Witch House (32 page)

“Of course, there is a substantial side risk
to doing this.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It could backfire. If we
don’t flush the killer out, then the public won’t get the arrest we
promised.”

“It is a gamble, and it could tarnish your
reputation some. Are you up for it?”

“Me?” I looked at him and laughed. “This is
your baby, Dominic. I think you need to do this.”

“What?”

“Sure.” I put my arm around his shoulder.
“You’re always saying how you want to get out in the field more.
Well, now is your chance. We will schedule this press release of
yours out there, back at the scene of the crime.”

“Back at Pete’s Place?”

“Yeah. We do this in the alley, tonight, live
on the six o’clock news. You get them to focus the camera on the
spot where Landau died. Do the chalk outline for maximum impact.
Then hold up a shoebox, shake it and tell them that you found the
murder weapon and that it is inside the box. Let them see you
placing the box into the trunk of your car, explaining that it will
be safe there until you can get it to the Justice Center in the
morning. After that we wait.”

“For what?” asked Carlos.

“For someone to come along and take the
bait.”

“I love it,” said Dominic. “Anyone wanting to
get his hands on the gun would know that his best chance is tonight
before I drive in to work in the morning and deliver the box into
evidence.”

“Exactly. So, the question is are
you
up to this?”

“Of course.” He took a deep breath and let it
out slowly. I could tell he was nervous about it. Dominic has
always been a behind the scenes operator, the unsung hero type that
never gets the accolades he deserves. Sometimes, I think he prefers
it that way. The problem with working in the long shadows of men
like Carlos and me is that it can stifle one’s self-esteem. That, I
am afraid, is what has happened to Dominic. I believe he regards
his brush with death last year a consequence of failure, and that
the pain he tries to numb with prescription drugs is a pain of the
heart and not the body. I felt that perhaps by pushing him out of
our shadows and shinning a spotlight on his worth, we might begin
to heal the heart and mend the mind of a troubled soul, and that
for Dominic, it is the least we can do.

The Metro Four news team was more than happy
to meet us out at Pete’s Place to cover the story live on their six
o’clock broadcast. Pete, on the other hand, seemed less than
thrilled, worried about the bad press. I suppose all that changed
when the crowd gathering out front to see what the commotion was
about filed in for happy hour drinks and hors d'oeuvre. I guess it
is true that no press is bad press.

Dominic did a superb job with the media,
walking them through the motions of the crime and pointing out the
exact spot where Landau lay dying with a gunshot wound to the
chest. The problem came when he produced the shoebox, informing the
film crew that it held the .38, which killed René Landau. I wanted
him to shake the box for effect, but he did more. At the insistence
of the reporter, he opened it and showed them the gun. Naturally,
the cameraman zoomed in on the piece, filling television screens
all over Greater New England with a close up shot of a vintage
department issued .38 Smith & Wesson five-shot revolver.

As the camera panned out, he closed the lid,
stowed the box in the trunk of his car and announced that he would
file it into evidence down at the Justice Center in the morning.
When the interview was over, I called him back to the cruiser. He
wore his smile like a crown. I hated like hell to wipe it off his
face the way I did.

“Did you see me?” he said. He seemed about as
excited as Carlos gets when two Snickers Bars drop from the vending
machine at once. “Did you see me, Tony, huh? I was a natural,
wasn’t I?”

“Yeah, a natural ass!” I said, vaporizing his
smile on impact. “What the hell do you think you were doing,
showing everyone the gun?”

“They…they asked to see it.”

“Okay, and if they asked if we were bluffing
about finding the murder weapon, would you have told them yes?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, that is what you just did.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, of course you don’t. Why don’t you head
on home? Carlos and I will meet up with you there in an hour.”

I opened the door and started into the
cruiser, when Carlos said, “Ah, you know what, Tony? I think I am
going to ride back with Dominic if you don’t mind. We’ll see you at
the house?”

