Homicide Related (39 page)

“Even if you ditch that phone,” Dooley said, “there's going to be a record somewhere of the number and the fact that it belonged to you. You can count on that. They're going to find out that you knew her.”

“Knew who?” Malone said.

“Lorraine,” Dooley said.

“Lorraine?”

Dooley had to hand it to Malone; the guy gave away nothing. It was as if the name meant nothing to him.

“Lorraine McCormack. She had your cell phone number.”

Malone smiled. “A lot of people have my number.”

“And Lorraine was one of them. And someone killed her, in case you missed that on the news.”

Still nothing.

“That phone call you just got,” Dooley said. “That was a friend of mine. I gave him your number. Lorraine had it written in a book—she drew a little heart around it.”

Malone laughed. “So?”

“She was cleaning herself up,” Dooley said. “She was getting her life together. I talked to her sponsor, you know, from the meetings she used to go to. She said she thought Lorraine was doing it for a guy. She was doing it for you, right?”

“I don't know who you're talking about.”

“Cut the crap,” Dooley said, louder than he had intended, loud enough that a couple of suits at the next table turned in his direction. “Jeffie saw you with her.” Sunday night on the late news, for the first time in his life, Jeffie had set eyes on Lorraine. He didn't know she was Dooley's mother. But he did know that he'd seen her before, back behind Jay-Zee's with his downtown guy who worked in the gold office building. “That's what this is all about—Lorraine.”

Malone glanced around. Maybe to the people at the tables around them he looked calm, unruffled. But Dooley saw the tightness around his mouth when he smiled.

“You said there were no pictures,” Dooley said. “But you're wrong. There's one. You give me a hard time, you try to bullshit me, you don't tell me what I want to know, and I'll take my story and that picture to the cops and they'll be all over you, making their case and making your life miserable while they do. I can guarantee it.”

“What picture?” Malone said.

“A picture of you and her”—he was going to say,
and me,
but he couldn't make his mouth form the words. “From sixteen or seventeen years ago.” He waited to see if Malone would make the connection. If he did, he didn't show it. “You knew her. You dumped her. And she was trying to get her act together again so she could be with you. Am I right?”

Malone said nothing.

“Am I right?” Dooley said, raising his voice again. This time more people turned to looked at him. “You answer my questions or I walk—now.”

Malone took a sip of scotch.

“I heard what happened to her,” he said finally. He kept his voice low, soft, like a man trying to soothe a vicious dog before it decided to take a bite out of him. “And I'm sorry. Okay, yes, she contacted me. And, yes, I agreed to see her. But a lot of water had passed under the bridge. We were together for a few months, but that was a long time ago, and her life …” He shook his head.

“Did you love her?”

“What?”

“Did you love her?”

“Is that important?”

Dooley surprised himself when he said, “It is to me.”

Malone contemplated his glass of scotch for a moment. “She was a fun girl but, no, I didn't love her.”

“She loved you.”

“So she said. She was pretty intense, you know what I mean?”

He was talking to Dooley now like he knew for a fact that Dooley had known her, that she wasn't just some woman he had seen once, like Jeffie had. Dooley wondered if Lorraine had talked about him.

“My situation wasn't like hers,” Malone said. “I took a year off school, had some fun, but then I had to get on with life.”

“So you just split?” Dooley said, wondering if Malone would mention that there had been a child.

“Something like that.”

“Then what?”

Malone shrugged. “Then nothing—much. A few teary phone calls at the beginning. A few idle threats—”

“Threats?”

“She was going to hurt herself—or so she said.”

She'd managed that just fine.

“After that?”

“Nothing.”

“Until maybe six or seven months ago, right?” Dooley said.

Malone didn't answer.

“Right?” Dooley said, raising his voice again.

“More like nine months ago,” Malone said. “We ran into each other. She made a fool of herself. I thought that was it. Then, somehow, she found out where my office was, and she called me. She showed up at my house, for Pete's sake.”

“So you killed her?”

“No.”

“What was she doing with you behind Jay-Zee's?”

“I told you,” Malone said, working now to stay smooth, but not doing well with it. Dooley was getting under his skin. “Jeffrey was mistaken. Lorraine had a substance abuse problem. She never did know when to stop. People like that are prone to overdose.”

“She used to cry about you.”

“I can't help that.”

“She cleaned herself up for you.”

“I never asked her to. I never asked her to do anything for me.”

“It wasn't right the way she died,” Dooley said. “It took the cops almost a whole day to even find out who she was.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Malone said. “The way she lived—that's what it's like down there. There are people who see a body lying half-naked behind a dumpster and what do they do? Do they call the police, like any normal person would do? No, they take her money, her wallet, any pills they find that they think they can sell. That's the kind of people she hung around with.”

Dooley studied Malone while he thought about what he had just said.

