Whitey said, “Poor old Devine ain’t had the best year.”
“You’re lucky no one in the press got to this,” Annabeth said.
“Oh, we take care of our own,” Whitey said. “We may have kicked his ass, but all the lady at the RMV had was the barracks the tickets emanated from, not the badge number. What’d we blame—clerical error?”
“Computer glitch,” Sean said. “Commander made me pay full restitution, blah, blah, blah, suspended me a week without pay and put me on three months’ probation. Could’ve been a lot worse, though.”
“Could’ve demoted him,” Whitey said.
“Why didn’t they?” Jimmy said.
Sean stubbed out his cigarette and held out his arms. “Because I’m Supercop. Don’t you read the papers, Jim?”
Whitey said, “What Ego-head here is trying to tell you is that he’s put down some pretty serious cases in the last few months. Has the highest ‘solved’ rate in my unit. We got to wait till his average goes down before we can dump him.”
“That road-rage thing,” Dave said. “I saw your name once in the paper.”
“Dave reads,” Sean said to Jimmy.
“Not books on shooting pool, though,” Whitey said with a smile. “How’s that hand feeling?”
Jimmy looked over at Dave, caught his eyes just as Dave dropped them, Jimmy getting a strong sense the big cop was fucking with Dave, pushing him. Jimmy had experienced enough of that back in the day to know its tone, and he realized it was Dave’s hand the cop was razzing him about. So what had he meant about shooting pool?
Dave opened his mouth to speak, but then his face was stricken by something over Sean’s shoulder. Jimmy followed his gaze and every inch of him stiffened.
Sean turned his head and saw Celeste Boyle holding a dark blue dress, the hanger up by her shoulder so that the dress hovered beside her as if covering a body no one could see.
Celeste saw the look on Jimmy’s face and said, “I’ll take it over to the funeral home, Jim. Really.”
Jimmy looked like he’d forgotten how to move.
Annabeth said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” Celeste said with a weird, desperate laugh. “Really. I’d like to. It’ll get me out for a few minutes. I’d be happy to, Anna.”
“You’re sure?” Jimmy said, his voice coming out of him with a small croak.
“Yeah, yeah,” Celeste said.
Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a person so desperate to leave a room. He came out of his chair toward her, hand extended.
“We met a few times. I’m Sean Devine.”
“Oh, right.” Celeste’s hand was slick with sweat as it slid into Sean’s.
“You cut my hair once,” Sean said.
“I know, I know. I remember.”
“Well…” Sean said.
“Well.”
“Don’t want to keep you.”
Celeste let out that desperate laugh again. “No, no. So it was good seeing you. I gotta go.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Dave said, “Bye, honey,” but Celeste was already moving down the hallway and heading for the front door like she’d smelled a gas leak.
Sean said, “Shit,” and looked back over his shoulder at Whitey.
Whitey said, “What?”
“I left my report pad in the cruiser.”
Whitey said, “Oh, better go get it then.”
As Sean went down the hall, he heard Dave say, “What, he can’t borrow a page from yours?”
He didn’t get to hear whatever bullshit Whitey slung, because he moved out through the doorway and down the stairs, came out onto the front porch as Celeste reached the driver’s side of the car. She got her key in the lock and opened the door, then reached in and unlocked the back door. She opened it and slid the dress carefully onto the backseat. When she closed the door, she looked over the roof and saw Sean coming down the stairs, and Sean could see pure terror in her face, the look of someone who expected to get hit by a bus. Now.
He could be subtle or direct, and one look at her face told him direct was the only hope he had. Get her while she was unbalanced for whatever reason.
“Celeste,” he said, “I just wanted to ask you a quick question.”
“Me?”
He nodded as he reached the car and leaned into it, put his hands on the roof. “What time did Dave come home on Saturday night?”
“What?”
He repeated the question, holding her with his eyes.
“Why would you be interested in Dave’s Saturday night?” she said.
