The Other Widow (34 page)

Dorrie doesn't recognize the man. He isn't particularly large. He wouldn't look dangerous at all if he weren't straining against Brennan like a mad dog, his arm twisted behind him, if transit cops weren't running toward him. If she passed him on the street, Dorrie wouldn't even notice him. Good-looking, fortysomething, deep brown eyes that are, at the moment, narrowed at her, staring at her, filled with hate.

For a few seconds, Dorrie feels nothing but a sort of hollowness at the pit of her, as if she's watching this on a screen, as if it's happening in someone else's life. Not hers. She stands, not moving as everything unfolds around her, and then she feels an incredible urge to run. Her insides race. Her breath comes in shallow, quick pants; her heart pounds, and she shivers violently in the icy station, but she doesn't run. Instead she waits. She watches, unsure of what might be outside, of where the danger starts or ends. She stands in the shadow of the stairs as a policeman handcuffs the small angry man and leads him from the station.

“Are you all right?” Brennan stands beside her. She reaches out, touches Dorrie's arm, and Dorrie jumps. “Maybe you should sit down for a minute,” Brennan says. “They'll want to question you, but I'll see if I can get them to skip the formalities and maybe get it over with faster.” She walks off to talk to an officer still standing in the station, and Dorrie concentrates on breathing as she looks down at the tracks where she could easily have died.

A cell phone lies where it landed after it flew from the man's coat pocket. The small thin patch of plastic lies faceup on the tracks, and Dorrie takes a step or two closer to the platform's edge. She stares down at Joe's burner phone, this final thread connecting them, this last sad trace. She breathes. The phone lies sideways on the ties. For just a second, it catches the light from the station, flashes it back toward her, and then, as Dorrie holds her breath, the B train rumbles down the track and crushes it to dust beneath the wheels.

“Ever seen that guy before?” Brennan has returned with the officer.

“No.” Dorrie shakes her head. “Not that I remember. But I wouldn't, probably. He's not especially—memorable.”

“Any idea why he might want to hurt you?”

“No.” So many thoughts are racing through her head. Karen. He did it for Karen, he said. Screamed it. Was he trying to kill her for sleeping with Joe? Was he defending Karen's honor? But that wouldn't make sense. Not now, with Joe dead. What, then?
I did it all for you, Karen.
She starts to tell them what she heard, but something stops her. Karen was trying to warn her. If she had wanted Dorrie dead, she wouldn't have acted the way she had, beating on the doors of the train, yelling at her to move out of the way. No. She won't drag Karen into this. She's dragged her through enough already.

“He was shouting at the train,” Brennan tells the cop who bends to write something down on a small pad he's taken out of his coat pocket. “Something about Karen. Most likely Karen Lindsay, maybe—the widow of the businessman who died on Newbury a few weeks back. Suspicious death.”

Dorrie nods. “Karen was on the train. The last car.”

“Anything else?” The cop taps his pen against a little notepad. “You see anything that might—”

Dorrie shakes her head. “It all happened so fast. I was standing there. I was just . . . It all happened before I could really even—”

“We're good for now, Mrs. Keating,” the cop says. “A detective will most likely be in touch. Later,” he says. “To get a more detailed account.”

“She was trying to warn me,” Dorrie says. Her voice sounds fuzzy, very far away, as if she's in a storm and a squall is blowing it around her head, tossing it here and there. “Karen. She was trying to tell me. She was trying to warn me.” She hears her words zipping repetitively in the air. Faint. Insubstantial. They sound like someone else's words. She wonders if she'll always feel like this. Mad like this.

“You'd better get yourself out of this cold,” the cop says. “You're shaking like a leaf. Plus, you don't look so good. You sure you're okay? He didn't do anything to—?”

“No.” Dorrie tugs on her coat, tightens the woolen belt, fiddles with it. Her hands shake. “He didn't touch me. He just—I just saw him flying toward the train—the tracks.”

She walks out with Brennan and stands on the sidewalk in the cold. “How did you know?” She feels a little better in the sunshine, out of the cave of the station, away from the tracks. “How'd you know to be here?” Sunlight slants down, touches Brennan's hair as they stand on the cold street, turns it a bright copper.