I slighted them both with a dismissive wave
and then drove off in chilled defiance of common civility. I know
it was wrong of me to do that, and to jump all over Dominic as I
did, especially after recognizing how vulnerable he must be feeling
about now. But damn it, he took a conceivably great plan and
sabotage it, albeit unwittingly. Carlos said on several occasions
that without a murder weapon we had nothing. He was right. The high
I felt only hours earlier had completely evaporated. Worse than
having the case stall out on us was having the case blow up in our
faces. This one, I feared, was about to do just that.

I spent the next hour driving around town,
trying to figure out what I was missing. Here we had a cast of
characters straight out of an Agatha Christie tale: a crooked cop,
a sleazy lawyer, a washed up chain-smoking debutante and a bona
fide Indian Chief, just to name a few. Why I could not hang
anything solid on any of them confounded me. I knew the possibility
existed that it could have been a simple case of the wrong guy in
the wrong place, maybe a botched back alley hold up by a couple of
homeless winos. Old Pete sure thought that was possible. But the
cop in me disagreed. René Landau still had his wallet in his back
pocket. And a gun? Winos don’t carry guns. Even if one found a gun,
he would hock it before day’s end and celebrate with a bottle for
all his wino friends. No, I was missing something more basic.
Money, I still believed that was the motivating factor behind
Landau’s death. Find the money, find the killer. Could it be that
simple?

After an hour of aimless wandering, I finally
turned the car onto Spinelli’s street and pulled it into his
driveway. Carlos came out immediately, instructing me to continue
around the house to hide the cruiser from the street. As I drove
on, he followed me in a jog, staying with me until I rolled to a
stop by the hurricane fence at the end of the property.

“That was not cool,” he said, shoving me back
against the car as I stepped out.

I looked back at my tire tracks. “What, did I
run over the cat or something?”

“No, I mean back there at Pete’s Place. You
know that Dominic had never spoken to the press before. The kid was
nervous as hell.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes that. You made him feel like two
cents.”

“Carlos, what he did was—”

“A mistake, I know, and he knows it too now,
but cut him some slack. The kid idolized you for Christ’s sake. Who
the hell do you think you are?”

I shut the car door with my foot and folded
my arms at my chest. “He probably ruined our chances for luring our
suspect out into the open, you know.”

“I explained that to him. He knows that by
showing the gun on TV that he likely told our killer we were
bluffing about having the murder weapon.”

“Then what are we doing here? We should be
back at the Justice Center figuring out what the hell we are going
to tell the captain.”

“We don’t have to tell him anything. He
already knows.”

“He knows?”

“Yes. Dominic called him and explained
everything himself. He took full blame for this fiasco.”

“Fiasco?”

“His words, not mine.”

I softened my posture, slipping my hands into
my pockets and leaning back against the car with my butt against
the door. “I wouldn’t call it a fiasco exactly. It was just a
mistake.”

“That’s right, and he feels terrible enough
about it. You can’t beat him up over it any more than he’s beaten
himself up already.”

“What about his drug problem?”

“His drug problem? Is that what this is
about? You think he messed up because he is on drugs?”

“Well?”

“He said he has it under control. It is not
up to us to decide whether or not he suffers from substance
abuse.”

“It is when we are on duty. We trust our
lives to each other every day, Carlos. I don’t know about you, but
I need to know that the cop who has my back is stone cold sober one
hundred percent of the time, because if he isn’t, then he—”

“He is going for help.”

“What?”

“We talked about it. He doesn’t think he has
a problem, but he does acknowledge that maybe he should get a
second opinion from another doctor. He is willing to make the
effort, Tony, I think we should make the effort to support him on
that.”

