Slipping Into Darkness (32 page)

 

He lay on his back and looked up, hearing a foghorn in the distance.

 

“How long?” she said finally.

 

“How long what?”

 

“How long since you’ve been with this other girl?”

 

“Ssshh.” He threw his forearm across his brow. “Was I that bad?”

 

“No. Just very . . .
aggressive.
”

 

“And is that good?”

 

“Usually I would prefer not to be fucked so vehemently, but . . . it’s okay.”

 

He heard truck wheels sluicing rainwater into the gutters.

 

“Twenty years,” he said.

 

“Pardon?” He realized she was starting to fall asleep.

 

“I said, it’s been twenty years since I tried to do that. . . .”

 

He could wake her right now and tell her everything. About the shanks and the showers, the flocks of geese flying past the guard towers, the way the vans smelled when you were getting transferred from one facility to another, vaguely aware that every time you went through a new set of gates, you were becoming more like the other men you were doing time with and less like people on the outside.

 

But then she curled up beside him and put her head next to his, so he could feel her cheek touching his ear and her warm breath on the side of his face. He couldn’t do it. There was something too sweet and hopeful about this moment that he couldn’t bear to disturb.

 

I don’t want better. I don’t want worse. Just keep it this way for a little while.

 

Once he told her, she would never lie so plainly naked next to him in moonlight, with the boy sleeping in the next room, the end of his loneliness almost in sight. She would never ask him over for dinner at a moment’s notice or imagine him again as a surrogate father for the son he now realized he’d always wanted.

 

She would hear the whole story and she would pretend to believe, but then she’d ask him questions and wonder what else he hadn’t told her. She’d flinch a little the next time he touched her and think of what she’d heard about men who’d been in prison. And then she’d stop returning his messages. And soon he’d find this was no longer a working number.

 

Water dribbled in the drains. The tugboat sounded its horn more faintly this time. Tomorrow he’d go back to being what he was. The sun would come out and reveal everything in a stark pitiless glare. All he wanted now was to stay this way for just a little longer, to dream awhile, at least until the rain let up.

 

 

PART V

COMPLICATED SHADOWS

 

 

36

 

 

 

A BUNCHA GUYS SITTING around an uptown office with their ties hanging down, like the tongues of panting hounds.

 

“Gotta start working the phones and computers today,” Francis said to “Yunior” Barbaro, Rashid, and gray old Jimmy Ryan. “Make sure we’re putting that DNA sample from under Christine’s fingernails into every state and federal data bank we can find, see if we get a hit.”

 

“We’ve been doing that since last night.” Yunior swiveled his chair around defensively. “You think we’re not going to check if the doer’s been arrested before?”

 

“I’m just saying, think outside the box. Start calling around to different states to get birth records too. See if Eileen had another daughter she hasn’t told us about.”

 

“Yeah, good fuckin’ luck,” said Yunior, checking his cell phone.

 

It was one of those newfangled Nokias with all the bells and whistles that could give you the time, the date, instant text messaging, museum-quality pictures, and weather patterns in Indonesia, but couldn’t get a call from one side of the street to the other in certain parts of the city. Like Yunior himself, it was a shiny new model trying just a little too hard and somehow still not quite getting the job done.

 

“Hey, we know we’re looking for a woman,” said Francis. “We know she left a sample at the ’83 crime scene as well. And we know she’s related to Eileen Wallis.”

 

The lieutenant on duty, Joe “Bodega Coffee” Martinez, ambled into the squad room. He was a doughy amiable guy Francis knew from back in Narcotics, when Joe was always disappearing right before a raid, saying, “I’m a go get coffee for everybody from the bodega on the corner.” These days, his two ambitions were to keep the squad running smoothly and to eat at every high-quality steak house from one end of the country to the other—sort of like that old Burt Lancaster movie
The Swimmer,
with sirloins instead of swimming pools.

 

“Any word about the Big Dig?” Rashid looked up.

 

“That’s a nega-tory,” said the loo, patting his stomach. “Nobody wants to exhume Allison’s body unless we really have to. Can you imagine how that’s going to play in the
Post
?”

