“You son of a bitch,” he said, his voice strained and wet, as if his mouth was clogged with soup.
I saw the blade before I saw Sean. He held it out in front of him like a bayonet and charged. Tony fell to the floor but Sean kept stabbing him, his arm rising and thrusting, rising and thrusting. I clamped my hands over my mouth, ducked under the dining room table.
When Sean was done, he wiped the blade on Tony’s pants, stood for a while with his hands on his knees, then straightened up and walked down the long entrance hallway as if he was in no hurry at all. I didn’t dare move until I heard the front door pull shut.
“By Sean,” Haagen said, “you mean Detective Sean Walsh?”
I nodded.
“The one who works in this building? The one who’s married to your friend Sarah?”
I nodded again. Her voice was calm and even. It seemed as if she’d known all along, as if this was the very story she’d been pushing me to tell. She exchanged a look with Nuñes, then turned back to me.
“You can prove it?” she asked. “You have proof that it was him?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have—”
“You’re saying Detective Sean Walsh committed murder, and you’re saying it on the record. You better be damn sure you’re right. Sean’s cleared a lot of cases in this department. Every one of them will be opened again. We’re talking untold man-hours. Criminals will go free. So let me ask you again: do you have proof?”
I leaned forward, looked her dead in the eyes.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have proof. But I saw where the proof went.”
Chapter 33Detective Sean Walsh
MY PLAN was to stop at Pete Owens’s Stow-and-Go on the way to Símon’s apartment. I had Serena’s file on the seat beside me, but I needed something more, something that belonged to Anthony and couldn’t be copied or reproduced. Something Vincent would recognize.
There was a pistol from the Civil War that Anthony kept locked away in his storage unit because he was afraid the help might steal it. He’d inherited the gun from his father, Vincent’s brother. Vincent had hoped to inherit it himself. That was the closest uncle and nephew ever came to a major clash. Once the relic turned up in Símon’s apartment, there’d be no doubt: Anthony would have clung to that pistol until the undertaker pried it from his icy hand.
As plans go, this one felt foolproof. I was already rehearsing my exit speech: “I’ve handed you your nephew’s killer,” I’d say. “I’m done now. It’s time for me to walk away.”
I was stopped at a light a block from the Stow-and-Go when they hit me: squad cars, unmarked cars, a goddamn armored SWAT truck. There was even a helicopter circling above. The sirens drowned out every other sound. Shock and awe meant a high-risk, high-profile arrest. The news vans wouldn’t be far behind.
At first it didn’t compute. I thought they were raiding the Stow-and-Go, swooping in on Pete and his band of thieves. I was thankful I hadn’t arrived five minutes earlier. But then I heard Heidi’s voice bleating at me through a loudspeaker, and I saw what must have been half the Tampa police force take cover behind their vehicles, Glocks and rifles pointed at me.
“Sean Alexander Walsh,” Heidi said, “I need you to step out of the vehicle with your hands on your head. Nice and slow.”
I did as I was told. The chopper hovered so low to the ground that the wind off its blades had my blazer flapping and my hair blowing in every direction. I stood at what felt like the junction of a thousand spotlights, my mind spinning through every possible scenario. Only one seemed likely: Vincent had given up on me a day too early, leaked my file straight to the precinct.
Heidi, dressed in Kevlar, crept up on me with her Glock raised. A small fleet of uniforms kept pace behind her.
“Sean Walsh,” Heidi said, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Anthony Costello.”
Murder? It was more than I could process. Without thinking, I took a step forward, dropped my arms to my sides. Heidi and her entourage cocked their guns in unison.
“Hands, hands, hands!” she screamed.
Then: “On your knees. Now.”
She let one of the unis pat me down and cuff me. She’d have done it herself if she wasn’t getting such a kick out of pointing that gun at my head.
“You have the right to remain silent,” she said. “Anything you say—”
“What the hell is this?” I shouted. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
“—will be used against you in a court of law…”
I wasn’t listening.
“You know where I was that day,” I said. “I was on shift. I was working a scene on the other end of Tampa. You know that.”
She kept on reading me my rights. I looked around at the small army assembled to hunt me down. You’d have thought I was Pablo Escobar.
“Search it,” Heidi said.
A crew of gloved detectives descended on the Jeep. I’d worked alongside each and every one of them. They were my colleagues. My friends. I’d been to their weddings, seen their kids baptized. If they had any regrets about what they were doing, it didn’t show on their faces.
Heidi signaled for me to get to my feet. Together we watched Jimmy, Beth, Tom, and Samuel strip my car down to the studs. They tore out the carpet, dropped anything that wasn’t nailed down into an evidence bag.
“Come on, Heidi,” I said. “What is this? What do you think they’re going to find?”
Crickets. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk to me. My partner of more
