“First and foremost, Mr. Costello,” Sean said, “I didn’t kill your nephew. Anthony and I were friends. We were partners. Hell, we were like brothers.”
“Brothers kill each other all the time,” Vincent pointed out. “So do friends. As a homicide detective, you must know this.”
“Yes, but there’s usually a reason. A contested will. A woman. Some long-standing grudge. None of that was true with me and Anthony. I don’t have any family of my own. No siblings. My mother died when I was young, and my father’s a drunk. I haven’t seen him in twenty years. Anthony was an orphan, too, except he had you looking out for him. He took me in the way you took him in. We went out fishing on his boat. We played golf together. We talked. We grew to trust each other, and that was rare for both of us.
“Then he introduced me to you, invited me into the family business. He even gave my wife a job. It’s not easy making it on a cop’s salary. I owed—I owe—everything I have to your nephew. To you. I’m telling you, Mr. Costello, I wept when I heard he was dead. I had to run out of the squad room.”
He was getting teary now. I watched the whites of his eyes turn red. It was a damn fine performance, and I could sense exactly where it was going.
“As for how Anthony died and who killed him, I told it all to your man Defoe. Anthony and I both had our vices. We both paid the wrong kind of attention to the women in our lives. I have a temper. Sarah bore the brunt of my temper, even when it wasn’t her I was mad at. I was quick with a slap. Sometimes a punch. I’ll admit that. I see myself more clearly now than I ever have before. I deserve to be punished, but only for the crimes I did commit.
“And Anthony? Anthony was all appetite. Food, money, and especially women—he couldn’t get enough, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. That isn’t news to anyone at this table. I didn’t know that my wife was one of the women who said no until it was too late. It never occurred to me that Anthony would cross that line. Maybe that seems hard to believe given my years as a cop—given all the things I’ve seen people do to each other—but like I said, Anthony and I were close. I thought of him as a brother.”
Here he paused to wipe away tears with the heels of both palms. The waterworks were real even if the sentiment behind them was fake. I don’t know how Sean did it. He hadn’t trusted Anthony. He hadn’t loved him. He hadn’t thought of him as a friend, let alone a brother. He looked at Anthony and saw opportunity knocking—period. From day one it was a contest to determine who could remain useful the longest. Whoever won that contest would see the other buried or jailed. There was no third way for their relationship to end.
“Sarah had a violent husband and—I’m sorry to say it—a sexual predator for a boss,” Sean continued. “Maybe it was only natural that she’d find a violent solution.”
I rose halfway out of my chair, started to protest. Vincent held up a hand.
“You’ll have your turn,” he said. “For now, the floor belongs to your husband.”
I sneered at that last word but did as I was told. Sean finished making his case.
“Murdering Anthony and framing me for it was like killing two birds with one stone. Anthony would never lay hands on another woman, and she’d have her vengeance on me. Everybody knows that being a cop in prison is a fate worse than death. She’d wake up every morning with a smile on her face, thinking about the day that was in store for me.
“And it couldn’t have been the other way around. She couldn’t have killed me and framed Anthony for it. A Costello would have a brigade of lawyers behind him. They’d keep digging until the truth came out, and when it did, there’d be nowhere she could run to, nowhere she’d be safe. But me? A trial would eat through my resources in under a week.
“Like I told Defoe, I’m not just speculating here. It all came spilling out during the long drive from Texas to Tampa. The only thing she wouldn’t tell me was what role the other two played. She claimed it was self-defense, but once my knife turned up with Anthony’s blood on it, I knew that couldn’t be true. The three of them fled for a reason. It was all choreographed down to the last detail.”
He pushed back in his chair, let his head drop. All eyes turned to me. This was a Costello-style trial, and it was the defense’s turn to speak. Only I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Defoe had been right: this wasn’t my world.
But it was Sean’s. The parade of career criminals he’d interrogated over the years had taught him how to lie convincingly. The trick, it seemed, was to ground your lies in partial truths. My husband was violent. Anthony was a sexual predator. The three of us had killed Anthony and framed Sean. All that was true. But I hadn’t confessed. Sean hadn’t wept for Anthony, and he wasn’t an orphan: his mother was alive and well and teaching kindergarten in Boca Raton. She just didn’t want anything to do with her son anymore.
“Well?” Vincent asked.
I was that little girl on talent night all over again—struck dumb, unable to walk out onstage. I was sweating and breathing hard. My lower lip began to tremble. And all I could think to do was confess. Come clean and
