The Helper

TWELVE

He has to act like the rest of them.

When he arrives at work that next morning and they say to him things like, ‘You hear what happened to Hanrahan last night?’ he has to pretend that he’s only just heard the news himself. He has to appear convincingly shocked and appalled. He has to look them in the eyes when he enquires about what they might have heard on the grapevine about the death of their former sergeant. When they tell him about an unknown perp entering Hanrahan’s apartment and blowing his face off with a shotgun he has to react with the expected level of disbelief and horror. And he has to do all this without sounding like he’s a member of the local amateur dramatics society.

Because yes, this is theater. Doyle is an actor. Delivering lines already written in his mental script. And it has to be the most convincing portrayal of his life. Otherwise his audience will see him for what he really is and their faith will be gone.

But it’s difficult. Reality keeps wanting to intrude. It wants to point a huge finger at Doyle and say, ‘See this guy here? Well, he had information relating to the death of Hanrahan. Truth be known, he possessed it way before Hanrahan was killed. And you know what? He didn’t want to share it with any of you. He didn’t want to give any of you the chance to prevent the murder of your big old friendly desk sergeant. What do you think of that?’

He tries doing what he did previously: telling himself that it would have made no difference if he had revealed his inside information. But this time the assurances ring hollow. This time he knows he made a huge error of judgment. He had an Irish tune sounding loud and clear in his head, and he didn’t follow it up. He could have gone into a record store or called up a music society or a relative in Ireland and he could have hummed or whistled it to them, and maybe they would have known what it was. And if they had said, ‘Yeah, I know that tune; it’s called “Hanrahan’s Last”,’ then he wouldn’t have spent fruitless hours sitting in a bar on the wrong side of the city. So maybe a difference could have been made. If he’d told somebody. Or even if he’d just tried a little bit fucking harder, for Christ’s sake. So what if Hanrahan used to be a cop? Wouldn’t a little more pondering about it have made Doyle say, ‘Okay, he used to be a cop, but he’s not now, so maybe this guy fits the clues.’ Shouldn’t he have done all this? Shouldn’t he have opened up the possibility for others to do this? Shouldn’t he have gone just that extra fucking inch?

Of course he should. He is painfully aware of this. It’s excruciating. It’s why he is exasperated and despondent and furious.

And it’s why he’s bringing this to an end. Initiating divorce proceedings. No more relationship with the mysterious helper.

He can’t bear the awful pressure.

He can’t live with knowing.

It means becoming a cop again. No inside knowledge means he has to do what other detectives do. He has to rely on shoe leather and his dialing finger and his wits and his questioning skills to get at the truth. Just as he would normally do in an investigation.

Jesus, what a relief that is.

Except that it’s not so simple. He wants to talk to Gary Bonnow, husband of the murdered nurse. Only he lives in Brooklyn, and Doyle doesn’t have a good excuse to go driving over to Brooklyn and back right now. So he decides to call him on the phone. Only he can’t make the call from the squadroom for fear of somebody overhearing and wondering what the hell he’s doing posing questions concerning a case that has nothing to do with him. So he goes for a short stroll to grab a coffee, and on his way back he gets into his car and makes the call from his cellphone. And as he dials he thinks back on the talk he had when Gonzo turned up unannounced at the station house, and he wonders how many more times he will use this car for clandestine conversations like this. So much for becoming Detective Normal again.

The voice that answers the phone sounds weary. Doyle figures that this man has probably spent a lot of time on the phone these past few days.

‘Mr Bonnow? This is Detective Doyle at the Eighth Precinct. We haven’t met, but I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a coupla questions relating to your wife. Would that be okay?’

‘Well, ya know, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if there’s anything more I can tell you guys. I don’t really know anything. Do we have to do this now?’

‘I’ll be real quick, I promise. Just a coupla things I’m sure my colleagues haven’t asked you yet.’

Doyle gets a long silence, followed by a sigh. ‘Okay, shoot.’

‘Mr Bonnow, do you know if your wife kept a diary?’

‘A diary?’

Doyle can hear the surprise in the man’s voice. He was expecting a question he’s already been asked a million times, and for a change he didn’t get one.

Bonnow repeats himself: ‘A diary?’

‘Yes, a diary. A journal. Or maybe just a notebook she liked to write in. Did she have anything like that?’

‘No. Lorna wasn’t a big writer. She was never even sure what to put in birthday cards, ya know?’

‘Okay. Here’s my other question. Did Lorna own a computer?’

‘A computer?’ Again, the question has thrown him. ‘No. She hated computers. Technology was never her thing. She always came to me just to work the DVD player.’

