“I’d be just as happy if you killed the stupid bastard,” he said to me, half in jest. I appealed to the better half.
“Tell Ross you want back on the case. Tell him you don’t give a crap who killed whom, that you’re a cop and this is what you do and if he thinks you won’t approach the investigation with perfect objectivity and respect for the rule of law, he doesn’t know who you are.”
It’s very hard to hide what you’re thinking when you’re only a few feet away in a tiny windowless room, even allowing for the artificial fog. From what I could see, Sullivan was thinking happier thoughts.
“Hard to argue with that,” he said.
“Tell Ross that Veckstrom will approach this with an assumption of my guilt. He won’t see anything or think anything that would interfere with that mind-set. Somebody besides me has to be open to alternative possibilities. Ross is a good man. He’s fair. Even if he wants to fry my ass, he won’t fight it.”
“He’s not big on backing down.”
“Neither are you.”
He wanted to say I was blowing smoke up his ass, but the sensation was too pleasant to mount an objection.
“Veckstrom’s not gonna like having the company,” said Sullivan. “He’s been in plainclothes for over ten years. Doesn’t like to share the big cases.”
“You call his clothes plain? Just tell Ross you want the freedom to poke around a little on your own. You won’t get in Veckstrom’s way.”
“Okay, let’s just say, theoretically, I’d be able to poke around, what exactly would I be poking into?” he asked.
“I want to know who Patrick is. Him and that crew of Robbie’s from Up Island. What’s their deal? They seem way too self-possessed.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Cocky. In command of things. I wonder about his relationship with old Robbie.”
“Okay,” said Sullivan. “I can tag him.”
“And Amanda’s house. I’d surely love to know what the County investigators think happened there.”
“They think it was arson,” said Sullivan.
“Yeah, but who, why and how? What do you think? Any reason it wasn’t Robbie and his boys? It makes the most sense.”
Sullivan started looking uncomfortable again.
“Proving that will give the ADA another motive,” he said. “She already thinks Milhouser humiliated you in front of your girlfriend.”
“That’s not how it was.”
“That’s how it’ll be when she brings it up in court.”
“I still want to know.”
“Only if Ross gives me the okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he said, and got up to leave. And then paused.
“You’re right. I liked you for this from the moment I got the call. I never said anything, but it probably showed. Couldn’t have helped you with Ross.”
“He got there fine on his own.”
“I like thinking now that you didn’t do it. Cops aren’t allowed to fraternize with murderers.”
“Could slow career advancement.”
“This is a better perspective. Makes me feel more confident. More self-possessed,” said Sullivan.
And then he left.
The steam room felt a lot roomier without his pinkish corpulence taking up valuable airspace. Though it wasn’t long before I regretted being left alone with my thoughts.
Or more accurately, my fears. Or was it anger?
I remembered reading once that the physiological effects of fear and anger were nearly identical. Evolution had it rigged so while the brain decided between fight or flight, the body was charged up and ready for action either way. All the blood ran into the arms and legs, and engorged the heart and lungs, while draining out of the brain, leaving just enough to fire the reflexes, but little for deliberative, analytical thought. Which is why mortal threats make you stupid. Stupid and dangerous, as the adrenal glands pump your bloodstream full of epinephrine, flushing your cheeks and drying out your mouth.
I don’t know if Nature also stirred in a dose of shame to go along with the fear and anger, or if that was an entirely human creation. Though I wasn’t ashamed to admit, at least to myself, that Milhouser and his boys, especially Patrick, had frightened me. I knew the type. Once challenged, or worse, embarrassed, they’d never stop. They’d never let it go. I got the drop on Patrick that night, but that wouldn’t happen again. Next time he’d own the surprise. Then it’s not a matter of who knows how to box, but who’s younger, stronger, meaner and as yet, un-brain damaged.
A reminder that we’re really only animals after all. Inflicted with the curse of cognition. Capable of moral reasoning, but prone to mindless violence. Mindless in its heedless ferocity, but also in its lunacy. Often begging the question, how could you do such a thing?
What were you thinking?
——
The only sure way to counter the wholesome, cleansing effects of an afternoon at the gym was an evening at the Pequot. I went home first to check on Eddie, fill his bowls with food and water and make sure he had the cottage under control. I don’t know how old he was when I sprang him from the pound, but probably no more than two or three. In those formative years he’d learned to be basically self-sufficient. He was always glad to see me when I showed up, but not so much that you’d think he couldn’t live without me. He’d often run up from the beach or bolt out of the wetlands to the west of the property when I drove in the driveway. I never asked what he was doing in there, and he never told.
For some reason, though, he was unusually attentive that night, wagging his broad sweep of a tail and making low, friendly noises. He normally ran around the yard after eating dinner, but this time he trotted over to the Grand Prix and waited by the door.
“In the mood for a little seafood?” I asked him.
He spun around once and looked expectantly at the back door. I let him in and he jumped over the console into the front, where he whined at the closed window. I opened it for him after I started the car.
“Anything else I can do for you?”
There’s no more hysterical prohibition than dogs in public eating areas, except in places like the Pequot, where Hodges’s Shih Tzus were skilled in squirting out from under the feet of exhausted deep-sea fishermen, and Eddie would routinely curl up under my stool at the bar or one of the little round tables where I read Beckett and Camus under the existential glow of the red-shaded lamps mounted along the wall.
Hodges had already gone home to his boat, part of a plan to keep his work time to something under ten hours a day. This left Dorothy in command of the joint. A tall Croatian with thick jet-black hair named Vinko was cooking in the back and helping serve tables while she held sway at the tattered pine bar. She’d dressed for the occasion, wearing her best black leather corset and matching accessories.
“Love the collar. Do you sharpen those spikes yourself?” I asked her, sitting down to the jumbo Absolut on the rocks she’d poured before I was halfway across the floor.
“My dad calls them hickey deflectors. He doesn’t know the guys I date. They actually dig the sharp little points. What’s the dog drinking?”
“Same as me. Hold the vodka.”
I ordered us both a burger, which Eddie preferred without the bun, and settled in with Immanuel Kant’s
People must have come in, had some food and drink, and left again while I was sitting there at the bar. I just didn’t notice. I was absorbed in Kant, except when attacked by mini explosions of anxiety that would suddenly seize my mind. I promptly stuffed them back down into my lower consciousness, temporarily subdued, but poised to
