“Is there anything I can do?” he asked after a minute or two.
“Not right now, Sam. Thanks.”
“Maybe a priest?”
“No, not now.”
“It wasn’t your fault, John.”
“Whose, then? She trusted me, Sam. I blew it.”
“The police want to talk to you some more. I told them tomorrow morning.”
He’d been through his second interview in the morning. Kelly had already told them much of what he knew. Her full name, her hometown, how they’d met. Yes, they had been intimate. Yes, she had been a prostitute, a runaway. Yes, her body had shown signs of abuse. But not everything. Somehow he’d been unable to volunteer information because to have done so would have entailed admitting to other men the dimensions of his failure. And so he had avoided some of their inquiries, claiming pain, which was quite real, but not real enough. He already sensed that the police didn’t like him, but that was okay. He didn’t much like himself at the moment.
“Okay.”
“I can—I should do some things with your medications. I’ve tried to go easy, I don’t like overdoing the things, but they’ll help you relax, John.”
“Dope me up more?” Kelly’s head lifted, and the expression was not something that Rosen ever wanted to see again. “You think that’s really going to make a difference, Sam?”
Rosen looked away, unable to meet his eyes now that it was possible to do so. “You’re ready for a regular bed. I’ll have you moved into one in a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
The surgeon wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the right words. He left without any others.
It took Sandy O’Toole and two orderlies to move him, as carefully as they could, onto a standard hospital bed. She cranked up the head portion to relieve the pressure on his injured shoulder.
“I heard,” she told him. It bothered her that his grief wasn’t right. He was a tough man, but not a fool. Perhaps he was one of those men who did his weeping alone, but she was sure he hadn’t done it yet. And that was necessary, she knew. Tears released poisons from inside. poisons which if not released could be as deadly as the real kind. The nurse sat beside his bed. “I’m a widow,” she told him.
“Vietnam?”
“Yes, Tim was a captain in the First Cavalry.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelly said without turning his head. “They saved my butt once.”
“It’s hard. I know.”
“Last November I lost Tish, and now—”
“Sarah told me. Mr. Kelly—”
“John,” he said softly. He couldn’t find it in himself to be gruff to her.
“Thank you, John. My name is Sandy. Bad luck does not make a bad person,” she told him in a voice that meant what it said, though it didn’t quite sound that way.
“It wasn’t luck. She told me it was a dangerous place and I took her there anyway because I wanted to see for myself.”
“You almost got yourself killed trying to protect her.”
“I didn’t protect her, Sandy. I killed her.” Kelly’s eyes were wide open now, looking at the ceiling. “I was careless and stupid and I killed her.”
“Other people killed her, and other people tried to kill you. You’re a victim.”
“Not a victim. Just a fool.”
We’ll save that for later, Nurse O’Toole told herself. “What sort of girl was she, John?”
“Unlucky.” Kelly made an effort to look at her face, but that just made it worse. He gave the nurse a brief synopsis of the life of Pamela Starr Madden, deceased.
“So after all the men who hurt her or used her, you gave her something that nobody else did.” O’Toole paused, waiting for a reply and getting none. “You gave her love, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Kelly’s body shuddered for a moment. “Yes, I did love her.”
“Let it out,” the nurse told him. “You have to.”
First he closed his eyes. Then he shook his head. “I can’t.”
This would be a difficult patient, she told herself. The cult of manhood was a mystery to her. She’d seen it in her husband, who had served a tour in Vietnam as a lieutenant, then rotated back again as a company commander. He hadn’t relished it, hadn’t looked forward to it, but he hadn’t shrunk from it. It was part of the job, he’d told her on their wedding night, two months before he’d left. A stupid, wasteful job that had cost her a husband and, she feared, her life. Who really cared what happened in a place so far away? And yet it had been important to Tim. Whatever that force had been, its legacy to her was emptiness, and it had no more real meaning than the grim pain she saw on the face of her patient. O’Toole would have known more about that pain if she’d been able to take her thought one step further.
“That was really stupid.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Tucker agreed. “But I can’t have my girls leaving without permission, can I?”
“You ever hear of burying them?”
“Anybody can do that.” The man smiled in the darkness, watching the movie. They were in the back row of a downtown theater, a 1930s film palace that was gradually falling to ruin, and had started running films at 9 A.M. just to keep up with the painting bill. It was still a good place for a covert meeting with a confidential informant, which was how this meeting would go on the officer’s time sheet.
“Sloppy not killing the guy, too.”
“Will he be a problem?” Tucker asked.
“No. He didn’t see anything, did he?”
“You tell me, man.”
“I can’t get that close to the case, remember?” The man paused for a handful of popcorn and munched away his irritation. “He’s known to the department. Ex-Navy guy, skin diver, lives over on the Eastern Shore somewhere, sort of a rich beach bum from what I gather. The first interview didn’t develop anything at all. Ryan and Douglas are going to be working the case now, but it doesn’t look like they have much of anything to work with.”
