The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  “All right, so what do I owe here?” She opened her wallet, trying to get it over with. “The sergeant I spoke to on the phone said the cash bond would probably be set at about twenty-five hundred dollars. So I hit the ATM and got the ten percent …”

  “Not so fast.” Mike raised a meaty slab of a hand. “He’s already in the system.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “He is already in the system,” Mike repeated the words more slowly, as if he was addressing a half-wit. “I already entered his paperwork on the computer.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “What does that mean?” He seemed incredulous. “It means there’s nothing anybody can do about it. He’s in the system. The bus is going to take him to the county jail in less than twenty minutes.”

  “And then he’ll have to spend the night in jail?”

  “Hey, court is closed here. Highball Harper’s probably tucked up in bed already with a nice warm bottle.”

  She pictured Barry in the county pen, packed in among the gang-bangers, rapists, and street crazies from all over the jurisdiction.

  “I can’t let this happen,” she said, trying not to panic. “What can I do to get him out tonight?”

  “Nothing.” He glanced over at the one-browed sergeant, who was talking on the phone and gesturing at him with great animation.

  “Once somebody is in the system, they have to go through the system,” he said with a kind of grinding vindictiveness. “Your husband’s a lawyer. He understands.”

  “All right, will you stop saying that!” Her voice cracked. “You don’t have to keep talking about the system like it’s something that can’t be controlled!”

  Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared, as if she’d just fired a starter’s pistol at the ceiling.

  She realized she had no idea who Mike was anymore or what he was capable of. She was still trying to process the idea that Sandi had been having an affair with him. It was like learning that a house you’d visited a hundred times had a torture chamber in the basement. How had the relatively straightforward kids she’d known become such morally baroque, recklessly perverse, and frighteningly untrustworthy adults?

  “Look”—she stood on tiptoe and leaned across the desk, trying to maintain her composure—“is this about what happened between you and me?”

  “And why would you think that?” He looked down at her, his face a mask of indifference.

  “I know you keep wanting something from me that I can’t give you,” she whispered. “But I don’t want you to take it out on my husband.”

  He lurched suddenly forward as if he was about to take her face in his hands. “Are you going to start telling me how to do my job too?”

  “No.” She felt his breath on her lips. “I just don’t want to have any more problems with you.”

  She stopped talking and looked over his shoulder, seeing all the men in the room still riveted as if this were in a sports bar and they were watching the last inning of the World Series on TV The sergeant was gesturing madly, trying to get one of them to tap Mike on the shoulder.

  “Let me ask you something, Lynn.” Mike leaned farther across the desk, his breath almost in her mouth now. “Did you really never care about me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Again, her eyes roamed past him, and she saw the sergeant holding the phone up and saying, “Mike?”

  “You heard me.” Fallon ignored him.

  She dropped back onto her flat soles, convinced that he’d lost all sense of propriety. “I really don’t think this is the place to discuss this.”

  She saw the other cops pretending to go about their duties, trying to look and not look at the same time. Small-town chain-of-command types, men whose respect Mike obviously needed. Now they were like mountaineers seeing the top of Everest melt just a little.

  “Mike?” The sergeant held up the phone. “I got the chief on the line.”

  “Yeah, what does he want?”

  Mike kept staring at Lynn, as if she’d disappear the moment he looked away.

  “He says kick him loose.” The sergeant waved the receiver.

  “What?”

  “He says we should release the guy downstairs. Cash bond is acceptable.”

  Mike looked over his shoulder, muscles rising and clenching in his neck. “And how is it that he happens to know about that guy, Eddie?” he said fiercely.

  “We called him as soon as you brought him in through the bay doors. That’s how the chief wants it from now on. Call him at home whenever there’s an arrest.”

  She saw Mike start to seethe behind the desk, leaning heavily on his elbow.

  “You wanna talk to him?” asked the sergeant, cradling the phone to his ear.

  “No, you can tell him I got the message.”

  Mike started breathing heavily through his nose and shuffling through papers on the desk, as if this had all just been some minor inconvenience.

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” he said. “You can take the old man off our hands. He doesn’t have to wait around to be arraigned. You’ll get a letter telling him when he has to come to court.”

  “Okay, good.” She exhaled in relief as the sergeant hung up the phone and shook his head at his fellow officers. “I just want to get him home. That’s all.”

  She quickly started laying down the $250 she’d got from the ATM, eager to get out of this place.

  “You can still pick up the car by the side of the road; we didn’t impound it yet.” Mike scooped the bills up preemptively. “By the way, you understand that you are assuming responsibility here, and if he doesn’t show up for his court date, you forfeit the bond and we come looking for him.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

  She looked at him, meaning to share a lighter moment, but instead saw that a certain wounded, dangerous male intransigence was still in his eyes.

  “Just keep him out of trouble in the meantime,” he said.

  30

  THE DOORBELL RANG a half-hour later, followed by a series of angry insistent raps rising steadily in force and volume until they sounded almost like thunder on the threshold.

  “All right, all right.” Mike went to answer it. “Put your nightstick away, will you?”

