The Second Life of Nick Mason

5

Detective Frank Sandoval had worked a hundred brutal homicides with his old partner Gary Higgins, but he’d never seen fear on the man’s face. Not once.

Until today.

Sandoval had come up here to this little inland lake west of Kenosha, Wisconsin, not knowing if he’d found the right place until he had walked around to the lake side of the house and had seen the old Crown Vic, pulled around back so it couldn’t be seen from the road. The sun was going down by then. Sandoval held up a hand to shield his eyes and saw the silhouette on the dock. He walked down the trail, moving fast. Sandoval was built short and compact, with Latin features, and dark piercing eyes that took in every detail around him. He was a man doing the one job in the world that could contain all of his energy.

When Sandoval was close enough, the silhouette resolved into a man he would have recognized anywhere. Late fifties, with wide shoulders and not much hair left on his head. One of the most decorated homicide detectives in the city, with a list of high-profile arrests that would run off the page.

Sandoval thought back to the first time he’d ever seen this man. It was his first day as a detective at Area Central Homicide. The commander had partnered him with Gary Higgins. First thing Higgins told him was shut up and listen. Keep your eyes open and watch me. Learn how this really works before you start thinking you know something.

It was a six-man team, working under one sergeant. It didn’t take long for Sandoval to see how the other men took their lead from Higgins. Always the first man through the door. Knew when to lean on people and when to hang back. Knew which questions to ask and the right time to ask them. If Higgins hadn’t been a cop, he would have probably been a professor of human psychology.

He did it hard. He did it right. Most of all, he did it clean.

Everything Sandoval knew about being a good homicide detective, about being a good cop, he learned from Gary Higgins. But now, as he looked down the dock, he saw his old partner sitting motionless on a folding chair between the last two pilings. The water was as flat and still as a mirror. When Sandoval took one step onto the dock, Higgins turned around quickly. The surprise on his face gave way to anger.

“Whatever answers you thought you might be getting on the drive up here,” Higgins said, “you can forget it. You’ll get nothing from me.”

“We have to talk, Gary.”

Higgins stood up and came down the dock toward Sandoval. He’d seen this man just a few weeks ago. How could he be so much thinner? He looked like a man who’d aged ten years.

“Who’m I talking to?” Higgins said as he grabbed Sandoval by the shoulders and began to pat him down. “Who else is listening?”

“Take your fucking hands off me,” Sandoval said, pushing him away. “You think I’d come here wired?”

He studied Higgins’s face. The lines around his mouth, the dark bags under his eyes. From two feet away, he could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Raise your arms,” Higgins said.

“Fuck you. I’m not wearing a wire.”

“How did you find me?”

“I remembered you talking about this place,” Sandoval said. “It’s still in your father-in-law’s name, so I came up here and took a shot.”

“Who else knows you’re here?”

“Nobody. I came on my own.”

“You should have stayed in Chicago, Frank. They could have followed you. They’re probably watching us right now.”

Sandoval looked around at the empty lake. There were other houses all along the shoreline, but he couldn’t see another soul. “Jesus,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”

Sandoval watched Higgins, waiting for the rest of his old partner to come back. The man who could never stop talking when they were on the job.

“I was your partner for six years,” Sandoval finally said. “You never took money, never crossed the line. I know you’re not jammed up, so you tell me what kind of deal you made to put Nick Mason back on the street.”

“I got nothing for you, Frank. You’re wasting your time here.”

“Thirty years,” Sandoval said. “You expect me to watch you throw that away, not say a fucking word? Give me a name, let me start helping you.”

“You can’t help me.”

“Give me one name.”

“I can’t.”

“Okay, I’ll give you one. Darius Cole.”

Higgins looked away. It was a fraction of a second, but it was all Sandoval needed to see.

“Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere. Darius Cole, who happened to be in the same block with Nick Mason, down at Terre Haute. Of course, you already knew that much, right? And Mason’s got what, twenty years until his first parole hearing? At least two decades before he’s out, Gary. You know where he is right now?”

Higgins didn’t answer.

“He’s in a five-million-dollar town house in Lincoln Park. Which I’m sure is owned by guess who. I haven’t dug into it yet, but I don’t have to, because you know it’s one shell company that owns other companies, one for the restaurant, one for the town house, and who knows what else. But if you follow the money, it all flows back to Darius Cole. So Nick Mason’s out of prison and soaking in a hot tub and getting ready to do… what? Cole knows. Maybe you know. What horrible thing is he out to do, Gary? Whatever it is, you’re going to be wearing it. How’s that sit with you?”

Higgins looked at him.

“He killed a federal agent, Gary. Now he’s out.”

“We never put that gun in his hand.”

“The fuck does that matter?” Sandoval said. “You know it’s felony murder as long as he’s there. Who cares if he pulled the trigger?”

Higgins put his hand on Sandoval’s chest and drove him backward, into the piling. Sandoval felt the rough wood digging into his back.

“You think I don’t know this?” Higgins said, his face two inches away. “All of this? I know what I did, Frank. I know what I fucking did. Every night, I gotta drink myself to sleep so I don’t put a bullet in my head.”

“We can climb out of this. Together.”

“You don’t know these people,” Higgins said. “You don’t know what they’ll do to you. Is this worth your life, Frank? Your family’s life? That’s what the risk is here if you don’t stop. You say you want the answers, but you don’t. Believe me, you fucking don’t.”

Sandoval had seen enough pain in his life. How many times had he answered a homicide call, met the wife or the parents, and seen a whole world of it? More than one person should be asked to bear? You never get numb to it. It’s new every time.

He was seeing that now, that same kind of pain, staring back at him through his partner’s eyes.

“I’m done,” Higgins said. “I’m over. You don’t have to be. Go back to Chicago and forget you ever saw me.”

Higgins let him go. He turned away from him and went back to the end of the dock.

“I’m not going to let this go,” Sandoval said to his back.

Higgins didn’t turn. He kept walking away.

“No matter what you say, Gary, I’m not going to stop.”