The 8th Circle (22 page)

“Y
ou have no goddamn respect for police procedure!” The captain’s voice boomed through the closed door.

“Fuck police procedure! If you’d just listen—”

“I’m tired of listening, Novell. I’m tired of dealing with your shit!”

Detective Sean McFarland tried to ignore the shouts that came from the captain’s office. He didn’t know if John Novell would still be working the case with him when he was done fighting with the captain, but right now, he was too busy working his way through the state police report on Beth Ryan’s accident to care.

It had taken them long enough to forward it to him, and it was, at first glance, straightforward. The victim had made a right turn onto Route 252 and lost control of her car. She had run off the road, gone through a barrier, and crashed into Valley Creek. Sean examined the photographs of the Jeep. It lay on its left side, squashed in like a trampled tissue box. The right rear tire lay in the creek.

Wait. How the hell had that happened? The Jeep lay on its left side but was missing its right tire.

According to the report, the tire came off in the crash, but in the photographs, it looked undamaged.

He looked at the autopsy photos. Beth Ryan had taken a beating. She was knocked unconscious when rocks had broken through the window and had two skull fractures, though the listed cause of death was drowning. Sean barely recognized her, but the little boy, Conor, was strapped into a car seat and didn’t have a scratch. It wasn’t impossible that the child’s neck was broken. Whiplash, maybe. But his car seat—the top brand on the market—was on the right side of the car. The car didn’t jerk backward. It rolled down and landed in the water.

This report was bullshit. It didn’t appear that anyone had checked to see if the brakes or wheels or anything else had been tampered with.

Something was wrong here. Sean was sure of it, and nobody gave a damn.

“W
hat the hell is the matter with you?”

“Shut up and walk.” Kevin dragged Danny from the interrogation room down the stairs and out to the parking garage. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.

Danny had forgotten how strong Kevin was. He wasn’t as tall as the old man, but Kevin had been a First Team, All-State tackle in high school, back in the days when Kevin could see his toes and dreamed of playing for Penn State. Danny didn’t know if Kevin had any dreams left.

They reached Kevin’s Navigator.

“What do you mean you have a witness?” Kevin pinned Danny against his car. “Stop playing games with me, or right here, I’ll beat the shit out of you. You can call your goddamn lawyer later.”

Danny could feel the fury rise off Kevin, like heat shimmers over hot asphalt. Sweat rolled down his forehead and his breath came in rapid puffs of white steam. He waited for Kevin to stomp the ground and snort like a bull, which would have been funny if Kevin’s big hands weren’t clamped around his shoulders.

“Paulie Ritter didn’t kill all those girls—if he killed any of them. At least one lived, thanks to the old man.”

Kevin stepped back as if Danny burned his fingers. “Holy fuck! Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The guy who had her called himself Mason, and from her description, he wasn’t Paulie Ritter.”

“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a copycat.”

“I don’t think so. According to her, Mason was tied to the Inferno.”

Kevin waved his hand in disgust. “Are you back to that again?”

“The old man talked about the Inferno.”

“The old man lived inside a Dewar’s bottle too.” Kevin looked past Danny, and the lines around his mouth grew deeper.

“What happened to the old man’s notes?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t his partner. You know the way he got at the end. He holed up in that house like a rat.”

Danny started to argue the point but then stopped. Why would Kevin take the old man’s notes? Maybe the old man did have reason to get rid of them. Maybe he had something to hide. Where did he get the extra money? Was it just from a second mortgage?

“You think he was on the take?”

“Hell, I don’t know. He took out a mortgage on the house before he died,” Kevin said.

“You were the executor of his estate. Why didn’t you check it out?”

Kevin gave him the cop look. “Because I didn’t want to know. Jesus, you’re so goddamn self-righteous.”

Danny let the sting of Kevin’s words sink in.

“Y’know, the old man wasn’t just your tragedy. We all got to share in it. Maybe you got it the worst, but no one escaped that house without scars.” Kevin’s staccato voice hit him like punches.

