City of Endless Night

44

Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta sat in the tidy living room of the apartment he shared with Laura Hayward, moodily drinking a Budweiser and listening to the bleat of traffic on the avenue below. From the kitchen came sounds of cooking — the creak of an oven door opening, the whuff of a gas burner being lit. Laura, a superb cook, was in the midst of outdoing herself in the preparation of a New Year’s Day feast.

D’Agosta knew why she was working so hard — to cheer him up, make him forget the Decapitator case…if only for a little while.

The prospect filled him with guilt. He didn’t feel worthy of all this effort — in fact, at the moment, he didn’t feel worthy of anything.

He drained his Budweiser, moodily crushed the can in his fist, then placed it on a magazine that sat on the end table. Four similarly crushed cans were there already, lined up like injured sentries.

He was popping the tab on his sixth when Laura emerged from the kitchen. If she noticed all the empties, she said nothing; she merely sat down in an armchair across from him.

“Too hot in there,” she said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Anyway, all the heavy lifting is done.”

“Sure I can’t help?” he asked for the fourth time.

“Thanks, but nothing to do. We’ll be eating in half an hour — hope you’ve got a good appetite.”

D’Agosta, who felt more thirsty than hungry, nodded and took another pull.

“What the hell ever happened to Michelob?” he asked suddenly, holding up the can of Bud almost accusatorily. “The real Michelob, I mean. Now, there was a premium beer. And that fat-bellied brown bottle with the gold foil at the neck — you really felt you were drinking something special. But today everybody’s crazy for craft beers. It’s like they’ve forgotten what a classic American beverage tastes like.”

Laura said nothing.

D’Agosta lifted the can to take another pull, then put it aside. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’m sitting around, sulking like a kid, feeling sorry for myself.”

“Vinnie, it’s not just you. It’s everybody who’s on the case. I mean, it’s tearing apart the whole city. I can’t even imagine the pressure you’re under.”

“I’ve got a ton of detectives working on this — and they’re just going around and around in circles.” They’re probably spending miserable New Year’s Days, too, he thought. And it’s my fault. I haven’t moved the case forward.

He sat forward, realized he was a little drunk, sat back again. “It’s the goddamnedest thing. This Adeyemi. I’ve talked to anyone who might have an ax to grind with her. Nothing. Even her enemies say she’s a saint. I’ve had my people digging twenty-four seven. Christ, I’ve even thought of flying to Nigeria myself. I just know there’s some deep shit in her background!”

“Vinnie, don’t beat yourself up about it. Not today.”

And yet he couldn’t leave it alone. It was like a sore tooth that your tongue kept returning to, testing and probing despite the pain. The worst of it, he knew, was a feeling he couldn’t shake: that the whole case was unraveling, coming apart before his eyes. Like the rest of the NYPD and everyone else in the city, he was sure it was some crazy psycho targeting the worst of the one percenters. God knew when Harriman first published the idea, it made perfect sense to him and everyone else. But no matter what stone he looked under, he couldn’t make this latest killing fit the pattern.

Then there was Pendergast. More than once, he’d thought back on what the FBI agent had said: There is indeed a motive for these murders. But it is not the motive that you, the NYPD, and all of New York seem to believe. He felt bad that he’d blown his stack. But the man could be so damn infuriating — trashing your theories while withholding his own.

What he had to do, D’Agosta realized, was refocus. After all, Pendergast hadn’t come out and said he thought Adeyemi was a saint, exactly. He’d just implied they were looking at things the wrong way. Maybe instead of a history of hidden bad behavior, Adeyemi had done one truly horrific thing in her life. That would be a whole lot easier to cover up. Harder to find, admittedly — but once found, bingo.

He was woken from this reverie by the clatter of china; Laura was setting the dining room table. Leaving his beer unfinished, he rose and went over to help her. In the last few minutes, he’d found that his appetite had, in fact, sharpened. He’d forget about the case for a little while, enjoy his wife’s company and cooking…and then get back to headquarters and start making a fresh round of calls.