“It’s a little thing, Celeste. We asked Dave some questions today because he was in McGills the same time Katie was. Some of Dave’s answers didn’t add up and it’s bothering my partner. Me, I just figure Dave had had a few that night and can’t remember exact details, but my partner, he’s a pain in the ass. So, I just need to know what time he came back, exactly, so I can get my partner off my back and we can concentrate on finding Katie’s killer.”
“You think Dave did it?”
Sean leaned back from the car, cocked his head at her. “I didn’t say anything like that, Celeste. Hell, why would I even think that?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“But you said it.”
Celeste said, “What? What are we talking about? I’m confused.”
Sean smiled as comfortingly as he could. “The sooner I know what time Dave came home, the sooner I can get my partner to move on to other things besides holes in your husband’s story.”
For a moment, she looked like she might hurl herself backward into traffic. She looked that abandoned, that confused, and Sean felt the same raw pity for her that he often felt for her husband.
“Celeste,” he said, knowing Whitey would give him an F on his probationary report if he heard what he was about to say, “I don’t think Dave did anything. I swear to God. But my partner does, and he’s the ranking officer. He decides which avenues the investigation explores. You tell me what time Dave got home, we’ll be done here. And Dave will never have to worry about us again.”
Celeste said, “But you saw this car.”
“What?”
“I heard you talking earlier. Someone saw this car parked outside the Last Drop the night Katie was killed. Your partner thinks Dave killed Katie.”
Shit. Sean couldn’t fucking believe this.
“My partner wants to take a closer look at Dave. It’s not the same thing. We don’t have a suspect, Celeste. Okay? We don’t. What we have are holes in Dave’s story. We close those holes, it’s over and done. No worries.”
He was mugged, Celeste wanted to say. He came home with blood all over him but only because someone tried to mug him. He didn’t do it. Even if I think he might have, another part of me knows that Dave is not that kind of guy. I make love to him. I married him. And I wouldn’t marry a killer, you fucking cop.
She tried to remember the way in which she’d planned to be calm when the police arrived asking questions. That night, as she’d washed his clothes of blood, she was sure that she’d had a plan for how to deal with this. But she hadn’t known Katie was dead at that point and that the cops would be questioning her about Dave’s involvement in her death. How could she have predicted that? And this cop, he was so smooth and cocky and charming. He wasn’t the potbellied, hungover, grizzled type she’d expected. He was an old friend of Dave’s. Dave had told her that this man, Sean Devine, had been on the street with him and Jimmy Marcus when Dave had been abducted. And he’d grown up into this tall, smart, handsome guy with a voice you could listen to all night and eyes that seemed to peel you away in layers.
Jesus Christ. How was she supposed to deal with this? She needed time. She needed time to think and be by herself and look at the situation rationally. She didn’t need a dead girl’s dress staring back up at her from the backseat and a cop on the other side of the car staring at her with venomous, bedroom
eyes.
She said, “I was asleep.”
“Huh?”
“I was asleep,” she said. “Saturday night, when Dave got home. I was already in bed.”
The cop nodded. He leaned into the car again, patted his hands on the roof. He seemed satisfied. He seemed as if all his questions had been answered. She remembered that his hair had been very thick and had almost toffee-colored streaks up by the crown amid the light brown. She remembered thinking he’d never have to worry about going bald.
“Celeste,” he said in that smoky, amber voice of his, “I think you’re scared.”
Celeste felt like her heart was clenched in a dirty hand.
“I think you’re scared and I think you know something. I want you to understand that I’m on your side. I’m on Dave’s side, too. But I’m on your side more because, like I said, you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she managed, and opened the driver’s door.
“Yes, you are,” Sean said, and stepped back from the car as she got in it and drove off down the avenue.
19
WHO THEY’D PLANNED TO BE
WHEN SEAN got back up to the apartment, he found Jimmy in the hallway, talking on a cordless phone.
