, blood and tread marks and abandoned cars and the unmistakable tension he’d felt when he stood there with the camera and took his pictures.

  Something didn’t make sense. Something didn’t add up. And he was damned if he knew what it was.

  Devil in the woods.

  Maybe it was time to walk home in the dark and face him.

  20

  HUMANESQUE

  Where did I go?

  Where did who I was and who I have become take different routes?

  How did this happen?

  I stand there. I am silent. I can hear the sound of the machine that helps her breathe, the machine that monitors her heart, her pulse, her blood pressure, the drips of saline and glucose and sedative as they make their way into her frail system and keep her distant from the pain.

  I wonder about her name, her home, the identity of her parents. Does she have brothers, sisters? Are there people—even now—out of their minds with worry, frustrated by the seeming inability of the police department to do anything to help?

  I see my own children—every one of them. I see their faces as best as I can recall them. Cassie, Adam, Lucy, Tom.

  I know that they don’t look the same way as I remember them.

  It all moves so fast—so exhaustingly, terrifyingly fast.

  The decay is observable, but slow. Like the wearing down of rocks by rain. Ideals, a philosophy, an uncompromising viewpoint, and then you arrive at the place.

  It even has a name.

  We call it the Trade-Off.

  You’ve got someone. Some A-hole. He’s done something. He raped or assaulted or butchered or stabbed or shot someone. Usually a kid. Pretty much one-for-one it’s a kid. You have him in the tank. It’s a done deal. Now it’s just a matter of paperwork.

  And then something happens.

  You’re sitting there on the other side of that plain deal table, five or six hours in the interrogation room, and someone knocks on the door. You go to the door and you think it’s such and such a person for this or that reason, and you get the look.

  You open the door and you see the look.

  There is an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and then they look down.

  The search warrant wasn’t signed; the warrant didn’t extend to his garbage pail, and the garbage pail was where you found some nine-year-old kid’s underwear covered in her blood and his DNA; the confession has been kicked back by the ADA; there’s a rumor about coercion, unnecessary force, something . . .

  He’s going to walk.

  And it’s not like you couldn’t let it go. Hell, shit happens. Maybe you could let it go. Maybe you could convince yourself of the existence of karma, some grand order of things, some master plan within which we all fit like jigsaw pieces . . .

  Yes, maybe you could let it go.

  But when you see that look on his face; when you see the deadlight in his eyes, the shadows that sit behind them, and the way that arrogant, condescending smile creeps around his lips, you know that even as he rises from the chair and makes his way to the interrogation room door, there’s someone else in his mind, some other little kid, the next one he’s taking . . .

  That’s the Trade-Off.

  And you do it for the right reason. You so do it for the right reason.

  Three hours later the perp is pulled over on a suspected DUI. Some bullshit. The cycle cop searches the car while the perp stands aside and smirks. What d’you know? There’s another article of the dead kid’s clothing right there under the backseat. The perp pleads ignorance. Now he isn’t smirking anymore. He’s handcuffed. Another unit comes out on backup. They bring the boy in and he’s fucked. He’s arrested, charged, arraigned, bail is denied, and someone gives the word to someone who gives the word to someone, and some other perp puts a shiv in the boy’s ribs in the shower room. Honor amongst thieves. Even the worst of the others can’t abide a child killer.

  The sense of satisfaction when you see that wide-eyed disbelief, the sense of vindication you feel when that guy comes back in on a different charge and he knows he can do nothing about it . . . Well, that sense of satisfaction is like a drug. You need it, but you hate it. You have to have it, but it costs so damned much.

  You tell yourself it’s necessary. The system will screw you before it screws those who buck that same system. You have to do your own dirty work. The law can go only so far. Lawyers are worse than the assholes they defend. What would you have me do? Let these bastards just walk the streets and do whatever the hell they want?

  No, justice has to be seen to be done, even if it’s distasteful.

  So I did those things. I did all those things for the right reasons. There were a few that slipped through the wires, that made a run for it and we never got them, but that was rare. And when Sandià entered the picture, when the information we needed had to come from a source other than our own CIs and intel operatives, well, that’s when it got crazy.

  There are things I have done I can never talk about.

  Not to anyone.

  People are dead. People are in jail. People have been executed.

  I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it. I’m not going to say that. It is always safer to say nothing.

  But this? This little girl? This is different now. What did she do? Why was she there? Why was Sandià hiding her in that house?

  If she had not been there, then she would not have been hit. But she was there, and the reason for her presence seems irrelevant in the face of a far more brutal and necessary truth.

  If I had not done this thing, then she would not be dying.

  Because I look at her and I believe she will die. Sometimes you can tell. It’s touch and go, and it all comes down to how much fight the person possesses. Not how old, or how big, or how strong, or anything else. Just how much fight there is left in them.

