St. Patrick's Day Murder (12 page)

“Maybe it isn’t a setup. Maybe the morning after the shooting they empty out Scotty’s locker and find my letter telling Scotty I needed my three grand back. And then someone remembers the fight and blows it up into something it wasn’t. The team working on the homicide picks it up and runs with it. Then some overzealous guy on the team drops the bullets in my drawer when I’m out. Once they think they’ve found their man, they stop looking and just work on closing the case. Nice and neat.”

“Besides the loan, what else would make them think you could have done it?”

“They think I had opportunity. After St. Patrick’s Day, they interviewed me—and Petra—and contrived a time frame that shows I could have been waiting in that parking lot. According to my calculations I couldn’t, but that’s what they’d expect me to say.”

“Talk to me about motive,” I said.

“You can always find a motive if you work at it. I found out they interviewed Betsy before I was arrested. I don’t have to tell you Betsy isn’t happy we split. I didn’t tell her about Petra because I didn’t want to hurt her. But the guys interviewing her did, just dropped it in her lap and watched her react. Who knows what she said?”

About what? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. Ray was artfully skirting the substance of my questions while seeming to answer them fully. Sure, Betsy could have said mean, nasty things about her husband when she heard he was practically living with someone else. And although she hadn’t struck me
as a vindictive person, no one could foresee how she would respond. It came down to whether she had told the truth, not whether she was vindictive. But Ray had made up his mind that he would not talk about substance.

“Have you spoken to Betsy since your arrest?” I asked.

“Once.”

Nothing doing there. “What have they got you doing on the job?”

“Make-work. All you need to know is the alphabet. Counting is one step up.”

“It’s better than sitting in your apartment.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s better.”

“Any other ideas?” I asked. We had pretty much eaten our lunch by that time.

He gave me a faint smile. “I thought you were the idea person.”

What I thought had to be obvious. He had eyed my coat when I took it off. The letter from Jean hung between us like bait on an invisible hook, enticing each of us to bite, but Ray would not. He knew what it said, but he couldn’t be sure if I did, if I even knew of its existence.

“I found the letter this morning,” I said. “After I called you.”

“Where is it?” he asked quickly.

“At home.” I took a deep breath. “I read it, Ray.”

His face showed nothing. “It’s not your business,” he said evenly. “It isn’t anyone’s business.”

“I’m investigating a murder. I want an explanation.”

“Look at the postmark. It was written a long time ago. It was nothing. Something that happened between two consenting adults.”

“Who else knows about it?”

“No one. We kept the shades down.”

The man really riled me. “Ray, we’re talking about a motive for homicide. If one other person knows—”

“You’re the other person, Chris. That letter isn’t your property. It got into your coat by accident and you should destroy it.”

It was pointless to pursue it. I had gotten more from him
than I expected. “I think there’s a lot missing,” I said. “I don’t suppose you know who did it.”

“I haven’t the faintest. I don’t know anyone who’d kill Scotty.” He laughed. “Except maybe me. And I didn’t do it.”

I went to a nearby church and got there in time for the Good Friday service. When it was over, I went to Jack’s apartment, showered, and changed.

As always when I waited for Jack after not seeing him for several days, I felt the accumulating desire of sex. Whoever first used the word “hunger” to describe that feeling had done so with great accuracy. Not only was the word right on the mark, but the two activities, sex and food, making love and eating, were so bound up together in our lives that it was sometimes hard to separate them.

I almost always saw Jack at a mealtime—and we almost always delayed the food in favor of the other, satisfying one hunger and increasing the other. I rather liked the commingling. The smell of food or the taste of something good often gave me a sexual jolt.

“You’re nuts, Kix,” I said aloud, and laughed.

Jack came home, and we made the usual decision to satisfy the usual hunger first. Although we had passed the spring equinox a week earlier, it was dusky in the bedroom, where we left the lights out. The sheets were fresh and crisp. I had changed them, as Saturday was Jack’s day for the Laundromat and cleaner. The room was almost too warm, the heat hissing from the radiator, blanketing the sounds of our love, the whispers and murmurs, the small yelps and bigger cries, the words I had heard only a few days ago for the first time and which I would never tire of hearing. Our bodies knew each other well now and worked with a beautiful rhythm. I could not have been happier.