‘Okay, thank you, Mr Bonnow. That’s all I wanted to know.’

‘That’s all? I don’t get it. Those questions are kinda strange. I mean, a diary and a computer? I don’t get it.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mr Bonnow. Sometimes we hear things and we have to follow them up, and it can all seem a little weird. You might get a few more weird questions as the investigation proceeds. It just means we’re doing our job.’

‘Oh. Well, okay then. It’s just. . well, I loved her, ya know? Even though she went with that other guy. . I kind of understand why she did that. So, I was. . well, I was hoping for a little more.’

‘I understand. Give us time. We’ll catch him.’

Doyle rings off. He too was hoping for a little more. He wanted a connection. A pattern. If the nurse had kept a diary or owned a computer, just as Cindy Mellish did, then that could have meant something. As it is, it’s just another dead end.

But there has to be a link of some kind. The killer has gone to far too much trouble for the victims to have been selected purely at random. There is a thread of some kind tying these three murdered people together.

Doyle just can’t see what it is.

Doyle waits until his lunch break before making his next excursion. When he arrives at the apartment building on Charles Street, he first of all checks that there are no parked cars that look like they might belong to the NYPD. Satisfied, he goes looking for the wife of Sean Hanrahan. He doesn’t find her, but the building superintendent tells him that she is staying with her daughter on Jones Street, just a few blocks away.

Doyle drives down to the address. It’s a low-rise Greek Revival rowhouse situated between a café and a record store with a stone-cladding fascia that makes Doyle queasy just to look at it.

A woman aged about thirty opens the door of the first-floor apartment and directs a gaze filled with suspicion at Doyle.

‘Yes?’

‘I, uh, I’m looking for Mrs Hanrahan.’

‘Are you a police officer?’

‘Yes, but I was also a friend of Sergeant Hanrahan. Was he. . was he your father?’

‘Look, this is not a good time, okay? My mother, she’s not in the best of health. She’s tired, she’s upset, and right now she could do with a rest. So if this isn’t urgent-’

‘I’ll only take a few minutes of her time. Please.’

He sees her wavering. This is a lawman at her door, and as a good law-abiding citizen she wants to do what’s right. But as a grieving daughter she also wants to tell him to fuck off and leave them alone. And Doyle understands that perfectly. He wonders what she would do if he told her how he failed to save her father’s life last night.

‘Who is it, dear?’

The voice comes from inside the apartment. Its owner comes into view. Doyle sees a flash of recognition in the woman’s eyes.

‘We’ve met before,’ she says. ‘Detective. .’

‘Doyle,’ he says. ‘Cal Doyle. Hello, Mrs Hanrahan.’

‘Please, come in.’

She beckons him inside. With reluctance, and wearing an expression of annoyance, the daughter opens the door wide to admit him. Doyle nods his gratitude and his apology as he enters.

It’s a light, airy apartment. The furnishings are modern and tasteful. On the walls are numerous photographs of two young children. An upright piano sits in one corner of the room, and supports yet more photos.

‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ says the daughter. ‘I need to get some air.’

She grabs a coat from a peg near the door, then shoots Doyle another look of anger as she leaves.

Doyle turns back to Mary Hanrahan. He knows that she is somewhere in her mid-fifties, but thinks she looks a dozen years older. He remembers Sean telling him that she used to own a bakery store but had to sell up because of problems with her circulation. He notices now how ruddy her complexion is, and how her breathing seems somewhat labored.

‘You’ll have to forgive Fiona,’ she says. ‘She’s been through a lot.’

Doyle smiles at her. ‘Nothing to forgive. I know how difficult this must be for both of you. I was really sorry to hear about what happened to Sean.’

She nods slowly, her eyes glistening. For an awful moment Doyle thinks she’s going to break down, but then she recovers her composure.

‘Please,’ she says. ‘Take a seat.’

They sit at opposite ends of a long cream-colored sofa.

‘How did you find me?’ she asks.

‘The super at your building directed me here. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘I can’t be at our apartment. I don’t know if I can ever go back to our apartment. Even if they can clean it up, I’m not sure that, well. .’

Doyle makes a show of looking around the living room. Anything to change the subject.

‘This is a nice place.’

She gives him a matronly smile. ‘Fiona and Brett have done well for themselves. They both have good jobs. They work hard. They deserve a break every now and then, but it’s difficult with two young children. Do you have children, Cal?’

He holds up a finger. ‘One. A girl.’

‘Then you know. I mean, how hard it is to get time to yourselves. That’s why I came here last night. To look after the children while Fiona and Brett had a night out. That’s why I wasn’t at home.’