The dingy walls of their house seemed to close around him, and Danny smelled the suffocating stench of scotch and mothballs. At least he’d made it all the way out. He thumbed his nose at the old man and walked away, but Kevin stayed tied. Brothers in blue. In the end, which of them bore the worst scars? “Kevin, I—”

Kevin waved him off. “You eat anything today?”

When they were kids, Kevin would find him after school and go through his battery of questions: “Did anyone hassle you? Did
you behave in school? You got any homework?” It always ended with, “Did you eat anything?” Most of the time, Kevin would shove a half-eaten hoagie into his hands and stand there, his face contorted in a scowl, until Danny choked it down. He used to believe Kevin did it to push him around. How stupid was he?

“You look like walking shit, Danny.”

He felt like walking shit. “Where did they find Andy’s body?”

“Old City. Why?”

“Will you show me?”

“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Danny gripped the door. “Andy gave me my life. I . . .”

The awful truth doubled him over, and the bitter dregs of his stomach emptied themselves on the asphalt. He clung to the side of the car. “I’m sorry.” Danny wasn’t sure for what. Everything. He didn’t know if Kevin even cared anymore.

Kevin jerked his head. “Get in the goddamn car.”

*

Danny stood in the alley and peered down at the row of dumpsters that lined the walls of the redbrick buildings. A piece of bright-yellow tape stuck to the edge of a trash can, but all other evidence of the morning’s crime scene was gone. There was just the odor of grilled beef and the beeping of a truck backing into the alley from the opposite end.

Danny folded his arms against the ache inside his chest. A door opened, and he could see into a restaurant kitchen. The truck backed into place at the loading area. Two kitchen workers smoked on the platform. Their uniforms bore a red rectangle with the embroidered words, “The Red Door.” A man with an impressive head of chestnut hair walked out and said something to the workers, who tossed their cigarettes and disappeared inside. He turned toward Danny, and for a moment, their eyes met and held.

And Danny could almost hear Michael Cohen whisper in his ear, “Look behind the Red Door for Bruce Delhomme’s real specialties . . .”

“I
can’t arrest Bruce Delhomme!” Kevin watched Danny, his expression as pained as if Danny had asked him to change water into wine.

“Why not? Andy and Delhomme knew each other. What else do you need?”

Kevin sighed. “Some physical evidence would be nice.”

“Like a body in a dumpster?”

“We found the body here. The ME says he was killed elsewhere.”

“Yeah, like in the Red Door?” Danny didn’t care what Kevin said. If Andy was found here, it wasn’t a coincidence. “You know Bruce Delhomme is involved in a bunch of sex clubs that are connected to the Inferno.”

“No. I don’t have proof of that, and neither do you. You have some half-baked article your friend was writing. That’s evidence of nothing. All I can do is ask Delhomme to answer some questions. We have nothing to tie him to Cohen’s murder.”

“But—”

“I haul Delhomme in, and he calls his high-priced lawyer who has him on the street an hour later. Five minutes after that, my ass is called into the commissioner’s office for hassling a highly regarded citizen.”

“Jesus, Kevin. I know this guy’s involved.” Did Kevin think he’d pulled Delhomme’s name out of the air?

Kevin threw up his hands in exasperation. “I’m a good cop, Danny. It may not mean much to you, but I am.”

“I know you are.”

“You always looked down on Junior and me ’cause we were just cops.”

It surprised Danny that Kevin gave a damn what he thought, but he sounded wounded, raw. The undercurrent of anguish in Kevin’s voice was an insubstantial thing, almost like a call borne on the breeze, a whisper from across the room, but Danny realized it had always been there. He didn’t know why he never recognized it before. Christ, it was a day for discoveries. First on the list: he was the world’s biggest asshole.

Danny opened his mouth to apologize, but Kevin said, “You gotta let me handle Delhomme. If I take you to the impound lot to pick up your car, will you promise not to come back here and hassle him? I got it repaired.”

“Will you talk to him?”

Kevin clenched his fists. “Let me handle the police work. You go write a pretty story.”

“Will you talk to him today?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re annoying!”

“And you’ll let me know what happens?”

“I don’t have to let you know jack shit.” Kevin jerked open the car door, but Danny heard the resignation in his voice.

