She paid no attention, or if she did she was not amused.
'What kind of person acts like that?' she said.
I thought about looking at the distance for a while. But that didn't seem productive. I took in more air and let it out again, even more slowly than last time.
'A person like you or me, an imperfect person, hence human, like you or me. I have nearly all my life tended to solve problems by whacking someone in the mouth. I contain that tendency better than I used to, but it hasn't gone away. I have killed people and may again. I haven't taken pleasure in it, but in most cases it hasn't bothered me all that much either. Mostly it seemed like the thing to do at the time. But the capacity to kill someone and not feel too bad is not one that is universally admired.'
'Your point?'
'You said I was the finest man you ever knew. Probably am. Most of humanity isn't all that goddamned fine to begin with. I am flawed. You are flawed. But we are not flawed beyond the allowable limit. And our affection for each other is not flawed at all.'
She had stopped looking at the distance and was looking, for the first time, at me.
'And every day I have loved you,' I said, 'has been a privilege.'
She kept looking at me and then soundlessly and without warning she turned from the bridge railing and pressed her face against my chest. She didn't make a sound. Her hands hung by her side. I put my arms around her carefully. She didn't move. We stood that way for a time as the pedestrians on the bridge moved spectrally past us. After a while, Susan put her arms around my waist and tightened them. And we stood that way for a time. Finally she spoke into my chest, her voice muffled.
'Thank you,' she said.
'You're welcome.'
And we stood some more and didn't say anything else.
chapter thirty-five
QUIRK CALLED ME and asked me to come in for a talk. The thing that was unusual about it was that he asked. My office was a two-block walk up Berkeley Street from Police Headquarters and I was there in Quirk's office at the back of the homicide squad room in about five minutes.
'Close the door,' he said.
I did.
'Civil Streets is a dead end,' Quirk said when I sat down. 'We went up there last week with the Stoneham cops and tossed the office. There's nothing there. No books. No computer. No paper. Nothing at all.'
'So they cleaned it out,' I said.
'Maybe,' Quirk said. 'Or maybe there never was anything there. We talked to the building owner. He said it was rented for a year by Carla Quagliozzi, paid on time every month with her personal check. I think it was just an address.'
'That's what it looked like the day I went there,' I said.
'So we figured we better talk to the president, and day before yesterday Lee Farrell called Carla Quagliozzi and asked her to come down with her attorney,' Quirk said. 'She was due here at ten in the morning. She didn't show. Farrell called. No answer. He called couple more times. Nothing. This morning we called Somerville and asked them to send a cruiser by. The cruiser guy found the front door ajar. He yelled. Nobody answered, so he opened it and looked in. She was in the living room. Somebody had shot her in the head, and cut her tongue out.'
'Jesus Christ.'
'Medical examiner says it was probably done in that order.'
'I hope so.'
'ME was pretty sure,' Quirk said. 'No evidence that any of the kitchen knives were used, assumption is that he brought his knife with him.'
'Hasn't this gotten ugly real quick,' I said.
'It has.'
'Did you, ah, find the tongue.'
'No.'
'So he took it with him,' I said.
'That's our assumption,' Quirk said. 'He had to carry the tongue away in something. It would be kind of messy to stick it in your pocket. There's no sign that he got a Baggie or Saran Wrap or whatever from the kitchen, though it's possible. Assumption is he came prepared.'
'He knew ahead of time he was going to cut out her tongue and take it away,' I said.
'That's our guess.'
'I hate talking about this,' I said.
Quirk said, 'I know.'
'So, why would he take the tongue with him?' I said.
'Got a guess?'
'He was going to show it to somebody.'
