“Sounds a little like you,” I said, “except for the high IQ and the part about being in shape.”
“Maybe we’ll be needing that phone book after all,” Roselli said.
“Come on,” I said. “You both know I didn’t do this.”
“Mulligan,” Polecki said, “you have now idea how much I’d love to see you go down for it.”
Dumb and Dumber made a few more empty threats, then got up and left the room. Fifteen minutes later they came back trailed by two more friendly faces. Jay Wargart, a big lug with a five o’clock shadow and fists like hams, and Sandra Freitas, a bottle blonde with rumble hips and a predatory Cameron Diaz smile. They worked homicide. What the hell did
61
Freitas settled into the chair across from me and dropped a large manila envelope on the desk. Wargart walked around the table and stood behind me. Polecki and Roselli held up the wall near the door, the little room crowded now.
Freitas opened the envelope and extracted three crime-scene photos.
“She had your name and number on a phone-message slip in her pocketbook,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Witnesses saw you knocking on her door a couple of days before she was shot.”
I kept my mouth zipped.
“She’d been spending a lot of time looking at property in Mount Hope lately. Did she see something she shouldn’t have? Is that why you killed her?”
I just looked at her. I should have asked for a lawyer an hour ago, but I wanted to see if I could learn something from the questions.
“She was shot three times with a forty-five, but of course you know that, don’t you? I’m betting ballistics will show it’s the same gun we found when we executed a search warrant on your shit hole of an apartment this morning.”
“How much?” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“How much do you want to bet?”
Wargart kicked my chair, slamming my chest into the table. I’d seen the routine before—bad cop, worse cop. The vial of pills was still on the tabletop. My ribs were pleading for them now, but I didn’t figure Dumb and Dumber and the homicide twins were going let me have any.
They grilled me about the murder for an hour before they unhooked the cuffs and gave me my one phone call. I used it to call Jack to tell him what was going on and let him know he was off the hook, at least for now.
“Jesus, Liam,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?” I gave him Veronica’s number and asked him to let her know why I wouldn’t be home for a day or two. There wouldn’t be enough to hold me once the ballistics report came back. At least that’s what I told myself.
When I was done, they tossed me into a holding cell. I chatted up a couple of meth dealers and then made a study of the folk-art mural scratched into the concrete blocks. Its visceral intensity, raw energy, and undiluted emotion stood in sharp contrast to its cool interplay of realism and impressionism. Think Grandma Moses meets Ron Jeremy.
I was dead tired. I stretched out on a hard, dirty cot, but my ribs wouldn’t let me sleep. It seemed like hours before I finally drifted off.
* * *
Rain pelted the courtroom windows. Gloria writhed and moaned from the witness stand: “Make it stop! Make it stop!”
Dorcas peered down at her from the bench. “I know this is difficult for you,” she said, “but just answer the fucking questions.” Then she reached inside her black robe and pulled out a coffeemaker and a five-gallon gas can.
The little thug rose from the prosecution table.
“Is the man who did this to you in this courtroom?” he asked.
Gloria nodded and pointed her finger.
“The record will show,” Dorcas said, “that the witness has identified Fucking Bastard.”
In the jury box, Hardcastle, Veronica, and Brady Coyle laughed and slapped high fives.
Dorcas was fiddling with the coffeemaker, trying to set the timer. The witness was still pointing at me, but now she had Cheryl Scibelli’s face. Then the coffeemaker exploded in a ball of flame, and I woke up. My ribs felt like they were on fire.
62
After forty-eight hours, I was kicked.
They returned my pills, belt, shoelaces, Mickey Mouse watch, lighter, and wallet, but the three twenties that had been in it were gone. My Visa card was still where it belonged, but I assumed they had taken down the number to check recent purchases. Fortunately I hadn’t bought any coffeemakers lately. I didn’t get my grandfather’s gun back.
Secretariat had been impounded and was no doubt being torn apart at the state police crime lab. I dry- swallowed a couple of painkillers and walked the half mile home from the station. The apartment had been tossed, the kitchen drawers pulled out and emptied on the floor. I was beyond caring. I stripped, stepped gingerly into the shower, and let the hot water stream over my ribs for a long, long time.
Late Friday morning, I stepped off the elevator and walked stiffly into the newsroom. Keyboard clacking dribbled into silence as two dozen reporters and copy editors stopped what they were doing to stare. At first, no one said anything. Then a drawl broke the silence.
“Burn down a neighborhood so you can write about it? Hot diggity! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Shut it, Hardcastle,” Lomax said.
He rose from his throne behind the city desk, gestured that I should follow, and stepped into Pemberton’s glass-walled office. I was halfway there when Veronica intercepted me.
“Are you all right?”
“As good as can be expected.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took her hand and squeezed it. “Keep me company after I have this friendly little chat.”
Then I turned away, entered the managing editor’s office, and sank into one of the maroon leather visitor’s chairs.
Pemberton took off his glasses, wiped them with a Kleenex, and put them back on. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs of his starched white shirt and rolled up the sleeves.
“Can I get you anything, Mulligan? Bottled water? A cup of coffee, perhaps?”
“I could use some Percocet.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. I’m good.”
“Yes, well. So let’s get right to it, then. We seem to have something of a situation here.”
“A situation?” Lomax said. “Feels more like a goddamned train wreck.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Have you observed how this unfortunate affair is playing on the TV news?” Pemberton said.
“Sorry, but the seventy-two-inch, high-def, flat-screen entertainment center in the holding cell was on the fritz.”
“Yes, of course. You were being detained. It must have been quite unpleasant for you.”
“Quite unpleasant indeed,” I said.