Let Kevin handle Delhomme. He had someone else to see.

“M
r. Delhomme, thank you for seeing us,” Jake said to Bruce Delhomme. Kevin wanted Jake to lead off. Right now, Jake was sharper. Fresher. He was happy to listen and take notes.

After spending five hours with Danny, Kevin’s head ached, and the crimson carpet made it worse. Photographs of ebony carousel horses covered the walls. Their red eyes seemed to watch him.

Delhomme stood behind his desk, an ugly thing made of dull, black metal, wound with a strip of scarlet. On the floor sat a huge lava lamp filled with blobs of black slime that slithered in a hypnotic rhythm through blood-colored liquid.

Delhomme frowned and tossed his hair. “We open for dinner in two hours, gentlemen. I don’t have much time.”

“Mr. Delhomme, you’re aware we found a body in your dumpster this morning?” Jake asked.

“Yes. A vagrant, wasn’t it? It’s a terrible thing, but I’m not sure what it has to do with me. I own three restaurants, so I wasn’t even here last night. I was at the Golden Palette. I already spoke to a detective about this.”

“Then I’m sure he told you we’d be asking all the local merchants for help identifying the body.” Jake’s voice was smooth. “You were at the Golden Palette all evening?”

“I was there from four o’clock until sometime after three
AM.
Then my driver took me home. I wasn’t alone, and if I must, I can provide you with her name.”

Jake waved toward a stack of cards held by a black porcelain hand. “Maybe you could just write it down on one of your fancy business cards. Say, you’re friendly with Andy and Linda Cohen, aren’t you?”

Delhomme’s eyes narrowed a little, but he nodded. “Yes, I am.”

Jake glanced at Kevin. “Andy Cohen wasn’t at the Golden Palette last night, was he?”

Delhomme looked confused. Kevin didn’t think he was faking it. “I’m sorry, but Andy’s wife was—he—I haven’t seen Andy since Friday night. His wife—Dear God, haven’t you people seen the news?”

“So you’ve had no contact at all with Andy Cohen?”

“I believe I’ve made that clear, Detective. Has Andy said otherwise? Is there some problem?”

“No problem, Mr. Delhomme.” Jake leaned a little closer. “We’re just trying to get a positive ID on the body we found this morning.”

“Oh dear.” Delhomme laid a manicured hand on his chest. He wore clear nail polish. Kevin almost snorted in disgust. What sort of asshole wore nail polish? “I suppose this is absolutely necessary, Detective?”

“We’d like to try to get this done as quickly as possible so we don’t inconvenience you. It’ll be easier if we do it here than, say, down at the morgue. And a whole lot less unpleasant.” Jake reached into his pocket for the photos. “I should warn you, he’s a little beat up.”

Jake laid out the photos in a row across his desk. Delhomme looked down at them, and Kevin watched the color drain from his face.

Delhomme drew in a breath. “Oh my God. It’s Andy Cohen.”

“Andy Cohen?” Jake said. “Your good friend?”

Delhomme’s head snapped up. His eyes locked on Kevin’s. “You got your ID, gentlemen. Which I think you already had before you walked in. Isn’t that right, Detective Ryan?”

Kevin held Delhomme’s gaze. He could feel Delhomme’s righteous fury. He could also smell his fear.

Kevin leaned in, resting his hands on Delhomme’s desk. “Now what do you suppose Andy Cohen was doing in your dumpster?”

D
anny turned off the Schuylkill Expressway onto Roosevelt Boulevard and headed to Northeast Philly. Coming here as a kid had always seemed like traveling to some distant land. Sure, there were row houses, but some people lived in single homes with yards and grass. People like Stan Witkowski.

They used to call Big Stan Witkowski “Bear” when he was the old man’s partner because of his massive build and lumbering gate. Danny had once seen him pick up two mouthy perps by their collars and smack their heads together, just like something out of the movies. Everything about Stan had been larger than life: he didn’t just laugh, he roared; he didn’t shout, he bellowed.

Big Stan had always called him “kiddo” even when he was on the police beat. He had been the cop who let him see the remains of Jane Doe One, though Danny wasn’t sure whether Stan had done him a favor or not.

