Skin Deep

47

Neil lived in a condo on Park Drive between Beacon Street and the intersection at Heritage Place. It was in walking distance to Fenway, and Steve said to meet him at noon at the little bridge across from the Museum of Fine Arts. The day was cool and overcast, feeling more like October than June.

Steve arrived first and headed for the bridge, a stone arch with wrought-iron rails. In the water below Canada geese bobbed, their butts point-up in the air. More geese spread across the lawn munching grass and honking. In the distance he saw Neil approach and he felt his blood charge. This could be one of those defining moments—a tipping point from which the rest of his life would be forever altered. In police culture you and your partner were like blood brothers. You didn’t cross each other. On the contrary, you went to the wall for each other. You looked the other way if your partner appeared dirty. The problem was that when he did, Steve saw himself.

Because it was his day off, Neil was dressed in a black windbreaker over jeans. “The place is goose-shit city.” He scraped the bottoms of his shoes on the bridge rail. He looked at Steve. “So what’s up?”

Centuries ago people saw a correlation between a person’s facial features and character traits. That you could read one’s soul and predict behavior according to face-parsing rules. Narrow eyes belonged to liars and cheats; round foreheads to the brave; long foreheads and narrow chins to the cruel; bulbous noses, the obtuse; sharp-tipped noses, the irascible. Today such rules are considered ridiculous. Yet at the moment Steve found himself trying to parse Neil’s face. It had gotten down to that—ancient physiognomy because he could no longer trust his interpretation of reality. Is this the face of a killer? he asked himself.

Is mine?

“We have to talk.”

Neil’s eyebrows twitched. “Sounds serious. There’s a Starbucks up the street.”

He was not wearing his weapon on his belt, and the windbreaker was too loose to detect a shoulder harness. Steve’s was under his jacket. “No, because there may be shouting.” He started walking down the path toward the basketball court where a few kids were shooting hoops.

“Shouting?”

“I was talking to people and I find out you were dating Terry Farina.”

Neil stopped in his tracks and glared at Steve, his eyes shrunk to dark beams. “What people?”

“That’s not important. You never told me this. You said you knew her from the club, that she was your trainer.”

“She was.”

“Yeah, but you said nothing about being involved with her.”

“Okay, I was involved with her.”

“So, why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“It was in the past and it had no bearing on the case.”

“For Christ’s sakes, Neil, we’re partners. We’re supposed to trust each other. You were dating a murder victim and that technically makes you a person of interest. But you purposely didn’t tell me. Instead you let me go chasing down a lot of people and find out on my own.”

Steve was stunned by his own hypocrisy. He could not believe his glibness. But a voice kept telling him, It’s him or you, Bubba. Him or you. Pendergast is scapegoat meat on a hook.

“Did you tell Reardon?”

“I wanted to talk to you first.”

Neil nodded, maybe in gratitude. “My relationship with her ended months ago.”

“But it was an intimate relationship, which makes it relevant to the investigation.”

“Who says it was intimate?”

“You were seen having a fight with her outside the health club and I’m sure it wasn’t over a parking space.”

“Ah, the smoking gun. Yeah, we had a fight. I wanted her to quit the pole and she refused.”

A student couple approached them hand in hand, and Steve let them pass until they were out of earshot. “And that caused you to break up?”

“Yeah. I didn’t like her stripping. She claimed she was saving for school and didn’t care about the sex stuff, said it was like doing aerobics with her clothes off. Except I didn’t see it that way. They make a lot of coin, but there’re a lot better jobs than playing dick-tease to a bunch of losers.”

“So it was her decision to split.”

“That makes no difference, but that’s what the parking lot scene was all about.”

Steve nodded, trying to read Neil’s face, waiting for that giveaway tic to hang hopes on.

“She also didn’t want to move from one relationship into another. So now you know what you need to know.”

They came to an intersection in the walkway and Neil led them left toward the water where the grass grew to a high thick wall of green. In the distance barely visible through the trees loomed the Greek pillars of the MFA, looking like an ancient temple. Only a few people were out because rain was in the forecast and thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Witnesses say she slapped you and you grabbed her and pushed her against a car.”

