Pariah

THIRTY

Doyle leaves his car in its hiding place in the woods, and approaches the house on foot. When he reaches the porch he sees that the front door is already open. He stops and peers through the mesh of the porch screen. Franklin is in the hall, one arm around Nadine’s neck, the other holding a gun to her temple. Nadine is clearly struggling for breath. One of her hands paws at the arm which is choking her, while the other tries to keep her shirt closed over her torso.

‘Inside, Cal!’ Franklin commands. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’

Since Doyle is carrying the recording equipment, it’s easy to comply with the order. He moves into the hall, follows Franklin as he shuffles backward, dragging Nadine with him. Her face is almost purple, her eyes bulging.

In the living room, Franklin flicks his gun muzzle toward a small table near the window.

‘Put the gear on there. Then your gun. Slow and easy.’

Doyle groans mentally at the thought of surrendering his weapon yet again, but does as he is told.

‘Move away,’ Franklin says.

Doyle takes a few steps to his right, his hands raised slightly, his eyes fixed on the man who has been both his boss and his persecutor.

Franklin lifts a foot from the floor, and kicks one of the armchairs so it now faces away from the fire. He spins Nadine around and shoves her down into the chair. Her shirt flaps open and she clutches it around her again.

‘Sit!’ he tells her. ‘Don’t move!’

Doyle says, ‘What now, Mo?’

Franklin doesn’t answer. He walks over to the table, picks up Doyle’s Glock and slides it under his waistband. He presses a button on the black box that Doyle set down. A small door flips open, and Franklin takes out the cassette. He moves back to the fireplace and tosses the tape onto the glowing logs. Within seconds, flames lick around it and it softens and melts. Black, poisonous-looking smoke rises up the chimney.

‘I asked you a question, Mo. Where do we go from here?’

Franklin licks his lips, seemingly at a loss for an answer. ‘I don’t know. I never planned for this. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. You. . you fucked it all up for me, Cal.’

‘So there was always a grand plan, then?’

‘Actually no. Not at first. The only thing I wanted was to see Joe and Tony dead. That was it. End of story. You didn’t enter into it. The only thought I put into Joe’s death was how to make it look like it was done by someone he didn’t know too well. Someone who couldn’t get close enough to pop him in his house or his car or whatever.’

‘So what changed things?’

‘You did. You and your history with Laura Marino. As soon as the news spread about Joe, it was clear that some people were just itching to bring you into it — even to put you at the center of it. But even then I had no idea what I was going to do with all that. I guess it sort of entered into my subconscious, changed the way I did things. When you asked for the Parlatti case, it was already a done deal in my head. Normally, I wouldn’t let a detective anywhere near a case involving his own partner. But somehow, without me even being aware of it, my brain was already evolving a scheme that could put the blame on you. That’s why I partnered you up with Alvarez.’

This comment puzzles Doyle. He had always thought that Alvarez had chased after him under his own steam.

‘What do you mean, you partnered us up?’

Franklin gives a rueful smile. ‘You didn’t know that, did you? Yeah, that night, the night of Joe’s death, I sent Tony running after you. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. My brain telling me to make the link between you and him.’

Doyle thinks about this. If it hadn’t been for that single impulse, that snap decision to forge a bond between him and Tony on that night, perhaps none of this nightmare could have been possible.

‘So that was the seed.’

Franklin nods. ‘And then it grew. You were now the obvious common factor. Everyone could see that. Even you. You said as much yourself in the squadroom.’

‘So you started sending the notes, just to confirm the suspicions. And then, when that wasn’t enough, the killings had to continue.’

Something flashes in Franklin’s eyes. ‘The only others I killed were pond scum. Whores, junkies, pimps, criminals. I didn’t hurt any other cops or their families, or any innocent civilians. I wouldn’t do that. There was a line I wouldn’t cross. Your family was never in danger, Cal.’

Sure, Cal thinks. You wouldn’t hurt another cop. Kind of a loose definition of the word ‘hurt’, wouldn’t you say?

‘Joe Parlatti was a cop. Tony Alvarez was a cop. Good cops. What was their crime, Mo?’

Franklin looks down at Nadine. She’s shivering. There’s a painful-looking swelling beneath her eye. With her torn clothes she looks like a homeless undernourished waif.

‘She knows,’ Franklin declares. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ Nadine stares at her husband, and then turns her injured face toward Doyle. He sees the grief, the guilt, the acceptance of her part in all this. She was the spark; Franklin was the flame she ignited.

Doyle says to Franklin, ‘How did you find out?’ Franklin’s expression is one of disgust at the memories he unearths. ‘There were signs. Around the apartment. Here at the house. Changes in Nadine’s behavior. She thought I didn’t notice, but I did. I couldn’t be sure — I guess I didn’t want to believe — so I checked it out. I bought one of those nanny cams — you know those tiny hidden cameras? — and put it in a shoe box on top of the closet.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Nadine says. ‘You filmed me?’ When he turns on her then, there is loathing and agony in his eyes and his voice. Spittle flies from his mouth as he confronts her with his truth.

‘Yes, I filmed you. I filmed you with Parlatti and I filmed you with Alvarez, and I still sometimes wonder if there were others I didn’t catch you with. I saw what they did to you, Nadine. To my wife, and on our bed. I saw what little respect they had for me. I saw them stripping your clothes off. I saw them running their grubby little hands over your body. I saw. . I saw everything. And I knew I couldn’t let them live after that.’

Doyle says, ‘Did you really think you’d get away with it?’

Franklin’s turn back to Doyle is slow. The hatred seems to

fade from him and his expression becomes one of calm reason

again. Doyle realizes then just how unstable this man has become.

