Transgressions

Ransome smiled cautiously when she looked at him again, began to stare him down. A look as old, as eter-nal as the sea below.

'We have to complete what we've started,' Echo said reasonably. She moved closer to him, the better for him to see the fierceness of eye, the high flame of her own obsession. She swept a hand in the direction of her portrait on his easel. 'Look, John. And look again! I'm not just a face on a sidewalk. I matter!'

She seized and kissed him, knowing that the pain in his sore head made it not particularly enjoyable; but that wasn't her reason just then for doing it.

'Okay?' she said mildly and took a step back, clasping hands at her waist. The pupil. The teacher. Who was who awaited clarification, perhaps the tumult and desperation of an affair now investing the air they breathed with the power of a blood oath.

'Oh, Mary Catherine—' he said despairingly.

'I asked you, is it okay? Do we go on from here? Where? When? What do we do now, John?'

He sighed, nodded slightly. That hurt too. He put a hand lightly to the bump on his head.

'You're a tough, wonderful kid. Your heart... is just so different than mine. That's what makes you valuable to me, Mary Catherine.' He gravely touched her shoulder, tapping it twice, dropped his hand.

'And now you've been warned.'

She liked the touch, ignored his warning. 'Shall I pick up the rest of those brushes that were spilled?'

After a long silence Ransome said, 'I've always found salvation in my work. As you must know. I wonder, could that be why your god sent you to me?'

'We'll find out,' Echo said.

Peter heard one of the detectives ask, 'How close did she come to his liver?'

A woman, probably the ER doc who had been stitching him up, replied, 'Too close to measure.'

The other detective on the team, who had the flattened Southie nasal tone, said, 'Irish luck. Okay if we talk to him now?'

'He's awake. The Demerol has him groggy.'

They came into Peter's cubicle. The older detective, probably nudging retirement, had a paunch and an archaic crook of a nose like an old Roman in marble. The young one, but not that young—close to forty, Peter guessed—had red hair in cheerful disarray and hard-ass good looks the women probably went for like a guilty pleasure. Cynicism was a fixture in his face, like the indentations from long-ago acne.

He grinned at Peter. 'How you doin', you lucky baastud?'

'Okay, I guess.'

'Frank Tillery, Cambridge PD. This here is my Fathah Superior, Sal Tranca.'

'Hiya.'

'Hiya.'

Peter wasn't taken in by their show of camaraderie. They didn't like what they had seen in the architect's apartment and they didn't like what they'd heard so far from Silkie. They didn't like him, either.

'Find the perp yet?' he said, taking the initiative.

Sal said, 'Hasn't turned up. Found her blade in a can of paint. Seven inches, thin, what they call a stiletto in the old country.'

Tillery leaned against a wall with folded arms and a lemon twist of a grin and said, 'Pete, you mind tellin' us why you was trackin' a homicidal maniac in our town without so much as a courtesy call to us?'

'I'm not on the job. I was—looking for Silkie MacKenzie. Walked right into the play.'

'What did you want with MacKenzie? I mean, if I'm not bein' too subtle here.'

'Met her—in New York.' His ribs were taped, and it was hard for him to breathe. 'Like I told you at the scene, had some time off so I thought I'd look her up.'

'Apparently she was already shacked up with one guy, owns the apartment,' Sal said. 'Airline ticket in your coat pocket tells us you flew in from Houston yesterday morning.'

Peter said, 'I got friends all over. On vacation, just hangin' out.'

'Hell of a note,' Tillery said. 'Lookin' to chill, relax with some good-lookin' pussy, next thing you know you're in Mass General with eighty-four stitches.'

'She was real good with that, what'a'ya call it, stiletto?'

Sal said, 'So, Pete. Want to do your statement now, or later we come around after your nap? As a courtesy to a fellow shield. Who seems to be goddamn well connected where he comes from.' Sal looked around as if for a place to spit.

'I'll come to you. How's Silkie?'

'Plastic surgeon looked at her already.

There's gonna be some scarring they can clean up easy.'

'She say she knew the perp?'

Tillery and Tranca exchanged jaundiced glances. 'About as well as you did,' Sal said.