Done for a Dime (23 page)

“They brought the mother in? Whose idea was that?”

“Murchison’s, I guess.”

Ferry chuckled and looked off.
“People versus Mayfield.”

Gilroy blinked, puzzled. “Percy Mayfield?”

“
People,
” Ferry corrected. “
People versus Mayfield
. It’s case law. You bring a family member in, like the mom, let her talk to the suspect, then try to break her down afterward. Mom’s not a suspect, no
Miranda
warning required. Constraints are a little more fluid.”

Using his last wedge of toast, Gilroy sopped up the bleeding pools of egg yolk, syrup, and meat grease on his plate. “Whatever.”

“You say Murchison thought of that?” Ferry was impressed. “That shows smarts.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Gilroy popped the last corner of toast in his mouth, chewed with abandon, then sat back, studying his immaculate plate. “If farts were smarts we’d all be Einstein.”

“Where do you get these things?”

“Not like it led anywhere. Little banger denies all. Momma screams, ‘Set my baby free!’ Fucking joke. And that’s another thing. Murchison may think he’s Eliot Ness, but—and this ain’t just me who says this—he goes into a room with a suspect? You’ll see ducks big as trucks before he walks out with a confession.”

Okay, Ferry thought. We’ve established you won’t be having the guy’s child. “What about the girl you mentioned? The one they found at the scene? What’s her story?”

Gilroy shook his head. “From what I caught during the shift change? She’s strictly a case of see-no, hear-no. And wiggy to boot.”

Finally, Ferry thought. A little tiny bit of good news. He drained the last of his coffee, gesturing to the waitress for the check. “Before we wrap this up, tell me the rest about Murchison.”

Gilroy stared at him like he’d asked for the radius of the moon. “The rest? Like what?”

“Like start with anything you can think of. And when you get to everything you know, stop.”

They walked side by side down the hospital corridor, the nurse—her name was Marjorie, Nadya had learned—keeping a dutiful pace. Movement still came sluggishly, Nadya’s legs working only in jerk-step. The slippers didn’t help. Made of paper, they felt like envelopes on her skin, and if she didn’t drag her feet they came off, tripping her up.

Sunday morning, the hallways were heavy with shadow and deserted. Patients slept or had their TVs turned down low, just the flickering screens and a humming undertone. The vast space, the long corridors, the quiet—it felt a little like the end of the world.

“They said I called nine-one-one. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember a lot.”

Marjorie reached over, pulled a strand of hair off Nadya’s forehead, smoothed it back against her skull. “I can’t say about nine-one-one. And what I know I can only guess at from what one of the EMTs said when they brought you in. That and the way you looked.” Her voice was calm, a throaty alto. “You were covered in blood, young lady. Your skirt, your sweater, your face. Your hair. I know, because I’m the one dealt with your clothes and scrubbed you off.”

Nadya felt her heart start to pound, her breath grow short, but the panic didn’t rise up and choke her like before.

“Some people remember these kinds of things crystal clear. Others, like you, go blank. At least at first. It’ll come back, nighttime especially, in bits and pieces.” Marjorie guided Nadya around a corner, said hello softly to a white-haired man and his gaunt wife with her IV pole, shuffling the opposite way. “We remember the things we can talk to ourselves about. This is how it started, then this, and so on. Things like you went through, when it just runs right over you, the mind hits overload. You’ll be piecing it all together for the next few days, weeks. Months, maybe. Emotions coming at you left and right, you’re gonna feel like you’re dodging traffic. Buses, not bicycles.”

“What if the memory’s gone forever?”

It was a strangely hopeful thought. Marjorie’s eyes, though, said no.

“What troubles me, little lady, is the stuff you’re forgetting. You tried to save the man’s life. You ran out, knelt down in his blood, turned him over, tried to breathe life into him, he coughed it all right back into your face. What you did, it was courageous, dear. But that you don’t recall. I believe you should. Maybe you’re stronger than you care to admit.”

They came to an empty waiting room, its chairs arranged along the wall, a table with jigsaw puzzles and board games piled atop it. What caught Nadya’s eye, though, was the piano.

“I’d like to sit here, just a little while, if I could.”

Marjorie checked her watch. “I need to get back to the nurses’ station.”

“I’ll be fine. Really.”

