prosecutor’s office seems very willing to buy.
Christian isn’t talking.
Although Michael Ryan was posthumously cleared by Internal Affairs, anyone who looks closely at the evidence would never believe anything but the obvious.
Mike Ryan died in a pair of twenty-five-dollar shoes.
The money was never for him.
At the end of the first week in January, as Paris begins to box up the Ochosi files at his desk, it occurs to him how close it had all come to him once again, how close to Beth and Melissa. The man he had seen with Beth at Shaker Square-the guy with the shoulders-really was a guy Beth had met on eharmony. The man’s religious leanings, however, had not yet assuaged Paris’s jealousy.
But Christian del Blanco did have his sights set on Beth. Paris has no doubt about that. Christian had found her e-mail address, had sent her the self-launching computer file of the velvet wing chair. Perhaps he meant to put her in it before it was all over. He just ran out of time.
As Paris marches the box of files to the elevator, it is that image that chills him more deeply than the winter storm raging outside.
Her hand is still in a splint. The doctors say she will, in time, regain most of its use, but the thick mound of scar tissue where the spike had penetrated will always remain.
She is being released from the hospital within the hour.
Paris stands at the foot of the bed. Mary sits, hands in her lap, a small suitcase at her feet. The only sounds are the hush of the heat register, the pellets of freezing rain on the window. Paris looks out at the confetti of ice- slicked cars in the University Hospital lot. He waits for the proper amount of silence to pass, then says: “Do you know why I’m here?”
Mary draws a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got it down to two things,” she says, her voice shaky, hesitant. “I’m leaving here in either a cab or a police car. I’ve been up all night bouncing between the two.”
“I came here to tell you that there won’t be any charges filed against you,” Paris says in a dry, emotionless monotone. He waits. Behind him, Mary begins to cry, softly. He doesn’t look. He isn’t interested in her tears.
After a few moments she says: “Thank you.”
“I had nothing to do with it. Believe me.”
“I am so sorry.”
Paris turns around, surprised at how much older she looks. “What are you sorry about again?”
“Everything. For making it personal for you. For putting you in danger.”
“I’m in danger by my second cup of coffee every day. You made a fool of me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Look, if the prosecutor’s office didn’t consider you a victim in all this, they might think you were trying to frame me for a capital crime. Maybe they need a little prodding in that direction. A little character reference.” He drops a pair of black-and-white photos on the bed. Blurry photos of a woman running from the Dream-A-Dream Motel. “Maybe these would help.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand plenty. I understand there’s an active file in Robbery called the Kissing Bandit file. Romantic, huh? I understand how your prints led me right to a partial print in that file, a series of robberies about which no detective can ever seem to get a victim to stay on the record. It’s all about a woman who dumps a couple roofies in the Cuervo and shakes down horny middle-aged businessmen.”
Mary is silent for a moment, her heart quickening. “Everything I did, I did for my daughter. You have a little girl. Draw the line for me. What wouldn’t you do?”
Paris has no answer to this question.
But it is just one of many he is certain will never be answered, especially about the Ochosi murders. And he knows why. The fact that such a high-profile monster as Christian del Blanco is now behind bars, and the fact that the Comeback City can now begin to pave over the nightmare, means that a lot of the loose ends are never going to be tied up.
Paris buttons his coat, pulls on his gloves.
“Is this where you tell me to leave town?” she asks, her eyes riveted on the photos on the bed.
Paris walks to the door. He glances at the picture of the beautiful, dark-haired little girl on the nightstand. “If you were anyone else, I’d probably have to.”
“I understand.”
Paris holds her gaze, recalling the last time he had looked so deeply into her eyes. He told himself he wouldn’t, but does anyway. “Let me ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“None of it was real, right?”
Her face softens. She is young again. “All of it was real. We just met in hell.”
Paris doesn’t bother to respond.
Mary stands, takes a tentative step toward him, stops. “How do I prove it to you?”
Paris lingers for a moment, burnishing her silhouette deep into his memory, then turns and walks down the hall.
The packed courtroom is suffused with a jungle silence. Judge Eileen J. Corrigan presides. She finishes her decree. “You are to serve these terms consecutively, without the possibility of parole.”
In the demeaning light of a room where justice is done, Christian del Blanco looks broken, small. Although Paris had aimed dead-center at his chest, fully prepared to blast him to hell, when Christian had leapt up from the floor the bullet tore into his right hip instead. The unfortunate prognosis is that he will one day walk again.
“Is there anything you wish to say to the court at this time?” Judge Corrigan asks.
“No, your honor,” Christian says, head down, the perfect penitent.
“May God have mercy on your soul.” Judge Corrigan bangs her gavel. She pauses, briefly, then exits in a flurry of polished black cotton, an air of shunted revulsion.
Amid the melee of reporters leaving the courtroom, Jack Paris and Carla Davis wind their way to the defense table. Paris glances down at Christian del Blanco sitting in his wheelchair. He studies the man’s sharp hewn looks, thinking: He’s going to have a great time in prison.
Suddenly, Christian looks up, acknowledging Paris’s presence. The sheer blackness of his eyes chills Paris’s blood. Paris had looked into these eyes once before.
Except, that time, they belonged to Sarah Weiss.
Christian says: “I have to know.”
“Know?” Paris replies. “Know what?”
“How?”
Paris understands what Christian is talking about, just as he realizes that something like this would eat at a person like him. Christian the trickster, the man who had recruited a woman named Celeste Conroy to do his dirty work; Celeste who looked so much like Sarah Weiss that Paris had no trouble believing it really was her that night in his apartment. The magic mushroom helped a little, of course.
“You mean my little misdirection with the computer camera?” Paris asks.
“Yes.”
Paris leans forward, close enough to see the humiliation and defeat in the man’s eyes. “Well, the blood on my forehead and the door locks were the easy parts.” Paris reaches into his pocket, drops a packet of ketchup and a paper clip on the table. “Old magician tricks.”
Christian absently touches a finger to his own forehead.
Paris opens his briefcase. “The hard part, at least for someone like me, was learning about the video lag. That I got out of a book. A hell of a good book. I think even you might get something out of it.” Paris reaches into his briefcase, drops a thin, soft cover book on the table in front of Christian.
Web Cam for Dummies.
Paris leans close to Christian’s ear, and adds: “No offense.”
