The Dead Man

Chapter Forty-three

I slid into the passenger seat next to Lucy. She was locked in a thousand-yard stare, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, her eyes red-rimmed and full.

"Hey," I said. "You okay?"

"Yeah." She triggered the ignition, put the car in gear, and glided toward the street, taking it too slow like a drunk trying to walk a straight line.

"So, how'd it go with Ammara and Dolan?"

She took a deep breath. "Some things you never get over, you know that?"

"Tell me about it."

She pulled into traffic. I didn't ask where we were going. I'd let her find her way.

"I'd come off a twenty-hour shift when I was busted for the diamonds," she began, reading more into my offhand suggestion to tell me about it than I had intended. She glanced at me, her raised brows asking if she should continue.

"It's okay. Go on."

She took another deep breath, gathering herself. "My eight hours were up when I found the jewelry guy's body. We were short-staffed. It was a hot case and the thought of going home, taking a shower, and going to bed with those stones under my pillow freaked me out. I never asked for the overtime. I just stayed with the case. It was understood that's what I'd do. The whole time, I'm trying to figure out how to get back in the motel room, drop the stones on the floor, and let someone else find them, but there's no way. First the room is packed with cops, CSI, everybody. After that, it's taped off and I'm on the street with one of the detectives, a drop-dead gorgeous guy named Ricky Brown who I'd been flirting with for a month, trying to get him to ask me out and I think he's interested except he's coming out of a messy relationship only he's not all the way out yet. No way I can go back. Part of me is scared shitless and part of me is so jacked up I can't see straight thinking everything will be okay if we just don't catch the guy that did it. I'm like praying, please God, I know he killed the salesman and I screwed up but how about giving me a break because nothing is going to bring the dead guy back and I'll make it up to you if you let me skate. I'll sell the stones and give the money to the church. I swear on my mother's grave I will. Then, twelve hours later when we catch the guy and he's got the stuff on him and Ricky asks him is that all of it and he says it's all of it except for some diamonds that he left lying on the floor and Ricky looks at me and I choke, I mean I don't say anything but it's like I'm saying everything. Later, when I'm serving my sentence, I talk to this prison chaplain and I tell him the story and that I must have been really screwed up to think God would answer my prayer and the priest says to me that God answers all prayers, it's just that sometimes the answer is no. Which makes sense so I keep praying that I don't screw up again because I don't think I can handle going back and then Dolan puts me in the backseat of their car and starts grilling me about you and the pictures of Enoch's body I took and they found on your laptop and I swear to Jesus for a few minutes there I was back in that shitty Gaithersburg interrogation room, Ricky staring at me across the table, the diamonds spread out in front of us, him saying what a shame because we could have had something and me thinking my life is over and I want to die. That's how Dolan makes me feel and then he says that he knows about Gaithersburg and that if I help him, maybe wear a wire with you that they'll take care of me. All I have to do is give you up."

"Do whatever it takes," I said, the words becoming the zealous mantra of the true believer no matter the cause.

She pounded the steering wheel, looking at me for the first time since I got in the car, tears pouring down her face. "Exactly. The bastard!"

I opened the console between our seats and handed her a package of tissues. She sniffled and wiped her eyes and nose.

"What did you tell Dolan?"

She smiled at me. "I told him to go fuck himself. Guy like him, it's the only way he'd get any."

She was a mess but a beautiful mess. I stroked her hair and patted her on the shoulder. "You did good, kiddo. So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the rest of the play?"

She laughed at the old joke, a small gurgle that blossomed into full out whooping, spreading to me, the two of us howling until she was crying again and I was shaking, our laughter opening our internal relief valves, purging the day's pressures, letting us begin again.

It started with a phone call from Kate.

"We just turned on the news. Are you okay?"

"Never better," I stammered, punctuating my answer with a grunt.

"Right. You sound terrific. Go home and take it easy."

"Make me believe you and Simon haven't come up with anything, in which case I'll have to fire you, and maybe I will."

"Is Lucy driving?"

"Yes."

"In that case, you can come over. We're at my office. See you in a few."

I gave Lucy directions. "Any luck with the construction crew on Regina Blair's project?"

"No. She was on site a lot but no one was working the morning she was killed."

Lucy had classified Blair's death as a homicide. My gut said she was right even though we still couldn't prove it.

"Did you ask the people who knew her about her fear of heights?"

"Yeah. The foreman said she was famous for it. He joked with her about it but he liked her. Said she never got close to the edge of anything unless it was the sidewalk. He gave me a lead, though."

"What?"

"He introduced me to the homeless guy who found her body. You'd be surprised how bad someone can smell in the middle of winter. His name is Vinny and he's equal parts teeth and charm, which is to say he's doesn't have much of either. But, twenty bucks bought me a dissertation on life on the street and a complaint that no one gave him a reward for finding the body."

"He probably went through her pockets before he flagged down a cop."

"That's the thing. He came clean on that at the get-go. He complained that she didn't have anything on her worth stealing."

"Nothing?"

"He said she had a cell phone but that was no good to him since there wasn't anybody he wanted to call. He went through her wallet but the liquor store wouldn't let him use her credit cards and that would just land him in jail anyway. He was looking for cash, jewelry, a watch, anything he could turn into a fifth of gin without a lot of questions. He figured someone got to the body ahead of him and he said that pissed him off more than anything because that alley was his. I don't remember the police report saying anything about her being robbed."

"Maybe she wasn't robbed, not the way Vinny means it."

"Is there another way?"

"It's not the way, it's the reason," I said, picturing Anne Kendall's mutilated left hand, her ring finger snapped off with wire shears. "Vinny was looking for something he could sell. The killer was looking for souvenirs."