07-Past Imperfect
Page 22
And that was it.
The Canary crept over to us, chirping and tweeting forlornly.
Harald sat there on the cold rooftop while I went down and called for help. And she sat there till the crime scene unit made it down from the Bronx. Someone brought a blanket and she let them drape it around her, but she didn’t move away from Peters’s body till they told her she was hampering their work. Even then, she wouldn’t leave the roof until they carried him away. She didn’t make a big scene about it. No sobs, no break in her voice when she told her version of events first to McKinnon, who arrived with the precinct boys, and again to Rawson, who’d heard it on his scanner and rushed down. But she couldn’t seem to stop the tears that streamed from her eyes whenever she looked over at Peters’s still form under Forensic’s portable floods.
Three dead because a cop couldn’t resist the temptation of grabbing some of that easy drug money. A new widow out in Woodhaven with three fatherless kids now. A partner who’d suspected and had called in sick or looked the other way because he didn’t want to know for sure. And Harald and me left to spend the rest of our lives wondering if things would have turned out differently if we’d thought to look up instead of down when we first went out on the roof.
No more pop psychology. They’d send us both to real psychiatrists over this. S.O.P. these days, Rawson reminded us.
“And a good thing, too,” McKinnon growled. “Come on,” he told Harald at last. “I’ll drive you home.”
“Not home.” She looked as exhausted as I felt, but she handed someone the blanket and said to McKinnon, “To Mother’s.”
That surprised me. She hadn’t struck me as anyone with a mother to run home to. Must’ve surprised McKinnon, too, because I heard him say, “You sure, Sigrid?”
She was already moving into the stairwell, so I didn’t get her answer, but McKinnon had an odd look on his face.
Almost like he was afraid.
Which was crazy now that everything was over.
END