“Once a cop . . .” Brennan shrugs. “It was pretty clear you were in danger. After the other night outside Starbucks . . . I had an eye out for you, is all.”

“Thank you.” It sounds so meager, considering all that's happened. “Really, Brennan. You saved my life. Again!”

Brennan smiles. “Glad I could,” she says. “But to be honest, if you hadn't moved in just that split second . . .”

“Yeah. Thank God for Karen.”

“But the
way
you moved—totally incredible! I have never in my life seen anybody move the way you did!”

Dorrie hesitates. “It was my—” She starts to tell Brennan about her mother, about how she is always there when Dorrie really needs her, the vision of her. She closes her eyes for a split second, sees her mother skating on the pond in Boston Common the day before Lily was born, young, beautiful, the sky bright-bright blue and thick as honey—her mother so graceful, so free. She skated over to the very edge of the ice and took Dorrie's face in her hands, softly, gently, like a breeze, like the brush of a butterfly wing.

She listens for her mother's voice, but there are only the sounds of the station, the squeals and whispers of the trains. Dorrie clears her throat. “So,” she says. “Today. With this guy— Was it about Joe's death?”

“It'd be one hell of a crazy coincidence if it wasn't. They're getting a warrant to search his place right now. Tomas Ramirez. Ever heard his name mentioned? At work or anything?”

“No.” Dorrie gazes out over the gray street. Everything is fading. Late afternoon is turning into night.

“Well.” Brennan tugs her coat up under her chin, glances at her watch. “If there's anything there to find, they'll find it.”

Listen,” Dorrie says. “There's something I have to tell you. About the night Joe died. I was there. I just—I'd lost so much already, I—”

“Maybe you should keep that to yourself.” Brennan tucks her hair under her hat and looks down the street as if she's searching for someone. “It's not exactly news, anyway, whatever it is you're about to
not
tell me. There's footage,” she says, “of that night. But they've got all they need. The rest is just—”

“Footage?”

“Little bakery one street over from Newbury,” she says.

Dorrie reaches up, touches the cut that's healed into a small white scar above her eyebrow, remembers the window, the cakes, blood seeping along the blue of Lily's borrowed hat. “Thanks,” she says. “Really.”

“I'm not sure what you're even talking about,” Brennan says. “But it's freezing out here. Drop you at your house?”

“No.” Dorrie isn't really ready to go home. Not yet. “I'm okay,” she says. “I think I'll stop and get a cup of hot chocolate or something. But, really, Brennan. Thank you. For everything. You're a damn good detective.”

“Not yet.”

XLII

DORRIE

T
hrough the large front window, Dorrie watches Viv rush down the sidewalk. She sees her slip and slide across a patch of ice, sees her coat fly open when she turns into the doorway of the coffee shop, notes her friend's unbuckled belt, hanging loose from the loops. She really did rush to get here and it really is extremely cold. Viv could so easily have said she couldn't come or just not responded. She could have said she didn't see Dorrie's frantic little text until it was too late. She watches Viv push through the door. Life is just too short to hold a grudge. Anyway, Dorrie needs a best friend, especially right now. She needs a confidante.

“I forgive you,” she says when Viv gets to the table, puffing and fumbling with her coat. “I'm not mad at you anymore.” She takes a sip of hot chocolate and wraps her hands around the cup as Viv drapes her coat over the back of a chair.

“Oh. Thank God!” Viv just stands there. She looks as if she's afraid whatever she says will be the wrong thing and throw their friendship back off track.

“Just stay away from Samuel.”

“No worries there,” Viv says. “Absolutely none.” She walks over to stand in line and comes back with a coffee. “So your text,” she says. “It sounded urgent. I— Am I even
dressed
?” she says. And she is. But badly. She's wearing a sweatshirt with something that looks like grape juice down the front, juice or wine, sweatpants that don't match. Her hair is a tangle of thick curls, and she's wearing only a little makeup that looks like it's left over from much earlier or possibly the night before.

“Yeah,” Dorrie says. “Sort of. Not your usual glam.” She takes another sip of her hot chocolate. “I was nearly murdered in the train station today,” she says.

