I felt that exact same sense of disconnection as I looked down.
And saw warm brown eyes staring up at me through a foot of bloody rainwater.
I almost hugged Scott right there and then. Almost dropped right into the water beside him in all my clothes, wrapped my arms around him.
Except I was unable to move.
I remembered the first time we met, at the 48th Precinct under the Cross Bronx Expressway. I was working overtime in the Homicide squad room upstairs, and Scott was working OT out of Narcotics downstairs, when the soda machine in the muster room wouldn’t take my dollar. He gave me one of his, and when I hit the button, two Diet Cokes dropped down.
“Don’t worry,” Scott said, smiling. You could almost hear the click as our eyes met. “I won’t tell Internal Affairs.”
I swallowed as the rain fell around me now. I eyed the tiny circles it was making over Scott’s dead eyes.
“One of the uniforms ID’d him. Name’s Scott Thayer,” Mike said. “He’s a detective from Bronx Narcotics. One of us, Lauren. This is as bad as it gets. Somebody killed a cop.”
My hands went up to my leaking eyes. I contemplated ripping them out.
“He was beaten very badly,” my partner continued, sounding to me like he was speaking from somewhere out past Pluto.
I nodded. Tell me something I don’t know, I thought.
Then Mike did.
“Beaten to a pulp,” he said, anger seeping into his voice. “And then somebody shot him.”
Chapter 19
SHOT HIM?
“See the entry wound under his left jaw?” my partner said, pointing as he continued to talk in a soft, mournful way.
I stared, nodded. I couldn’t believe that I’d missed it. It looked like a misplaced belly button. I shuddered as I suddenly remembered the feel of Scott’s stubble on my stomach.
“And the corneas.”
I nodded. Death sometimes makes the corneas look blurry after a few hours. Scott’s were clear, indicating that he’d died very recently.
“He’s got an ankle holster, but the gun is missing,” Mike said. “It’s a small holster, so I’m not sure if it was his service weapon . . . or maybe a throw-down in case he got into a questionable shoot. Who knows what he was doing here? Anyway, better to be tried by twelve than carried out by six, right? But it looks like Scott missed his day in court. God help him.”
This was one reason not to get involved in an office romance, I thought as I stepped out of the fountain and collapsed back against the cold, wet edge a minute or so later.
My brain made itself semi-useful by locking onto one word as I sat there. It banged against my skull, ricocheting off the inside like a trapped bird looking for an escape.
Why?
Why? Why? Why?
Scott had been alive. I’d heard him moan when Paul put him in the car. I was a Homicide detective, a trained expert in these kinds of things. Scott had been alive.
Had been, I thought, alternating glances between the tarp and the ground between my feet. After a while, I noticed that it wasn’t actually a tarp. It was a Neat Sheet.
I shook my head in disbelief. I remembered clearly the trip to Stop & Shop when I bought the picnic blanket for Paul to keep in the trunk of his car.
Paul, you idiot, I thought as tears sprang hot from my eyes.
You stupid, goddamn idiot.
“I know, Lauren,” Mike said as he sat down beside me.
“That might as well be you in there,” he said. “Might as well be me. Imagine, everything he ever worked for. Everything he ever enjoyed. Ever planned.”
Mike shook his head grimly.
“Dumped into a Bronx fountain like so much garbage.”
For a moment I felt the immense weight of my guilt. The idea of owning up hovered over me like a waiting avalanche. All I needed to do was turn to my partner and spill my guts. Tell him everything. Commence the end of my life as I knew it.
But I just couldn’t make the words come out. Not now, anyway. Was it some instinctual desire to protect Paul? To protect myself? I don’t know, I sincerely don’t.
But I didn’t say anything to my partner and the moment passed.
I kept my thoughts to myself and shook as I cried.
Chapter 20
I WAS STILL WIPING MY EYES when a pair of clunky black shoes appeared in front of my rubber boots.