  I don’t think she can fight.

  I th
ink she started out with two strikes against her, and I delivered the third.

  I think about Sandià, about what he said when I asked him her name.

  “Her name is unimportant. Who she is and where she came from are unimportant matters.”

  And I hate him for saying that.

  Her name is important. Who she is and where she came from seem to be the most important matters in the world right now.

  I look at her once more, and then I turn away.

  I am tired. I am emotionally shattered. I know I will feel different tomorrow. Tomorrow I will think of her as I first thought of her: collateral damage.

  Shit happens.

  Sometimes I just get too emotional, too involved.

  It’s a dangerous route. You cannot afford to be emotional. You cannot afford to get involved. If they see your weakness they will eat you alive. You want to play with the tough guys, then you have to be tough. This is the nature of the beast.

  I hesitate at the door. The girl is so small she is barely visible there beneath the covers.

  Hell, she isn’t my daughter, and from the turnout it looks like she’s no one else’s either.

  If the rest of the world doesn’t care, then why should I?

  21

  GIVE UP THE SUN

  “Tell me what you have,” Walsh said. He leaned back in his chair. The call had come through from the coroner’s office, and he’d taken it. He’d asked Crime Scene from the storage unit to keep him apprised. Unit First had agreed, and was now being good to his word. Unit First’s name was Luke Fraschetti.

  “You’ve got three guys, all with sheets. We picked them up on AFIS. Robert Landry, Laurence Fulton, Charles Williams. Fulton got it in the stomach with a .44 from Williams, more than likely bled out within half an hour. Landry was hit in the head with a .38, and then Williams got it in the heart with the same .38.”

  “You can tell the sequence?” Walsh asked.

  “This is Crime Scene, not the Ouija Board Squad, but I’d say that Fulton shot Landry first, then Williams—figuring he was next—shot Fulton with the .44, but it wasn’t a kill shot, so Fulton had time to get Williams before he went down. Whichever way, you got three dead and no one to argue about how it played out.”

  Walsh was silent for a moment. He closed his eyes. He pictured the scene in the storage unit. He put himself right back there.

  Apart from the DBs, it was just the money and the Econoline . . . and then he had it. He could see it clearly, as if it was right there before his eyes. The tread mark at the edge of the blood pool. A car went out of there after the shooting had happened.

  Walsh’s nostrils cleared like ammonia. He felt a cool, electric sensation up his spine and across the back of his neck.

  The devil in the woods.

  “Well, there we have it,” Fraschetti said. “That’s just the prelim stuff. You want more, I can send it over when we’re done. You’re not the lead on this, though, are you? It’s Callow, right?”

  “Yes,” Walsh said. “Ron Callow.”

  “Okay, well, you said to call you and I did.”

  “And it’s really appreciated. Thank you.”

  “No big deal. Anyway, got to go. Places to be, people to see.”

  The line went dead.

  Walsh replaced the receiver in its cradle. He sat for a moment in silence.

  There was a fourth man. A ghost on the highway. Maybe there had been a great deal more money, and whoever now had it had killed the three guys in the storage unit and just driven away.

  Walsh left his office. He found Charlie Harris in the squad room.

  “Ron Callow around?”

  “Callow? No, he’s off.”

  “Off?”

  “Two weeks. Gone like a bird.” Harris shook his head. “Lucky son of a bitch has a vacation.”

  “And his cases?”

  Harris shrugged. “We do what we can with the people we got.” He glanced up at the actives board. Each detective’s name, the case numbers of his ongoings, the date opened.

  They were there already—the triple from the storage unit, Callow’s name beside them.

  “So who takes that triple from last night?” Walsh asked.

  “Well, if I can somehow just get this paperwork through to the NYPD Cloning Division—”

  Walsh smiled at the sarcasm. “It’ll stay right there until Callow gets back,” he said.

  “I don’t know. It might, it might not. We’re stretched six ways to Sunday as it is. You know the beat, Walsh; you did Homicide. If I get a break on some other stuff I might be able to take a look at it. But, hell, it’s three scumbags. They probably got what was coming. I don’t think the chief of police is gonna be down here anytime soon wondering why there’s no progress on that one.”

  “Understood,” Walsh said.

  Back in the hallway he hesitated, and then he went left and up the stairs.

  Bryant was in his office.

  “Sarge, I want the triple from the storage unit.”

  “You what?”

  “Last night, the triple homicide in the storage unit. You sent me out there on secure. Callow took it, but he’s on leave for two weeks, and I want to pick it up.”

  Bryant frowned, shook his head. “You on drugs, or what? What do you mean, you want to pick it up? You’re IA.”

  “I’m IA, but I did eighteen months in Homicide, and you’d sure as hell rather have me working one of those cases off the board than snooping around Evidence to see who’s stealing what.”