“Play square with us, and I’ll make sure you get your exclusive.” He’d clamped his big hand on Danny’s shoulder. “You’re family, right?”

Now if it hadn’t been for a drooping tattoo of a rearing black bear on his bicep, Danny wouldn’t have recognized the shrunken man who stood before him. Shrunken might have been the wrong word. Tethered to an oxygen tank, Stan Witkowski seemed to be
collapsing upon himself. His once florid face had turned a pale gray, his lips had tinged blue, and his dark eyes had sunken deep into the hollows of his skull.

“Stan?” Danny reached out a hand to touch him to see if the apparition was real.

Tears filled the old man’s eyes. “Jesus Christ, Danny Ryan.” He took a deep breath and leaned close. His hands seemed oversized now, but he squeezed Danny’s shoulder with surprising strength. “Emphysema. Your dad would get a laugh out of that.” He gave a wheezing snort. “Don’t suppose you gotta cigarette on you?”

“I don’t smoke. Sorry.”

“It don’t matter.” He motioned Danny into the hall and closed the door. Danny recognized the heavy, sickroom smell that clogged the air. The stink of soiled linens not quite covered by antiseptic mixed with the bitter tang of medicine. He could see his mother all over again lying in her bed, whiter than her sheets, her hands like wax.

“How’s Muriel?”

“You don’t gotta whisper, kiddo. She’s upstairs. She ain’t so good these days. She got the cancer, just like your mom.” Stan sucked in a gulp of air and let it out with a rattling wheeze. “She’s dying. She got morphine for the pain so it ain’t so bad.”

“Jesus, Stan, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Stan shook his head then let it droop forward. “We got hospice care, so it ain’t so hard. What the fuck, we all gotta die, right? Better she goes first.” He took another wheezing breath. “Here . . .” He motioned down the hall toward the kitchen.

Danny glanced at the pictures of Stan, Muriel, and their daughter Lily Jean that covered the walls, wisps of memory that reached out to him.

He’d spent so many Sunday afternoons here before his mother died. Stan would barbeque steaks until they turned black, downing beers with the old man while the women smiled indulgently. Lily Jean and Danny had hid from Junior and Kevin in the shrubs, and she had made him tell her stories until his
throat got sore. Theresa had sat in the sun, her nose in a movie magazine, and ignored them all. Just two regular families.

After his mother had died, Danny had wanted to go back to the comfort of their ritual, but when he’d asked the old man, he’d gotten a punch in the mouth that loosened two teeth.

Danny swallowed the lump that almost choked him. Maybe what made it all the worse was that once things had been normal. Not perfect. Just normal. Maybe the old man had drunk too much, and his mom tolerated it. Maybe Junior and Kevin had ganged up on him, and Theresa had acted like they were all beneath her. But at one time, they’d been a family.

Maybe you couldn’t learn to hate someone unless you once loved him.

Kevin was right. The old man wasn’t just his tragedy. The Iceman’s self-loathing became a poisonous cloud that choked them all.

“You comin’?” Stan stood in the doorway and beckoned him into the kitchen.

Not much had changed. It was still painted bright yellow, though an array of pill bottles lined the white Formica counter. Two huge, gray oxygen tanks sat by the door.

Stan opened the refrigerator. “Beer?”

“No thanks.”

“You never was a drinker.” Stan shut the door. “Sit. I gotta call the oxygen guy. He’s late today. I only got half a tank left.” His face had a flush that turned his skin a peculiar shade of light purple, and a muscle in his cheek twitched. Danny listened to him make a quick call, and then Stan pulled up a chair.

“What did you want to ask me?”

“It’s about my father. About that last case.”

“The Sandman case.”

Stan sat beside him like a priest and placed his hand on Danny’s arm. “I think we better start at the beginning, kiddo.”

*

“It’s one hell of a story.” Stan’s voice exuded sorrow, regret. It pulled him in, but a weird unease nagged at the base of
Danny’s gut—something Kevin had said, something about Junior’s funeral.

“I need to know if my father was on the take, Stan.”

