The Echo Man

Chapter 103

Monday, November 8

Byrne sat in the small lunch-room at the back of the Roundhouse. The four-to-twelve shift had already come and gone and were out on the street. Byrne, who had been on administrative leave since the shooting, sat by himself, a cold cup of untouched coffee in front of him.

When Jessica entered the room and approached him she saw something else on the table. It was Byrne's fifty-cent piece.

'Hey, partner.'

'Hey,' Byrne replied. 'You finish that FAS?'

A Firearms Analysis System form was a trace request sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

'All done.' Jessica slid into the booth across from Byrne. 'You heading home?'

'In a while.'

They sat in silence. Byrne looked tired, but not nearly as tired as he had looked recently. He'd gotten the results from all his follow-up tests. There was no tumor, nothing serious. They said it was a combination of fatigue, poor diet, insomnia, with a Bushmills chaser. Jessica glanced at the menu displayed over the counter in the corner, and thought about how eating in this place might be part of the problem.

Byrne looked up, at the scarred booths, the plastic flowers, the line of vending machines against the wall, at the place to which he had come to work for more than twenty years. 'I didn't do my job, Jess.'

She'd known this was coming, and here it was. Everything she planned to say vaporized from her mind. She decided to just speak from her heart. 'It wasn't your fault.'

'I was so young,' Byrne said. 'So arrogant.'

'Christa-Marie confessed to the crime, Kevin. I wouldn't have handled it any differently. I don't know any cop who would.'

'She confessed because she was ill,' Byrne said. 'I didn't dig any deeper. I should have, but I didn't. I turned in my report, it went to the DA. Just like always. Boss says move on, you move on.'

'Exactly.'

Byrne spun the coffee cup a few times.

'I wonder what her life would have been like,' he said. 'I wonder where she would have gone, what she would have done.'

Jessica knew there was no answer to this, none that would help. She waited awhile, then slipped out of the booth.

'How about I buy you a drink?' she said. 'It's fifty-cent Miller Lite night at Finnigan's Wake. We can get hammered, drive around, pull people over, do some traffic stops. Be like old times.'

Byrne smiled, but there was sadness in it. 'Maybe tomorrow.'

'Sure.'

Jessica put a hand on Byrne's shoulder. When she got to the door she turned, looked at the big man sitting in the last booth, surrounded by all the whispering ghosts of his past. She wondered if they would ever be silent.