Mystic River (24 page)

Why? Why would anyone do such a thing? And if you accepted that someone, in point of fact,
could
, was it a logical leap to assume Dave could be that person?

Yes, she told herself, he lived in a secret world. Yes, he’d probably never be whole because of the crimes committed against him when he was a child. Yes, he’d lied about the mugger, but maybe there was a reasonable explanation for that lie.

Like what?

Katie was murdered in Pen Park shortly after leaving the Last Drop. Dave had claimed to have fought off a mugger in the parking lot of the same bar. He had claimed he left the mugger there, unconscious, but no one had ever found the guy. The police
had
mentioned something about finding blood in the parking lot, though. So, maybe Dave had been telling the truth. Maybe.

And yet, she kept coming back to the timing of everything. Dave had told her he was at the Last Drop. Apparently, he’d lied about that to the police. Katie was murdered between two and three in the morning. Dave had walked back into the apartment at ten past three, covered in someone else’s blood and with an unconvincing story as to how it had gotten there.

And that was the most glaring coincidence of all—Katie is murdered, Dave returns home covered in blood.

If she wasn’t his wife, would she even question the conclusion?

Celeste bent forward again, trying to keep her insides in and block the voice in her head that kept saying the words in a hissing whisper:

Dave killed Katie. Jesus Christ. Dave killed Katie.

Oh, dear God. Dave killed Katie, and I want to die.

“S
O YOU’VE DISCOUNTED
Bobby and Roman as suspects?” Jimmy said.

Sean shook his head. “Not completely. It doesn’t rule out the possibility that they hired someone.”

Annabeth said, “But I can see it in your face, you don’t think that’s likely.”

“No, Mrs. Marcus, we don’t.”

Jimmy said, “So who do you suspect? Anyone?”

Whitey and Sean looked at each other, and then Dave came into the kitchen, unwrapping the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, and handed them to Annabeth. “Here you go, Anna.”

“Thank you.” She looked at Jimmy with a minor embarrassment in her face. “I just got the urge.”

He smiled softly and patted her hand. “Honey, whatever you need right now is fine. It’s cool.”

She turned to Whitey and Sean as she lit up. “I quit ten years ago.”

“Me, too,” Sean said. “Can I bum one?”

Annabeth laughed, the cigarette jerking between her lips, and Jimmy thought it may have been the first beautiful sound he’d heard in twenty-four hours. He saw the grin on Sean’s face as he took a cigarette from his wife, and he wanted to thank him for making her smile.

“You’re a bad boy, Trooper Devine.” Annabeth lit his cigarette.

Sean took a puff. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Heard it last week from the commander,” Whitey said, “if I remember right.”

Annabeth said, “Really?” and fixed Sean in the warmth of her interest, Annabeth being one of those rare people who could invest as much effort in her listening as in her talking.

Sean’s grin widened as Dave took a seat, and Jimmy could feel the air in the kitchen grow lighter.

“I’m just coming off a suspension,” Sean admitted. “Yesterday was my first day back.”

“What did you do?” Jimmy said, leaning into the table.

Sean said, “That’s confidential.”

“Sergeant Powers?” Annabeth said.

“Well, Trooper Devine here—”

Sean looked over at him. “I got stories about you, too.”

Whitey said, “Good point. Sorry, Mrs. Marcus.”

“Oh, come
on
.”

“No way. Sorry.”

“Sean,” Jimmy said, and when Sean looked over at him, Jimmy tried to convey through his eyes that
this
was good, this was what they needed right now. A respite. A conversation that had nothing to do with homicide or funeral homes or loss.

Sean’s face softened until for a moment it looked like the face he’d had as an eleven-year-old, and he nodded.

He turned back to Annabeth and said, “I buried a guy in phantom tickets.”

“You
what
?” Annabeth leaned forward, cigarette held up by her ear, eyes wide.

Sean leaned his head back, took a drag from his cigarette, and blew it out at the ceiling. “There was this guy I didn’t like, never mind why. Anyway, once a month or so, I’d enter his license plate into the RMV database as a parking offender. I’d mix it up—one month it was parking at an expired meter, the next it was parking in a commercial zone, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, the guy goes into the system, but he doesn’t know it.”

“Because he never got a ticket,” Annabeth said.

