Still As Death (33 page)

The three of them waited together for Ellie to come with backup. They would have to hold Tad Moran until they’d had a chance to formally interview him, but he’d most likely go home tomorrow.

One of the uniformed cops cuffed him, and they led him downstairs and out onto the sidewalk, where the cars were waiting. Quinn held him loosely by the arm while they got everything organized. He’d meant what he’d said. If Tad Moran’s story checked out, Quinn didn’t think they’d charge him with anything other than being an accessory after the fact. Moran seemed more relaxed, standing there in the balmy summer air. It was dark now, and the night smells of cooking food and cigarette smoke and a sweet unknown smell, like perfume, wafted across the street.

Quinn watched Sweeney, standing alone by the sidewalk. She was staring out over the crowds of people, but beyond them, as though somewhere out there was a mountain range or an ocean, something only she could see. She was beautiful. He was in love with her. There, he’d said it. He’d said he loved her, if only to himself. But there was Ian, and as he admitted his love to himself, a vision of Maura’s face swam up in front of him, her small, feline prettiness, her tragic eyes, her sad, sad face. He had always known the state of her mind immediately on seeing her face. His last memory of her, lying dead in the bathtub, was of her face, expressive of pain even in death.

Students had gathered around the entrance to the museum and Ellie and some of the other guys tried to clear them away, speaking to them good-naturedly, pushing them back. Quinn watched her work. She was good. He had to admit it. She was good with people. She knew how to talk to them, how to read them, how to get them to do what she wanted them to do. And what was being a cop if not that?

Then suddenly he felt Tad Moran’s arm slip away, and Sweeney was calling out, “No!” and he turned in time to see the tall, stooped figure dash into the traffic. There was a squeal of brakes, and he imagined the thud before he saw it happen.

And as everyone rushed forward and he saw Ellie raise her head and meet his eyes, and he knew that Tad Moran was dead, he found that it was Sweeney he searched for. And he reached for her, pressing her tearstained, horrified face to his chest and holding it there as she sobbed, and later he wasn’t sure if he had kissed her eyelids or only imagined that he had, trying to take away the images of death she’d seen, trying to take away the awful finality of it all.

THEY LET SWEENEY GO at two
A.M.
There had been statements to give and things to approve, and as she drove home she tried not to think about what was waiting for her. She knew she should have called, knew she should have let Ian know what was happening, but there hadn’t been an opportunity.

She’d explain, tell him that all she wanted was a drink and to go to bed and that they would talk in the morning. She didn’t see his car in front of the house and wondered if he wasn’t home yet. She had a sudden feeling of panic that she didn’t stop to analyze, and by the time she reached the door, she knew. She didn’t have to open the door and see his coat and shoes missing from the hallway, his books and papers gone from the dining room table, the empty half of the closet to know that he was gone. There wasn’t a note. There wasn’t anything. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a tumbler of whiskey, downing it in one big swallow and pouring another, and then she went through into the living room and sat down on the couch. The General came out of the bedroom and watched her from his post on the windowsill. She couldn’t cry. She thought about calling Quinn. But instead she poured herself another drink.

*    *    *

It was a couple of days later that the weather turned. When Sweeney woke up, she knew there was something different, knew that fall had come again. That afternoon, she walked across the yard, wishing she had a sweater, and thought about how quickly it had gotten cold. She was getting into the car when the phone rang. It was Quinn.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s Tim. Tim Quinn.”

She smiled. “Hi, Tim Quinn.”

“I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“Yeah. I guess so.” There was a silence and then he whispered, “I’m still mad at myself for not keeping him under better restraint.”

“He seemed really calm.”

“I know, but …”

“It’s not your fault.” It was the only thing she knew to say.

“Yeah. Well, anyway, we’ve tied up some of the loose ends. I thought you might want to know about them. Do you think … I thought I might go to Flannery’s tonight. Maybe, if you and Ian feel like a drink, you could head over.”

Sweeney waited a minute. She didn’t feel like going into it on the phone. “That sounds good. What time?”