“That’s about what she said when we ... ‘talked’ to her. He picked her up, and it looks like they had a mighty good time together, but her supply of pills ran out, she said, and she had him bring her in town to score some ’ludes. So, no harm done?”
“Probably not, but let’s try to control loose ends, okay?”
“You want me to get him in the hospital?” Tucker asked lightly. “I can probably arrange that.”
“No! You damned fool, this is going on the books as a robbery. If anything else happens, it just gets bigger. We don’t want that. Leave him be. He doesn’t know anything.”
“So he’s not a problem?” Tucker wanted to be clear on that.
“No. But try to remember that you can’t open a murder investigation without a body.”
“I have to keep my people in line.”
“From what I hear you did to her—”
“Just keeping them in line,” Tucker reemphasized. “Making an example, like. You do that right and you don’t have any more problems for a while. You’re not a part of that. Why does it bother you?”
Another handful of popcorn helped him bend to the logic of the moment. “What do you have for me?”
Tucker smiled in the darkness. “Mr. Piaggi is starting to like doing business with me.”
A grunt in the darkness. “I wouldn’t trust him.”
“It does get complicated, doesn’t it?” Tucker paused. “But I need his connections. We’re about to hit the big time.”
“How long?”
“Soon,” Tucker said judiciously. “Next step, I think, we start feeding stuff north. Tony is up there talking to some people today, matter of fact.”
“What about now? I could use something juicy.”
“Three guys with a ton of grass good enough?” Tucker asked.
“Do they know about you?”
“No, but I know about them.” That was the point, after all—his organization was tight. Only a handful of people knew who he was, and those people knew w
hat would happen if they got a little loose. You just had to have the stones to enforce discipline.
“Take it easy on him,” Rosen said outside the private room. “He’s recovering from a major injury and he’s still on several medications. He’s really not capable of talking to you with a full deck.”
“I have my job, too, doctor.” It was a new officer on the case now, a detective sergeant named Tom Douglas. He was about forty, and looked every bit as tired as Kelly, Rosen thought, and every bit as angry.
“I understand that. But he’s been badly hurt, plus the shock of what happened to his girlfriend.”
“The quicker we get the information we need, the better our chances are to find the bastards. Your duty is to the living, sir. Mine is to the dead.”
“If you want my medical opinion, he’s not really capable of helping you right now. He’s been through too much. He’s clinically depressed, and that has implications for his physical recovery.”
“Are you telling me that you want to sit in?” Douglas asked. Just what I need—an amateur Sherlock to watch over us. But that was a battle he couldn’t win and wouldn’t bother to fight.
“I’ll feel better if I can keep an eye on things. Go easy on him,” Sam repeated, opening the door.
“Mr. Kelly, we’re sorry,” the detective said after introducing himself. Douglas opened his notebook. The case had been booted up the ladder to his office because of its high profile. The first-page color photo on the Evening Sun had come as close to the pornographic as anything the media could publish, and the mayor had personally called for action on this one. Because of that, Douglas had taken the case, wondering how long the mayor’s interest would last. Not very, the detective thought. The only thing that occupied a politician’s mind for more than a week was getting and holding votes. This case had more spin on it than one of Mike Cuellar’s screwballs, but it was his case, and what was always the worst part was about to take place. “Two nights ago you were in the company of a young lady named Pamela Madden?”
“Yes.” Kelly’s eyes were closed when Nurse O’Toole came in with his morning antibiotic dose. She was surprised to see the two other men there and stopped in the doorway, not knowing if she should interrupt or not.
“Mr. Kelly, yesterday afternoon we discovered the body of a young woman who fits the physical description of Miss Madden.” Douglas reached into his coat pocket.
“No!” Rosen said, getting out of his chair.
“Is this she?” Douglas asked, holding the photo before Kelly’s face, hoping that his proper grammar would somehow lessen the impact.
“God damn it!” The surgeon turned the cop around and pushed him against the wall. In the process the photo dropped on the patient’s chest.
Kelly’s eyes went wide in horror. His body sprang upwards, fighting the restraints. Then he collapsed, his skin pasty white. All in the room turned away but for the nurse, whose eyes were locked on her patient.
“Look, doc, I—” Douglas tried to say.
“Get the hell out of my hospital!” Rosen fairly screamed. “You can kill somebody with that kind of shock! Why didn’t you tell me—”
“He has to identify—”
“I could have done that!”
O’Toole heard the noise as the two grown men scuffled like children in a playground, but John Kelly was her concern, the antibiotic medication still in her hand. She tried to remove the photograph from Kelly’s view, but her own eyes were first drawn to the image and then repulsed by it as Kelly’s hand seized the print and held it a scant twelve inches from his own wide-open eyes. It was his expression now that occupied her consciousness. Sandy recoiled briefly at what she saw there, but then Kelly’s face composed itself and he spoke.
