“You’re really going to buy me a meal,” Sally said with mock disbelief as he held her chair. “This is a first.” Big Rob didn’t explain, but as he sat down across from her she thought the smile on his face seemed false. He had brought a yellow file folder with him, and he set it down next to his plate.
Big Rob waited until the server had recited the specials and returned for their order before beginning. He didn’t whisper. Even though the distance between tables was less than ten inches – measured each morning by the owner with a piece of custom-cut crown molding left over from the remodeling of her den – this space somehow felt as private as an office.
“Phil Canella’s dead,” he told her.
“What?” Her disbelief was genuine this time.
“On a job. In Nebraska. Chasing a cheating husband.”
Sally reached across the table and touched his arm. “Oh, my God, Biggie. I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close. You were on the Chicago PD together, right?” He nodded, and she understood now the formality of the setting was part of his mourning process. By giving her the news this way, in a nice restaurant instead of his hot, cramped office, he was showing respect for his friend. “When did it happen?”
“He went missing a few weeks ago. Police haven’t found his body, but, you know…” His face went blank as he tried to choke off an unwelcome emotion. “I went down there for a few days to help out if I could. The town where Philly was last seen, Brixton – their force is a little understaffed for this kind of thing.”
“Was there anything you could do?”
Biggie shrugged. “He was staying at a Marriott in Lincoln. I went through his things, looking for anything that might tip us in the right direction.” He held up the yellow file folder. “I found these in his room.” He handed it to Sally.
Barwick opened the folder. She covered her mouth with her right hand. “Oh. Jesus. God. No. God, no. ”
Inside were many of the photos Sally had taken of Justin Finn over the years. The posed shots she had taken at Martha Finn’s request and sold to Gold Badge Investigators.
“How? How did he get these?”
“According to his e-mail he got them from his client, Jacqueline Moore. She lives up in Northwood.”
Sally continued to leaf through the photos, their familiarity shocking under the circumstances. “I didn’t have any idea who the client was on the photo job. Scott Colleran never told me.”
“Jackie Moore told Philly she found these on her husband’s computer.”
“The cheating husband?”
Big Rob nodded. “His name is Davis Moore. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“He was the doctor who cloned Justin Finn.”
Slowly, Sally’s hands abandoned the folder on her lap and began scratching the sides of her face. “Davis Moore hired Gold Badge to acquire photos of his former patient? Doesn’t make any sense. What about Mrs. Moore? Does she know who the kid is?”
“No. As far as I can tell, she was afraid he was her husband’s kid. By some other woman.”
“So Moore might not have been cheating after all. Jesus, what a waste. And Philly’s death? I mean disappearance? Related?”
“I’m going back to Brixton to find out.”
Sally saw the waitress approaching with two plates of pasta and she discreetly closed the folder. She couldn’t imagine eating right now. Philly was dead. It horrified her to think the photos she took – that she already felt so guilty about – might have had something to do with his murder.
“When are you going back?”
“Not for a few days. Philly and I made a deal a long time ago. I’ll go through his cases and settle up with his clients. Take on the ones I’m able. God, I have to call Jackie Moore and tell her Philly was killed while working on her case.”
“What are you going to tell her about the photos?”
Big Rob mumbled through a giant forkful of linguine. “I don’t know. What do you think I should tell her?”
“Well, the truth, of course,” Barwick said. “There’s just no way to know what the truth is.”
Big Rob put down his fork, which for him was a gesture of seriousness. “There’s something else I wanted to prepare you for, Sals. The cops are gonna want to know what Philly was looking for down there. They’re going to chase every angle. Interview witnesses. These photos” – he nodded at the folder – “are gonna come out.”
It took a few seconds for the scenario to play out in Sally’s head. “Omigod,” she said. “Martha.”
Big Rob nodded. “You might want to start thinking about how you’re gonna handle that. I predict you’re going to have one pissed-off mother on your hands.”
That night, grown-up Justin came again to Sally’s dreams wearing Eric Lundquist’s face. They were sitting on top of a tall building downtown. Not the Hancock or the Sears Tower, but one of the early-twentieth-century skyscrapers, ten or twelve stories up. Taller glass-and-steel buildings formed privacy walls in every direction. Gothic gargoyles – cats and bats and monkeys and dragons – lined the edge of the roof all around them. It was night but the air was warm and still. They were having a picnic.
“Have you heard of Plato’s cave?” Justin asked.
Sally had taken two semesters of philosophy at the University of Illinois, but in the dream she said no.
Justin opened the picnic basket and transferred the contents – fruit and cheese and bread – to the blanket underneath them. “Plato believed an idea was the ideal state of being,” he said. “When a carpenter conceives of a table in his mind, it is perfect. His conception of the table is the real table. When he actually planes the wood and saws the legs and assembles it, when he crafts it into something we can see and we can touch, the actual table is only a representation of the idea, an imperfect imitation.”
“And the cave?” Sally asked, opening a thermos and pouring thick, sweet, green liquid into a pair of wine goblets.
“He said our experience is like that of a man in a cave, watching shadows projected on the wall from an unknown source. The shadows we see are only imperfect representations of the real human beings.”
“So the real people? If you can’t see them, where are they?” Barwick asked.
Justin took a goblet from her and leaned forward, their shoulders pressed together, his lips the smallest metric measurement from hers. “Here,” he said. “On this roof. The two of us. At night. In your dreams. This is real.”
He kissed Sally – an endless, heart-skipping, unforgettable first kiss that was still thick on her lips in the morning. It felt real. God, it felt so real.
– 35 -
Jackie hung up the phone with the private detective – Robert something-or-other, he’d said – and walked into the bathroom and shut the door. Tears fell from her cheeks into the bowl of the sink. Her hands trembled. Her eyes were pink with the bad news.
She had sent a man to his death.
Detective Robert had assured her there was no evidence linking Phil Canella’s disappearance to her case, but he never would have been in Nebraska if she hadn’t asked him to go back. Her lungs filled with asthmatic guilt. Exhaling became impossible.
He told her they didn’t have any more information about her case. She told him that was all right, she was so sorry. He didn’t mention the sketch of the man or the photographs of the mysterious child or whether he knew if the boy was her husband’s son. She didn’t ask.
Whenever Jackie took an assessment of herself, she pictured the three Jackies: past, present, and future. Past Jackie, full of energy and potential; present Jackie, always in transition; and future Jackie, contented, relaxed, happy at last. In the mirror tonight, she could see only the first two Jackies. She couldn’t even imagine herself without a husband, without a daughter, without this house. And now this shame on top of it.
Her husband was leaving her. A man was dead.
She could never know how much of it was her fault.
– 36 -