 

“Well, if Loughlin had bothered to check the toe tag before they planted the wrong girl, we wouldn’t be running around now.” Yunior snapped his cell phone shut.

 

“Hey, fuck you, Yunior. You’d need an extension ladder just to get up high enough to kiss my ass.”

 

“Oh, here we go.” Jimmy Ryan clapped his hands. “Katie, bar the door.”

 

“Legend in his own mind,” Yunior muttered.

 

“Ivy League pussy.” Francis smiled with all his teeth.

 

“Come on, guys,” said the lieutenant. “Can’t we all just get along?”

 

Rashid shot him a look.

 

“Look,” said Francis, letting the static fade for the moment. “JC was just telling me to keep an open mind, don’t get a hard-on for one guy, so let’s freestyle it a little.”

 

“What do you mean?” said the loo.

 

“Middle of the night last night I got to thinking.” They didn’t need to know about his little caper up on the roof and the bedroom interrogation afterward. “I’m just riffing here. All right?”

 

He was pleased to see that they all still subtly leaned toward him a little, like the actors in one of those old E. F. Hutton ads.
When Francis X. talks, people listen.

 

“So I’m not completely writing Hoolian off, I’m just asking: Christine Rogers’s parents said she was adopted. I-ight?”

 

Rashid nodded cautiously, confirming that Jimmy, Yunior, and the lieutenant knew it as well.

 

“Anybody checking out who her biological birth mother was?”

 

“Shit.”
Yunior’s face swelled up like a wad of bubblegum under his ninety-dollar haircut. “You’re not serious.”

 

“Course, I’m serious,” said Francis. “We know there’s some blood connection between these two cases and we have no idea who her real mother is. So we gotta look at everything.”

 

“But people spend years trying to chase that crap down. You ever hear of confidentiality laws covering adoptions?”

 

“Then you better stop wasting time and start talking to Legal Affairs about getting around them,” said Francis, waggling his eyebrows while the phone on his desk started to ring. “Not that I’m telling everyone what to do, God forbid.”

 

“And why doesn’t this guy do it?” Yunior eyed Rashid. “He’s the one from the precinct.”

 

“
Allahu akbar,
brother.” Rashid gave him the Black Power fist. “Servants to the same master.”

 

“Still doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Yunior turned back to Francis. “Allison was twenty-seven when she died in 1983. Christine turned the same age in February this year. That means she would’ve been seven years old when Allison was murdered.”

 

“‘Since these mysteries are beyond me, let’s pretend we’re organizing them.’” Francis started to reach for the phone. “Bet you never learned who said that at Dartmouth . . .
Hello . . .
”

 

“Francis Loughlin?”

 

“’At’s my name. How can I help you, young lady?”

 

“Judy Mandel from the
Trib.
”

 

“Uhhh-huhh.”

 

The rest of the task force scurried away as if a RADIOACTIVE sign had just been put around his neck, somehow sensing it was either the press or the brass on the line.

 

“I catch you at a bad time?”

 

“As a matter of fact . . .”

 

“Then I’ll be quick.” She sounded like the kind of high-strung girl who constantly had to remind herself to say please and thank you. “I’m working on a story about the link between the Allison Wallis and Christine Rogers cases.”

 

“Are you now?” Francis switched the phone from one shoulder to the other, not about to fall into the old trick of confirming a story by agreeing with its premise.
And when did you stop beating your kids?

 

“And who said they were connected?” He tried flipping her.

 

“Come on. We’re both grown-ups here.”

 

“Well, that’s kind of presuming we’re about to have a real conversation.”

 

Somebody
had talked. His eyes searched the room for likely suspects. Couldn’t be Ryan. The only reporters he dealt with were the old Irish ones, guys who looked like they chased parked cars and shaved with the sidewalk. The lieutenant was a possibility, since he was such a steak whore. A filet mignon at Sparks could mean a week’s worth of columns for an enterprising writer. Rashid was unlikely, since he was relatively new to the game. But Yunior was a possibility, since he always seemed to have some lissome young freelancer on the hook.

 

“Okay, if you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll just go with what I have,” she said. “I’m going to feel bad, though, running a story that says you guys blew two cases without any comment from you.”

