Scoop hung up and got out of his car. It was warm out on the street. He ducked under the yellow caution tape. Bob O'Reilly was on the front steps with a contractor, one of his friends from Southie, who saw Scoop, mumbled something about hero cops and left.
Bob nodded toward his departing friend. 'He can't fit in the pool and cabana in the backyard.'
'Funny, Bob,' Scoop said.
'Yeah. I talked the city out of condemning the place. That might not have been smart. We could turn the lot into a community vegetable garden and pitch tents.'
'At least the damage wasn't as bad as we originally thought.'
'We?' Bob grinned. 'You were on morphine. You should have seen the people trooping in and out of your hospital room. Who knew an internal affairs SOB could have so many friends?'
His entire family had come, too, Scoop remembered. He'd faked being passed out during one of their early visits, just to spare them from having to think of what to say. Later, when he was in better shape, they'd all had an easier time. They got along, but that didn't mean they were talkers.
Bob rubbed a big hand over the top of his head. 'Fiona feels guilty, but she shouldn't. I never would have thought twice if I saw Cliff on Abigail's porch with a damn bomb in his hands, never mind passing through the neighborhood.'
'Probably the bomb would have tipped you off he was up to no good.'
'Who knows? I wasn't Cliff's biggest fan over the years, but I never figured him for blowing up this place-- damn near killing my daughter. If I'd seen him with a bomb, I'd have assumed it was a dummy and he was doing a drill or some damn thing. When you're not suspicious, you're not suspicious.'
Scoop shrugged. 'Maybe I'm never not suspicious.'
Bob let that one go without a response. 'Acosta's here. He's in back. He's angry and frustrated, and he's looking to take it out on someone. He doesn't much like you on a good day, Scoop.'
'So why's he here?'
'He figured out you were already looking into whether a member of the department was involved with some Boston muscle.'
Scoop noticed that Bob hadn't asked a question. He made no comment himself.
'Acosta doesn't want to go down with Cliff,' Bob said.
They headed out back where Acosta was checking out the burned-out first-floor porch as if he could make sense of why his former partner might have wanted to plant a bomb there--for money, revenge, satisfaction? Was he being blackmailed? Was it part of some bizarre ritual he was into?
Bob pulled out white plastic chairs he'd hosed off, although they were still stained black from soot. 'Have a seat, fellas. Let's talk. View's not that great right now, but look at that sky. Not a cloud in it. It's a perfect fall day.'
Acosta wasn't in a friendly mood. 'Cliff was murdered,' he said, practically spitting the words at Bob and Scoop. 'Homicide can be as tight-lipped as they want. Cliff wouldn't off himself by tying a rope around his own neck and hanging himself from a plant hook. He'd eat a bullet. He was a son of a bitch in a lot of ways, and he was lazy. He had his run-ins with internal affairs over the years. But someone hit him on the head, put a noose around his neck, tied the rope to a door, hoisted him up and let him hang to death.'
Scoop sat on one of the chairs. 'He'd have been deadweight.'
'He was scrawny.' Acosta stalked over to the edge of Scoop's garden and kicked at squash vines, for no apparent reason except frustration. 'So far there are no witnesses who saw anyone or anything unusual in the neighborhood. Could have been someone familiar.'
'Ex-wife?' Scoop asked.
'She'd have shot him,' Bob said, dropping heavily into a chair. 'She wouldn't go to all the trouble of hanging him. I'm not officially on the case, but cause of death was asphyxia. I can tell you that much. He was hit on the head--the blow was hard enough that it might have killed him eventually by itself.'
'Why go to the trouble to hang him?'
'Probably some kind of ritual significance, given the rest of the scene,' Bob said, watching Acosta. 'Whoever killed Cliff didn't go to a lot of trouble to make it look like a suicide.'
Acosta picked up a half-rotten tomato and threw it against the compost bin, constructed of slats and chicken wire. 'I'm not fooled, Lieutenant. You're only telling me this so you can watch my reaction.' He picked up another tomato and splattered it against the compost bin, too. 'We have nothing.'
Bob shook his head. 'We have a lot. We just can't make sense of it yet.'
'Now Augustine's dead. If he knew anything...' Acosta bit off a sigh. 'It wouldn't have mattered. He'd never tell us.'
'If you're chewing on anything, Frank, you know you need to tell us.' Bob's tone was patient, but his gaze was narrowed intently on the robbery detective. 'Otherwise go home.'
'Go to hell,' Acosta said tonelessly.
Bob ignored him and addressed Scoop. 'Where's your archaeologist today?'
But there was something in Bob's voice, and Scoop turned in his cheap chair and saw Sophie coming down the walk, her hair pulled back as neatly as he'd ever seen it. She had on a pumpkin-colored sweater and slim jeans, and his heart skipped a couple of beats. He figured Bob and maybe even Acosta noticed, but whatever. This was how it was going to be until the fairy spell wore off or he just accepted that he was in love.
He glanced over at Bob. 'You invited her?'
'She's Irish,' he said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. 'I thought she could sweep the bad fairies out of the corners of the house before we renovate.'
'You want her to see where the bomb went off.'
He got up. 'Maybe it'll help jog our memories.'
Sophie gave them a strained smile. 'Hello, Detectives.'
Acosta moved away from the compost bin, looking irritated and out of place, as if he'd beamed himself into the middle of the wrong meeting. He didn't say a word to Sophie as she gazed up at the burned-out back of the house. 'It must have been an awful day.'
'It started better than it ended, that's for damn sure,' Bob said.
She pointed to Scoop's trampled, overgrown garden. 'The compost bin was the only possible place to take cover.' Her blue eyes leveled on him. 'How did you think of it?'
'I didn't,' he said. 'I reacted.'
'You relied on your instincts and training.' Spots of color appeared high in her cheeks. 'And your fear for Fiona.'
'For myself, too. Hell if I wanted to get blown up.'
Acosta muttered under his breath, then shifted to Scoop and Bob. 'I have to go.'
Sophie watched him retreat back up the walk and out to the street before she spoke again. 'He blames me for his friend's death.'
'Why do you say that?' Bob asked.
'Because he does.' She stepped into the remains of Scoop's vegetable garden. 'No pumpkins?'
'Butternut squash,' Scoop said, following her to the edge of the garden. 'I don't eat pumpkins.'
'I love squash. I'm a terrible cook. I don't mind cleaning, though.' She took a long step over knee-high weeds to the compost bin. 'Is the compost in here still okay?'
'Should be. I can pick out any shrapnel that ended up in it.'
Bob walked around to the other side of the bin, behind Sophie. 'Would an archaeologist be interested in an ancient compost bin?'
She laughed, relaxing some. 'We deal with the material remains of a culture. Compost would be decomposed.'
'Not the shrapnel,' Bob said. With a broad sweep of one arm, he took in the entire yard. 'Imagine keeping everything just as it is and then making sense of this backyard a thousand years from now.'
'It would be a challenge,' Sophie said.
'Aren't archaeologists part scientist and part historian?'
Scoop didn't know where Bob was going--maybe nowhere--but she didn't seem to mind. 'Archaeologists are archaeologists,' she said with a light smile. 'There are many areas of specialization. Mine is visual arts. We often