Neil stopped again. “Fuck!” He pulled the stirrer from his mouth and tossed it away. “Yeah, okay. It was an emotional moment and we got a little physical. So what?”

Steve felt the press of his piece against the small of his back. “Did you kill her?”

Neil’s face was plumped to the bursting point. “No, I did not.”

Steve nodded. “I had to ask.”

“Yeah, and now you know.”

Steve had been waiting for that deciding moment, that giveaway declaration or micro-expression, but the promise had receded. And he began to wonder who it was he was interrogating, Neil or himself. “Were you in love with her?”

“Are you asking as Steve or Lieutenant Detective Markarian?”

“Both.”

“What the fuck difference does it make? Yeah, I was pretty hooked.” His eyes began to tear up and he looked away.

Steve had seen Neil emotional only once before—when his daughter was in trouble. He had also seen him put on Oscar-winning performances during interrogations. So he didn’t know if this was real or performance—if he was tearing up because he loved Terry Farina or because he had killed her. They circled back toward the bridge. “How long did you see her?”

“A few months. After Ellen died, I let myself go, gained thirty pounds. I finally kicked myself in the ass because I didn’t want to die and leave Lily a ward of the state. So I joined Kingsbury, where I met her.”

“And this led to that and you started going out.”

“Something like that. She asked if I would help get rid of the asshole living with her. She wanted to end it and he wouldn’t go. So I paid him a visit. After that we went out a few times.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Maybe two months ago.”

“How come her girlfriend Katie didn’t know about you?”

“I don’t know.” Then he stopped. “This has turned into an interrogation and I don’t like it.”

“And I don’t like what you did to Pendergast. I told you I didn’t think he was our man, and you pulled him in and ate him up.”

“Because he’s a sexual predator with a track record.”

“A sexual predator doesn’t kill without sex or mutilation.”

“Because he killed her before it got to that.”

They had returned to the bridge. Neil reached into his pocket and removed a tin of aspirin and swallowed two. Below a bull goose flared his chest and beat his wings to drive away other males. There was a lot of honking and Neil threw a few stones, sending the group into flight.

“Fucking things are just flying shit machines. Look at the mess.”

“I checked the video again and I’m concerned prosecutors are going to see what I saw.”

“What’s that?”

“A coercive interrogation that’s more personal than professional. That you arrested him for having sex with her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“All that stuff about did she initiate the making out, did she rub your bulge, did she go down on you, how she was nothing but a little slut….”

“I’m getting a little tired of you playing Sigmund Freud with me.”

“Maybe so, but it doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to wonder if you tried to pin the rap on Pendergast because you killed her yourself.”

Neil’s hands were on the rail, but in his head Steve saw the explosive attack on Pendergast and rehearsed his moves if Neil went for a weapon.

“I told you the truth.”

“You also told me you hadn’t seen her in four months, now it’s two months. How do I know you didn’t arrest him to cover your own crime?”

Neil glared at Steve. “And how do I know you didn’t kill her, huh? You knew her from Northeastern. Your room was right next to hers, 215 Shillman Hall.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I used to pick her up from class. She said you two met during breaks and had coffee. For all I know you could have been going at it hot and heavy. Plus you like redheads.”

“Where the hell you get that?”

“One, I heard you say that. Two, your old friend.”

“What old friend?”

“Sylvia Nevins. That picture from last year’s Christmas party in the staff room. The redheaded broad with your arm around.”

He glared at Steve with the same gotcha eyes he had given Pendergast. “So you conclude that I killed Terry Farina because I had coffee with a redhead?”

“That and because you’ve got all the answers. You seem to know everything before anybody else, including twenty-five-year C.S.S. vets. You that smart or have you got information the rest of us don’t? The more I think about it, you could have gone up there yourself and done it.”

Yeah, I could have.

“In fact, where exactly were you that night?”

“Home watching the game.” The words slid out as if oiled. Except he couldn’t recall a moment of being home or the game. Everything he knew about the Sox win he had read in the Sunday Boston Globe.

“Maybe we should do an internal investigation of you, Lieutenant.”

And in a voice straining for nonchalance, Steve said, “Be my guest.”

Neil looked at him and bobbed his head. He made a dry smirking humph. “So now what?”

“We go to Reardon.”