“I’ll probably be there from seven or so on.”

“Okay, well, I’ll see you there.” She wondered if he’d noticed her use of “I,” wondered what he thought about it.

We’ll see
, she told herself.
We’ll just have to wait and see
.

He was sitting in a corner booth when she got there, with a pint of Guinness in front of him, listening to the musicians. She looked down and saw his foot tapping out the rhythm on the table leg. When he saw her, he smiled and waved.

“The music’s good tonight,” she said, sitting down across from him. “Have you been here a long time?”

“Ten minutes or so.” He looked past her, then asked, “Where’s Ian?”

“He left.”

“To go back to London?”

“Maybe. I don’t know where he is, actually. He may still be in Boston for all I know. But he left … he left me.”

“I’m sorry.” He waited a beat. “So you’re not going to London?”

“No. I’m not going to London.”

He met her eyes across the table just as a waitress came up and asked Sweeney what she wanted. She asked for a scotch, straight up, and when the waitress had gone, she met Quinn’s eyes again. He’d been about to say something. She could feel it still hanging there in the air. But instead, he turned to watch the musicians and told her, “I thought you’d like to know that Denny Keefe has agreed to testify against McMaster. We’ve brought in some of his associates, including one of the guys who roughed up Keefe. And the FBI has some really good leads on the paintings and artifacts taken in 1979. We may be able to recover some of them.”

“That’s great. What about Tad’s mother? For some reason, I’ve been thinking about her.”

“He’d taken out a life insurance policy. It explains why he did it the way he did it. Any other way and it would have been a clear-cut suicide, but this way it was that he escaped and was hit accidentally while trying to get away. She’ll get the money. I hope it will provide for her care. But I can’t stop kicking myself. I should have known.”

“You couldn’t have.” She looked down at his hand on the table and wanted to reach out for it. “You’ve got to let yourself off the hook.” He looked away and she changed the subject. “You know, I thought Jeanne Ortiz might have had something to do with it. Even after the thing with the kid.”

“Oh, yeah, didn’t you say something about her being around a lot around the time Karen Philips died?”

Sweeney nodded. “I asked her about it. Yesterday. It turns out she was having an affair with this woman Susan Esterhaus’s boyfriend.
Who’s now her husband. She didn’t want her to know, which is why she acted so strangely.”

She sighed. There was something about it that just made her sad. “Well, congratulations,” she told him. “On solving it. Although that doesn’t seem like the right word.”

“If I’d been on the ball from the beginning, we could have gotten Keane for Olga Levitch’s murder. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop thinking about her. You should have seen this place where she lived. It was just so … sad. So empty. She had nothing to show for any of it, nothing at all.”

They talked about the case for a bit, then she asked him, “So how are things going with the new partner?”

“Better. I was giving her a hard time. It really freaked me out, having a woman partner. I think that’s what it was. Anyway, I was kind of an asshole to her. But I think it’ll be okay now.” He looked so tired.

“I can’t imagine you being an asshole to anybody.” She tried to keep it light, but he looked up and his eyes were very, very serious, burning into hers before he cast them down again.

“Yeah, well …” He looked up again and Sweeney thought he was going to say something, but instead he drained his beer and looked miserably up at the clock behind the bar. “I guess I should get home. Patience was nice enough to stay late, but I shouldn’t take advantage. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what happened with Keefe.”

“Okay. I’ll walk out with you.”

Outside, it was dark and cold. Sweeney had tied a sweatshirt around her waist and she put it on.

“Well, I’ll be seeing you,” he said, hunching down in his polo shirt, as though protecting himself from the cold.

“Wait, Tim.” He stopped and turned, gratefully, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. He stood there on the sidewalk, his blue eyes wide and somehow childlike. Sweeney suddenly had a glimpse of what he
must have looked like as a little boy, his round head and short blond hair, his face open and curious and just a little apprehensive.

She strode up to him, emboldened now by that openness. “Are we going to talk about it?”

He just blinked at her.

