Chapter 24

I AM A HOMICIDE DETECTIVE, and a pretty good one, and I easily found Scott's gun and badge in our garden toolshed.

It takes a lot of work and cleaning materials to erase a crime scene. I didn't see any obvious evidence in our garbage can outside the garage, so I went to the next logical hiding place. On the other side of the shed door was one of the Stop amp; Shop bags we used for garbage. It was brimming with blood-pink paper towels.

And underneath the bag were Scott's badge and the gun Paul had used to kill him.

It was a short-barreled Colt.38 revolver, a Detective Special. It was special, all right. I used one of the paper towels to lift it. I tipped out the chamber and looked at the dark holes where two rounds were missing.

I carefully placed it back under the bag and then locked the shed. I was walking up the driveway to my front door when my cell vibrated.

I looked at the caller ID, then at my lit bedroom window. I pressed myself into the shadows beside the garage door.

It was Paul.

What did he want? Should I pick up and talk to him? Had he seen me? I wimped out and let my voice mail take it. I played his message back a few seconds later.

"Hi, Lauren. It's me. I'm at home. I ran into difficulties with my flight. I'll explain what happened later. Was there a problem with your flight, too?" Paul said. "I noticed that your car's not here. Are you at work? Give me a call when you get a chance, okay? I'm worried about you."

Worried about me? I thought, staring up at my window. Why? I didn't kill anybody.

Could this get any more bizarre? At least he was all right, I finally thought, folding my phone closed.

Paul was all right physically, if not otherwise.

I was taking a deep breath by my porch stairs, preparing myself to finally go inside and face him, when my phone vibrated a second time.

But it wasn't Paul this time.

It was my partner. I headed back into the shadows by the garage before I picked up.

"Mike?"

"Time's up, Lauren," he said. "Keane's on the move. I won't be able to stall for you much longer. You have to get back here now."

"On my way," I said.

I looked up at my window again. What the hell was I waiting for? I thought. Why was I skulking around in the dark outside my own house? I needed to go in and talk to Paul. Get some crisis management in motion. Call a good lawyer. Be rational. Be an adult. Figure this thing out somehow.

It was just a matter of looking Paul in the eye and saying, "Yes, I cheated on you. Yes, I made love to another man tonight, and now we have to deal with the terrible consequences of what you've done."

I thought about that as the rain continued to fall around me.

I wasn't a procrastinator by nature, but in this case, I thought I'd make an exception.

I stuck to the shadows on the jog back to my car.

Chapter 25

I LEFT THE CAR ON GRAND CONCOURSE and walked in a daze down 193rd, trying to think my way through this disaster. I met Mike on the south side of the park, at the entrance far from where the bosses were set up in the Command Center on Jerome.

I couldn't help noticing the half dozen news vans parked alongside it. Great. The public has a right to know. To which I have to ask, Why is that?

"Anybody notice I was gone?" I asked Mike in greeting.

He made a pained face. "Bad news, Lauren. The commissioner came over about ten minutes ago, all outraged about where you were."

My stomach dropped.

"But you know me," Mike said, "I just slapped him around and told him to get his sorry ass back in the donut bus, where he belongs."

I punched my ever-the-wiseass partner in the arm. The contact felt good, actually.

"I appreciate it," I said. Mike had no idea how much.

The steady rain continued to fall as we made our way toward the tenements on Creston Avenue on the east side of the park. If two concrete acres of handball courts, rusted basketball hoops, and pit bull-chewed baby swings could be considered a park.

I don't know what James was the patron saint of, but I have a funny feeling it wasn't the marijuana, coke, and heroin that were sold out of the ancient buildings along the park's perimeter. Judging by the looks of the young, bored-looking, hooded men under the red plastic awning of a corner bodega, our presence had slowed sales considerably, though.

"Give me some good news on your canvass, Sarge," Mike said to a stocky black cop filling out a report in the open door of his double-parked police van.

He looked up, his face disappointed.

Good, I thought. Disappointment was good.

"We got an Amelia Phelps, eighty-year-old African American lady lives in that rattletrap over there," the sergeant said, pointing to a vinyl-sided Victorian on the corner.

"She said she saw a car park near her driveway," the sergeant continued, "and a man carrying something out of the trunk."

"White, black, Hispanic?" Mike asked. A loud shout interrupted him.

"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!"

It was one of the hoodies in front of the bodega. His arms and hands were outstretched.

"FIVE-0 FINALLY GOT WHAT'S COMIN' TO 'EM!" he yelled again. " 'BOUT TIME!"

Mike moved out into the street at the bodega so quickly I had to jog to keep up.

"What was that?" he said, putting a hand to his ear as he ducked under the crime-scene tape and closed in on the men in front of the store.

Most of the St. James sales personnel had wisely dispersed down the block, but the rabble-rouser, a thin, green-eyed, light-skinned Hispanic, inexplicably stood his ground. He looked to be in his early twenties.

"What? You don't like hearin' the truth?" he said as he cocked his little bantam rooster head at Mike. "Then, do somethin' about it, chump."

Mike picked up the metal garbage can off the corner and threw it at the guy, two-handed like a basketball pass. Its steel-rimmed side knocked the punk instantly on his back and into the gutter. Mike lifted the can and turned it upside down, burying the kid in garbage.

"How's that for somethin'?" he said.

"He's nothing," I whispered into my partner's ear after I caught up. "You want to get jammed up over this mope? Open your eyes, Mike. There's bosses everywhere."

Mike rubbed the vein throbbing at his temple as he finally let me walk him away.

"You're right. You're right, partner," he mumbled with his head down. "Sorry, I lost it."

That's when I remembered.

Mike was a second-generation cop whose father had been killed in the line of duty. His dad had been a transit cop, and he'd walked into a subway car where a rape was in progress and was shot in the face. It was one of the few cop murders in the history of the NYPD that had never been solved.

So there actually was one thing that could rile my even-tempered partner, I thought as I pulled him toward the witness's house.

A dead cop.

Things just kept getting better and better.