Jimmy said, “Yeah, I’ll remember the photographs. Thank you,” and hung up. He looked at Sean. “Reed’s Funeral Home,” he said. “They picked up her body from the medical examiner’s office, said I can come down with her effects.” He shrugged. “You know, finalize the service details, that sort of thing.”
Sean nodded.
“You get your report pad?”
Sean patted his pocket. “Right here.”
Jimmy tapped the cordless against his thigh several times. “So, I guess I better get down to Reed’s.”
“You look like you could use some sleep, man.”
“No, I’m all right.”
“Okay.”
As Sean went to pass him, Jimmy said, “I was wondering if I could ask you a favor.”
Sean stopped. “Sure.”
“Dave’ll probably be leaving soon to take Michael home. I don’t know what your schedule’s like, but I was kind of hoping maybe you’d keep Annabeth company for a bit. Just so she’s not alone, you know? Celeste will probably be back, so it won’t be long. I mean, Val and his brothers took the girls out to a movie, so there’s no one in the house, and I know Annabeth doesn’t want to come down to the funeral home yet, so I just, I dunno, I figured…”
Sean said, “I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I gotta check with my sarge, but our official shift was over a couple hours ago. Let me talk to him. Okay?”
“I appreciate it.”
“Sure.” Sean started walking back toward the kitchen and then he stopped, looked back at Jimmy. “Actually, Jim, I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” Jimmy said, getting that wary con’s look of his.
Sean came back down the hallway. “We got a couple of reports that you had a problem with that kid you mentioned this morning, that Brendan Harris.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Not problems, really. I just don’t care for the kid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Jimmy put the cordless in his front pocket. “Some people just rub you wrong. You know?”
Sean stepped in close, put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “He was dating Katie, Jim. They were planning to elope.”
“Bullshit,” Jimmy said, his eyes on the floor.
“We found brochures for Vegas in her backpack, Jim. We made a few calls and found reservations under both their names with TWA. Brendan Harris confirmed it.”
Jimmy shrugged off Sean’s hand. “He kill my daughter?”
“No.”
“You’re a hundred percent positive.”
“Close to it. He passed a poly with flying colors, man. Plus, the boy don’t strike me as the type. He seemed like he really loved your daughter.”
“Fuck,” Jimmy said.
Sean leaned against the wall and waited, giving Jimmy time to take it all in.
“Elope?” Jimmy said after a while.
“Yeah. Jim, according to Brendan Harris and both of Katie’s girlfriends, you were dead set against them ever dating. What I don’t understand is why. Kid didn’t strike me as a problem kid. You know? Maybe a bit dim, I dunno. But he seemed decent, nice really. I’m confused.”
“You’re confused?” Jimmy chuckled. “I just found out my daughter—who is, you know, dead—was planning to elope, Sean.”
“I know,” Sean said, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper in hopes Jimmy would follow suit, the man about as agitated as Sean had seen him since yesterday afternoon by the drive-in screen. “I’m just curious, man—why were you so adamant that your daughter never see the kid?”
Jimmy leaned against the wall beside Sean and took a few long breaths, let them out slow. “I knew his father. They called him ‘Just Ray.’”
“What, he was a judge?”
Jimmy shook his head. “There were so many guys named Ray around at the time—you know, Crazy Ray Bucheck and Psycho Ray Dorian and Ray the Woodchuck Lane—that Ray Harris got stuck with ‘Just Ray’ because all the cool nicknames had been taken.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I never liked the guy much and then he cut out on his wife when she was pregnant with that mute kid she’s got now and Brendan only six, so I dunno, I just thought, ‘The acorn don’t fall far from the tree’ and shit, and I didn’t want him seeing my daughter.”
Sean nodded, though he didn’t buy it. Something about the way Jimmy had said he’d never liked the guy much—there was a small hitch in his voice, and Sean had heard enough bullshit stories in his time to recognize one no matter how logical it may have sounded.