Franklin shrugs. ‘Back then I didn’t really care either way. I

just wanted them dead. But when you became involved, then yes, I started to think it might just work. At least, I did until Sonny Rocca showed up.’ He tilts his chin at Doyle. ‘There’s a dirty cop in the precinct, did you know that?’

But not as wrong as you, thinks Doyle. ‘Yeah, I heard that.’

‘Whoever he is, I don’t think he knew what I was doing. I think he just heard something in the locker room about Joe or Tony with my wife. You know how these things start.’

Doyle nods. Oh, yeah, I know all about the way rumors can start and then wreak havoc.

‘Whatever, he passed it on to Bartok. To be honest, I don’t think even Bartok was sure about me at that stage. When he sent Rocca to me, I got the feeling he was just testing the waters, so I told him to get the fuck out of my face or I’d collar him for extortion.’

‘But when Bartok called Spinner in, you knew he wasn’t going to leave you alone. Was it really necessary to torture Spinner like that?’

‘I. . I had to find out what he knew, and also who else he’d spoken to. He was just a junkie, Cal. A junkie and a fence and God knows what else.’

So that makes it okay, Doyle thinks. This whole project was executed according to some warped moral code that makes it all okay. Provided you draw a line in the sand and you don’t cross it, everything is hunky-dory.

‘So where does it end, Mo? What’s the final act in this big scheme of yours? Were you planning to keep me in isolation forever?’

‘No. I never really had an ending. I guess I thought I’d just let it fizzle out. The NYPD would keep looking until it ran out of steam and the brass called it a day. You’d slowly come out of hiding, start making contacts again. Gradually you’d reintegrate and everything would return to normal.’

‘Happy ever after, huh? What about me looking over my shoulder every minute in case this guy’s still around? What about me worrying about my family? What about people still refusing to come near me in case they get whacked? You really think that it would all just go away? You think it’s okay to let me live like that, never knowing whether each day is my last?’

‘I had no choice. I was never going to hurt you or your family, but I had to make you and everyone else believe I would. I’m sorry, Cal. Really. I know what you went through, but it would’ve been okay for you in the end. It just would’ve taken time.’

‘And now?’

Franklin looks puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You keep saying “would have”. If your plan would have worked. But it didn’t, Mo. It fell to pieces. So I’m asking you what I asked earlier. What happens now?’

Franklin lowers his gun slightly, but doesn’t take his eyes off Doyle.

‘I can’t undo it,’ he says regretfully. ‘I can’t stop it now. It has to play out.’

The unease creeps into Doyle’s bones. ‘Play out how?’

‘The same way it’s gone all along. Death following you around like it always does. You chose to come here tonight, Cal. You know what that means.’

It’s only as Franklin says these words that Doyle understands. And then it is too late. Too late to do anything except watch as Franklin pulls Doyle’s Glock from his waistband, turns it on Nadine and puts a bullet between her eyes.

Blood, skull fragments and brain matter explode onto the headrest behind her, and her arms fly apart, baring her upper body as she twitches in a macabre dance to her death.

‘NO!’ Doyle cries. He starts forward, but is stopped in his tracks by the sight of two gun barrels aimed straight at him. It’s the second time his own gun has been trained on him, and the second time he believes it to be his last.

‘Fuck!’ Doyle says. ‘She was your wife, for Chrissake! You didn’t have to do that.’

‘You’re wrong. I should have done it in the beginning. Instead of all that complicated shit, I should have just killed Nadine. I thought I could fix things, but I couldn’t. I should have kept it simple. I think she knew the truth anyhow. The way she acted after Joe and Tony died, I could tell she knew it was me. Of course, she couldn’t say anything without giving up what she’d done. When I started making it look like it was about you, she latched onto that. She really wanted to believe it had nothing to do with her own infidelity. We were both living a lie, Cal. It couldn’t have lasted.’

Doyle glances again at Nadine’s body. It’s motionless now. Blood trickles down from the hole in her head and into her part-open mouth. Her eyes are wide; they stare at Doyle as if to say, Look at what you’ve done. Doyle breathes like he’s just run a marathon; his heart seems to pound the blood through at the rate of a machine gun. He wants to move, to take some kind of action.

‘How the fuck are you going to explain this, Mo?’

Another shrug. ‘She was killed by your gun, Cal, not mine. There’ll be forensic traces that you were here — I’ll make sure of that. You came here, you killed her, you disappeared. Weird, I know, but then your behavior has been pretty erratic lately. I mean, the way you just happened to turn up at Spinner’s place and find the body. That was pretty coincidental, don’t you think? Then there was the meeting you had with known criminals — again, I’ll make sure we find confirmation of that. Maybe the hotel staff saw you leave with one of ’em? I don’t know — I’m sure we’ll find something. Oh, yeah, and then you go and check out of your hotel without even informing anyone. You just up sticks and leave. Pretty strange, all right. Why kill Nadine? Who knows. Maybe you were having a little thing with her. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been suspected of cheating like that. Or maybe she found something out about you, along the lines of you engineering this whole anti-Doyle scheme yourself. We’ll see what the NYPD manages to come up with.’

‘With you directing the investigation, naturally.’

‘Naturally.’

‘For a last-minute change of plan, that’s pretty good.’

‘Thank you. I think better under pressure.’

‘Only, I didn’t like the bit about me disappearing after I’ve been here. Can we change that?’

‘Sorry, Cal. That stays.’

Doyle nods. ‘I thought it might.’

Franklin nods too, then stands there for a while. He tucks Doyle’s Glock back into his waistband, then gestures with the other gun.

‘Let’s get this over with.’