  He opened the door and found Paco and Harold looking somber and resolute, a fly circling the porch light behind them.

  “Now you know you done fucked up, don’t you?” Harold moved past him into the foyer. “I don’t have to tell you that, do I? I don’t have to tell you shit.”

  “Come on in.” Mike forced a smile as Paco followed and closed the door behind them. “Good to see you too.”

  “How long do you think you’d last in any other department after the stunt you pulled tonight?”

  Mike didn’t bother making excuses right away. He knew as soon as he put the cherry top on the roof that he was going to have to answer for chasing Schulman. But his foot was already on the gas. He was in full hunt-or-be-hunted mode. The only thing he would’ve got by stopping short was whiplash.

  “Let’s talk out back,” he said, leading the two of them down the narrow hall and past the kitchen.

  “Hey, handsome,” Marie, making her late-night tea at the stove, called to the chief. “Can I fix you gentlemen a drink?”

  “No, thank you, m’dear.” Harold did his courtly bow in the doorway. “We won’t be long.”

  “Could you get me a beer?” Mike looked in after him, knowing he was going to need some fortification.

  “Why don’t you get it yourself?”

  He saw vapor leaking from her teapot and wondered how she’d like having it poured over her head.

  He decided to skip the beer and led them through the tiny living room, where Timmy was awake an hour and a half past his bedtime, jabbing at the hamster with a pencil through the bars of its cage.

  “Hey, didn’t I tell you to knock that off?” Mike saw the rodent
dance away from the sharp end. “You keep torturing that poor animal, he’s gonna turn around and bite you one of these days.”

  “Big Tim, what’s the word?” Harold offered him an upraised hand.

  “What up, dawg?” Timmy reached up to high-five him.

  Great, Mike thought resentfully. They’re happier to see him than they are to see me. Maybe he can stay and I can go, and there’ll be another minority family on the block.

  Instead of stopping to introduce Paco to his wife and son, he continued to the screen door and held it open for his visitors.

  “After you guys,” he said, thinking it was time to put the storms in.

  “Well”—Harold waited for the door to close after them—“you must think you’re a hell of a man.”

  “Remind me what we’re talking about here.”

  The night itself felt aggravating. Cold enough so you could see your breath and wear a sweater but warm enough for some insects to still be around. The yard seemed particularly small and paltry with three grown men standing in it. There was barely enough room for the deck, the grill, Marie’s wilting annuals, and the rope swings he could never get to hang right because of the slope of the hill.

  “You knew he was a lawyer when you pulled him over, right?” Harold’s left eyelid twitched slightly. “You couldn’t slow down for just a second to think about that?”

  “The law is the law, far as I’m concerned, Harold. The man was speeding, and then he laid hands on me after I told him to turn off his phone …”

  “He’s probably going to sue the town and the department. You know that, right?”

  “I got him on resisting and obstruction, Harold.”

  “Twelve hours after he came to me about you and his wife? Forget it. I’m dropping the charges.”

  “You’re what?” Mike bent a little, as if he’d been cracked across the rib cage with an aluminum baseball bat.

  “Tell me again why I didn’t suspend you this morning when I came to talk to you?”

  “Three oh five Bank Street.” Mike reminded him of Brenda Carter’s address. “That’s a good place to start.”

  “Man, when are you gonna stop cashing that chit in?” Harold grimaced. “Don’t you think that’s getting kind of tired?”

  “I don’t know. Are you getting tired of your life?”

  They both fell quiet for a few seconds, remembering the aqua-green housing project kitchenette. Could it really be ten years ago? A call about an EDP coming over the radio. The neighbors complaining somebody’s grandma had snapped. Didn’t sound like much. Until they showed up and found a three-hundred-twenty-pound wild woman swinging a butcher knife around and jabbering about Rockefeller impregnating her niece. Harold, who knew her from church, gently tried to talk sense to her. And then that sweet fat old lady came roaring at him like a garbage truck. She caught him with the knife right up under his Kevlar vest, driving it hard into his abdomen just barely short of the vital connections. She was about to bury it deeper when Mike raised the twelve-gauge and blew her brains all over her gas range.

  “I told you to back the fuck off.” Harold jabbed a finger at him. “Why wouldn’t you listen?”

  Mike put his hands in his pockets. “Same reason I didn’t back off with the shotgun.”

  “Ah, that’s bullshit.” Harold swiped the excuse out of the air. “One thing don’t have nothing to do with the other.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you think.”

  He noticed Paco staring at the side of his face. What did these motherfuckers know anyhow? You pull a trigger. You step on the gas. It’s all the same thing—survival instinct. You can’t take it apart any more than you could unravel strands of DNA.

  “Why’d you bring him here?” he asked Harold. “You don’t have the balls to talk to me on your own?”

  “Paco’s got a few questions for you,” said the chief. “I thought you might be more comfortable answering them away from all the surveillance cameras and microphones we’ve got set up around the station.”

  Mike blinked at the mention of all the hardware that had been installed after the Replay Washington shooting to make sure suspects weren’t having their precious rights violated.

  “So, what can I do for you, Paco?” He glared at the detective.