* * *

We sat at the table eating one of Jack’s creations, fish with a marvelous tomato sauce with olives and other goodies topped with feta cheese. It even looked professional on the serving platter, and it smelled wonderful.

I leaned over and held his wrist before he dug in. “I want to say something.”

“Talk.”

“I love you.”

He swallowed. “Before fish?”

“Away from the heat of passion. Calmly and coolly.” I had not said it before, and I had thought a lot about a time and place. I hadn’t exactly selected “before fish,” but it was as good a time as any.

He touched my face, my hair. He took my hand and kissed it. “Accepted,” he said. He kissed my hand again. “And returned.”

“Bon appétit.”

“It isn’t dinnertime conversation,” Jack said after we’d dipped into the fish, “but I’m going to tell you what I heard today. It’s about that IAD rumor I told you about.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Since my lunch with Ray I had a pretty good idea what was coming.

“Very bad. It started out as ‘unsubstantiated information on an overheard.’ That’s what it’s called when someone picks up some scuttlebutt on a cop and reports it. Eventually it finds its way into a D.D.5.” A D.D.5 is a form used in the Detective Division to report interviews, information, almost anything that’s relevant to a case.

“Overheard information? That’s outrageous.”

“It may be outrageous, but Internal Affairs collects this stuff. Someone said Ray jumped Scotty’s old lady.”

I didn’t need a translation. “It’s true, Jack.” I told him about the letter, which I had left home, so Ray wouldn’t be able to talk me out of it. “You think Ray bragged?”

“Knowing him I’d say no.”

“And I’m sure Jean didn’t. How does information like that find its way to Internal Affairs?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Jack, why would Ray keep that letter? All it could do is cause him trouble.”

Jack put his fork down. He looked troubled. “Let me tell you something about cops. If you looked in a cop’s locker tonight, a nice guy with a wife and kids, you’d find some things that would surprise you. There might be what you’d call girlie magazines, even bordering on pornography. You’d find letters from women, civilians he met while doing his job, flattering, admiring letters. There might be snapshots of women, sometimes with the cop in them. A guy who goes to church with his family every Sunday, who speaks out loud and clear about adultery, a guy who never wears anything but jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of sneakers when he comes to work, has a designer suit, a clean white shirt, a silk tie, and a pair of hundred-dollar black shoes in his locker for a night when he tells his wife he’s working overnight.”

I sat still, my eyes on his face as he spoke, the inevitable questions forming in my mind.

“And when that cop dies, like Scotty, someone in the station house goes into his locker—they don’t need a warrant to do that, by the way; it’s Police Department property—and they sanitize the contents before sending it home to his widow.” He stopped and met my eyes. “So when you ask your question, why did Ray hang on to a letter like that, it’s what cops do, Chris. He was just a little smarter than most of them; he took it home, where it was safer. Because he never expected to have his apartment searched because he would never do anything that would warrant a search.”

I said, “I see,” although I didn’t see it all; I didn’t see most of it.

“You don’t know cops, Chris, and there’s a lot cops don’t tell their women. You know me, you know Ray a little, and you knew Scotty a little. I’m not saying we’re different. It’s pretty obvious that we’re not. You’re part of a group with a lot of strong macho bonds.”

“It’s OK, Jack.”

“I know you’re wondering. I’d wonder, too, if I were in your shoes.”

I put my hand on his to stop him, but he went on.

“A week after I met you, I cleaned out my locker. And the week before I started law school, I cleaned it out again.”

I kissed his cheek, feeling honored.

When we finished dinner, Jack made a phone call. I knew immediately it was to the man watching Joe Farina.

“Sal, it’s Jack. What’s up?” He listened for a brief time. “OK. I’ll keep in touch.” He hung up. “Farina went home after his tour.”

“Home to Sharon Moore?”

“I think that’s the only home he has now. Anyway, he’s still there. Lights are on. No one’s come in or gone out.”