 

The one train ran past the windows again, sending a light tremor through the squad room.

 

“You get permission to talk to me from Public Information?” Francis asked, taking care not to raise his voice.

 

“I thought we could keep this on background.”

 

He slipped a discreet finger under his collar, knowing he didn’t have a choice. “So, what is it you want to know anyway?”

 

“How’d you end up finding DNA from somebody who’s been dead twenty years on the body of a victim from last week?”

 

Another train passed going the other way, rattling an empty Diet Coke can on the windowsill.

 

“Ah, that’s bullshit.” He laughed. “Somebody’s putting you on.”

 

“And why would they make up something like that?”

 

“I don’t know what goes through a defense lawyer’s mind,” he said, still trying to smoke out her source. “I’m just saying, you’re way out in left field here. What else you got?”

 

“I know you started off looking at Julian Vega for the Christine Rogers homicide.”

 

He started fidgeting like a crackhead, pulling apart a paper clip and straightening its metal bends. Lots of ways she could’ve found out, he realized. The super at Christine’s building could’ve tipped her off after they’d shown him a photo array with Hoolian’s picture in it. Or somebody from Crime Scene could’ve dropped a dime. Even Hoolian himself could’ve worked out that something was up after Francis tried to sandbag him at the supermarket. Though why he would’ve told the press, Francis didn’t know.

 

“We’re looking at a lot of people,” he said, twisting the ends of the clip together. “Doesn’t mean anything.”

 

“Then why’ve your guys been back and forth between the ME’s office and the property clerk like a dozen times, trying to prove it’s his DNA at both girls’ crime scenes?”

 

“We’re at those offices all the time. This is Homicide. We got a lot of different cases there.”

 

Could Dr. Dave at the lab have given him up? Unlikely. You didn’t get a lot of forensic scientists spilling their guts to the press after hours in the local watering holes.

 

“No offense, but I think somebody’s spinning you, miss. One thing you learn on this job, everybody talks to you for a reason.”

 

“Excuse me, am I interviewing you or are you interviewing me?”

 

“I’m just saying, everybody’s got an agenda. Even innocent little lambs like you and me.”

 

Two desks away, Yunior glanced over and wrapped the end of his Hermčs tie around his finger.

 

“So, what’s your explanation for why you couldn’t even find Julian Vega’s DNA under Allison Wallis’s fingernails at the ’83 scene?”

 

“All I can tell you is that this is an ongoing investigation.” Francis started rearranging papers on his desk, just to keep his hands occupied. “We’re not going to give out anything that’s going to jeopardize the case.”

 

“I see,” she said. “So how
do
you explain that it was the same woman’s DNA that you found at both crime scenes twenty years apart? Did you mishandle the evidence?”

 

“Absolutely not.” He could feel the tension start to rise up the back of his legs. “This is pure fiction. Excuse me,
science
fiction.”

 

She was cornering him and she knew it. Cutting off all means of egress. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek, knowing he had to deflect her. As soon as this information hit the papers, the freaks would start coming out of the woodwork in their tinfoil hats and ballet slippers, eager to help with the investigation.

 

“Look, I hate to see you get it all wrong when we’re on the verge of making an arrest here.”

 

Rashid, who’d been walking by with another box of files, did a double-take.

 

“When is
this
going to happen?” she said, brought up short.

 

“Any day now.” He hunched over in his chair, like a crafty old poker sharp. “Just have to pound a couple of nails for our probable cause. You know how it is. Nobody wants to go off half-cocked.”

 

“Well, what are you talking about? A week? A month?”

 

“You want, I could give you a heads-up. Fair’s fair.”

 

Jimmy Ryan gave Francis a knowing smirk as he walked by, taking in the whole sucker’s play in a glance.

 

“You’re not just playing me, are you?” Judy Mandel was saying in an anxious voice, like she was stuck at an intersection with everyone honking at her. “If I hold back this DNA story and it turns out to be true, I’m going to kill myself.”

 

Can’t have that.
He gave Jimmy the all-clear sign, safe for the moment. “And if you run it and it turns out to be bullshit, you’re gonna be out on the ledge as well. So, really, it’s six of one, half-dozen of the other.”