their game.

‘You have to give me something here, Tate, or I can’t help

you.’

I figure it’s best if I play the game too. But before I do, I decide to give him something.

‘Father Julian knew who killed those girls.’

‘What?’

“He told me he knew. And Bruce Alderman, he buried them.

He told me that.’

‘What? Why the hell didn’t you tell us that?’

I explain to Schroder my conversations with the priest,

detailing my pleas for Julian to tell me who had done it, even touching on the frustration I felt. I can see Schroder wondering how far he’d have pushed it if he’d known that Father Julian had been confessed to. I tell him about Bruce Alderman and what he said about dignity before elegantly blowing his brains out.

‘You should have told us,’ he says. ‘We could have convinced Julian.’

“I doubt that.’

‘We could have done something, Tate. Anything. But instead

you let a whole damn month slide by and now it’s too late. That’s why you were outside his church, right? You weren’t following Father Julian. You were watching to see who came to see him.

T>u were waiting in case the killer showed up, only you didn’t know who the hell you were looking for.’

“I had to do something.’

‘You fucked up.’

‘I know’

‘And now Father Julian is dead. And you’re in a world full of

shit.’

‘It’s an abyss.’

‘What?’

‘Come on, Carl, you know me. You’ve known me for nearly

fifteen years.’

‘Which is why this is hard for me too. We found the hammer

in your garage.’

‘And that’s why you’re going to let me leave.’ It’s time to play the game.

‘What?’

‘You’ve got nothing to hold me here.’

He looks down at the hammer in such a way as to suggest

maybe I’ve forgotten it’s there. But I haven’t.

‘You found it in my garage.’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, well, first of all you don’t even know if it’s my

hammer.’

‘That’s not the …’

‘Second,’ I say, and I hold up my hand and start counting off

my points. ‘You’re going to print it and find my prints aren’t on it.

You’re going to think a guy who used to be a homicide detective was dumb enough to clean off his fingerprints but not the blood, was dumb enough to keep the weapon, was dumb enough to

leave it in his garage for anybody to find.’

“Not dumb, but drunk,’ he says.

‘And that’s exactly my point.’

‘What?’

‘Three,’ I say, counting off another point with my fingers. ‘And this one is the kicker. This is the reason I’m about to get up and walk out of here.’

Schroder leans back. He knows what’s coming.

‘The timeline. See, we know the timeline, Carl, but the problem is the guy who planted the hammer there didn’t.’

Schroder says nothing. He knew I’d figure it out, but was

hoping it wouldn’t be this quickly. Or he was hoping to rattle me enough that I’d give him something more, maybe tell him about

Sidney Alderman.

‘You think he died around midnight,’ I say, not because he told me, but because that’s when I saw the person leaving the church, the person who I thought was the priest. The killer knew my car was there, but he didn’t see me because I was covered in ground fog. He probably figured I was passed out drunk in the front

seat because that’s what I was used to doing. He stayed in the shadows where he thought he was out of sight.

‘But I didn’t make it home. Only the killer couldn’t have

known that. He drove to my house and replaced the hammer

he had stolen to kill the priest. He didn’t know I was following him. What he couldn’t know was that I would be involved in an

accident. Your boys came and locked me up. My car was towed

away, and after you found Julian was dead, you would have had

it re-towed, this time as evidence in a murder investigation. You had it brought here and every inch of it has been gone over. No blood from Father Julian and, more importantly, no hammer,

right? And it’s not like it got logged along with my wallet and cellphone. I didn’t have it on me. And you would have searched the area of the crash, would have searched the roads between the graveyard and accident. You found nothing. Until tonight. So

how’d I put it there?’

‘You could have dumped the hammer, picked it back up

tonight. Maybe that’s why you’re covered in dirt.’

‘Why would I dump the hammer? I couldn’t know I was going

to crash. What would be the point of dumping it, just to come

back tonight to retrieve it and hide it in my garage?’

Schroder says nothing.

‘Then the whole tongue thing. Like I said earlier, why the

hell would I cut it out? Because I didn’t want him talking? That’s the sort of message you want to leave when there are others who can still talk, right? A gang thing. But not in this case. This time it was designed to make me look guiltier. It would look like I was pissed at him for talking to you guys and complaining that I was following him.’

He starts tapping a pen against the table in a slow rhythmic

pace, then smiles. ‘Well done,’ he says. He leans forward and starts packing up the photographs.

‘So you know I didn’t kill him, but you haul me down here

anyway’

‘Come on, Tate, you know how it is.’

He’s right. I do know. There are two things that bug me.

The first is, why plant the hammer in my garage, and not the

tongue?

‘Somebody still killed him,’ Schroder says.

‘Uh huh.’

‘You can help us out there.’

‘You shouldn’t have fucked me around, Carl. You should have

just asked for my help.’

‘Hey, don’t go playing the victim here, Tate. You almost killed a woman last night. Hell, maybe you still did — last I heard she was stable, but that don’t mean shit and you know it. Father Julian had to take a protection order out on you and you kept breaking it. You were there the night he died. You’re involved, Tate. Julian died, and if you’d been upfront a month ago maybe he’d still be alive now. Sidney Alderman is nowhere to be seen and you’re

acting like he’s dead. Same goes for Quentin James. You need to start giving me some answers. Look, you know that by keeping

these from us —’ he leans forward and touches the bags with the jewellery and the articles — ‘you slowed down our investigation.

Things would be different. We might have looked further. We

might not have pinned all our beliefs on Alderman. Fuck, Tate, we needed this one. There’s been so much shit lately with the

fucking Carver case, and that’s just the tip. You’d know that if you gave a shit, or if you read a newspaper.’ He pauses, takes a pencil out of his shirt pocket, rolls it across his fingers, then snaps it in half. ‘Look, you get the point. We needed something to work out, not just for the victims and for their families, but for us. People don’t have faith in the police any more, Tate. Jesus, it’s hard to blame them. That could have all changed, but you held back on

us.’

‘Was I in the news today?’

‘What?’

‘The papers, Carl. Was I in them? The accident?’

‘Not the papers. The accident was too late for that. But you’ve been on the news all day’

‘Since this morning?’

‘That’s what all day means.’

‘Then why the hell aren’t you asking yourself the obvious

question?’

‘Which is?’

‘Why would the guy who planted the hammer in my garage

not take it back out after seeing the news? He must have known being in jail would clear me.’

I can tell from his expression that Schroder hadn’t thought of it. ‘Maybe he didn’t see the news.’

‘Come on, Carl, you know just as well as I do that these guys