I tilted my head up and saw my boss, Lieutenant Pete Keane. Irish, fair-skinned, baby-faced, and near-skeletal. The overseer of the Bronx Homicide Task Force could have passed for an aging altar boy if not for the flat nail heads of his hard gray eyes.
“Lauren,” he said. “Came in when you heard the bad news, huh? I’m really glad you did. Saves me a call. I want you to be the primary investigator on this. You and Mike’ll be the perfect team. You’re my go-to guys, right?”
I stared at Pete Keane. Things were happening at warp speed. I was hardly reconciled to the fact that Scott was dead, and now my boss wanted me to be in charge of the case?
I wondered suddenly if Keane had learned about our affair. Jesus. Maybe he suspected I knew something about Scott’s death and was testing me. Was that it?
No, I thought. That was impossible. Nobody knew at work. Scott and I had gone to painstaking lengths to make sure of that. Besides, nothing except flirting and a few meals had even happened between us. Until tonight, of course.
Actually, it felt like just about every conceivable thing had happened between me and Scott tonight.
It was only that Pete Keane liked me for big cases, I realized after a paranoia-dissipating breath. There were detectives on our squad who were senior to me, but I, his “lady lawyer cop,” as he liked to call me, was a perfectionist. I put my law school training to work in the Homicide squad. I went methodically by the book, was completely thorough, completely organized, and I had a very high success rate. Bronx assistant DAs practically fought to take my cases because they could just about read my reports aloud for their prosecutions.
In a big-daddy political-shitstorm case like this, it would be all about reports, I realized. The ones that would have to be sent up the chain of command on practically an hourly basis.
I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there. I needed time to think, to sift through the pieces of my blown-apart life.
I felt the knot in my stomach twist like a corkscrew. In the end, it all came down to my inability to come up with a plausible excuse for not taking the assignment. For the moment, words failed me.
“Whatever you want, Pete,” I found myself saying.
My boss nodded.
“Scott Thayer,” he said, shaking his head wearily. “Goddamn twenty-nine years old. Unbelievable. You guys know him at all?”
Mike blew on his coffee, shook his head.
My boss turned to me.
“How about you, Lauren?” he said.
How could I deny Scott? I thought. Only hours before, he’d stared into my eyes as he stroked my hair in his bed. Now he was lying there cold on stone, the expression of pain on his face reserved only for those who die completely alone.
The number 4 train screeched past on the elevated track on Jerome Avenue behind us. The blue-white light of its sparks snapped against the dark faces of the surrounding tenements.
“The name sounds familiar, I think,” I lied as I peeled off a rubber glove.
My first lie, I thought, looking out at the sea of NYPD blue and the flashing firefight of emergency lights.
I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be my last.
Chapter 21
“GIVE ME WHAT YOU GOT SO FAR,” Keane said. “Commissioner just got off the Whitestone. I need smoke to blow up his ass — and keep it coming. What’s your initial read on the crime scene? Impressions — anything at all?”
“Massive lacerations and contusions to the face,” Mike said. “And one bullet wound under the left jaw. Maybe more, but we’re still waiting on the ME so we can roll him.”
?
??Caliber?”
“Medium. A thirty-eight, maybe,” Mike guessed with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Service weapon or badge anywhere?”
Mike shook his head grimly.
“First impression is that somebody threw Thayer an incredible beating, shot him, and then dumped him here. Somebody pretty perturbed.”
“You agree, Lauren?” my boss asked.
I nodded, cleared my throat.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Why do you say ‘dumped him’?” Keane asked next. “You pretty sure Thayer wasn’t killed here?”
“Not much blood in the fountain. Plus, his clothes are covered in mud and grass stains,” Mike said. “This park hasn’t seen grass since the Iroquois Nation.”