“It’s okay, Sam. He has his job to do, too.” Kelly looked down at the photo one last time. Then he closed his eyes and held it up for the nurse to take.
And things settled down for everyone except Nurse O’Toole. She watched Kelly swallow the oversized pill and left the room for the calm of the corridor.
Sandra O’Toole walked back to the nurses’ station, remembering what she alone had seen. Kelly’s face turning so pale that her first reaction to it was that he must be in shock, then the tumult behind her as she reached for her patient—but then what? It wasn’t like the first time at all. Kelly’s face had transformed itself. Only an instant, like opening a door into some other place, and she’d seen something she had never imagined. Something very old and feral and ugly. The eyes not wide, but focused on something she could not see. The pallor of his face not that of shock, but of rage. His hands balled briefly into fists of quivering stone. And then his face had changed again. There had been comprehension to replace the blind, killing rage, and what she’d seen next was the most dangerous sight she had ever beheld, though she knew not why. Then the door closed. Kelly’s eyes shut, and when he opened them, his face was unnaturally serene. The complete sequence had not taken four seconds, she realized, all of it while Rosen and Douglas had been scuffling against the wall. He’d passed from horror to rage to understanding—then to concealment, but what had come in between comprehension and disguise was the most frightening thing of all.
What had she seen in the face of this man? It took her a moment to answer the question. Death was what she’d seen. Controlled. Planned. Disciplined.
But it was still Death, living in the mind of a man.
“I don’t like doing this sort of thing, Mr. Kelly,” Douglas said back in the room as he adjusted his coat. The detective and the surgeon traded a look of mutual embarrassment.
“John, are you all right?” Rosen looked him over and took his pulse quickly, surprised to find it nearly normal.
“Yeah.” Kelly nodded. He looked at the detective. “That’s her. That’s Pam.”
“I’m sorry. I really am,” Douglas said with genuine sincerity, “but there’s no easy way to do this. There never is. Whatever happened, it’s over now, and now it’s our job to try and identify the people who did it. We need your help to do that.”
“Okay,” Kelly said neutrally. “Where’s Frank? How come he’s not here?”
“He can’t have a hand in this,” Sergeant Douglas answered, with a look to the surgeon. “He knows you. Personal involvement in a criminal case isn’t terribly professional.” It wasn’t entirely true—in fact, was hardly true at all—but it served the purpose. “Did you see the people who—”
Kelly shook his head, looking down at the bed, and he spoke just above a whisper. “No. I was looking the wrong way. She said something, but I didn’t get around. Pam saw them, I turned right, then started turning left. I never made it.”
“What were you doing at the time?”
“Observing. Look, you talked to Lieutenant Allen, right?”
“That’s correct.” Douglas nodded.
“Pam witnessed a murder. I was bringing her in to talk to Frank about it.”
“Go on.”
“She was linked up with people who deal drugs. She saw them kill somebody, a girl. I told her she had to do something about it. I was curious about what it was like,” Kelly said in a flat monotone, still bathing in his guilt while his mind replayed the image.
“Names?”
“None that I remember,” Kelly answered.
“Come on,” Douglas said, leaning forward. “She must have told you something!”
“I didn’t ask much. I figured that was your job—Frank’s job, I mean. We were supposed to meet with Frank that night. All I know is it’s a bunch of people who deal drugs and who use women for something.”
“That’s all you know?”
Kelly looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes. Not very helpful, is it?”
Douglas waited a few seconds before going on. What might have been an important break in an important case was not going to happen, and so it was his turn to lie again, beginning with some truth to make it easier. “There’s a pair of robbers working the west side of town. Two black males,
medium size, and that’s all we have for a description. Their MO is a sawed-off shotgun. They specialize in taking down people coming in for a drug buy, and they particularly like the gentry customers. Probably most of their robberies don’t even get reported. We have them linked to two killings. This might be number three.”
“That’s all?” Rosen asked.
“Robbery and murder are major crimes, doctor.”
“But that’s just an accident!”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Douglas agreed, turning back to his witness. “Mr. Kelly, you must have seen something. What the hell were you doing around there? Was Miss Madden trying to buy something—”
“No!”
“Look, it’s over. She’s dead. You can tell me. I have to know.”
“Like I said, she was linked up with this bunch, and I—dumb as it sounds, I don’t know shit about drugs.” I’ll be finding out, though.
Alone in his bed, alone with his mind, Kelly’s eyes calmly surveyed the ceiling, scanning the white surface like a movie screen.
First, the police are wrong, Kelly told himself. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did, and that was enough. It wasn’t robbers, it was them, the people Pam was afraid of.
What had happened fit what Pam had told him. It was something they had done before. He had allowed himself to be spotted—twice. His guilt was still quite real, but that was history now and he couldn’t change it. Whatever he had done wrong, it was done. Whoever had done this to Pam, they were still out there, and if they’d done this twice already, they would do it again. But that was not really what occupied his mind behind the blank staring mask.