“It ain’t so simple, Danny. At the end of that case, we were no closer to catching the Sandman. We had the FBI crawlin’ up our ass, the mayor, the press—Christ, you were there. It was a three-ring circus. No one slept. I never even saw Muriel or Lily Jean.”

Danny remembered those months. He knew the cops had been running on fumes by the end. The cops. The FBI. It was like the Sandman was a demon, and one who understood enough about criminology not to leave clues. Worse, because the victims couldn’t be traced or identified, the police didn’t know if they were runaways or local prostitutes.

Stan stared off into space. “After ten months, we got a break. Someone called in a description of a car with a partial license plate. Your father and I told no one, not even the FBI. We chased down every car that matched and came up with a possible, but it was registered to Mason Scott, son of Bartlett Scott, the big developer. The guy who gave all that money to Children’s Hospital and the Avenue of the Arts.”

Mason Scott. Kate’s Mason? Danny thought of all the development going on around the city.
Another improvement brought to you by Scott Development
. Bartlett Scott’s daughter Melissa was running Scott Industries. Did she know about her brother? She had to know.

Some are born to endless night
. He supposed that was true enough.

“At first, it seemed ridiculous—that is, until we started to tail this Mason guy, found out he hung out at a warehouse in the Northern Liberties section. Then it was like—it all seemed to come together. Too fast. Both of us got a look at him and knew it. But you can’t get a warrant on looks. We just didn’t have enough evidence—especially considering who he was, and we knew as soon as we went before a judge we’d tip our hand.”

Stan wiped his face, and his wheezing breath turned ragged. Danny heard the anguish in his voice. Even after all this time,
it was still there. The old man used to talk about soul-breaking cases. He never understood until now.

“It was like the little bastard knew we was watchin’ him. He’d go in and out of that goddamn warehouse every day, but we had nothin’, and he didn’t do nothing. And we couldn’t stop him or be there all the time. Finally, your father said, ‘I’m goin’ in. We’ll worry about gettin’ a warrant after the fact.’ But then we get an anonymous tip about Paulie Ritter.

“We go to check him out, and don’t you know, we find Jane Doe Twenty-Two in his place still warm?”

Danny remembered too well. Stan and the old man leading Paulie Ritter out of his rat hole, Paulie still covered in Jane Doe’s blood. Trouble was, Paulie hadn’t seemed aware that he had a dead girl in his home.

“We knew he’d been set up,” Stan said. “It didn’t matter what the CSU found in his place. We knew. Paulie Ritter couldn’t draw a stick man. How could he paint all them pretty flowers on those girls? Your dad got so pissed, he just threw his badge across the room and walked.”

When the police spokesmen hinted that the old man had gone over the edge, Danny had been surprised, though not alarmed. He’d wanted to believe the old man’s sins caught up with him, and the old man’s fall from grace made a good story. After all he’d done, the time had come for the old man to enjoy the benefits of his own poison.

Stan’s voice broke through his thoughts. “We went back to that warehouse. He was determined, and I couldn’t let him go alone. I always had his back, you know. And he always had mine.”

Danny nodded. The Iceman and the Bear. They had always been a duo. Supercops with feet of clay.

“He must have been expecting us, though I don’t know how. We step in the door and the place goes up in flames. I remember hearing those girls screaming.” He looked at Danny with haunted eyes. “He kept them like animals, Danny. Worse than animals. We could only get one out alive.”

“But I don’t understand. You had the girl as a witness. Why didn’t you go after him?”

“You didn’t see her, kid.”

But he did see her. For the first time, he finally saw Kate. He had let her walk away. He should have run with her when he had the chance.

“You wouldn’t know she was a girl, except she had long hair. Hell, I seen a lot of awful things in my time, but this girl was bad. Your father carried her out and she held onto him like he was Jesus Christ. Her face all torn to hell. She’d been broke, Danny. She’d never have held up on a witness stand. She couldn’t even talk straight.

“Even so, your father went to see Bartlett Scott. Told him he had a witness that could put his son in jail, and they made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I don’t know. The kind that put Mason Scott in the nut house for a while and let your father walk away with compensation for the girl.”

