His face sagged a bit more as his gaze shifted away from Shannon. “Bill, I feel lousy that I didn’t see you after what happened. The whole thing was so fucking bizarre, and with what he did to Joe, and Jesus, you leaving town as quick as you did after getting out of the hospital. But I should’ve visited you while you were laid up. It’s something that’s been bothering me.”
Mason was nodding. “I’ve been feeling like shit about it too, Bill.”
“Back then I wasn’t much in the mood to see anyone,” Shannon said. “If you had come to my hospital room, I probably wouldn’t have let you or anyone else in.”
“Yeah, well, still, I feel pretty lousy about it,” Poulet said, but relief showed on his face. “So what the hell are you up to? Just living the good life off your disability pension?”
“Half-retired. I’ve been working part-time doing some private investigations.”
“No shit?” Poulet said, his shit-eating grin back in place. “I should’ve guessed as much. Detective work is in your blood, Bill, one of the reasons you were one of the best cops I ever worked with.”
“Never thought I’d hear those words, Ed.”
“I mean it. That was probably the reason I was always giving you shit, just trying to get under your skin so I could level the playing field.” He turned his smart-alecky grin towards Mason. “Anyway, at least you were a hell of a better cop than this waste of space next to me.”
“Fuck you,” Mason said, punching Poulet harder in the shoulder than he had punched Shannon.
“How are things back in Cambridge?” Shannon asked.
“Quiet,” Poulet said as he rubbed his shoulder and glared at Mason. Then his gaze wandered back to Shannon as he forgot about the punch thanks to an alcohol-shortened attention span. “We haven’t had anything major in years. Just the typical shit. Car thefts, domestic disputes, b and e’s, vandalism, drugs, punks trying to pretend they’re gang members, nothing big. I don’t know if you heard, but our old Captain captain found himself a new job. I guess the aftermath of that Charlie Winters’ business was too much for him.”
“I hadn’t heard. What’s Martin doing?”
“He took the same position with the Lynn police,” Poulet said, his smart-alecky grin stretching wider. Mason started laughing, said, “He stepped in it big-time.”
“I don’t know if it made the news here,” Poulet added, “but a pretty messy bank robbery went down last summer with a couple of their customers killed. They still don’t know exactly what happened, but from what I hear our old captain, Martin Brady, was put through the ringer. Last I heard he’s hanging onto his job by a thread.”
“Tough luck for Martin.”
“Yeah, I almost feel sorry for him.”
An announcement came over the PA system for people to stand during the national anthem. Poulet indicated to Shannon that they were going to go find their seats. “Bill, it was good seeing you. Stay safe, okay? And keep in touch, for Chrissakes!”
“Hey, it was good seeing both of you too. And don’t worry, we’ll keep in touch.”
As Shannon made his way back to his seat, he realized he’d meant what he’d said. It was cathartic in a way seeing the two of them. Putting old ghosts to rest. Although he doubted whether he’d contact either of them again.
“Run into some friends?” Maguire peered at Shannon from above the rim of a cup raised to his mouth. Underneath his seat were two empty cups, and it looked like he’d bought a couple of more beers from a vendor.
Shannon nodded towards the beer Maguire was in the process of finishing off. “You might want to slow down.”
“Hey, I’m here to unwind and have some fun-something I haven’t had in months. You’re not drinking, so what the fuck, you can be the designated driver.”
He handed Shannon the keys to his BMW. “Besides,” he added, “isn’t lesson four that PIs, other than you of course, are supposed to drink like fish? Basically be borderline alcoholics?”
“Nope. Lesson four is don’t believe everything you read in books.”
Maguire gave Shannon a wary eye as he finished his beer, but he slowed down his drinking after that and spent most of the game good-naturedly trading jibes and arguing statistics with Colorado fans sitting nearby. Instead of the game being the homerun derby he’d predicted, it turned out instead to be more of a pitchers duel and defensive showcase, one in which the Red Sox pulled ahead by a run in the top of the ninth thanks to a seeing-eye single, stolen base, bunt and sacrifice fly. Uncharacteristic for them. Normally it would’ve been the type of game Shannon enjoyed but he couldn’t focus on it, his thoughts circling back to what his next steps would be and to Poulet’s remark about detective work being in his blood. Maybe it was that simple for him. As much as he liked to think he was doing the work partly to keep busy and partly for purer, more altruistic reasons, maybe deep down inside he was driven simply because it was in his blood. Or worse, these cases allowed him to get close to the darkness without fully immersing himself in it. Maybe it was yet another way he was attached to Charlie Winters, and at some subconscious level he was trying to understand the evil that drove that psychopath. Because what was the altruism for this case? He could tell himself it was to provide a voice for the victims and to make sure that something as cruel as ending the lives of two young people didn’t go unpunished, but the bottom line was he was working to help a defendant in a civil case keep from having to pay out a large judgment.
Thoughts of one of Susan’s homeopathic patients also kept buzzing in and out of his mind-the psychic who was stuck in two worlds, the dead and the present. In some ways he could argue the same about himself. He had moved to Boulder for a fresh start, to heal himself, to live a different life than the one he had submerged himself in Massachusetts. Yet here he was, back investigating the types of crimes he’d thought he wanted to leave far behind. Like Susan’s patient, he found himself floating between two worlds, unable to fully commit to either one.
Focusing on his next steps, he decided he’d have to visit Linda Gibson’s family, which meant a trip to America’s Heartland. And he’d also have to find out how a college student was able to afford the purchases Taylor Carver had made for his mother. Especially if he wasn’t dealing drugs as Lieutenant Daniels claimed.
The Rockies made the final out by popping up harmlessly to second base and Maguire exchanged high-fives with a couple of other Red Sox fans nearby and traded a few more jibes with the Colorado fans he’d been engaged with.
“Another eighty-six years before they win another one,” one of them told him.
“Ha, want to bet eighty-six years before your team has another whiff of the playoffs again?”
“You’re still a bunch of chokers.”
“Like the last four years, with three Super Bowls and one World Series Championship?”
“And you won them personally, huh, asshole?”
“Hey, they’re the teams I live and die for. How have your teams been doing?”
That elicited a number of “Fuck you’s” and “Move back to Boston if its such a fucking paradise”. As they walked back to the car, Maguire acted animated, buoyant, but when he got into the passenger seat the life seemed to drain out of him, almost as if a switch had been thrown.
“Oh man, I’m wiped,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Sorry, any more questions you’re going to have to wait. I’m fucking exhausted.”
Shannon glanced over and saw Maguire’s chin moving slowly towards his chest, his eyelids mostly closed. “Lesson five, learn how to pace yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Maguire mumbled as if he were talking in his sleep. “I’ll take notes later.”
“I have a few more questions,” Shannon said without much hope of getting anything more out of his companion. “And I still need to talk to your wife.”
“Tomorrow,” Maguire said, his voice slurred as if he were using the last bit of strength he had. “Give me a call tomorrow.”
The traffic leaving the ballpark was bumper-to-bumper and it took a while to navigate to I-25 North, but once Shannon pulled onto US 36 West he seemed to have the highway to himself-as if he and Maguire were the only people from Boulder to attend the game. More likely than not that was true. There wasn’t much interest for professional sports in Boulder, outside of some of the college students and transplants like Shannon and Eli. While you could stop almost anyone on the street and discuss the Tour de France endlessly, it was a tough town to talk baseball or football in.
As Shannon drove, he could hear heavy breathing coming from Maguire along with sporadic choking noises that would last for a few seconds before sputtering out, then Maguire’s heavy breathing again. There were moments
