"Of course when they left the next day I charged them for the full four days and they paid without a peep."
I got a cab to my rental and it took fifteen teeth-chattering minutes to get the heater up to speed. I was at the roundhouse near Franklin Square at eleven for an eleven-fifteen with Detective Fried and I parked in the visitors' lot.
On the third floor there were few uniforms. Shirts and ties. Suit jackets. Secretaries and doors with brass nameplates. Pure administration. I'd worn my collared shirt. Guy had read the extra-close shave and hint of cologne and had lent me an expensive sweater. The cuffs of my pleated chinos came down far enough to disguise the black work boots that still had a manufacturer's shine.
I checked in with the IAD assistant and waited uncomfortably in an anteroom for Fried. There was a large corner office that I knew would belong to the lieutenant. The door was shut. I didn't have to make out the name on the brass plate. I paced, fidgeting, and realized I was surreptitiously looking for a flash of blonde hair.
"Mr. Freeman?"
I turned on the male voice, wishing it quieter, questioning why I hadn't set this up as an outside meeting.
"Rick Fried," the man said, shaking my hand in a strong grip. "Good to meet you. Come on in."
I followed the back of Fried's suit into a small office and since he hadn't closed the door, I did. He slipped his coat off and hung it on the back of his chair before sitting.
"Your uncle speaks very highly of you, Mr. Freeman. And when Sergeant Keith speaks, the smart ones around here listen."
"He's a good man," I said.
"One of the best," Fried answered, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling back his sleeves, just us working guys here. It was probably a technique for IAD interviews. He was younger than my uncle, older by ten years than me, at least that's what I was telling myself.
"He tells me you're a P.I. in Florida now."
I nodded.
"Nice tan."
I nodded again.
"OK. The sarge says you're working something on our former Mr. Colin O'Shea and I gather it's gotta be on the defense side, Mr. Freeman, 'cause I see that someone from the, uh, Broward sheriff's office has already made some inquiries on Mr. O'Shea."
"You handle them?" I said.
"Nope. The lieutenant does all outside agency contacts," he said.
Fried was reading from a lined check-out sheet stapled to the front of a file on his desktop. It was lying on top of a second folder.
"Well, I wouldn't say 'defense,' detective. I'm in a sort of neutral position," I said. "I was asked by a friend to offer an opinion because I knew O'Shea, years ago."
"Yeah, right, you two graduated academy together," Fried said, unconsciously, or maybe not, touching his fingers to the second file. "You two ever work the streets together?"
I knew the IAD game. Even if this guy was a friend of my uncle's, his whole existence in this job was give-and-take. Info for info.
"We ran across each other. He was from the neighborhood," I said. "Know what I mean?"
In South Philly, mention of the neighborhood still had a sense of being synonymous with a tribe of sorts. I was here on my uncle's honor. It snapped Fried back.
"Yeah, well, the file's pretty straight up on O'Shea," he said, handing it across his desk.
"Had some complaints. He was written up for excessive use of force. Then he and a couple others out at the Tenth got stopped on a drunk and disorderly, their sergeant handled it, kept it off the books, warned them to clean it up. But O'Shea stayed on the bottle. Another excessive a year later. Then his wife throws a domestic- abuse charge at him."
"Any of these excessive-force complaints involve women?" I said, looking through O'Shea's stats. High number of arrests. Most in districts I remembered as being high-crime spots.
"Naw. Lowlifes mostly. Drug collars on the street. One was a group thing where the bang squad went in on a house full of gang warrants and the hard boys started crying about being beaten afterwards. But I got the feeling that O'Shea didn't exactly shy away from a little extracurricular activity."
"You guys ever do any psych screens on him?" I said.
"Not if it isn't in there," Fried said.
I closed the file and put it back on the desk. As I did I glanced at what I was sure was my own file.
"I don't see anything in there about the Faith Hamlin case," I said, nodding at O'Shea's jacket folder, making the accusation that Fried was holding out on me as bluntly as I could.
The detective laced his fingers and sat back in his chair, like mention of the case had not surprised him.
"That's all part of an ongoing investigation, Mr. Freeman. "It's not public information."
I lowered my voice and leaned forward just as far as Fried had moved back.
"Oh, I thought my uncle's word carried more weight than that. There was once a brotherhood and even you guys were part of that," I said, watching his eyes, their movement, center to right, center to right, giving him away.
He finally leaned in.
"Your uncle doesn't have the power to hire and fire, Freeman," he said, showing his allegiance was with his paycheck. "My boss is where she is because of the Hamlin case. She took those guys down, and I'm not saying they didn't deserve it, but as far as she's concerned, the real perp got away."
"O'Shea," I said, without having to.
Fried nodded and leaned back again.
"Now, you got anything on him from Florida that's gonna help her nail his ass for the killing of Faith Hamlin, I'm more than happy to forward that information along, Mr. Freeman."
I sat back as well, more than happy to increase the personal space between us. Fried didn't know that I had once been married to his boss. Uncle Keith had been more circumspect than that.
I stood up and offered my hand.
"If I should come across anything that I think you can use, Detective, you'll be the first to know," I lied. "I appreciate the time."
"Hey, any friend of the sarge. Maybe I'll catch you out some night, buy me one," he said, just one of the boys again.
I grinned the guy grin while he showed me out. In the hallway I found myself shaking my head and thinking some line about six degrees of separation. My ex-wife and now my ex-lover had swapped notes on O'Shea and his connection with the disappearances of Faith Hamlin here, and about the disappearances of the women in Florida. They both had the guy's ass in their rifle sights. I figured I knew that Sherry Richards's motive was this hell-bent desire for justice for the victims. Meagan's I was equally sure of: a premier scalp on her already extensive collection, a step up her ambitious ladder to who the hell knew where, and yet another man-challenge to conquer. I didn't think either had mentioned my name or my intimate connection to both of them.
"Don't tell me that God has a plan, Mamma," I whispered to a pale empty wall. "Or he is one bizarre poet."
I was waiting for the elevator when I heard her call my name and there was no denying the voice.
"Max?"
I looked back down the hall toward IAD and she was standing in a cerulean-colored suit that I could only imagine her coming up with when the dress code said blue. Even from here I could tell the high cut of her skirt was not regulation. Her head was angled slightly with a questioning look and her honey blonde hair took advantage of the tilt to cascade down over one shoulder. She had called out my name once like that when we were married, late one night while she tried to sleep after a SWAT shooting she'd been in on. Her voice had sounded like she'd needed me, so I'd held her in our bed until she stopped shivering. But the next morning she had no recollection of it and I had been wrong about the needing.
"Max?"
I put my hands in my pockets and took a step toward her. The elevator bell rang and I ignored it. I watched her hand a load of files to a man in a suit next to her and wave him into the office, all without taking her eyes off me. As she approached she looked down once, then raised her eyes and reached up and took a strand of hair that had come loose and in one heartbreaking motion that burned in our past, she tucked it behind her ear. We met halfway.