Stay close

27

Broome leaned in closer. “Cat got your tongue, Megan? I asked you about your old beau, Ray Levine.”

At the mention of Ray’s name, Megan felt her heart tumble down.

“Hello?”

“It’s not what you think,” she said.

“Gee, I didn’t expect that line. Let me come back with an unexpected one of my own: What’s not what I think?”

Megan didn’t even know what to say, how to explain it. She flashed back again to last night, to how she felt in Ray’s arms, to Lucy looming above them almost protectively.

“How could you lie to me like that?”

“I didn’t lie.”

Broome slapped something down on the table. “Did Ray Levine take this picture?”

It was the anonymous picture of Carlton Flynn in the park.

“I know your old squeeze used to be a big-time photojournalist-and I saw your face when I first showed this to you. So let’s stop with the lies, okay? Ray Levine took this picture, didn’t he?”

Megan didn’t reply.

“Answer me, damn it. If he’s innocent, he’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Right, sure,” Megan said. “Just like that Ricky Mannion guy you told me about. How long has he been in prison?”

Broome sat next to her. “Eighteen years for something he didn’t do. You want to help him get out?”

“By having him trade places with another innocent man?”

“Hey, Megan, I know he used to be your boyfriend and all, and, man, that’s just so sweet, but this is a hell of a lot bigger than you guys or your summer romance or whatever game you two were playing with Stewart Green.”

“Game?”

“Yeah, Megan, game. The night Stewart Green disappeared-Ray Levine was there, wasn’t he?”

She hesitated just long enough.

“Damn,” Broome said. “I knew you were holding something back-I just didn’t know what. So let’s follow this through, shall we? Ray Levine was at the park the night Stewart Green vanished and-lo and behold-seventeen years later he’s there again when Carlton Flynn vanishes. That about sum it up?”

She couldn’t protect Ray, at least not by lying. “It’s not what you think.”

“Yeah, you said that already. Was Ray there the night Stewart Green disappeared or not?”

Megan tried to think how best to put this. “We were supposed to meet there, yes, but Ray showed up late.”

“Late when?”

“After I ran.”

Broome made a face. “After you ran?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it. How would you know what happened after you ran?”

“He told me.”

“Ray?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Broome couldn’t have looked more incredulous without plastic surgery. “Let me get this straight: Ray Levine told you that he showed up after you saw Stewart Green lying there.”

“Yes.”

Broome shrugged. “Well, heck, that’s enough for me. I might as well close the book on him. He’s clearly innocent.”

“Very funny.”

“He told you this last night.”

“Yes.”

“And you, what, just believed him?”

“Yes, but…” Megan again wondered how to put this so he’d understand. “Do you want the truth?”

“No, no, really, I mean, now that Harry’s dead and Carlton Flynn’s blood was all over that park, what I really want from you, Megan, is more lies.”

She tried to slow herself down. Her heart raced in her chest, her mind pulled in a hundred different directions. “I told you the truth about the night in the woods. I saw Stewart lying there by that boulder. I thought he was dead.”

Broome nodded. “And you were supposed to meet Ray?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see him?”

“That’s right.”

“Go on.”

Megan took a deep breath. “Well, I’d been pretty badly abused by Stewart. I told you about that too.”

“Did Ray know?”

“I guess he did. But that’s not the point.”

“What is?”

“Stewart Green was a bad combo: a violent bully and a real citizen. I mean, if he was just a run-of-the-mill degenerate, would you still care about his whereabouts, after all these years? Would you still visit his wife on the anniversary of his disappearance? If some, I don’t know, working stiff with no wife and kids went missing instead, would you cops care this much?”

The answer was obvious: No. That hit home for Broome. It explained why no one had seen the Mardi Gras connection. Berman’s wife hated him. Wagman was a truck driver passing through. Her accusation was true-and yet it was also, for the sake of Ray Levine’s possible role in these cases, totally irrelevant.

“We cops play favorites,” Broome said, folding his arms. “Big news flash. So what?”

“That’s not my point.”

“So what is your point?”