I glanced past Carlos’ shoulder and spotted
Dominic looking out the window. I suppos he knew we were talking
about him, probably afraid we were discussing his future as a
detective. Prescription substance abuse would not get him demoted,
especially considering the reason he was on painkillers to begin
with, but it could get him transferred to another precinct if I
made a big enough stink about it. Of course, I would never do that.
As I mentioned before, I value Dominic immensely. His contributions
to the department, his profession and to Carlos and me personally,
are immeasurable. I only hoped for his sake that he had not started
down a path from which he might never return. I looked Carlos in
the eye and said, “He is your boy, Carlos. You handpicked him. I
know he looks up to me, but you’re his mentor.”

“Me?” He seemed surprise at that. “No, Tony,
I don’t think I’m anything special.”

“You’re not, that’s the point. You’re
unpretentious. He looks up to you for that, and for the way you do
your job as though it were second nature to you. You don’t have an
on-off switch. You live the values of a first rate detective every
day.”

“Wow, do you really think so?”

“Of course, I do. You don’t see it, but you
have already taken him under your wing. That’s the reason you are
out here talking to me on his behalf. So now you need to nurture
him, especially while he is at this crossroad in his career. If he
lets this drug thing take hold of him, it could bring him down, and
I would hate to see that, because he is a good cop.”

“He is an exceptional cop.”

“I know it, and that is why I want you to
stick with him. Get him some counseling if that is what he needs to
get off those pills. If he still needs pain management, talk to his
doctor; see what he can do about reducing his dependency on such
hardcore narcotics as Oxycontin.”

“All right, Tony, I can do that.”

“I know you can. Now tell me, what the hell
are we doing here. Do you still think we can flush out our killer
with a gun that any fifth-grader could tell was a decoy?”

“I do, and so does Dominic. Listen, you know
how he knows everybody, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well he called the TV station and
talked to the news director about the piece. Obviously they can’t
do anything about the segment they aired live at six o`clock, but
he did convince them to edit the piece for their ten o`clock show
and to cut out the part where he opened the box up for the camera.
If our suspect didn’t see the original broadcast, but catches the
later version, we may still have a chance to flush him out.”

“He got them to do that?”

“He did. Tony, I’m telling you, he feels
awful about what happened, but look how he has taken charge. He
called the captain and explained everything; he fixed things with
the news station, and he is ready to apologize to you.”

“Me?” I looked again over Carlos’ shoulder
and saw the curtains drop on the kitchen window. “Huh, I think I am
the one that should apologize, Carlos. I’ve forgotten what it’s
like to be green.” I offered up a handshake. “I was an ass, wasn’t
I?”

“Shah! A gigantic ass.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed. “Fuck me? Fuck you!”

Then I laughed, and we hugged in that brutal
man sort of way where one guy nearly takes the other guy down.

“Seriously, Tony,” he said, and he pointed
toward the house. “The kid is in there waiting on pins and needles.
Why don’t you go talk to him?”

“Yeah,” I said, and we started walking.
“Let’s go.” We were half way to the back door before I took my arm
off his shoulder. “You know, Carlos, it is going to be a long
night. We should order out. You hungry?”

He laughed. “You kidding?”

“How’s pizza sound.”

“Depends. You buying?”

“Of course.”

“Sounds great.”

“I thought you might say that.”

I had started up the steps before realizing
that Carlos had dropped back on me. Dominic met me at the top and
held the door open. I crossed the threshold and put my arm around
his shoulder to take him aside. I think he thought I was going to
lecture him again. The expression on his face told me he expected
nothing less. Instead, I gave him a hug and a slap on the back and
said, “You did all right back there, kid. You made a mistake and
then did everything you could to make it right. I can’t ask for
anything more than that.”

His stare slipped away to a spot on the floor
by our feet. He shook his head. “I let you down.”

“Yes, but you know what? There will be times
when I let you down, too. The best we can do is not keep score.
Does that sound all right to you?”

I could see his lips stretching thin. He took
a deep breath, and a wave of serenity seemed to find him. Then he
looked at me and said simply, “Sure, that sounds good to me.”

“Okay then.” I patted him on the shoulder and
pushed him away. “I’m ordering pizza. Why don’t you put on a pot of
coffee? It looks like it’s going to be a long night.”