Bad blood

38

“God, my heart breaks for that kid,” I said to Mercer as I slumped into the chair at counsel table in the empty courtroom. “Why didn’t we think of this?”

“Hey, I missed the same signs you did. Mike told me all that talk about how Bex had spent so much time at the Quillians, practically living in their house.”

“Of course she wanted to come into Manhattan with Trish the day she went to have lunch with Brendan and meet his fiancée,” I said. “No wonder he became so upset when he saw Bex in the rowboat. He probably thought she was going to do something to break up his engagement, act out in front of Amanda Keating. Who knows how long she’d been sleeping with him at that point, on his infrequent visits home?”

“Or playing hooky, slipping into town to meet up with him somewhere. Then she appeared at the church the day of the wedding and went home to the Bronx, all furious with Trish. By then, Bex was pregnant.”

“You should have seen that pitiful sight when they opened the coffin yesterday. And I’m thinking she was buried with a stuffed animal like it was a childhood toy.”

“And wasn’t it that?” Mercer asked.

“A little brown-and-white bulldog? Try Jack the Bulldog, the mascot of the Georgetown Hoyas. A present from Brendan, no doubt. I suppose some family member put it there beside her without having any idea what it stood for.”

Mercer and I had been to enough college basketball games at the Garden to recognize the symbol of Brendan’s alma mater.

Mercer said, “So if we suppose Brendan knew Bex was pregnant-”

“Of course he knew,” I snapped. “He was calling her house, up until the day of the marriage. He was probably trying to reason with her, checking on whether or not she’d told anyone about it. Wondering how she would be able to deal with it, knowing that terminating a pregnancy wasn’t an option with the religious upbringings they’d both had.”

“There’s his whole golden opportunity-a new life as part of the Keating kingdom-just weeks away from being formalized, and he’s messing around with his kid sister’s best friend.”

“And she’s the only one-the only person in the world, little Rebecca Hassett-who stood a chance of getting in the way of Brendan’s shot at the entire Keating fortune.”

Mercer was leaning against the edge of the table, working the points over and over, and shaking his head from side to side. “Alex, it still doesn’t change the fact that Brendan was out of the country on his honeymoon the night Bex was killed.”

I tossed my head back and grimaced. “But look at the weight it adds to his desperate breakout this week. Who else stood to know that in a careful reexamination of the body, there was physical evidence that connects him to a murdered teenager?”

Mercer patted my hand. “Look, he may have been afraid an exhumation would reveal the girl’s pregnancy. Maybe even tie him to it, since you gotta figure he knows more than the average Joe about DNA after the investigation of Amanda’s murder. Somebody was smart enough to kill his wife without a trace of any forensic clues. That still doesn’t link him to Bex Hassett’s murder.”

“Let’s let them lock up the courtroom,” I said, standing up to leave. “You want to call Mike and break the news to him? I think it’s time we sit down with Trish Quillian. Maybe he can have her picked up. And you double-check with your friend Kate Meade.”

“I know, I know. Did Kate save anything that proves that Amanda and Brendan were in Europe the night Bex was killed? Souvenir postcards or photographs she might have in a scrapbook somewhere?”

“Exactly. I’d better tell Battaglia about what’s been going on at the morgue.”

Mercer made his calls to Mike and Kate, then went down to wait for me in the car while I briefed the district attorney. Then we drove together uptown to the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

Mike was sitting in the lieutenant’s office, his feet on the desk. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before and was unshaved as well. He was eating an egg sandwich and greasy french fries at one o’clock in the afternoon.

“Breakfast?” Mercer asked.

“I think it’s yesterday’s dinner. We didn’t spend much time aboveground. It was a long night with Teddy O’Malley nosing around the water tunnel and a few other sandhog holes.” Mike stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. “I can’t get that sound of dripping water out of my head. And I was just about to go home for a while when you called.”

“Go ahead, then. Mercer and I can handle this.”

“If I remember correctly, you and Trish Quillian didn’t exactly bond when you met. I’ll run this one my way.”