Viv goes pale. “Oh my God! What
happened
? Who was it? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I didn't know him. Never saw the guy before in my life. It was so bizarre. He came at me. That's all I know. Karen saw him from the train and warned me. And then Brennan was—”

“Wait.
Karen? Joe's
Karen?”

“Yeah,” Dorrie says. “Joe's Karen. It was all so totally—
surreal
. I was kind of following her, actually.”

“Why?”

Dorrie shrugs. “I'm not sure.” She stares out the window, where night is beginning to fall, where streetlights come on, suddenly, like lights on a Christmas tree. “Curiosity. Closure, maybe. I'm just glad it wasn't Samuel,” she says.

“Samuel?”

“Yeah, Samuel. My husband? Samuel, the anger-issues-guy-who-passes-out-on-my-friend's-hotel-bed-Samuel? I found one of my gloves from the night of the accident. I'd lost the other one and I only had the one glove. It was in the car, on the seat. It was in Joe's car the night he died.”

“So?”

“So I found it hidden behind a bunch of Samuel's stuff in the garage. I never would have found it. I never even go near his stupid workbench, but I was looking for something to clean.” She takes another sip of hot chocolate. “It doesn't matter. I found it. That's why I wanted to meet you that night, but then we got into that whole thing about you and Samuel, and I . . . Anyway, he must have been right there on Newbury Street the night Joe died. He must have grabbed my glove. And he
has
been acting creepy. And you said he was—that you thought he was dangerous.”

“I got a little got carried away,” Viv says. “Samuel is about as dangerous as Purrl, probably.”

“Wait. You told me he was . . . ‘Watch out for him, Dorrie!' Didn't you tell me that?
Several
times?”

Viv takes a sip of her coffee. “I did. I know. But I was a little down on men at that point. Well, at
this
point.” She sighs. “I suppose I've got issues. And he
was
really angry that night. I mean, he really
didn't
seem like the Samuel we all know and love.”

“Careful.”

Viv fiddles with her napkin, folds it into a tiny square. “Maybe I exaggerated a little.”

“Okay. Granted, you do tend to overdramatize. But there's still the
glove
!”

“Wait!” Viv bends over the table. Her eyes are bright in the overhead glare of the cheap lighting. “Was it a
black
glove?”

“Yes.”

“Leather?”

“Yeah.”

“You left it in my car,” Viv says. She takes another sip of coffee.

“So. Wait. So how did
Samuel
—?”

“I gave it to him,” Viv says. “The night he came up to my, um, to my room. When he was leaving, I remembered the glove. I hadn't seen you since you left it in my car. ‘Take this to Dorrie, will you?' I said, and he told me he would. I guess neither of us thought about how he'd explain exactly
why
he had it, which is probably why he never gave it to you. He just must have stuck it somewhere and figured he'd deal with it later. He was furious with you anyway. He couldn't have cared less about your chapped
hands
at that point! And then he must've forgotten about it.”

XLIII

MAGGIE

T
wo weeks later, Maggie stands up and straightens her uniform in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She's meeting Hank at the diner up the street from the station. They aren't partners, but Maggie hopes at some point they will be. They work well together. They always have, but even though Johnson isn't Maggie's favorite person—or Hank's, either, apparently—he is Hank's partner, at least for now. Her own partner is a nice enough guy. Gus. Not much of a talker. Their rapport is fine at work, but there's no overlap the way there was with Hank. They're not really friends.

She never went back to work at the beige office with the wavy floor after the day in the Park Street Station. She wasn't a good fit for Mass Casualty and Life. She wasn't built to sit in an office, to push buttons with a manicured finger, to swivel on a cheap metallic chair. Maggie knew she was meant to do less passive things, more hands-on things, and the day with Tomas only reinforced her conviction. She'd called in to give her notice that next morning, but her boss had let her off the hook. “Just come by and get your stuff,” he'd told her, and she had. Even though she'd wondered since the incident in Chinatown if she would ever be all right back in the field—worried that she might freeze again or hesitate, that she would let her partner down or put someone at risk—she hadn't. Not at Park Street. Despite her fear of making the wrong choice, despite Iraq, despite everything, she'd come through when it really mattered. She won't let anybody down. She knows she won't.