Skin Deep

65

“Do you have a paper, Lieutenant?”

“No.”

“Then I could kill you.”

“Yes, you could. But it wouldn’t be a good idea.” Steve turned his head to look at him.

“Straight ahead and don’t move.”

“Neil, let me up.”

“You’re an intruder going through my things.”

“Shooting your partner point-blank in the back of the head won’t stand up.”

“It’s dark and I couldn’t make you out. All I have to do is flick the switch.”

Like you did in Farina’s bedroom, he thought. “Neil, don’t do this. You’ve got a kid.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a kid.”

“Let’s do this right. Let me up and put the weapon away.”

Steve began to turn when Neil stopped him. “Put your hands on your head.”

Steve put his hands on his head, thinking that in the next second a bullet would explode his brain. And Neil would stage it so he’d get away with murder.

“How much have you creeped?”

“Why’s that important?”

“You’re wearing gloves. Did you go through all the drawers and desk? Look under the bed? Check the other closets? Do a full-blown process?”

Steve didn’t answer.

“You’ve been trying to pin this on me since day one.”

Neil’s voice sounded flat, without affect. No anger or guile. Just flat.

“That’s not true. When you admitted that you and Farina were lovers you became a witness.”

“And I somehow graduated to suspect. How’d that happen?”

“Put the gun away and let’s do this right.”

“There is no right. You told the papers I was taken off the case. That I was given a temporary suspension. And there’s speculation of improprieties—that I’m a suspect.”

“Where the hell did you hear that?”

“Calls from the Globe and Eyewitness News.”

“That was probably Pendergast’s lawyer—maybe getting back for his death.”

“You don’t bullshit well, Steve. Never have. That was you because no one else wants to discredit me.”

“Why would I want to discredit you?” Steve’s mind scrambled.

“In fact, you could be planting evidence for all I know.”

“Jesus, man, what the hell would be my motive?”

“To keep them off you. You knew her. You had a thing for her. And you may have been the last person to see her alive.”

Steve felt goose skin flash up his trunk. “What’re you talking about?”

“I knew you were after me so I did some snooping of my own. Does Conor Larkins ring a bell?”

“Conor Larkins?”

“Don’t go stupid on me.”

“You mean the pub?”

“Yeah, the pub right across from Northeastern. I knew she liked to go there to do her homework. So I asked around, showed her picture. Seems that she was there the afternoon she was killed and she wasn’t alone. Nope. With a guy who may have been you.”

Steve felt as if he were walking through a minefield. “If you thought it was me, why didn’t you bring it to Reardon?”

“Because I only found out today, and when I showed the waitress your picture she wasn’t too sure, but she said it could have been you. It’s been three weeks and her memory was fuzzy. But I’m thinking that maybe it was you after all. You had all the answers,” he said. “You did her and decided to try to hang it on me. Maybe get a medal and make up for the Portman shit.”

Steve’s s breath had bulbed in his throat. “I didn’t kill her.” The words rose up without thought.

“Yeah? Then maybe it was Pendergast after all,” Neil said. “But, you know, I really don’t give a shit. I really don’t fucking care. My wife is dead. My daughter’s a fucking mess, I’m under suspicion for murder by my own colleagues. Life’s short, but at least it sucks.”

Steve’s heart froze. He had seen Neil in despair when Lily once overdosed on sleeping pills, but he had not been so low as this. His voice was dead and he was thinking that he had little to live for—the prospect of trying to prove his innocence and possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. What Steve could hear was hopelessness. And in that hopelessness he wanted to take Steve with him. It’s what people suffering clinical depression did—go to the office and shoot everybody who ever looked cross-eyed at them.

This is my death, Steve told himself. He’s going to kill me. Then he’s going to kill himself. My punishment, and such sublime irony.

“Freeze! Lower the gun, Neil.”

Steve turned. Dacey. She was in a stance with her hands on her weapon and aimed at Neil’s back.

Neil looked over his shoulder at her.

“Drop it, Neil. Drop it.”

For a brutal moment Neil stood frozen with the gun at Steve’s head and Dacey with hers at Neil’s. In the tiny window of awareness, Steve imagined Neil fulfilling the existential moment and blasting Steve and taking Dacey’s fire. And he held his breath and waited for the explosions.

Instead, Neil swung the weapon around so Dacey could take it. She did and stuffed it into her belt behind her. Steve got to his feet.

Dacey moved to snap her cuffs on Neil, but Steve stopped her hand. Neil was staring down at the still open bottom drawer of his dead wife’s clothes. Dacey’s weapon was still on him. She began to utter a command when Neil moved past Steve and bent down. “Is this what you want?” he said, and pulled up the black stocking.

But it was not a stocking. It was one leg of a folded set of panty hose.

Neil held it up to Steve’s face. “This what you’re looking for?”

Steve could think of nothing to say.

“How about this?” Neil said, and pulled out more panty hose, then some letters bundled together. Then a small red photo album. “Or these?”

Then Neil yanked out the whole drawer and dumped the contents at Steve’s feet. Then the next drawer and the next, until there was a pile of Ellen Gilmore French’s intimate apparel spilling over the feet of Steve and Dacey, who stood there as if they’d each been shot with a stun gun.

Neil looked back at them. “Lily five seventeen ninety-one.”

For a moment Steve said nothing. Then he put it together. “Your daughter’s birthday.”

“And the password to the laptop.”

Before Steve could think of a response, Neil turned and left. They heard the front door close behind him.

Steve looked down at the pile of garments on the floor. “Shit,” he muttered.

He looked at Dacey. He didn’t know what she had heard, but her eyes were huge and fixed on him.