“That’s it, huh?” Sean said. “That’s the only reason?”
“That’s it,” Jimmy said, and pushed himself off the wall, started back up the hallway.
“I THINK IT’S a good idea,” Whitey said as he stood outside the house with Sean. “Stick close to the family for a bit, see if you can pick up any more. What’d you say to Boyle’s wife, by the way?”
“I told her she looked scared.”
“She vouch for his alibi?”
Sean shook his head. “Said she was asleep.”
“But you think she was afraid?”
Sean looked back up at the windows fronting the street. He gestured to Whitey and tilted his head up the street, and Whitey followed him to the corner.
“She heard us talking about the car.”
“Fuck,” Whitey said. “She tells the husband, he might skip.”
“And go where? He’s an only child, mother deceased, low income, and he ain’t got much in the way of friends. Ain’t like he’s going to blow the country, try living in Uruguay.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not a flight risk.”
“Sarge,” Sean said, “we got nothing to charge him with.”
Whitey took a step back, looked at Sean in the glow of the street lamp above them. “You going native on me, Supercop?”
“I just don’t see him for this, man. Lack of motive, for one.”
“His alibi’s shit, Devine. His stories are so full of holes, they were a boat, they’d be sitting on the ocean floor. You said the wife was scared. Not annoyed. Scared.”
“Okay, yeah. She was definitely holding something back.”
“So, you think she really was asleep when he came home?”
Sean saw Dave when they were little kids, getting in that car, weeping. He saw him dark and far away in the backseat as the car turned the corner. He wanted to bang his head against the wall behind him and knock the images right the fuck out.
“No. I think she knows when he came home. And now that she overheard us, she knows he was at the Last Drop that night. So, maybe, she had all these things in her head about that night that didn’t jibe, and now she’s putting all the pieces together.”
“And those pieces are scaring the shit out of her?”
“May
be. I dunno.” Sean kicked at a piece of loose stone at the base of a building. “I feel like…”
“What?”
“I feel like we got all these parts banging around near each other, but they don’t fit. I feel like we’re missing something.”
“You really don’t think Boyle did it?”
“I’m not ruling him out. I’m not. I’d buy him for it, if for one second I could imagine a motive.”
Whitey stepped back and lifted his heel, rested it against the light pole. He looked at Sean the way Sean had seen him look at a witness he wasn’t sure would hold up in court.
“Okay,” he said, “lack of motive’s bothering me, too. But not much, Sean. Not much. I think there’s something out there that could tie him to this. Otherwise, why the fuck’s he lying to us?”
“Come on,” Sean said. “That’s the job. People lie to us for no other reason but to see what it feels like. That block surrounding the Last Drop? There’s some serious street trade there at night—you got regular hookers, transvestites, friggin’ kids all working that circuit. Maybe Dave was just getting a hummer in his car, doesn’t want the wife to find out. Maybe he has a lady on the side. Who knows? But nothing, so far, connects him to within a mile of murdering Katherine Marcus.”
“Nothing but a bunch of his lies and my feeling the guy’s dirty.”
“Your feeling,” Sean said.
“Sean,” Whitey said, and started ticking off points on his fingers, “the guy lied to us about when he left McGills. He lied to us about when he got home. He was parked outside the Last Drop when the victim left. He was at two of the same bars as she was, yet he’s trying to cover that up. He’s got a badly bruised fist and a bullshit story about how it got that way. He knew the victim, which as we’ve already agreed, our suspect did, too. He fits the profile—to a fucking T—of your average thrill killer; he’s white, mid-thirties, marginally employed, and, guessing by what you told me yesterday, he was sexually abused as a kid. You kidding me? On paper, this guy should be in jail already.”
“You just said it yourself, though—he’s a past victim of sexual abuse, and yet Katherine Marcus wasn’t sexually assaulted. That don’t make sense, Sarge.”
Dennis Lehane Page 27
