“Six-thirty?” I said. “You must have been there pretty early on, then.”
“Naw, the call had been in for at least half an hour. I didn’t hear about it until I reported for work. We had started working tens then — ten-hour shifts. Seven A.M. to four P.M., five P.M. to two A.M., eleven P.M. to eight A.M. You’d come in about thirty minutes before and stay about thirty minutes later for the shift changes, but those were the shifts. Frank and Cookie worked graveyard shift. What’d you have then, Bear?”
Bear was frowning. “I must have been mixed up about something yesterday….”
“When I met you, I think you were working afternoon shift,” I said. “Bars would be closed, we’d go to one of the all-night coffee shops — you and Frank and I. We’d talk until everyone wound down, until about four in the morning.”
“That’s right,” he said, but he still looked puzzled.
“Afternoons… I must have been on afternoons.”
“Frank switched to graveyards after you left, Irene,” Bea said. “Cecilia worked days. He’d sleep while she worked, and they’d go out in the evenings.”
Cecilia seemed uneasy with this talk. “It cut every evening short,” she said quickly.
“Well, Frank was lucky to have y’all there for him,” Cassidy said, pulling the conversation back to that day. “I understand he took it pretty hard.”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “Those kids — they just wouldn’t let go of him. Even after their mothers got there. We wanted to talk to Frank, but any man came near ’em, they freaked out.”
“Now I know!” Bear said. “The scanner!”
The rest of us looked puzzled, but Gus started laughing. “Oh, goddamn — excuse me, Bea. Oh, oh — I’d forgotten about that, you were such a—!” He looked at Bea again, couldn’t seem to come up with a clean word, and contented himself with laughing.
Bear was turning red. “Gus, it’s not
“Cassidy,” Gus said, “you have never met anybody whose blood is so blue. Blue, blue, blue. The guy works ten-hour shifts, spends all his time off with other cops, and when they can’t stand him anymore and send him home, what does he do? Listens to his scanner. Remember how much sh — uh, what a hard time we used to give him about that, Cookie?”
Cookie, who had been silent for some time, merely said, “I remember.”
“You were there that day, too?” I asked him.
“Yes. I was there. As Gus said, I worked nights. But I wasn’t working that Sunday, the one when Frank found the boys. I had come in on Friday night, and worked until eight on Saturday morning. I was off on Saturday night and Sunday morning.”
“How did you find out about it, then?”
“Bea called me, said Brian was out of town, asked if I could go over to the warehouse.”
It seemed a little odd to me that Bea, who must have heard about the incident from Bear or Gus, would call in additional reinforcements. But this may have been the way their “extended family” operated — all for one, one for all.
“So you were there fairly soon?” I asked Bear.
“Yes. I tried to go down to the basement, to talk to Frank, but by the time I arrived the crime lab was there and not letting anyone near him. Once they came up out of that basement — as Gus said, the boys became very upset around any other man. I thought it was just me, at first. But they reacted that way to any other male.”
“Do you have any idea where they’re holding Frank?” Gus asked.
“Not at present, no,” Cassidy said. “But we believe it’s somewhere in Las Piernas. Folks down there are working hard to locate him.”
“What are you doing out here, then, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Ryan and Neukirk — the boys — contact us here. They tell us they have some task for us to complete before they’ll release Frank. Something to do with the murder of their fathers, I’m sure. Any of you have any idea what it could be? If you did, it could sure help us — help Frank most of all.”
No arms crossed, no nervousness, no eyes averted. Yes — Cassidy was a cool liar.
“Something to do with the old case?” Gus was asking. He grew thoughtful. All three men were silent, seemed to be considering the question.
“I don’t know what it could be,” Bear said. “The boys know the killer is dead, right?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said.
“Cecilia,” Cookie said, “you discovered the body of the killer, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Were there any signs that he might have had a partner, an accomplice?”
“No,” she answered. “Not a thing. Of course, I didn’t get involved in the forensics — just made the call.”
“Wait,” Gus said. “Cookie — man, they never should have kept you out of detectives. You were born to be a suit, I tell you.”
Nathan Cook colored red from his neck to the top of his head. “Really, Gus—”
But Gus was continuing, in a tone that seemed — at least to me — to be slightly sarcastic. “You see how he is, Cassidy? He can think ahead like that—”
