Still As Death (34 page)

They’d found him watching TV in his apartment and charged him, but Quinn knew what she meant. He hadn’t felt all that great about it, either. After the outcome of the Hapner Museum case, it made Quinn feel like he didn’t have a lot to show for the past few weeks of work.

Now, sitting at a table at an outdoor café around the corner from headquarters, Quinn studied Ellie’s face. She seemed a little older today, her forehead drawn down in concentration. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he’d come to see her differently, Quinn didn’t trust his own perceptions anymore. But no, he realized, she had her hair different today. That was it. She’d cut her hair. It was shorter, with bangs, and it was clean and shiny. It looked good.

She could tell he was staring at her, so he said, “You got your hair cut. It looks good.”

“Oh.” A hand flew up to her hair. “Thanks.”

There was a silence, and he found that he knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“Look, when I went off on that guy, it was stupid. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”

He hesitated. He could let it go, tell her it was okay. He was so tired, he almost didn’t want to hear about anyone else’s pain. But he knew she wanted to tell him, and so he said, “Why’d you do it?”

She took a sip of her soda, then leaned forward, squaring her shoulders, and looked him right in the eyes for a few seconds before looking away. “I figured Havrilek would’ve told you. I left Ohio because of something that happened out there. A guy, another cop, he asked me out and we went to the movies and his place and he, he … raped me. But because it was a date, you know the story. I went to the hospital, made them do a rape kit, had them hold the evidence. I didn’t end up pressing charges because I couldn’t do that to my parents, have it in the paper and everything, but everyone knew.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

“The thing is that I’ve said it so many times to victims, you shouldn’t blame yourself. He had no right. But I do blame myself. I do.” She picked up her soda again, but instead of taking another sip, she held it in both hands. Quinn recognized the gesture. It was what you did with a cup of hot coffee on a cold day, letting the warmth seep through the mug to your cold hands.

“They didn’t fire you, did they?” He’d heard of cases where that happened, where a female cop got raped by another cop and they found a reason to let her go because she made everybody so damned uncomfortable.

“Nah. My lieutenant was pretty decent about it, actually. Gave me a really good reference. That’s why I’m here.” She smiled for a second before her face fell again. “You probably wondered about that. That’s why I’m here. I got a kick-ass reference.”

“You’re here because you’re good.”

She looked up at him with eyes that he recognized for what they were. Maura’s eyes, wounded eyes. He’d realized it standing there on the sidewalk in front of the museum, when he’d thought of Maura’s face, when he’d realized he was in love with Sweeney.

Looking at her, he thought of Maura again. He would never forget the way she’d looked at him the last time he’d seen her alive, angry and accusing and sad. That was why Ellie irritated him so.

But Maura was dead. And Ellie wasn’t Maura. She was his partner, a cop, a good cop, and she had had something bad happen to her. That was all.

“You shouldn’t feel like it’s your fault,” he said gently.

“I know. But I do.”

They watched a couple sit down at one of the other tables and lean in to touch hands across the table. The woman was younger than the man, very beautiful, wearing a halter dress that showed off her tanned shoulders. Quinn felt an ache, not desire exactly, but a kind of wanting.

“So what’s the deal with you and Sweeney?” Ellie asked finally.

He decided not to lie to her. “God, I have no idea. I really have no idea.”

“Does she know?”

Quinn didn’t need to ask what she meant. But he didn’t know what to say. He finally settled on, “No. Not exactly,” because he was pretty sure that Sweeney didn’t know that when she’d kissed him he’d been so surprised that he hadn’t known what to do. He’d thought about kissing her more often than he’d admitted to himself, but when it had actually happened he had wanted to slow it down, to stop and just … talk to her. Her hair had seemed to be everywhere, tendrils falling away from the barrette in which she’d pinned it up, and her long limbs had felt hot against his. Kissing her had been … different. That was all he could come up with. She had felt so different from Maura, so much more substantial against his body. From the first time he’d kissed Maura, the first time they’d made love, he’d always been careful with her, as though she would break under his weight. But with Sweeney, it was as though she was challenging him, with her lips and her body. He’d pushed her away, wanting to slow down and talk about whatever it was that was between them, wanting, he realized, to finish telling her about his class and about Megan and Patience. Over the last few months, he’d found himself saving up little stories to tell her, and there was a way his stories were still up there in his head, wanting to come out.

He had wanted to take her somewhere where they could stay up half the night, telling each other their stories. That was it, he saw. He wanted to know who her best friend had been in third grade, what her favorite movie was. What was the best vacation she’d even taken? He wanted to know what she ate for breakfast and whether she’d ever broken any bones. But she had misunderstood, and before he could explain, she was gone.

Why hadn’t he gone after her, called her that night? All day yesterday, he’d kept taking out his phone and finding her number, but he hadn’t known where to start.

Now he thought he did know.

“I have some things I should do,” he said awkwardly to Ellie. “Do you mind if I take off before you finish your soda?”

“No, not at all. It’s nice to just sit.” She grinned at him. “Good luck.”

He allowed a little smile. “Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” She sat back in her chair, the late afternoon sun on her face, and Quinn left her there, looking like a cat curled up in a patch of light.

