“Not yet. Tell me, Patti- you think Harry is the Saint?”
Patti shook her head. “Me personally? No. The coppers are pretty evenly divided on this. There’s a third that think he is, there’s a third that think he isn’t, and the rest don’t really have an opinion.”
“One last question: what’s the story on Harry and Gloria Russell?” Broker said.
They stared each other down. Second by second Patti’s face filled with gravitas until it weighed about a ton. “Some people say they were like crossed live wires on a tin roof from the minute they started working together on the Dolman thing. It got so bad, it deep-sixed her marriage and was interfering with her work. So she talked to John E. and got him to take Harry off the case. Replaced him with Lymon Greene.” Patti sat deeper in her chair and folded her arms. “Which really pissed Harry off.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“Apparently, Lymon replaced Harry in more ways than one. According to this version, that’s why Harry pulled his Mark Fuhrman number. You know, the famous N-word scene.”
Broker lifted his eyebrows.
“I give you one last thing, and then you leave me alone. Okay?” Patti said.
Broker nodded.
“The only thing I know for sure is Gloria and Lymon spend lunchtime together lifting weights downstairs in the gym.”
“Thank you, Patti.”
“Fuck you, Broker.”
Broker continued to the basement motor pool and was going down the lines of marked and unmarked cars when he encountered Cody, the narcotics cop, and his partner, both wearing the tree trimmer costumes. Cody was carrying a black plastic bag. Seeing Broker, he held up the bag and grinned.
“We’re going through garbage. You want to join us?” Cody called out in a sardonic voice.
Broker smiled and kept going, got into Harry’s car, started it up, and drove from the underground garage into the ash-white sunlight.
He turned south on Osgood, crossed Highway 36, and stopped at the Holiday station, went in and bought several packs of Backwoods cigars. Back in the car, he fired up one of the rough-looking stogies with Harry’s casino matches. As the raw but calming smoke meandered from his mouth, he caught himself automatically doing a terrain field scan. A pre-cop habit from a shooting war. He was checking the surrounding area by breaking it into quadrants, then stopping, reversing field to overlap the last quadrant before moving on and repeating the process.
Broker shook his head.
With the windows down and the cigar clamped in his teeth, he put the car in gear and continued north through Oak Park Heights, past the quaint shady residential streets. Then, off to the left, the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility hid in a fold of open field. The maximum security prison was sunk four levels deep in the ground, like a buried battleship.
The worst dudes in the state were entombed here like bad canned meat. Ten years ago, Diane Cantrell’s murderer was on his way here for his own protection-but they didn’t move him fast enough, and he was knifed to death in Stillwater Prison. Washington County was host to the state’s two serious prisons, Stillwater and OPH, located within a few miles of each other. The county could boast more killers and rapists per capita than any other jurisdiction.
He hadn’t consciously planned this; consciously, he was just buying some smokes. But now he knew that he was following a need to get close to the origin of this whole thing. So he stepped on the gas and raced past clusters of large framed homes. Then he topped a rise and saw the strip malls and monotonous condo barracks of Timberry sprawled below him.
He pulled over, consulted his Hudson’s street map guide, got his bearings, and drove on. Ten minutes later he was in more open country. Then he pulled into the entrance to Timberry Trails Elementary School, where he was surprised to find a line of yellow school buses along the entry road.
Summer school, maybe?
Eight- and nine-year-olds wearing red safety patrol belts were walking out the front door, taking up positions at the buses. Broker parked, stubbed out his cigar, and popped a Certs in his mouth. As he approached the school entrance, it was as if they’d opened a faucet. Children squirted out the front door in a blur of color and squeals. They sluiced past him wearing shorts and T-shirts.
He stood motionless as they swept past. Little nudges and tugs, like a happy rush of water. Open faces, innocent bright eyes.
Trusting.
He shook his head to clear out the sunspots and entered the building, crossed an atrium, and went into the administrative office. There was a basket on the reception desk containing red clip-on visitors’ badges. Broker picked one up, weighed it in his hand.
The receptionist eyed him, smiling less and less the more she looked. “Are you a parent?” she asked.
“Yes,” Broker said. “My daughter is in preschool.”
“I. . guess. .” The receptionist turned and called through a doorway, “Marian, we have a police officer here. .”
The principal was a short, vigorous woman in her early sixties. She came to the door and sized up Broker. Her expression steadied down, but she continued to smile.
“Come in,” she said. “Marian Hammond.”
“Phil Broker.” They shook hands.
“You don’t look well, Mr. Broker. Can I get you a glass of water?” Marian said as she closed the door.
“I’m fine. It’s the heat.”
“No, it’s the heat plus. I’m in the people business, and you look like trouble. May I see some identification, please,” Marian said promptly.
Broker showed his new ID card.
Marian scrutinized the ID. “Okay, so why is a detective in my school?”
“I thought school was out.”
“Special summer event day. Why are you here, Mr. Broker?”
“I’m a temporary officer assigned to clearing out old files. I have a few questions about the Ronald Dolman case.”
Marian raised her hand to her throat as Dolman’s name glided across the room like a dark-finned shadow. She dropped her hand and balled her fists. “What kind of questions?”
“The boy involved. .”
Marian nodded. “Tommy Horrigan. He was six then; he’s seven now.”
“Is he still. .?”
“Of course not; his parents moved out of state, and they requested no forwarding address be given out.”
“Okay. There’s no nice way to ask this one. Was Dolman buried in the county?”
Marian was probably a grounded, compassionate woman. But she curled her lip, showed her teeth, and did not conceal the flash of disgust. “I’d have thought you people would know about that. Ronald Dolman was cremated, and his remains were thrown in the trash.”
Chapter Sixteen
Angel frowned as a mob of shouting eight-year-old boys rocketed past. Defiant, she refused to even wince when their churning bare feet pecked her with sand. She watched them tear along the crowded beach and yowl and