Doyle gets what she’s saying. She wasn’t at home last night. When her husband was killed. She wasn’t there with him, and she regrets it bitterly. Doyle can hear the self-recrimination in her voice.

She continues: ‘You see, last night was their wedding anniversary. I couldn’t say no, could I? I couldn’t let them down. The reason we moved to the Village was to be near our children and grandchildren. I love to see them. Why would I say no to helping them out? I can walk here in just a few minutes. And it’s good for me too. I have problems with my circulation, you know.’

‘I’m sure you’re a wonderful parent and grandparent. It’s nothing to beat yourself up about.’

She looks at him, seemingly grateful that he understands. He imagines she has spent the whole morning talking to people who are concerned with just the facts, ma’am. The whos, whats, whys and whens. And when she answered their questions, perhaps nobody picked up on her subtext. Perhaps they failed to see what was happening to her inside.

‘They won’t make me see him, will they?’ she asks. ‘For identification purposes, I mean. They say that he’s. . well, that he’s not what he was. I don’t want to see him like that. I want to remember him as he used to be.’

Doyle has seen bodies with shotgun wounds to the face. It’s not a pretty spectacle. Uncomfortable even for cops who have seen all kinds of terrible sights.

‘No, don’t worry. The NYPD has his fingerprints on file. You won’t need to identify him.’

She nods again. Doyle is glad that he has been able to lift one small weight from her shoulders. Not much, but something.

She says, ‘You probably know more about this than I do, but the police were very interested in hearing about our friends. People we know well. People we trust. Is it possible, do you think? That someone we know might have done this?’

Another worry. It’s bad enough when an act of extreme violence is perpetrated on you or your family, but the thought that it could have been done by somebody you know, somebody you might meet again very soon, can be almost impossible to accept.

Doyle hesitates before answering. She is looking to him for help, and by God he owes it to her to clear this fear from her mind. But he has to be careful. What he knows and what he can say are not necessarily the same.

He says, ‘My guess is that there were no signs of a break-in, no signs of a struggle?’

‘No. The police said there was nothing like that.’

‘Then it’s understandable that they would want to talk to everyone who Sean might have allowed into the apartment. In most cases that would mean friends, family, people the victim knew pretty well.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘But that’s not always the case. It could be somebody pretending to be something they’re not. An authority figure, maybe. It could be someone Sean never met before in his life.’

She looks at him like it’s a ridiculous suggestion. Which, he has to admit, is exactly how it sounds. A complete stranger who is such a smooth talker that he can get close enough to an ex-cop to pull out a shotgun and obliterate the man’s features before they can even register surprise. The funny thing is, Doyle is pretty sure that it’s almost exactly how it went down. The killer, whoever it is, has this magic ability to inveigle his way into the homes of his victims. Into their lives. And once he’s there. .

‘But if it’s somebody he never met before,’ Mrs Hanrahan is saying, ‘why on earth would they want to kill him? And why would they go to such lengths? If they hated him that much, why not just gun him down on the street?’

Why indeed? Because maybe it’s not about hate. Maybe it’s about power. Maybe he’s doing it simply to prove he can. And that makes him so much more dangerous than a killer who is blindly driven by something as basic and primitive as raw hatred.

‘I don’t know. I think it’s too early to say. But we’ll catch him. That’s one thing I’m sure of.’

‘We?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said, “We’ll catch him.” Are you working Sean’s case?’

He hears a note of hope in her question. She wants someone who knew Sean personally to be taking care of things for him.

‘I meant the police. But I’ll do everything I can.’

He notes the look of disappointment. She was a cop’s wife for God knows how many years. She knows how these things work. She knows that unless there’s a break in the case in the first forty-eight hours, then it’s unlikely the perp will ever be caught. And that means she wants every resource at the NYPD’s disposal to be allocated to the search for her husband’s murderer. Doyle has promised her that he will play his part, and he intends to keep that promise.

‘I suppose the detectives asked you all the usual questions about whether Sean had any enemies, anyone that may have threatened him recently.’

‘Yes, they did. My answer was no. Nobody that I know of.’

‘Anything bothering him recently? Any financial worries, that kind of thing?’

She hesitates before answering. ‘Sean was a very troubled man, Cal. It started a long time before last night. But as for anything specific happening more recently, the answer is no again.’

Now it’s Doyle’s turn to pause. He tries to slip the next question in with as much nonchalance as he can muster.

‘I don’t suppose that Sean was the type of guy who might have put his troubles down on paper? In a diary or a notebook maybe?’

She gives him a quizzical look. ‘No. That wasn’t Sean. He needed an outlet, all right, but writing wouldn’t have done it for him.’

