“Yes. She isn’t a bad person; she just has this horrible problem. So I gave her the money.”
She looked puzzled, and Valentine watched her run her hand over the seat, then the dashboard, then the panel of the door. She shook her head.
“This is an old car, isn’t it?” she said.
“It’s a ’92 Honda Accord.”
“You’re not a rich man, are you?”
“I make a decent buck, but no, I’m not rich.”
“So you gave her the money out of the goodness of your heart.”
“I guess you could put it that way.”
“So why are you now shunning her? It doesn’t add up.”
Valentine felt the air escape his lungs. He didn’t want to go down this road. It was painful, and thinking about it would only ruin his sleep tonight, his dreams tortured by Lucy’s problems and his own troubled conscience. As if reading his mind, Mary Alice reached across the seat and grasped his arm. She gave it a healthy squeeze.
“Please answer me,” she said.
He had never liked talking in cars, and they got out and walked to her porch. The swing looked inviting so they sat in it. He stared at the maple tree in her front yard and tried to gather his thoughts. A big fat crow sitting on a branch stared back at him.
“When I first became a cop in Atlantic City, I thought part of my job was helping people,” he said. “I grew up there, so most of the people I came in contact with I personally knew. They were my friends, so I tried to help them work their problems out.”
“Instead of arresting them.”
“Exactly. One day, my supervisor took me aside. His name was Banko, and he liked to do things by the book. He told me I was making a mistake, that I needed to stop.”
“Did you listen to him?”
“Not at first. Then one day, something happened that changed my mind. Two cops I knew got called to a domestic disturbance. Their names were Manley and Hatch. I’d known them since grade school. Good guys. The disturbance was between a girl and her boyfriend. The girl was trying to break up, and the boyfriend was taking it hard. He was threatening her, so a neighbor called 911.
“Manley and Hatch entered the house, and the boyfriend got belligerent with them. Right then, they should have cuffed him, read him his rights, and thrown him in their cruiser. That’s what that situation calls for. Only, they didn’t. Manley put his hand on the kid’s shoulder and tried to talk some sense into him.
“The boyfriend was crazy angry. He worked construction, and his tools were sitting on the table. He reached down and picked up a ball-peen hammer.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a special hammer used to beat metal into shape. He smacked Manley in the face with it. Manley’s nose practically came off and was hanging on the side of his face. Hatch drew his gun and shot the kid through the heart.”
“Does that make Manley wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Please explain why.”
“Manley’s intentions were good, just like mine were when I interceded in disturbances. But the fact is, if Manley had cuffed the boyfriend like he was supposed to, he wouldn’t be walking around today with a steel rod in his face, and the kid would still be alive. Sometimes the best thing is to arrest a person and stick them in jail. Sure, it’s rock bottom, but that’s a place some people need to go.”
Mary Alice folded her hands in her lap. “Is that where Lucy Price needs to go?”
“Yes.”
“But you gave her twenty-five thousand dollars. Surely that helped her.”
“It only made things worse,” he said. “I had this selfish dream that by giving her the money, she’d get her life back in order and we’d get together. Instead, she took the money and went on a gambling binge. When it was over, she was broke. She got so despondent, she left one of the casinos and ran her car over the median of Las Vegas Boulevard. She hit another car and injured several tourists. One died.”
“Do you blame yourself for that?”
“Yes.”
“And you honestly believe that she’d be better off if you hadn’t given her the money.”
“I don’t know if Lucy would be better off or not,” he said. “I just know that someone wouldn’t have died.”
The crow started cawing at him. It was like being heckled from a crowd, and Valentine fished a coin out of his pocket to throw at it. Before he could, Mary Alice stood up from the swing. She did it suddenly, and his legs shot out from the sudden shift in weight. She marched across the porch to the front door of her house, then turned to face him.
“Goodness is never a sin,” she said.
He stared at her, his face burning.
“Shame on you for thinking so,” she added.
“Don’t you want me to take you to Brevard?”
“No,” she said.
She went back inside and shut the door behind her. He heard the dead bolt being thrown. It was a humiliating sound, and he sat for a long moment and let the crow berate him. Then he got her suitcase from the trunk and put it on the front mat.
30
At three-thirty Sunday afternoon, Lamar pulled his car into the parking lot of Dixie Magic, found one of the few remaining spaces, and killed the engine. The casino was doing a brisk business, and Gerry stayed low in the passenger seat.
“You think I’ll be safe here?”
“I’m not putting you inside the casino,” Lamar said. He pointed at a construction trailer at the rear of the lot. “I’m putting you there.”
Gerry stared at the trailer. It was covered in aluminum siding, and an air conditioner hanging from a window was dripping water. It looked like a pit.
“Why there?”
“That’s command central,” Lamar said. “Come on.”
Lamar took his gun off the seat and slipped it under his belt. They got out and crossed the lot, with Lamar standing between Gerry and the road.
Lamar knocked three times on the trailer door, paused, then knocked three times again. The door popped open, and a blast of cold air greeted them. They went in, and Lamar closed the door behind them and locked it. Gerry was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and felt himself shiver.
“We keep it this cold so the humidity doesn’t ruin the equipment,” Lamar said.
Gerry stared at the tables cramming the trailer’s interior. They contained dozens of video monitors stacked atop each other, and machines that generated the date and time on a tape. There were also phones and logbooks and plenty of empty coffee cups. Watching the video monitors were two guys Gerry remembered from his lecture the day before. Both men turned in their chairs and said hello.
“We set up command central a few weeks back,” Lamar explained. “It lets us watch the action inside the casino without anyone knowing it.”
Gerry stared at the monitors. “Discover any more cheating?”
Lamar scratched his chin. “Well, that’s where I was hoping you could help us.”
“Help you how?”