“When I saw Stewart Green lying there, when I thought he was dead, it naturally crossed my mind that Ray had something to do with it.”

“You were in love with Ray?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t give me maybe.”

“Okay, suppose I was.”

Broome started pacing. “So you didn’t just run away to protect yourself. You ran away to protect the man you loved.”

“The cops would put it on one of us, that was for sure,” Megan said. “If I stayed, one of us-or hell, maybe both of us-would have ended up in prison. Like Ricky Mannion.”

Broome smiled now.

“What?”

“That all sounds great and dramatic, Megan, except for one thing: You thought Ray did it, didn’t you? He was protecting you, and part of you was relieved to get this creep off your back. Plus, really, when you stop and think about it, Stewart Green had it coming, right?”

She didn’t reply.

“So that night, you see Stewart Green. You think he’s dead. You’re relieved, but you also think your boyfriend, Ray Levine, killed him. You ran so he wouldn’t get caught.”

She wasn’t sure how to reply so she went with, “I’m not denying that.”

“And”-Broome held up his hand-“you ran because you really didn’t want to stay with Ray or marry him or whatever, because now, justified or not, you viewed Ray Levine as a killer. You ran away from that too, didn’t you?”

Broome stepped back. He could see that he had hit the mark. For a moment, they sat there in silence. Broome’s phone buzzed. He looked down and saw it was Goldberg paging him up to his office.

“All these years,” Broome said, “you thought Ray killed Stewart Green.”

“I thought it was possible.”

He spread his arms. “So that leads up to the big question: What made you change your mind?”

“Two things,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

“One”-she pointed to the table-“Ray sent you that picture.”

Broome waved it off. “To toy with me. Lots of serial killers do.”

“No. If he’d been killing men all these years, he’d have started toying with you years ago. You didn’t have a clue that Carlton Flynn had ever been to the park. Without that photograph, you’d know nothing. He sent it in to help you find the real killer.”

“So he was, what, being a good citizen?”

“In part, yes,” she said. “And in part because he, like me, needs to know the truth about that night. Think about it. If Ray hadn’t sent you that picture, you’d still be at square one.”

“And pray tell, how did he happen to take that picture?”

“Think about that too. Why this year? Why not last year or the year before? If Ray was the killer, he could have sent you a new one every year, right? He would have sent them on Mardi Gras. But you see, for Ray, the big day was February eighteenth. That’s the last time we were together. That’s when it all ended so horribly for us. So Ray goes there-on the anniversary, not Mardi Gras. He takes pictures. That’s what he does. That’s how he processes. So he wouldn’t have pictures of your other victims-because he wasn’t there on Mardi Gras, except when it overlapped with February eighteenth. He’d only have pictures of Carlton Flynn.”

Broome almost chuckled. “Wow, you’re really reaching.”

It was, Broome knew, outrageous and full of holes, and yet, as he had learned over the years, the truth has a more unique stench than lies. Still, he didn’t have to rely on intuition. Would Ray have pictures from every February 18? That might back her crazy claim.

But more important: If Ray snapped a photograph of the victim, maybe, just maybe, he took a photograph of the killer.

“You said two things,” Broome said.

“What?”

“You said there were two reasons you changed your mind about Ray killing Stewart Green. You just gave me one. What’s the other?”

“The simplest reason of all,” Megan said. “Stewart Green isn’t dead.”

Deputy Chief Samuel Goldberg wanted to cry.

He wouldn’t, of course; couldn’t even remember the last time he had, but suddenly the desire was there. He sat alone in his office. The office was really a glass partition, and everyone could see in unless he closed the blinds and whenever he did that, every cop in the precinct, a naturally suspicious group by nature, got extra-antsy.

Goldberg closed his eyes and rubbed his face. It felt as though the world were closing in on him, preparing to crush him like in that Star Wars ’ trash compactor scene or that old Batman TV episode where Catwoman’s spike-y wall nearly skewers the Dynamic Duo. His divorce cost him a fortune. The mortgage payments on his and his ex’s properties were ridiculous. His oldest daughter, Carrie, the greatest kid any guy could ever hope to have, wanted to become a tennis phenom and that was so damned expensive. Carrie was training down in Florida with some world-famous coach, and it was costing Goldberg more than 60K a year, which was nearly his take-home salary after taxes. Plus, okay, Goldberg had expensive taste in women, and that was never a good thing for the bank account.

