Chain of Evidence

CHAPTER 48

It seemed strange to Dart that he should know so many people in a graveyard. Patrolman Bernie Denton was buried on the west side in a family site, the victim of a gang shooting and recipient of a funeral covered on national news a few years earlier.

There were two plaques among hundreds on a long cement wall erected for those choosing cremation rather than burial. Walter Zeller’s name was there, alongside Lucky’s, though Lucky’s avoided the nickname. He wasn’t sure what he believed about an afterlife-but if there were such a thing, Zeller was in a tough place.

The sun had risen and set several dozen times since he’d walked out of the hospital a decorated cop, and yet he was still Joe Dart, confused, lonely, restless. No charges had been filed against Kowalski, and although Dart had expected him to return to the department the same man, there were subtle but discernable differences in his acerbic behavior-something had changed.

News stories had filled the screen for a while: the collapse of Roxin Laboratories, and the endless ethical debate that the news of a drug like Laterin had caused. Some were calling Dr. Arielle Martinson a saint, among them a senator from Michigan. Some others were saying her case would never reach trial-that only Proctor and Alverez would serve any time. For her part, Martinson had disappeared, fueling a bevy of rumors-one being that she had signed on with a French company that had bought several of the genetic patents through the bankruptcy court; another that she had committed suicide, following in the steps of her test subjects.

It was all too sensational for Dart. The world was changing so fast-there was no predicting anything. Today’s fear was tomorrow’s promise.

He had no flowers to leave her. He had brought her nothing. He owed her nothing-that was how he felt about it. But he stopped at the foot of her grave anyway, because he couldn’t pass it up. He needed her. He needed that connection to the woman who had birthed him, to the person, however god-awful it had been. She was down there, under the snow and grass and earth, and Dart felt grateful for that. We are all where we belong, he thought.

He felt his throat constrict, and he cursed her for maintaining any hold over him, any power. How dare she! His eyes brimmed with tears and he wanted to hate her, but he could not.

He reached down and placed his cast in the snow, leaving an unexplained print behind. He closed his eyes and he hated her briefly, but it passed.

“I forgive you,” he whispered, the tears beginning to fall. Met with an unsettling silence, and the distant sound of the Interstate’s overpass.

He stood and walked away, dragging his face against the shoulder of his coat, cursing his weakness.

He followed his own prints back through the deep snow, painfully aware that there were no other prints to follow. It’s okay, he thought, glancing over at the wall that bore Zeller’s name.

Abby had kept the engine running. Kept things warm. Mac slept in the backseat.

She was driving. Dart was no good with the cast.

“You all right?” she asked, reaching over and touching his face lightly, wiping away one of his tears.

“Better,” answered Joe Dartelli. All right was still a little ways off.