He tried Sweeney’s cell phone, and when it went directly to voice mail, he sat there in the car for a moment, thinking about what to do. The waiting itself gave him courage, and the idea of going to her house became clearer the longer he sat there watching the traffic. He could almost see himself at her door, telling her that he’d made a mistake, that he’d just wanted to slow everything down, to talk to her, to know what it was she had meant when she had kissed him.

It didn’t take long to get to Russell Street. He knew which apartment was hers, though he’d never been inside. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door, his body suddenly full of a riotous energy. It zinged through his veins, zipping through his limbs like electricity. He knew what he was going to say. It was simple. Or perhaps he wouldn’t say anything, perhaps he would just … take her in his arms and kiss her. It was what he wanted to do, he realized suddenly. It was his … he almost laughed as he said the word to himself … destiny.

He heard footsteps inside and then the door opening, and he took a deep breath and looked up into the eyes of a tall, dark-skinned man wearing white painter’s pants and a blue undershirt. The smell of paint filled the hallway. Beyond him, Quinn could see the empty apartment, the stepladders and buckets, the sheets spread over the floor.

“Can I help you?” the guy asked.

It took Quinn a minute to say, “I’m a friend of Sweeney’s. Is she … around?”

“She moved out a couple days ago,” the guy said.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Nah. She said she might be out of the country for a while, so I should send any mail to a post office box. You want it?” Quinn shook his head. “The guy who helped her move her stuff was this tall guy, dark hair. I saw him around a lot. Nice guy. She didn’t tell you she was moving?”

“No, but that’s okay. I’ll just … I’ll give her a call. I didn’t realize she was moving.”

“Hey, I think it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.” The man looked genuinely sorry. He must have seen something on Quinn’s face that made him feel the need to soothe his ego. “I’m sure she was gonna tell you.”

“Thanks,” Quinn said, turning and stumbling a little as he headed back down the stairs. Behind him, he heard the door to the apartment close. Outside again, he felt suddenly dizzy. All that crazy energy he’d felt at the door was now just sitting in his stomach. He leaned over for a second, sure he was going to throw up.

That was it. She’d gotten back together with Ian, gone to London with him. Of course she had. The kiss had been just a stupid thing. She’d been drinking, hadn’t she? That must have been it.

He got back in the Honda, started it up, then shut it down again and got out. His stomach still knotted up, he started walking toward Davis Square. He needed a drink. Before he could go home and face Patience, with her knowing eyes, before he could face Megan, he needed a beer. He took one last look up at the building, as though he might find Sweeney in one of the windows, then put his head down and started walking.

SWEENEY LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW of the airplane over the dry, beige landscape. She could see a patchwork of farmland every once in a while, and then long stretches of desert. There was something soothing about it, the land uncomplicated and laid bare, nothing hidden or obscured.

In Cambridge, it was already winter. An early frost had killed everything green and living, and a freak October snowstorm had covered everything in a virginal white layer of snow, then melted into a depressing slushy mess. On the way out to the airport that morning, she had watched the almost-bare trees and dirty snow flash by and finally felt her spirits lift at the thought of sun, of spicy food, of mariachi bands and beers with limes.

“We have a beautiful day for our flight to Oaxaca City,” the pilot’s voice came on the address system. Then he said something in Spanish and Sweeney turned to her seatmate. “Did you hear what he said? What did he say?” The Spanish came again, fast and incomprehensible to her. She’d been listening to language tapes for a couple of weeks, but the pilot’s voice was much harder to catch than the slower-speaking man and woman on her tapes.

Toby, who spoke nearly perfect Spanish, looked annoyed. “He
just said the same thing he said in English, that we have a beautiful day for our flight to Oaxaca City.”

“Okay, okay.” She rearranged her magazines on her lap.

“Are you going to do this to me the whole trip?”

“No. I’m practicing.
Yo soy Sweeney. Donde esta el baño?”

“Not bad.” He grinned, then said, “You’re still going to ask me to translate the whole trip, though, aren’t you? I’m starting to regret this already.”

“Look, if you and I and the General could live together for six weeks in your apartment without killing each other, I think you can handle me for a month in sunny Mexico.”

“I suppose that’s right.” He went back to the book he was reading, but Sweeney touched his arm and he looked up again, squinting into the strangely angled sun coming through the window.

“Toby. Thanks for letting me stay with you. I don’t think I really said that.”

“Come on. You don’t have to say it.”

“I know, but …”

He reached across her and pulled down the shade on her window. “You still haven’t talked to Ian?”

“No.” She moved the magazines to the seat pocket, then took them out again.

“And what about the cop?”

“Quinn.” She shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

He smiled at her, searching her face for something, and she looked away as the flight attendant came around taking drink orders. Sweeney got her wallet out of her bag and waved her over.

“Let’s get tequilas,” she said to Toby. “Because of Mexico.” She ordered two Cuervos and poured them out, the yellow liquid running silkily from the bottle.

“To the Day of the Dead,” she said, touching her plastic cup to Toby’s.

They came in low over the brown and arid-looking land.

“To Mexico,” he said.