  Paco’s bald head seemed to glow a little in the evening chill, as if he’d been saving energy by not speaking.

  “Hey, man,” he said in that mongrel city accent that was truly starting to grate on Mike, “how come you didn’t tell me the state trooper called me this morning about finding Sandi’s car at the motel? I only got the message after he called me back again.”

  “Sorry. I got tied up,” said Mike, flushing.

  “And how come you didn’t tell me you’d been back at that house on Love Lane a week before we went to search it?” Paco crossed his arms like one of those macho rappers you see on billboards.

  “I told you. I knew her.” Mike shrugged. “We all knew her. Harold knows I did some work on their fence.”

  Mike sensed a shadow moving in the depths, underneath all the little minnows swimming back and forth.

  “We’re having some problems with the chain of evidence in this case,” said Paco.

  “What are you talking about?” Mike looked over at Harold.

  “You see a diary when we were over at the victim’s house the other day?” asked Paco.

  Mike heard the day laborers’ pit bull starting to bark across the street, a throaty yelp above the merengue din. “No. Did you?”

  “We have information from people close to the victim that she kept a detailed diary. Friends saw it around the house recently.”

  “Well, maybe the husband got rid of it. Maybe there was something in it that he didn’t want us to see.”

  Jesus. He was flailing here.

  “Maybe,” said Paco, giving him the hundred-watt stare right back. “Except the husband noticed it was missing too and mentioned it to us. He said he’d seen it on a bookshelf right before the two of us came over the other day.”

  That crazy bitch. She must’ve put it there deliberately, as if she wanted the whole world to know.

  “Obviously, he’s lying.” Mike gave a half-strangled laugh. “Did he happen to say what was in it?”

  “No,” Harold interrupted. “But, Mike, I’m starting to think you haven’t been a hundred percent straight about some of the things I’ve asked you …”

  “Like what?”

  Some part of his mind was retreating to his childhood bedroom, hearing his parents’ voices in the kitchen.

  “Part of the reason I’m here is to tell you that we’re opening an Internal Affairs investigation into the way this all went down,” Harold said.

  “Get the fuck outa here. I do the Internal Affairs investigations.”

  “Not this time, partner.”

  The rush was like diesel fuel filling up his mouth. Too fast. It was all coming apart on him too fast to make a rational decision. The body washing ashore, the diary turning up, the fact that she really was pregnant like she’d said. He was a pilot losing altitude, his dials spinning wildly. When do you bail out?

  The screen door opened behind him, and he whirled around.

  “Yeah, what the fuck do you want?”

  Timmy stood in the doorway, eyes glistening and lower lip sore from being chewed. “I just wanted to say good night to you and Harold,” he said in a shaky voice.

  “Get back in the house.”

  He saw the boy back away and let the screen slowly close, a dense gray rectangle of tiny wires between them.

  Regret drenched him like a freezing rain. “Hey, come back here …”

  But the boy had already bolted back into the living room and up the stairs, his bare feet thumping unsteadily on the wooden treads.

  “Thanks a lot, you guys.” Mike turned back to his guests, still feeling the scorch marks on his tongue. “See what you made me do?”

  Harold was wearing his deeply etched solemn face, as if
he was about to present the bereaved with their bill. “Mike, I want to ask you one more time: Is there something about your relationship to the victim that you haven’t told us yet?”

  Mike began to shrug, heaving weight off his shoulders. Okay, so I was doing her. He tried the line out in his head. Okay, so I lied about it. Okay, so I took the diary. Okay, so there’s a couple of things in it I didn’t want you to see. Okay, so I might have roughed her up a little sometimes. Okay, I might’ve put my hands around her throat. Okay, so that might’ve been my kid she was carrying. Okay, so where do you stop saying okay?

  “I can’t believe you guys are wasting time on this bullshit,” he said, trying to deflect them. “We should be sweating the husband, going over his financial records, sending a guy up to Boston to try and shake his alibi. He’s the one that did her.”

  “What makes you say that?” Paco tugged on his earring.

  “She was scared of him.”

  “And how do you know that?” asked Harold pointedly.

  A slant of light fell over Mike’s face. Marie turning on a lamp upstairs.

  “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions without a lawyer around,” he said abruptly.

  “Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to take a leave of absence.” Harold bowed his head as if he was about to lead them all in common prayer. “I checked before I came over, and you’ve got a week of paid vacation that you have to take before the end of the year …”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” said Mike. “You’re suspending me? I haven’t done anything wrong. My only problem is I have an old girlfriend with a big mouth and a jealous husband.”

  “No, your only problem is you’re about to become a material witness in a murder case, and you could be sued by a member of this community for harassment. Other than that, you’re doing a hell of a job.”

  “I’m sorry I embarrassed you, Harold. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

  “Oh, screw this.” Mike slapped a mosquito on the side of his neck. “You guys are going to let this case slip right through your fingers.”

  “You’re not giving me any choice.” Harold lowered his voice. “There’s going to be a disciplinary hearing if Lynn and her husband press charges. But if you start cooperating with us right now, you can count on it all going down a little smoother.”