So Goldberg had to be creative to make ends still not meet. How? He sold information. So what? For the most part, the information didn’t change a damn thing. For that matter, neither did law enforcement. You get rid of the Italians, the blacks take it over. You get rid of the blacks, you got the Mexicans and the Russians and so on. So Goldberg played both sides. Nobody got hurt except those who deserved to get hurt. Criminal-on-criminal crime, so to speak.

As for this new situation-providing information on the Carlton Flynn case-well, that seemed even more basic. The father wanted to find his kid. Who couldn’t get that? The father believed the cops could only do so much and that he could help them out. Goldberg doubted it, but sure-why not? — go for it. At worst, the father feels like he did the most he could. Who wouldn’t understand that? And at best, well, the cops did have limits. They had to follow certain rules, even the dumb-ass ones. Someone outside of law enforcement circles didn’t have those restraints. So maybe, who knows, this could be a good thing for everyone.

Plus, yep, Goldberg gets money.

Win-win-win.

During his marriage, Goldberg’s now ex-wife, one of those beautiful women who wanted you to take them seriously but the only reason you’d bother is because they’re beautiful, had thrown a lot of yoga-Zen-Buddhist crap at him, warning him about the danger of his extracurricular moneymaking activities. She talked about how bad deeds could enter the soul and the slippery slope and that it would color his chakra red and all that. She talked this way until, of course, he pointed out that if he listened to her they’d have to move into a smaller house and skip the summer vacations and forget about Carrie’s tennis lessons.

But maybe there was something to all that slippery-slope mumbo jumbo. A stripper gets hurt a little-big deal, right? But maybe it is. Maybe it just snowballs from there.

And where does it end up?

Megan Pierce, wife and mother of two, who could now identify Del Flynn’s two psychopaths-that’s where. She needed to be silenced. That’s the problem with crossing the line. You step over it for a second, but then that line gets blurry and you don’t know where it is anymore and next thing you know, you’re supposed to help two maniacal Talbots-catalogue models kill a woman.

Goldberg’s cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and saw it was the psycho chick.

“Goldberg,” he said.

“Is she still in your precinct, Deputy Chief Goldberg?”

Her upbeat voice reminded him of the hot cheerleader captain from his high school days. “Yes.”

The young woman sighed. “I can wait.”

And then Goldberg said something that surprised even him: “There’s no need.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m getting all the information on her, and then I’ll pass it on. There’s no need for you to, uh, discuss anything with her. You can just let her be.”

Silence.

“Hello?” Goldberg said.

“Don’t worry, I’m here,” she said in a singsong voice.

Where the hell had Flynn found these two? He decided to push it a bit.

“Plus there is a lot of heat,” Goldberg said.

“Heat?”

“People are watching her. Cops. You’d never have a chance to get her alone for more than a minute or two. Really, it’s best to leave this one to me.”

Silence.

Goldberg cleared his throat and tried to move her off this topic. “The blood by those ruins belongs to Carlton Flynn, just so you know. So what other angle are you two working on? Anything I can help with?”

“Deputy Chief Goldberg?”

“Yes.”

“When will Megan Pierce be leaving the precinct?”

“I don’t know, but I just told you-”

“She saw things, Deputy Chief Goldberg.”

He flashed onto Harry Sutton’s dead body-the poor guy’s pants down around his ankles, the burn marks, the incisions, the horrible things done to him. Beads of sweat popped up on Goldberg’s brow. He hadn’t signed on for this. It was one thing to sneak a little information to a worried father. But this?

“No, she didn’t.”

Again the young woman said, “Pardon?”

“I was just with her,” Goldberg said, realizing that he was talking too quickly. “She said she saw a black man at the scene, that’s all.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“If you say so, Deputy Chief Goldberg.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But the call had already been disconnected.