“Do your canvass forthwith,” Keane said. “Talk to the ME and crime-scene, then get your asses into Thayer’s office and check out his caseload. See what was open, what he was doing. The other members of his Drug Enforcement Task Force are being called as we speak. Talk to them when they get in. Talk to everybody in the squad.”
Keane turned as a speeding, four-car entourage arrived beneath the elevated track from the south. He gave me a fatherly pat on the back.
“They’re probably going to try to give this to those prima donnas at Major Case, but I’m not going to let them do it. This happened in our house. Make me proud.”
Chapter 22
MAKE MY BOSS PROUD? I thought numbly as Pete Keane walked away.
That was going to take some doing.
Wait a second, I thought. Where was Paul? I’d been so busy being angry at him, I hadn’t even thought to check if he was okay. For the first time, I realized something chilling.
For all I knew, he could have been shot, too! That actually made some sense to me.
I tried Paul’s cell first. My stomach dropped as his voice mail picked up.
I had to see if Paul was okay.
“Damn,” I said, slapping my forehead with my phone as I looked up at my partner. “You’re not going to believe this, but I had terrible insomnia last night, so I was up baking, and I left something in the oven. I need to swing by my house, Mike. You think you could cover for me for about half an hour?”
“What?” Mike said, shaking his head. “Biggest case of our lives and . . . What was it, anyway?”
“Brownies.”
“Okay, Betty Crocker,” Mike said with a dumbfounded shake of his head. “I got you covered for now. We have to wait around for the ME, anyway. Anybody asks, I’ll tell them you went to swing by Scott’s office. But you better fly, Ms. Primary Investigator. I don’t think the LT is going to be too happy if you’re not here when he gets back, even if you bring him a midnight snack.”
I did as I was instructed. My lead foot coupled with the portable cop light I kept in my Mini had me back at my house in about eight minutes flat.
But as I crested the top of our cul-de-sac and spotted Paul’s car in the driveway and the light on in our bedroom, I eased off the gas. A wave of relief washed over me.
Paul was home, at least.
Chapter 23
THE CAR GAVE ME AN IDEA. Finally, my brain was starting to function again. I killed my headlights along with my siren and dash light and cruised toward my house like I was about to commit a burglary. I needed to figure out as much as I could before I faced Paul. I parked three houses down the street and walked the rest of the way.
The Camry’s doors were locked, but with the Slim Jim I retrieved from the trunk of my Mini, it was only a temporary setback. I paused at the driver-side door as the smell hit me. Pine cleaner and bleach. Somebody had cleaned up a mess. I shook off my emotions, took a breath, and clicked on my Mini Maglite.
A few drops of blood under the passenger-side rear floor mat were all that I could find.
It took me all of three minutes to find the bullet hole.
It was underneath the driver’s headrest. It had gone in but it hadn’t come out. I probed the hole with the blade of the Leatherman tool I always carried and heard it click against something hard. A few saws later, the mushroomed lead slug dropped out of the hole right into my hand.
I placed it in my handbag, closed my eyes, and pieced the situation together as best I could.
Paul must have been driving when Scott, lying on the backseat, came to. Disoriented and fearing for his life, Scott probably drew his ankle gun and fired once at Paul. The first round had hit the headrest.
Paul might have turned then and struggled for the gun. Then it must have gone off again.
In Scott’s jaw. Jesus, God.
I took a scalding breath of bleach before I continued my reasoning, such as it was.
After that, Paul must have panicked. Even in self-defense, he knew that a dead cop just wasn’t going to go away. So he’d come up with a quick plan, the best he could do. Scott was a cop. Who kills cops? Drug dealers kill cops. So Paul had driven into the Bronx and didn’t stop until he found a busy drug area. Then he dumped Scott, came back home, and cleaned the car.
I shook my head as tears welled in my eyes again. For about five minutes, I knelt over where Paul had killed Scott and wept until my eyes ached.
This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. One mistake in judgment and now three lives were totally wrecked. I finally wiped my tears and got out of the car and headed for my house. And Paul.