He was more likely to have success with her than I was. “Are you going to tell her about Bex? About the baby?”

Mike looked at Mercer. “I don’t think so. Not yet. I’m not looking to fuel her up with information. I want to see what she gives us.”

Mercer nodded in agreement.

“Maybe this is what old Phinneas Baylor meant about Trish. About saying she should dig for the bones in her own backyard. Maybe these are the bones he meant.”

“You have anything to hit her with?”

Mike wiped his hands on his chinos and reached for papers on the desk. “From the phone company. Our boy Brendan finally called his sister after his shooting spree on Tuesday. Here’s the incoming right here on the dump of her phone.”

“What’s that worth?” I asked. “From a booth? From what location?”

“Not so lucky. He called from the cell phone of the guy he carjacked. Only used it once, best I can tell. May have thrown it away after that. But this clocks him in for four and a half minutes with his baby sister. We can start there.”

“Is Trish here?”

“Yeah. Across the hall in the captain’s office. Roast beef on rye with a root beer. I don’t think she’s eaten in a week. Two of the guys picked her up at home after Mercer called. Peterson wants a team sitting on her house full-time now in case Brendan makes a guest appearance.”

I waited for Mike to finish eating. Mercer left the room and came back with our vending-machine lunch. A choice of entrées-M amp;M’s, red licorice Twizzlers, or a Milky Way-and a soda for each of us.

“Kate Meade seals the deal. Very sentimental type. Saved an album with photographs of the wedding party and letters Amanda wrote on her honeymoon. There’s a snapshot of Amanda and Brendan at the Trevi Fountain, with a date stamp on the back. All in sequence with the rest of their travels. Get Brendan Quillian out of your brain, Ms. Cooper. He didn’t kill Rebecca Hassett.”

Mike rolled up his empty bag and tossed it in the garbage. “Why don’t you come with me, Mercer? Alex, you can watch through the one-way mirror. Better you don’t set Trish off, okay?”

“She’s all yours, Detective.”

I took my soda and went off into the room adjacent to the one they would use for the interview. A few minutes later, Mike opened the door for Trish Quillian, who looked nervously around the small, bare rectangular space before sitting down and resting her elbows on the table. She was wearing a black polyester track suit that zipped up the front and clung to her thin frame.

“I have to be getting home, Detective. I’ve got to be feeding my mother some lunch.”

“It’s been a pretty rough time for you, Trish, with Brendan going wild on us right on the heels of Duke’s funeral. Are you managing okay?”

Trish picked up her head and stared into the mirror. She couldn’t see me, I knew, but I was staring right into the hard, sharp features of her unsmiling face. “Is it concern for me now that you sent two cops to pick me up?”

“No. You might say it’s concern for your brother.”

“For Brendan?” She slowly circled the palm of her hand on the tabletop and looked at Mike. “You’re playing me for a fool, aren’t you? You make some hokey case about him killing Amanda that wouldn’t stand up in a kangaroo court, and now that he’s beat you at it, I’m supposed to think you’re worried about him?”

Mike sat across from her. “He shot a woman to death at pointblank range, Trish. Killed a court officer in front of a judge and lawyers and several other decent people. Wounded three others. He stole two guns and he hijacked a car. Brendan’s what they used to say was ‘armed and extremely dangerous.’”

The lean woman looked a decade older and harder than she had a week ago, rocking in her chair as she continued to trace designs on the wood with her fingertip.

“What do they call it now?” she asked.

“I’d say he’s more like a fucking bull’s-eye. I’d say your brother’s a walking target, Trish, with a great big X painted on his forehead. Some cop sees him and knows how trigger-happy he is, Brendan gets nailed by the first shot, before he can even focus the only eye he’s got.”

One side of Trish Quillian’s mouth pulled back, almost in a grin. “My brother’s been dead for me a really long time, Detective. You trying to make me think you care what happens to him? I gave up worrying about Brendan years ago. Right after he gave up worrying about us.”

“I talked to Phin Baylor.”

The smile faded. “I’m the one who told you to, wasn’t I?”