“You know who I am, right?” he said.

“Some scumbag friend of Jeffrey Eccles,” Malone said.

Right.

“Did she put up a fight?” he said.

Malone stared evenly at him.

“They said there were bruises on her arms. Did she put up a fight?”

Nothing.

“I bet Jeffie did, though,” Dooley said.

“Look, you came to me for money—I'm sure we can come to some kind of agreement. You give me that picture of Lorraine and me. You forget she had my phone number. We can work it out. What do you say we get together tomorrow, somewhere a little more private, where we can do the exchange?”

“Now
you want to pay me off, even though you weren't behind Jay-Zee's that night and you have nothing to do with what happened to her?”

“My clients pay me well for my advice—for my reputation. It's worth it to me to keep the police out of my life.”

“So you want to meet me and pay me and maybe do me like you did Jeffie?” Dooley shook his head. He started to get up.

“Be reasonable,” Malone said, soothing, very soothing. “You give me something I want, I give you something you want.”

“What does the D stand for?” he said.

“What?”

“The D—Ronald D. Malone. What does it stand for?”

Malone's lips stretched into a smirk.

“David,” he said.

David. Not Dooley.

“She fed you a line, huh?” Malone said.

Apparently she had, not that Dooley minded, not now that he'd met the guy.

He glanced around and was surprised to see Randall coming past the maitre d' so soon. He hadn't been sure whether Warren would be able to get hold of him. But he had. Myers was right behind him. A couple of uniformed police officers followed. Forks and glasses paused in midair as people turned to watch them march through the dining room and stand at the opening to the booth where Dooley was sitting.

“Jeffie fought back,” Dooley said. “They have blood. They're going to go for DNA.”

Malone sat where he was, but he wasn't smiling anymore.

“Ronald Malone,” Detective Randall said. “We'd like to talk to you about Lorraine McCormack and Jeffrey Eccles.”

Dooley called Beth and told her he couldn't meet her at seven o'clock after all because the police needed him to make a formal statement. He said it would help to get his uncle released.

“They found the person who did it?” Beth said.

“Yeah,” Dooley said. He knew he would eventually have to tell her who that person was. But when he did, it would be in person, not over the phone. “I'll call you, okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “Tell your uncle I said hi.” There was a pause. “That sounds kind of lame, doesn't it?”

“I'll tell him you were asking about him. He'll like that.”

Dooley's uncle got out the next afternoon. The first thing he wanted to do was go home, take a shower, and put on some clean clothes. The next thing he wanted to do was cook what he called a decent meal. He wouldn't let Jeannie or Dooley do a thing. He poured some wine for Jeannie and a Coke for Dooley and sat them down at the kitchen table. They could watch—in fact, he seemed to want them there, although he didn't come right out and say so. He didn't say anything about what had happened, either. He just cooked and drank wine and smiled at Jeannie, and then they all ate together. Dooley left them both in the living room while he cleaned up the kitchen. But his uncle didn't stay there. He came into the kitchen and put on an apron to help Dooley.

“It's okay,” Dooley said. “You stay with Jeannie.”

“Jeannie's okay on her own for a little while,” his uncle said. He rinsed a couple of plates and put them in the dishwasher. He said, “Your friend Jeffrey could have saved everyone a lot of grief if he'd just come out and told you he saw Lorraine.”

“He didn't know I knew her,” Dooley said. “He never met her.”

His uncle digested this. He rinsed some cutlery and put that in the dishwasher.

“About the money,” he said.

Dooley had the tap running, filling the sink with hot water so he could tackle the pots and the broiler pan. He turned it off and looked at his uncle.

“I wanted you to have a chance,” his uncle said. “The first time I went to see you, you were so messed up, you were practically climbing the walls. You remember that? And what you did—you were fifteen years old. When I was a kid, fifteen-year-old boys were out playing hockey or softball. They weren't doing what you were doing. Getting locked up was probably the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Dooley wasn't sure he'd go that far.

“I wanted her to stay away from you, that's all,” his uncle said. “She'd made a mess of her life and yours. I didn't want her to make things worse, not when it looked like you might have a chance. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. Maybe you don't want to hear it. But she was willing, Ryan. I didn't exactly have to twist her arm to get her to take the money and stay the hell away from you.”

“She knew,” Dooley said. He had been chewing it over ever since he'd visited the cemetery. “You said they never told her about your sister, but she knew. I figure she found out when she was thirteen or fourteen.” Dooley explained about the picture he had found. “Did you tell her?”

“No.”

“You think maybe your parents did?”

“If they did, they never told me.” He looked hard at Dooley. “I have something for you, Ryan,” he said at last.

Dooley waited.

“It will have to wait until tomorrow, when the bank opens,” his uncle said.

Twenty-One