‘What about a computer? You have one of those at home? Maybe Sean made a connection with the wrong people on the Internet.’

Now her brow is furrowed in suspicion. ‘No, we’ve never seen the attraction. I guess that Sean and I have always been old-fashioned in that way.’

Give it up, Doyle tells himself. The diary, the computer — there’s nothing there. That’s not the way you’re gonna find the killer. So what is? What possible link can there be between this woman’s husband, a young girl who worked in a bookstore, and a nurse who was having an affair? What am I missing?

‘Cal,’ she says. ‘Why did you come here?’

Just when he thought he’d gotten away with it.

‘I. . I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Sean and I were married to each other for thirty-one years. In all that time I hardly ever asked him about his police work. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was frightened. I didn’t want to hear about the drug addicts and the murderers and the rapists he had to clean off our streets. I didn’t want to know that Sean was putting himself in dangerous situations each day, that he was putting his life on the line. Closing myself off to those things somehow helped me not to worry that he might not come home one day. But I still managed to learn a few things. I know, for example, that investigations are usually carried out by the squad controlling the precinct in which the crime takes place. You’re in the Eighth Precinct, Cal. That’s east side. It’s not here in the Village. Now a minute ago you told me that you’re not working Sean’s case. Fine. Except that you’re asking some damn strange questions for someone who’s not officially involved. What’s going on, Cal?’

Go ahead, he thinks. Worm your way out of that one.

‘I don’t know if you read about it — maybe Sean told you about it — but just before Christmas I was involved in a big case. Some cops died. People thought I had something to do with it. Some still do. Anyway, after it was all over, the Department wanted to make sure the fire didn’t start up again, so they made sure I went nowhere near the matches. They started giving me the cases nobody else wanted. If there was a dumpster to be searched, I was your man.’

‘That must have been tough on you.’

‘It was okay at first. But now I’m starting to get kinda sick of it. So I’m looking for a way out, a way to redeem myself in the eyes of the Department. If it means working cases in my spare time, then that’s what I’ll do. You’re right, I’m not officially on Sean’s case, and the PD would go nuts if they found out I was working it. But the answer I have to give you is that I am looking for Sean’s killer, and some of the reasons for doing that are selfish ones.’

He waits for her to yell, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ After the plate of horseshit he just served to her, it’s the least he deserves. But instead she lets it ride. It seems to Doyle that she senses it’s wise not to pursue this too closely. She is giving him her trust, on the assumption that he will repay it when he is able. And although he is grateful, he doesn’t feel too bad about himself. Because his real reasons are not at all selfish. He wants to get to this killer so that he can stop him. That’s it, pure and simple. Nothing to do with improving his image. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what others might think of him. Lies or no lies, he feels he can hold his head high, and he guesses that Mrs Hanrahan detects that too.

Her smile is a knowing one. ‘All right, Cal. Then I wish you well. Whatever your reasons, I hope you get whoever did this. Perhaps even my daughter would find some forgiveness in her heart if the NYPD could catch her father’s killer.’

‘Forgiveness?’

She pauses, but only briefly. ‘As I said before, Sean was a troubled man. I’m sure you already know that he was a drunk. He was probably drunk last night. If he hadn’t been, maybe his guard wouldn’t have been down. But that’s beside the point. Sean turned to drink after his partner was killed. He blamed himself, even though it wasn’t his fault. I believe that’s a very common reaction in your job.’

Oh yeah, thinks Doyle. Been there, done that, still wearing the scars.

She says, ‘His whole character changed. I’m not saying he became violent or anything, but he wasn’t the same man. Fiona in particular couldn’t come to terms with it. Even though she was a grown woman when this happened, one minute Sean was her daddy, and the next he wasn’t. She took it hard, and she blamed Sean’s job. Not for the shooting itself, but for the lack of support which followed. She felt that the NYPD were never really there for him. And when it just got worse, we started to worry that Sean might. . well, that he might harm himself. To be honest, when I heard the news that Sean had been shot in our apartment, my first thought was that he’d done it himself.’

‘The job has counselors for this kind of thing. Didn’t Sean go to see any of them?’

She shakes her head. ‘I think he was afraid that word would get around, and that it would be seen as a sign of weakness. It took me long enough to get him to see a private counselor, but Sean couldn’t stick with that either, even though Fiona and Brett were willing to keep paying. He only went to two sessions with Dr Vasey before he gave up, and then-’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Doyle. ‘Who did you say he went to see?’

‘Dr Vasey,’ she answers. ‘Dr Andrew Vasey.’