“He said you shouldn’t be pointing fingers at any of the Hassett boys. Phin said there were things about your own brothers-about Brendan and Duke-that we ought to talk about with you.”

There was no change in Trish’s expression. She kept on rocking back and forth, rubbing her finger around and around on the wooden surface. “Like what?”

“Tell me what else you remember about Brendan. Tell me how he got along with your friends.”

“My friends? That’s a long way to think.” Trish Quillian sat still for more than a minute. “Maybe you know how it is with big brothers, Detective.”

She made eye contact with Mike for the first time, and he nodded at her.

“All the guys I went to school with, they looked up to Duke. He was the strong one, he was the street fighter-took on anybody’s cause for a friend. Sick as he was, when they thought he was going to die of the cancer, he came back tough as a bull. Wasn’t a soul who’d mess with me ’cause they knew Duke would take care of business.”

“He hurt people, didn’t he?”

Trish’s eyes narrowed to the size of slits. “He never hurt anybody who didn’t cause trouble first. And you can be sure no one complained about it to me. I wouldn’t have listened.” She wagged a finger at Mike as she spoke.

“And Brendan?”

“Boys didn’t understand him-him being afraid of the tunnels and the sandhog jobs and all. Liking books so much, inside doing homework most nights while kids were playing on the street. Girls? Well, some of them get kind of stupid around guys like him. He was good-looking-even with the bum eye-and popular with all the fancy girls. From the time he started high school at Regis, he always dressed better and talked smoother than the neighborhood kids. He was something special.”

“Your friends, Trish, did he hang out with them?”

She dismissed that thought with a snort. “You must be kidding. Six, seven years difference at that age? I think he liked the attention, liked the girls fawning all over him. But he didn’t have any interest in none of them. Just a nuisance, that’s all they were to him.”

Mike took his time making his approach. “How about Bex?”

“Yeah? What do you want to know about her now?”

“Well, you said she was at your house all the time, am I right?”

“Practically living there. Part of the family. My very best friend.”

“And Brendan. Did they get along?”

There was no sign of tension in her face or movements as she answered Mike. She didn’t seem to get the significance of his questions.

“I’d say they got along fine. He was good to Bex. Helped her with her homework, even. Things like that. Especially in those few months after her father was killed in that accident-right before Brendan got married-he was trying to be a big brother to her, help her through it.”

“They spent time together?”

Trish cocked her head and looked at Mike. “I’ve just told you what kind of things they did. Family stuff. Schoolwork. Even took her out driving a few times when she got her permit. In old Mr. Keating’s car, if I’m not mistaken. He was being good to her, if you don’t mind. You’re not making something else of it, are you? Sticking Brendan with something else?”

“Not anything-”

“We were kids, Bex and me, Detective. Sixteen years old when he got married to that snooty dame. She hated to lose him, same as I did. Like a brother.”

“Think of those last few months, Trish, before the wedding. Was Brendan around?”

“In the city? Sure. He and Amanda had to do Pre-Cana. They had to go to Amanda’s church, not ours.”

I knew that Pre-Cana was a requirement before Catholic weddings, couples meeting in sessions with a priest to discuss the responsibilities of their marriage, a reminder that it was considered a sacrament of the church.

“Were he and Amanda living together?”

“Before the wedding? Not like you mean. He stayed in the Keatings’ home, in the guest room from time to time,” Trish said. “My mother used to tell me-like it was the only good example she could draw from the Keatings-what a fine thing it was that Amanda had been raised with such important religious values. She liked that Amanda insisted on keeping herself pure till they were married-that’s what Mother called it. ‘Pure.’ Brendan told her that, she used to say.”

I closed my eyes, thinking of Amanda Keating guarding her virginity until her wedding night, while Brendan Quillian found a naive but willing sexual partner in a lost teenager who idolized him.

“So when Bex was angry and upset after the wedding, you didn’t think it was because Brendan-like, Brendan had something going on with her?”

“Trust me, Detective. I would have known about something like that. One of them would have told me, I’m sure of it.”