“Exactly. And every twenty-one days he gets hit another five bucks for failure to pay, and then the fines keep racking up until one day he gets a summons to court.”

Whitey said, “And finds out he owes the Commonwealth about twelve hundred dollars.”

“Eleven hundred,” Sean said. “But yeah. He says he never got the tickets, but the court didn’t believe him. They hear that all the time. So the guy’s screwed. He’s in the computer, after all, and computers don’t lie.”

Dave said, “This is great. You do this a lot?”

“No!” Sean said, and Annabeth and Jimmy laughed. “No, I do not, David.”

“Calling you ‘David’ now,” Jimmy said. “Watch out.”

“I did it this
one
time to this
one
guy.”

“So, how’d you get caught?”

“Guy’s aunt worked in the RMV,” Whitey said. “You believe that?”

“No,” Annabeth said.

Sean nodded. “Who knew? The guy paid the fines, but then he put his aunt on it and she traced it back to my barracks, and since I had a previous history with the gentleman in question, it was easy for the commander to add motive to opportunity and narrow down the suspects, so I got bagged.”

“Exactly how much shit,” Jimmy said, “did you have to eat over this?”

“Bags of it,” Sean admitted, and this time all four of them laughed. “Big, huge, trash-can-size bags.” Sean caught the glee in Jimmy’s eyes and started laughing himself.

Whitey said, “Poor old Devine ain’t had the best year.”

“You’re lucky no one in the press got to this,” Annabeth said.

“Oh, we take care of our own,” Whitey said. “We may have kicked his ass, but all the lady at the RMV had was the barracks the tickets emanated from, not the badge number. What’d we blame—clerical error?”

“Computer glitch,” Sean said. “Commander made me pay full restitution, blah, blah, blah, suspended me a week without pay and put me on three months’ probation. Could’ve been a lot worse, though.”

“Could’ve demoted him,” Whitey said.

“Why didn’t they?” Jimmy said.

Sean stubbed out his cigarette and held out his arms. “Because I’m Supercop. Don’t you read the papers, Jim?”

Whitey said, “What Ego-head here is trying to tell you is that he’s put down some pretty serious cases in the last few
months. Has the highest ‘solved’ rate in my unit. We got to wait till his average goes down before we can dump him.”

“That road-rage thing,” Dave said. “I saw your name once in the paper.”

“
Dave
reads,” Sean said to Jimmy.

“Not books on shooting pool, though,” Whitey said with a smile. “How’s that hand feeling?”

Jimmy looked over at Dave, caught his eyes just as Dave dropped them, Jimmy getting a strong sense the big cop was fucking with Dave, pushing him. Jimmy had experienced enough of that back in the day to know its tone, and he realized it was Dave’s hand the cop was razzing him about. So what had he meant about shooting pool?

Dave opened his mouth to speak, but then his face was stricken by something over Sean’s shoulder. Jimmy followed his gaze and every inch of him stiffened.

Sean turned his head and saw Celeste Boyle holding a dark blue dress, the hanger up by her shoulder so that the dress hovered beside her as if covering a body no one could see.

Celeste saw the look on Jimmy’s face and said, “I’ll take it over to the funeral home, Jim. Really.”

Jimmy looked like he’d forgotten how to move.

Annabeth said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” Celeste said with a weird, desperate laugh. “Really. I’d like to. It’ll get me out for a few minutes. I’d be happy to, Anna.”

“You’re sure?” Jimmy said, his voice coming out of him with a small croak.

“Yeah, yeah,” Celeste said.

Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a person so desperate to leave a room. He came out of his chair toward her, hand extended.

“We met a few times. I’m Sean Devine.”

“Oh, right.” Celeste’s hand was slick with sweat as it slid into Sean’s.

“You cut my hair once,” Sean said.

“I know, I know. I remember.”

“Well…” Sean said.

“Well.”

“Don’t want to keep you.”

Celeste let out that desperate laugh again. “No, no. So it was good seeing you. I gotta go.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Dave said, “Bye, honey,” but Celeste was already moving down the hallway and heading for the front door like she’d smelled a gas leak.

Sean said, “Shit,” and looked back over his shoulder at Whitey.

Whitey said, “What?”

“I left my report pad in the cruiser.”

Whitey said, “Oh, better go get it then.”