  “This isn’t a joke, right? You actually want to take an active case and run it?”

  “Sure I do. I’m still a detective, irrespective of being IA.”

  “And your superiors?”

  “I can handle them. I can log it as a supervisory investigation.”

  “Why the change all of a sudden, and why this one?”

  Walsh stepped forward. He sat down facing Bryant.

  “I went out there, Sarge. There’s money and guts all over the place. Three dead guys, all with sheets. Way I see it, there was a fourth man. The money came from somewhere. It all went to shit. Number four kills one, two, and three, and off he goes. I figure there was a great deal more money going out of there with number four than he left on the floor. I think he wanted it to look like three men did a job, three men disagreed, and three men died. End of story—”

  “And how do you figure this? How do you know there’s a fourth man?”

  “There was a tread mark through the blood, and if that tread mark is different from the tires on the van they left behind, then it means someone drove out of there after Fulton was down.”

  Alvin Bryant took a deep breath. “Hell, I don’t know, Walsh. You don’t exactly got a good reputation around here . . .”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Ah, come on, man. Don’t be so naive. You think they like having you here? You’re IA, for Christ’s sake. IA are the enemy inside the castle walls. They see you running something like that, they’re gonna think you’re investigating Callow.”

  “Well, tell them the truth. Tell them we’re overloaded and I’ve volunteered to pick up a nonstarter. Callow didn’t even get the ME’s prelims. He’s off on vacation, right?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “So let me do it. You tell whoever you have to tell. I’ll say whatever to my superiors. And the fact that they’re not the same thing is beside the point. If I bust it, I’ll credit Callow. And if it’s still running by the time he gets home from wherever—”

  “Saratoga Springs.”

  “Huh?”

  “Where Callow has gone . . . Saratoga Springs.”

  “What the hell is in Saratoga Springs?”

  “Exactly what I asked him. Fishing, apparently. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.” Bryant rose from the desk and walked to the window. He looked out and down into the street, buried his hands in his pockets. “Okay,” he said eventually. “I give you this. You do it as a supervi
sory. I tell everyone here that you’re just helping to ease the load. You bust it, you credit Callow; you don’t, then Callow gets it when he’s back from the fishing trip.”

  “Right.”

  Bryant turned and faced Walsh. “And this is not some line, okay? This is not some bullshit internal secret inquiry into something or other?”

  Walsh raised his hands, his expression one of disbelief.

  “What? You don’t think I know how IA works sometimes? Come on, Walsh. You’ve been too long around these corridors—”

  “Straight up, Sarge. It is what it is. I want to do the thing, okay? I just want to do this thing.”

  “Good enough,” Bryant said. “Report to me, no one else.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Okay, so go do your worst, G-Man.”

  22

  UP ABOVE THE WORLD

  When Madigan woke he felt differently about a great many things. He’d known he would, but it was good to find the familiar sense of certainty that had been absent the previous night.

  Leaving the hospital at some unknown hour, he’d made it home again and crashed on the bed fully clothed. A handful of hours of sleep, he then woke and showered and shaved. He drank coffee, took a couple of bennies, even ate half a bagel, and then stood in the kitchen and chained smokes until he felt ready to leave.

  Today he had to find out who the girl was.

  That was priority number one.

  The drive from the Bronx to East Harlem cleared his head. The traffic was light for the time of day, and when he passed under the expressway on Third and crossed the river he tried to imagine the worst-case scenario. Always best to imagine the worst, and then anything better than the worst was a small success. He was forty-two, a veteran of the PD, and his life had not been a straight highway to health and happiness. He was also on the take, had an armful of files that IA could open wide and blow apart; he was drinking too much and taking too many pills. That was a fact. But such things were relative. Everything was relative. He was worse than some, better than others. Honestly—and he had to be honest about this, if nothing else—he was worse than most. But, once again, such a thing was relative. Ultimately Madigan believed he did more good than not. This was the rationale, the small saving grace that preserved his sanity. Life was not only what you made it; it was also what you took from it. And who did he take from? The scumbags, the lowlifes, the worst of the worst. Sandià was in a category all his own. Sandià did not possess a soul, nor a heart, nor a conscience. Sandià—sometime back—had ceased to be a human being in the accepted sense of the term. His dealers sold to kids. He knew it, and on it went. Some of his girls carried the kind of diseases that killed you. Still they worked on his payroll, and on his terms, and they met the demands of the job for fear of far greater retribution than some pissed-off homicidal john could ever have delivered. And then there was his name. Sandià. The Watermelon Man. He reveled in it. People who knew him when he was no one had even forgotten his real name. Such was his reputation. Such was the effect created by what he had done and why he had done it. Once such a thing had entered the realm of urban myth, there were few who would cross him, few who would even have considered it.