First Drop

do with me up against a filing cabinet. “Am I under arrest?”

Till sighed. “Just take us to Mr Brown,” he said.

Randy led the way with much more eagerness than he’d shown last time I was there. He eventually stopped just outside a pair of large double doors with a plaque on one that said Party Room. By the sounds of it Brown was just rounding off his big welcome speech on the other side. Nobody listening to the old guy’s melodious voice would ever guess he was a vicious murderer.

Till spoke fast and low into his radio, then issued brief instructions to the men he had with him. They all seemed to know the drill without needing long explanations, in any case.

When the moment came they kicked the doors open and went in at a run. There were a few squeals and shrieks from the assembled crowd, but mostly it was all over before anyone had the time to get excited.

It was only then that Sean and I were allowed into the room. Several hundred pairs of shocked and bewildered eyes followed our entrance, but the most stunned belonged to the harmless-looking old guy with the wispy grey hair, currently face down on the floor with two FBI men on top of him, cuffing his hands behind his back.

Brown was loudly announcing his outrage at this manhandling and, I considered, was making a pretty convincing show of wronged innocence along the way.

“You don’t begin to have the right to treat me this way,” he protested, sounding hurt and a little self- righteous, just as he would if he was truly blameless. “You don’t have a single shred of evidence against me.”

“Oh I’m afraid we do, Mr Brown,” Till said. “Not only do we have a boatload of witnesses, as it were, but thanks to this little lady here we even have a tape recording of you actually in the act of carrying out a homicide. In fact, we got so much on you it’s gonna take from now ‘til Thanksgiving just to file the charges.”

Brown managed to turn his head enough to look right at me. The surprise on his face was followed quickly by disgust. Not for me, I realised, but for himself. That he’d been fooled.

“She was just a girl,” he muttered as Till’s men dragged him to his feet. The disbelief was a faint tinge around the edges of his voice. His eyes slid to Sean and then back again to me. “She was Meyer’s goddamn girlfriend. A nobody . . .”

Special Agent in Charge Till put a hold on his satisfaction just sufficiently to give me his own brief, sombre appraisal. He took in the sodden filthy shirt and the matted tangle of revolting pink hair. And he saw that above it all I was still standing, still in there. Right to the bitter end.

He nodded to me, just once, and turned back to his prisoner.

“Yeah,” he said, and his stern face cracked into the first genuine piece of emotion I’d seen him display. A big grin. His voice had never sounded so laconic, so laid back as it did then.

“I guess if you was a stupid man,” he said, “you might just make the mistake of thinking that.”

Epilogue

“So, Charlie, how are you?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.” But we both knew I was lying.

“That’s good,” he said, not fixing me with that piercing stare, careful not to let me know outright that he could tell. That wasn’t his way, this quiet man. He made a few notes on the pad in front of him. “And how is Sean?”

“He’s fine, too,” I said. Another half truth.

The man sighed at that and laid down his pen. It was a nice pen, a shiny chrome Sheaffer and he was careful how he placed it, with precision, between the pristine blotter and the small framed photo of his wife and children. He was a careful man altogether.

We were in his office. A quiet room, but then, I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Outside his window was a tranquil view onto public parkland, with trees in the hazy distance.

Nobody disturbed the emptiness of the space except a solitary dog walker. Later, the office workers would be out to sunbathe on the parched grass and return, pink and sleepy, to their afternoon desks. For the moment, though, the dog walker had it all to himself.

“I found a news cutting since your last visit that I thought might be relevant,” the man said now. “I saved it for you, if you’d like to see it?”

It was phrased politely but if I refused it would send up flags. Denial. I shrugged, suddenly reminding myself of Trey.

He reached into the desk and brought it out, a folded magazine rather than a clipping. As he handed it across I looked at the page header out of curiosity and found it was a copy of a US financial journal, dated a week ago.

I opened the magazine out and there right across the top of the left-hand page was a picture of Walt and Harriet. They were standing in front of what could only be described as a mansion in the modern American style. They were arm in arm, and smiling.

I started to read the article, heedless of the fact that the meter was running. The man opposite brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘time is money’. My only consolation was that it wasn’t me who was footing the bill.

The piece turned out to be an interview, the gist of which was that in the last four months this self-effacing retired law enforcement officer had come from nowhere to become one of the most successful intra-day traders on the US futures market.

I read on, frowning. It wasn’t until I turned the page that it all became clear. There were several smaller pictures there, including one, a little group shot tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner, that showed half a dozen kids sitting around a swimming pool and grinning self-consciously. Walt presided over a barbecue nearby. He was wearing a chef’s apron and his usual battered Panama hat.

The text told me that Walt and Harriet were using their newfound wealth to continue fostering kids from broken homes. They didn’t mention Trey by name, but they didn’t need to for me to recognise him.

He was lurking in the background of the photo. The braces had clearly served their purpose and been discarded, and he no longer had his hair short and blond and spiked, but there was something familiar about the eyes, the line of the chin.

And next to him was Scott, looking self-conscious for the photo, standing with his arms folded and his weight on one hip, striking a pose. But he was standing. On his own two feet. That was the main thing.

I put the magazine down slowly onto my lap.

“Son of a bitch,” I murmured. “So he really could make it work.”

“How does that make you feel, Charlie?” He picked up his pen again. Another incomprehensible scribble. Was he condemning or redeeming me?

I stared at him a little blankly. “Feel?” I echoed. “I don’t know. Glad, I suppose. Glad that it wasn’t all for nothing, just a monumental waste of time and effort and life.”

“So you feel regret at the loss of life?”

“Of course I do,” I said, but it was the bystanders I was thinking of. The woman at the theme park who’d lost a lung to Haines’s wild shot. She would always have that to remind her of the day of fun that turned into a living nightmare.

The young cop, whose only mistake had been eagerness to make his mark but who had never lived long enough to grow out of being known as the rookie. He’d had a wife and a ten-month-old baby son who would never know his father.

And the teenage couple at the motel, away together for the first time, who’d found death instead of love.

Not the men I’d killed, though. Even though I knew their names now, it had failed to make them more real to me. They had been professionals who’d known the risks and gambles when they’d agreed to play the game. And not for Haines, either.

I looked up. “Of course I feel regret,” I said again.

But most of all, selfishly, I was regretful for myself and for Sean. For the people we’d been before. The people