Nadya guided herself along the chairs to the piano bench, pulled it out from the keyboard, and sat. A sad old upright, scarred from years of schoolroom use, its wood dull, its keys yellowed, three with the ivory chipped and the low C-sharp gone altogether. A simple test of octaves revealed, to her surprise, it didn’t need tuning too badly.

She centered herself, raised her hands to the keys, and began. Once again: Brahms, the Eleventh Hungarian Dance. Originally written for four hands, she played the transcription for solo piano made famous by Julius Katchen, just as she had the night before, waiting for Toby’s father to return home. No matter what comes up, she thought, no matter how fierce, how awful, keep playing. You may not have a story for what happened, not yet. But you have this.

She forced her fingers deep into the keys. The sound became the backdrop to a kind of movie—whimsical but sad, the old modal church harmonies mixing with Romany tremolos and displaced accents. In time, the images arose—the house, its lamplit interior, this same music. The gate outside opening, once, twice. Shots.

She stopped playing, as she had last night. Sat there stock-still. How long? Finally rushing to the window, the curtain pulled back. There, in the yard. Toby’s father.

Play what you know.

Her skin beaded with sweat. It took her several moments before she could swallow. This is your life now, she thought. Pounding heart, cold wet skin, the gooey sweet copper smell of blood. Make peace. Make peace with it and try again. Remember. Toppling backward from the window, yes. Tripping over the ottoman, I suppose, yes. The phone, dialing the phone—was she really remembering it now or simply fabricating images to coincide with what they’d told her?

Did it matter? Of course it mattered.

“Why did you stop?”

Nadya jumped at the sound. Turning, she saw him in the doorway. “Toby.” A whisper. His shirt collar open, jacket unbuttoned, he looked spent and rumpled and wonderful. Except—

“What’s wrong?” she said.

She saw something in his eyes. A terrified revulsion.

“No.” He shook it off. “Nothing’s wrong. Are you—”

She put her hands to her face. “I must look—”

“No, no.” He sat beside her. “Don’t say that.”

She leaned into him, pressed her face against his shirt. “Are you all right? Oh God, you’re all right, you’re all right, you’re all right.” She clung to him, gripping his jacket as though hoping to crawl inside.

He wrapped his arms around her, swaying gently. “Shush, shush, hey, I’m okay, I’m fine. What about you?”

What about me? she thought. My mind’s a
danse macabre
. I’m sick with fear and I want to die from guilt and I missed you and thought I might never see you again, or if I did you’d hate me, like I thought you did when I first saw you in the doorway, that look in your eye.

“I was so scared.” She jerked her head back. “You smell like you were scared, too. Oh God, what happened?” She reached up, grazed his cheek with her fingertips. “Where were you the last few hours?”

He took her hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to shower.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. My God, it smells wonderful. You’re here. You’re here.”

13

M
urchison took what solace he could from the fact he’d had the good sense to extend the crime scene to the two Victorians on either side of the Carlisle property. He sat in a patrol unit, waiting for a callback from the watch commander, while officers manned the front and rear of each house, making sure no one made it in or out.

The watch commander was himself waiting—expecting word from down the chain of command, men who were tracking down the owners of record for both premises, so Murchison and his officers could gain permission to enter. They’d knocked, hoping someone was inside and would have the good sense to open up, but no such luck. Lacking anything concrete to claim exigent circumstances, they couldn’t just plow on in with neither a warrant nor permission. And they lacked anything solid enough yet for a warrant.

What they had was dribs and drabs—scraps of information collected bit by bit from members of Long Walk Mooney’s crew, their friends, hangers-on. They’d been brought in one by one by patrol units or questioned in the field. The bad news—every single one denied any involvement by Arlie Thigpen or Long Walk Mooney in the Carlisle killing. Alibis, such as they were, abounded, contradictory and otherwise. But what they did hand up got confirmed by Holmes’s nameless source, who checked in when word of the mutt hunt made the rounds.

He’d told Holmes it was true, there was a mixed-race male—
skittle,
Holmes said, was the word used—heavyset, six feet tall, went by the name Manny. He’d hung around the fringes of the Mooney crew the past few weeks, then got tipped he could crash at one of the houses next to the Carlisle home. No one as yet knew which one, which was why Murchison had men stationed both places.