Danny wanted to puke. “I can’t believe the old man would agree to put an innocent man in jail so Mason Scott could get off.”

“It was the best your dad could do. Like I said, it ain’t so simple.”

“And he believed Bartlett Scott would keep his word?”

“He made a tape of the whole thing. Bartlett Scott had no choice, and don’t forget, he was always worried about his reputation.”

“What did my dad do with the tape, Stan?”

Stan shook his head. “I don’t know. I figure he hid it good. It was his insurance. No one ever found it.” He pushed away from the table and stood.

“And the girl. What happened to her?”

“She disappeared.” Stan looked away. “That girl. Your father felt like he had to save her. I always thought it was on account of he couldn’t save your mother. He never forgave himself for that,
for her dyin’. And you. Jesus God, you look so much like her. It killed him. But this girl was like a second chance. I don’t think he touched the bottle again after he found her, and he was in a bad way. It changed him, Danny. He never was the same again.”

Stan’s words soaked through Danny like bitter rain. It all sounded true, so why did it feel rehearsed? Stan had no reason to lie. Not after all these years. Christ, he needed to get out of this rotting house.

“And what did you get out of it, Stan? Why did you go along?”

“I didn’t have a choice. I had a family. Muriel. Lily Jean. When you got people you can’t bear to lose, you’ll do anything to keep them safe. You close your heart. Do things you never thought possible.”

Stan gave a shrug, and Danny saw both resignation and defiance in the gesture.

“I’m sorry. I can’t say I had lasting regrets about Paulie Ritter. He was a rapist and a thief and a low-life scum who shouldn’t have been on the streets. Your father knew that. He did what he had to do not just for that girl but for you and Kevin and Theresa. To keep them from going after you.”

“Then what do you regret?” The words stuck in his throat, and he knew what bothered him. The old man and Stan were partners. They had each other’s backs, but the old man didn’t want to see Stan after he retired. At Junior’s funeral, he wouldn’t shake Stan’s hand.

Kevin’s words. And Stan never mentioned Junior.

Stan looked away. “It was a long time ago.”

Why would the old man turn against his best friend?

“What do you regret? You and Dad were partners for years. Why wouldn’t he shake your hand at Junior’s funeral?”

Stan shuffled closer and took hold of Danny’s arm. “We all have to make hard choices. It damn near killed me.”

Danny understood then. “Junior. It was Junior, wasn’t it?”

“We’d been partners, friends for so long. But I didn’t have a choice, Danny. It was a test. If I didn’t do it, they’d have killed
Lily Jean. You understand, don’t you, kiddo? It wasn’t personal. You had a wife, a kid. You gotta take care of your family.”

Danny wanted to push Stan away. Hadn’t he always questioned how Paulie Ritter managed to kill Junior with a lead pencil? Andy hadn’t let him go down to the jail to write the story. “You’re too close,” he said. But Danny knew something was wrong. Deep down, he’d always known.

Now he understood why Kevin kept steering him away from the Sandman case. Kevin knew. Somehow he knew the truth.
Let me handle the police work. You go write a pretty story
. He wasn’t condescending. He knew. Stan had killed Junior.
At Junior’s funeral, the old man wouldn’t shake Stan’s hand
. That was Kevin’s oblique way of warning him off. And now it was too late.

“Those people killed my family, Stan.”

“You should have let them rest in peace.” Stan squeezed his arm and glanced around. “Go. Get out now, and don’t come back. Please, Danny, I—”

There was a sharp knock on the back door, and Danny saw two huge men in dark-blue windbreakers. Stan shrank closer. His fingers dug into Danny’s arm when the back door swung open.

“Hey, Stan,” the larger of the two said. He had a square head that sat on his shoulders like a box. “You got a pick-up today?” When he smiled, he bared a set of crooked, yellow teeth.

“Sure, Lyle.” Stan’s voice trembled, and he seemed to diminish in the presence of these giants. Danny stood.

The second man walked around the room until he hovered behind Danny. His mouth turned dry.
Run
. The thought jumped into Danny’s head and clung on like a mosquito sucking at an open vein. But he couldn’t. No matter what, he couldn’t leave Stan.