“I don’t know why you asked me for a drink if you were going to just act weird and then not say anything.”

“I …”

The scotches had done their work. She didn’t care anymore. “There’s obviously something going on here. Ian knew it. He never came right out and said it, but I think he did. And Toby said something to me about it too. Apparently everybody’s aware of it but us.”

“What did Toby say?”

“He said that he thought we were attracted to each other.”

Quinn stared at her. Then he did something that would haunt Sweeney for months afterward, whenever she thought about that night. He laughed.

“As though you’d … as though we’d ever … That’s crazy.” She watched his face as he said it and thought she detected something hopeful there. Was he saying it was crazy, or was he asking if she thought it was crazy? It was that little bit of hope in his face that gave her the courage to do what she did next.

One moment he was looking at her, his eyes dark in the late dusk. And then she was stepping toward him and she was kissing him, hard, as though kissing him could take away the silence between them, could say all the things they hadn’t said. He kissed her back, his lips cool and dry and unfamiliar, then warm and moist. His arms had gone around her, and she took his face in her hands and kissed him some more, searching for him, trying to find something there that could consume her, subsume her. She wanted to lose herself in his face, his body.

Their hips knocked against each other, their bellies, their groins. Her lips were hot against his lips. She could feel her tongue against his.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. She felt him step back, his hands on her shoulders. “Sweeney, just wait, just hold on a second.” He pushed her back, away from him, and when she looked into his eyes, she saw confusion, and something else, something like disgust.

She could feel shame overtake her in a slow, burning flush. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have …” She pulled away from him, his eyes burning her. “I had too many drinks. I should get going.” She stumbled, wanting to get away from him but waiting to see what he was going to do. There was still something hanging there between them. But when she looked up at him, he looked only disappointed, and it was that disappointment that made her run.

She turned and felt her legs moving independently of her body, her arms pumping through the humid air. And suddenly she remembered something she’d long forgotten, a night, years ago, when she was only a child. She had been visiting her grandparents in Newport with her father, and they had gotten into an argument, about the way her father was living, she supposed, about the kind of father and son he was, about how much of a disappointment he’d been to his parents. Sweeney’s grandmother never raised her voice, and she didn’t raise it that night, but somehow Sweeney had known just how angry she was, and she had known that her father, who had a volatile temper, was about to lose it. She had jumped up from the dinner table and run out into the night. She could remember the sound of her sandaled feet on the pavement and the smell of the ocean as she’d run and run along the road, not knowing where she was going, just running and running, trying to get away from the voices, from the growing storm on her father’s face, knowing that someone would have to come after her, knowing that her flight might stop the argument.

After a few minutes she had stopped, listening for the sound of footsteps behind her. But there had been only the silence of the night, and her loneliness, and feeling the same emptiness behind her tonight, she knew he hadn’t followed her, and she didn’t stop running until she was home.

“IT’S COOLER TODAY,” Ellie said. “I didn’t think it would ever get cool again.” She sipped her soda. “I’m really happy we got him,” she said. “But it doesn’t feel the same as if we’d broken him down, you know?”

The day before, she had come up to Quinn’s desk holding a piece of paper and looking a little deflated. “We got him,” she’d said dully. “The guy who killed Luz Ramirez. The computers came back with a match on the semen. He’s a convicted sex offender. Aggravated rape. Got out over the summer. He was a ticking time bomb. We can go pick him up. I’ve got his address right here.”

Quinn was already up and ready to go, checking his holster. “You don’t seem very happy about it. He’ll be locked up for the rest of his life now. He won’t hurt anyone else.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, looking out over the lights from the buildings around the yard. “But we didn’t do it. The computer did it.”

“Be thankful for the computer,” he said. “Years ago we never would have found a guy like that.”

“Yeah, but …”

“I know what you mean,” he’d said finally. “It’s not as satisfying. But you know what? Most of these things, they get solved by chance.
Someone mentioning something, some guy we already know about screwing up again.” He’d given her a minute and then said, “You ready to go get him?”