Tight as a nun’s butt, Murchison thought. In Stluka’s defense, not to mention Truax and Hennessey, who’d done the first check, both Victorians were indeed secure. The search would probably reveal how the kid had gotten in and out, but still, it felt embarrassing, to be so close and at the same time so clueless. Good thing Jerry went home for a few hours’ sleep, he thought. Otherwise he’d be sitting here howling.

The radio call came through. Murchison picked up. “What’ve we got?”

“We tracked down your owners.” The watch commander this shift was an old-timer named Durbin. “Gotta tell you, Murch. I mean, it was like pulling teeth, getting them to cop to the fact they were listed on title.”

“They’re straw men.” Murchison had to hand one to Toby Marchand’s lawyer. The Queen of Naps. “What about consent to enter?”

“You’re good, go on in. But get this—neither one of these owners had keys.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“You’re not?”

“Who does? Have keys, I mean.”

“Woman named Veronique Edwards.”

Murchison laughed. Victim’s sister. “That’s too perfect.”

“Both owners said she handled the sales, these are investment properties, blah blah, she’s in charge of the renovations.”

That made Murchison look, just to be sure. “What renovations?”

“Guys I had making the calls, they said these people couldn’t even tell for sure if the Edwards woman had keys, you want the truth.”

Didn’t want to tell you, Murchison thought.

“My guys told them we needed access, keys or no keys, now, not next week, what’s it gonna be? After some real sandbagging they finally said yeah, sure, okay. My guess is they’re calling this Edwards woman right now. Her or their lawyers.”

Or both, Murchison thought. He ran it over in his mind, tried to imagine what he’d do in their shoes.

“Durbin, it’s time to bring this Edwards woman down for a sit. Might be past time. Send a car over to get her. Her and her husband, no excuses. Whoever you send, make it clear, don’t say anything about keys or anything else. Offer condolences, sweetie her up. If pushed, we want to hear anything and everything she has to say about her brother. Tell her it’s all routine, but it can’t wait. Homicide, first seventy-two hours, you hear where I’m going. Same with the other owners, they don’t get a choice. Put ’em in different rooms, if you can find that many. Or out in the squad room where they can be watched. Regardless, they sit tight.”

He signed off, got out of the car, and signaled to both crews to grab their tools. They were free to go in.

Toby and Nadya rode in the back of a Yellow Cab from the hospital, sitting close. Toby wrapped his arm around her as she nestled her head into his shoulder.

The clothes she’d worn last night had been claimed by the police. Toby’d not thought to bring anything for her, so it had been up to Marjorie, the nurse, to loan from her locker a cable-stitch sweater and jeans four sizes too large. Nadya’d rolled up the cuffs, and they’d found twine to cinch the waistband tight, the denim billowing at her hips and thighs. For shoes she wore the same paper slippers. They were ridiculously thin in the cold air, and she shivered beside him in the backseat of the cab.

As he held her, something his father once told him came to mind. It was one of the best lessons the old man had ever given him, actually, about something he called at one time or another The Deep Sweet. Music is a living thing, he’d said. Inside every piece you ever play there’s a pulse, a real one—not made up in your head, in the music itself. It’s your duty to find it, connect. Do that, commit yourself to it, you’ll discover the reason you play. Discover yourself, reflected back in song. You don’t, you’re just blowing notes.

Toby had felt it maybe a half-dozen times, no more. But the point was to know you’d felt it. To know that was to understand that inside every true thing there’s a welcoming beauty, even as simple a thing as a song. That kept you hungry. And that was the point—to keep on the hunt, to crave that echo, to know it’s there, and to never stop wanting it.

Toby’d come to think of love that way, too. There were technicians in that realm just like in music—men and women who thought what happened between them was a matter of skill, a craft you refined. He’d fallen hard for a woman like that, almost proposed—a woman, sad to say, whom his mother still considered perfection—fashion model elegant but educated, too, Stanford Law, a worldly future ahead of her. But inside?

As Nadya curled up beside him, he felt a deepening suspicion that this sneaky, mercurial truth toward which his father had pointed the way resided closer than he’d guessed. No sooner did this feeling arise, though, than he shrank from it. Maybe, he thought, it’s just need. Or guilt, trying to twist itself into something good. You’re a walking wound, he thought. Be careful. Let all this sit till your father’s death and all it means isn’t so raw.