I felt a little uneasy. It was eight o’clock, four hours till midnight. We had not yet discussed what was going to happen. “Maybe he’s not the guy.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for eleven o’clock to leave for Manhattan.”

“What are we going to do, Jack?” I had cleared the table and Jack was starting to do the dishes. I stood next to him, the dishtowel in my hand.

“We’ll drive over there. There’s plenty of time. Whoever he is, I don’t think he’s going to be a couple of hours early. It’s too cold, and if he picked the site, you can bet he knows it.”

We finished the dishes without talking about it, but it was the only thing I could think about. Crazy things went through my mind. Did this man know something or was this meeting an elaborate way to get me alone for purposes having nothing to do with Scotty’s death? Was he someone who knew the killer—or knew about the killer—and if so, how could he? Jack was certain there had been only one person in the car he shot at. Or could it be the killer himself? Had I accidentally stumbled on something that I had not yet recognized as a lead—and did he want to erase the possibility that I would put everything together and discover the evidence that pointed to him?

Jack turned off the water and said, “Leave the rest.”

The silverware was dried and put away, but I hadn’t finished the dishes. I hung the towel to dry. Jack took my hand, and we sat on the sofa.

“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll leave about ten. It won’t take more than half an hour to get there from here. I’ll park a block or so away and walk back. I want to find a place that’ll give me some cover. I have to be able to see that meeting point.”

“What about me?”

“I’ll make that decision when I see if I can find a place for myself. In any case, I want to be there to see if this guy comes.”

“We’d better take my car,” I said. “He’s probably seen it. I don’t want him to know your plate number.”

“OK. Nervous?”

“Scared to death. I wonder if he’s going to tell me it’s you they were after.”

“Don’t even think about what he’s going to tell you. He may not show. He may have nothing to do with the homicide. He may just be some wacko that gets his kicks from meeting women in parks at midnight.”

I didn’t want to think about all the possibilities. Midnight would come soon enough and I would deal with the single reality at that time. Instead, I told Jack about the rest of my lunch with Ray.

“He says the answer to everything is in Scotty’s mysterious past. How am I going to find out where he was born and who he really was?”

“Jean should know that by now. Scotty had to submit a birth certificate before he entered the Academy. I think she’s asked the department for a copy.”

“She’s never said anything.”

“This is very rough on her.”

But I had to know. If Scotty had been the intended target, Ray might be right about where to look for a motive. “I’ll talk to her,” I said. “This is a tough case, Jack. It’s full of pain. Almost everyone I talk to has suffered a terrible loss—Jean, Sharon Moore, Sister Benedicta. It’s not like questioning neighbors whose strongest feeling is curiosity. These people are all
involved
.” Jack was watching me. “You know all this, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess you’d have to.” But for me it was new. I had investigated
three homicides since leaving St. Stephen’s and in all of my questioning had spoken to few deeply bereaved relatives. The pressure of these women’s pain had begun to weigh on me. Even finding Scotty’s killer would not diminish it. I had to keep telling myself my job was to expose the truth, uncover the facts, provide a reason for the madness of killing. I was not in the business of alleviating pain.

“Tell me about the nun,” Jack said.

“She’s a Dominican and I’ve been scared of Dominicans since I was a kid.” I smiled at him.

“Come on.”

“It’s true. And she was the incarnation of the nun that used to terrify me.”

“But you talked to her. You got something from her.”

“She’s very honest,” I said. “She doesn’t hide her feelings under her habit. You sense a real person, someone who’s had great difficulty coming to terms with loss. She said she’d tried to forgive the man who killed Harry, and I felt what she was saying was that she hadn’t succeeded. But she held a lot of things back.”

“Like what?”

I told him about Sister Benedicta’s leave of absence.

“Back in those days that must have been scandalous.”

“But she did it. She’s tough and she has strong opinions. But she never said why she left, and she didn’t say what Harry’s problems were when he wanted to leave the department.”

“Donner wanted to leave?”

“A long time ago. Twenty years, maybe more. He’s the one who talked her into going back to her order, and she convinced him to stay on the job. But no details. I’ll have to try again.”