Mike sat up straight and Trish Quillian crossed her legs and rubbed her hands together.

“I’d like to trust you, Trish. I’d like to believe what you tell me, but I’m having a hard time with it.”

She looked up at Mike’s face and pursed her lips. “Why is that?”

“’Cause my damn ankle hurts like hell. I can’t concentrate on what you’re trying to feed me,” he said, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck.

“That’s not my fault.”

“You Quillians, you’re a tough bunch. I’d say it’s completely your fault. Wouldn’t be this way if I hadn’t chased you halfway across the elysian fields yesterday.”

“The what?”

“The cemetery, Trish. You were there when we went to-to-uh, to Bex’s grave.”

The slightest bit of color rose to her sunken cheeks. She looked up at the mirror and then glanced over at the closed door of the room. She began rocking again.

“Now, how did you know that I was going to be at Woodlawn in the morning?”

“It must have been a coincidence. I go there a lot,” she said defiantly. “I go there to talk to Bex pretty often. I didn’t know any of you was going to be there.”

“You ought to bring flowers next time you go. Looks pretty bare next to that little headstone. Aren’t you curious about why we had to dig-to disturb her grave?”

“I’m not a curious person, Detective. Since I called you the first time, I’m finding out it’s safer to mind my own business.” Trish leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms.

“I thought maybe Brendan told you why. I thought maybe Brendan explained the reason we had to take that poor girl back to the morgue and-”

“I don’t want to know anything about that part of it. Don’t you get that Brendan has nothing to do with this?” She waved a bony hand in front of her face. “I’ve only seen him at the wake. At the funeral. Brendan and I don’t talk.”

“Ow!” Mike said, letting out a fake yelp and bending over to grab his ankle. “Every time you tell a lie, my leg just throbs.”

“What lie?” She looked again at the door, as if trying to get the nerve to walk out.

Mike leaned in close to Trish Quillian. “Brendan called you on Tuesday. Brendan phoned you after he shot his way out of the courthouse.”

Her eyes opened wide and she sat upright. She was speechless.

“What did he tell you, Trish? Bet he didn’t mention that there’ll be no one left to take care of your mother if you get yourself wound up in helping Brendan get away. You’ll be an accessory to this murder. Don’t let him drag you into this.”

She was looking straight into the mirror now. “There’s someone on the other side of that glass, isn’t there? Someone watching us and listening.”

“You’re talking to me,” Mike said. “That’s all that matters at this point.”

“You’ve tapped my phone then, have you?”

“No, we haven’t done that. I wouldn’t be needing to ask you what Brendan told you if we had. I wouldn’t be asking you where he is.”

“Well, I’m not interested in helping you, Detective. You didn’t do nothing to help me when I came to you. You haven’t done a single damn thing to find who killed Duke.”

She stood up. “I can go, can’t I? You’re not holding me?”

“Yeah, you can go,” he said, giving her a card with his cell phone number on it as he got to his feet, too. “But you call me if you get smart about Brendan. And there’s one more thing I’d like to ask you for, Trish.”

“What’s that?”

Mike took a small manila envelope from the pocket of his blazer and removed a Q-tip from it. “Could you just put this inside your cheek for me, dab it around to get some saliva on it?”

The woman appeared to be as taken aback as I was. She shoved Mike’s arm away. “What are you looking for now?” she asked, raising her voice. “You making me some kind of guinea pig, are you? Is this that DNA stuff you’re trying to get from me, using me against my own brother? Is that what you’re up to?”

Mike was thinking of the speck of blood-with the genetic markers of a woman-that was on the zipper of Rebecca Hassett’s sweater.

The Q-tip had dropped to the floor and Trish Quillian had her hand on the doorknob. “You want my saliva, Detective? You and your high-handed girlfriend from the District Attorney’s Office, that’s what you’re after? Like I’m a killer or a criminal?”

She sucked in her hollow cheeks and wet her lips. Then she opened her mouth ever so slightly and spit at Mike, missing the sleeve of his jacket by only inches.

“There’s your sample, Detective. Catch me if you can.”