As Sean went down the hall, he heard Dave say, “What, he can’t borrow a page from yours?”

He didn’t get to hear whatever bullshit Whitey slung, because he moved out through the doorway and down the stairs, came out onto the front porch as Celeste reached the driver’s side of the car. She got her key in the lock and opened the door, then reached in and unlocked the back door. She opened it and slid the dress carefully onto the backseat. When she closed the door, she looked over the roof and saw Sean coming down the stairs, and Sean could see pure terror in her face, the look of someone who expected to get hit by a bus. Now.

He could be subtle or direct, and one look at her face told him direct was the only hope he had. Get her while she was unbalanced for whatever reason.

“Celeste,” he said, “I just wanted to ask you a quick question.”

“Me?”

He nodded as he reached the car and leaned into it, put his hands on the roof. “What time did Dave come home on Saturday night?”

“What?”

He repeated the question, holding her with his eyes.

“Why would you be interested in Dave’s Saturday night?” she said.

“It’s a little thing, Celeste. We asked Dave some questions today because he was in McGills the same time Katie was. Some of Dave’s answers didn’t add up and it’s bothering my partner. Me, I just figure Dave had had a few that night and can’t remember exact details, but my partner, he’s a pain in the ass. So, I just need to know what time he came back, exactly, so I can get my partner off my back and we can concentrate on finding Katie’s killer.”

“You think Dave did it?”

Sean leaned back from the car, cocked his head at her. “I didn’t say anything like that, Celeste. Hell, why would I even
think
that?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“But
you
said it.”

Celeste said, “What? What are we talking about? I’m confused.”

Sean smiled as comfortingly as he could. “The sooner I know what time Dave came home, the sooner I can get my partner to move on to other things besides holes in your husband’s story.”

For a moment, she looked like she might hurl herself backward into traffic. She looked that abandoned, that confused, and Sean felt the same raw pity for her that he often felt for her husband.

“Celeste,” he said, knowing Whitey would give him an F on his probationary report if he heard what he was about to say, “I don’t think Dave did anything. I swear to God. But my partner does, and he’s the ranking officer. He decides which avenues the investigation explores. You tell me what time Dave got home, we’ll be done here. And Dave will never have to worry about us again.”

Celeste said, “But you saw this car.”

“What?”

“I heard you talking earlier. Someone saw this car parked
outside the Last Drop the night Katie was killed. Your partner thinks Dave killed Katie.”

Shit. Sean couldn’t fucking believe this.

“My partner wants to take a closer look at Dave. It’s not the same thing. We don’t have a suspect, Celeste. Okay? We don’t. What we have are holes in Dave’s story. We close those holes, it’s over and done. No worries.”

He was mugged
, Celeste wanted to say.
He came home with blood all over him but only because someone tried to mug him. He didn’t do it. Even if I think he might have, another part of me knows that Dave is not that kind of guy. I make love to him. I married him. And I wouldn’t marry a killer, you fucking cop
.

She tried to remember the way in which she’d planned to be calm when the police arrived asking questions. That night, as she’d washed his clothes of blood, she was sure that she’d had a plan for how to deal with this. But she hadn’t known Katie was dead at that point and that the cops would be questioning her about Dave’s involvement in her death. How could she have predicted that? And this cop, he was so smooth and cocky and charming. He wasn’t the potbellied, hungover, grizzled type she’d expected. He was an old friend of Dave’s. Dave had told her that this man, Sean Devine, had been on the street with him and Jimmy Marcus when Dave had been abducted. And he’d grown up into this tall, smart, handsome guy with a voice you could listen to all night and eyes that seemed to peel you away in layers.

Jesus Christ. How was she supposed to deal with this? She needed time. She needed time to think and be by herself and look at the situation rationally. She didn’t need a dead girl’s dress staring back up at her from the backseat and a cop on the other side of the car staring at her with venomous, bedroom eyes.

She said, “I was asleep.”

“Huh?”

“I was asleep,” she said. “Saturday night, when Dave got home. I was already in bed.”

The cop nodded. He leaned into the car again, patted his hands on the roof. He seemed satisfied. He seemed as if all his questions had been answered. She remembered that his hair had been very thick and had almost toffee-colored streaks up by the crown amid the light brown. She remembered thinking he’d never have to worry about going bald.