But first I made a little side trip.
Chapter 24
I AM A HOMICIDE DETECTIVE, and a pretty good one, and I easily found Scott’s gun and badge in our garden toolshed.
It takes a lot of work and cleaning materials to erase a crime scene. I didn’t see any obvious evidence in our garbage can outside the garage, so I went to the next logical hiding place. On the other side of the shed door was one of the Stop & Shop bags we used for garbage. It was brimming with blood-pink paper towels.
And underneath the bag were Scott’s badge and the gun Paul had used to kill him.
It was a short-barreled Colt .38 revolver, a Detective Special. It was special, all right. I used one of the paper towels to lift it. I tipped out the chamber and looked at the dark holes where two rounds were missing.
I carefully placed it back under the bag and then locked the shed. I was walking up the driveway to my front door when my cell vibrated.
I looked at the caller ID, then at my lit bedroom window. I pressed myself into the shadows beside the garage door.
It was Paul.
What did he want? Should I pick up and talk to him? Had he seen me? I wimped out and let my voice mail take it. I played his message back a few seconds later.
“Hi, Lauren. It’s me. I’m at home. I ran into difficulties with my flight. I’ll explain what happened later. Was there a problem with your flight, too?” Paul said. “I noticed that your car’s not here. Are you at work? Give me a call when you get a chance, okay? I’m worried about you.”
Worried about me? I thought, staring up at my window. Why? I didn’t kill anybody.
Could this get any more bizarre? At least he was all right, I finally thought, folding my phone closed.
Paul was all right physically, if not otherwise.
I was taking a deep breath by my porch stairs, preparing myself to finally go inside and face him, when my phone vibrated a second time.
But it wasn’t Paul this time.
It was my partner. I headed back into the shadows by the garage before I picked up.
“Mike?”
“Time’s up, Lauren,” he said. “Keane’s on the move. I won’t be able to stall for you much longer. You have to get back here now.”
“On my way,” I said.
I looked up at my window again. What the hell was I waiting for? I thought. Why was I skulking around in the dark outside my own house? I needed to go in and talk to Paul. Get some crisis management in motion. Call a good lawyer. Be rational. Be an adult. Figure this thing out somehow.
It was just a matter of looking Paul in the eye and saying, “Yes, I chea
ted on you. Yes, I made love to another man tonight, and now we have to deal with the terrible consequences of what you’ve done.”
I thought about that as the rain continued to fall around me.
I wasn’t a procrastinator by nature, but in this case, I thought I’d make an exception.
I stuck to the shadows on the jog back to my car.
Chapter 25
I LEFT THE CAR ON GRAND CONCOURSE and walked in a daze down 193rd, trying to think my way through this disaster. I met Mike on the south side of the park, at the entrance far from where the bosses were set up in the Command Center on Jerome.
I couldn’t help noticing the half dozen news vans parked alongside it. Great. The public has a right to know. To which I have to ask, Why is that?
“Anybody notice I was gone?” I asked Mike in greeting.
He made a pained face. “Bad news, Lauren. The commissioner came over about ten minutes ago, all outraged about where you were.”
My stomach dropped.
“But you know me,” Mike said, “I just slapped him around and told him to get his sorry ass back in the donut bus, where he belongs.”
I punched my ever-the-wiseass partner in the arm. The contact felt good, actually.
“I appreciate it,” I said. Mike had no idea how much.
The steady rain continued to fall as we made our way toward the tenements on Creston Avenue on the east side of the park. If two concrete acres of handball courts, rusted basketball hoops, and pit bull–chewed baby swings could be considered a park.
I don’t know what James was the patron saint of, but I have a funny feeling it wasn’t the marijuana, coke, and heroin that were sold out of the ancient buildings along the park’s perimeter. Judging by the looks of the young, bored-looking, hooded men under the red plastic awning of a corner bodega, our presence had slowed sales considerably, though.