Billy was quiet. Even as a behind-the-scenes litigator, he knew the workings and the working flaws in the system. He also knew that a lawyer can get a leg caught in the machinery and get pulled in, just as a suspect can. I was asking him to risk that chance that he might be pulled into an arena that he had avoided his entire career.
"O'Shea says he has nothing to do with these disappearances, Billy. And he asked me to help him."
"D-Do you trust him?"
I hesitated, something a good attorney would never do, whether they were convinced or not. People familiar with the working of courtrooms know that truth and justice are only in the eye of the beholder. The best lawyers know that their job is only to convince that beholder of their version.
I knew I could never accept that role and I knew Billy well enough to know how he disdained it.
"My gut tells me he's not involved," I said. "But I could be giving him more benefit than he deserves. The guy did save me from a hole in the back ten years ago."
Diane brought over the coffee, put mine in front of me and then sat next to Billy.
"Do you want to t-tell me that part?"
Even if he did phrase it as such, I knew it wasn't really a question. While I told the story, I went through the entire pot of strong Colombian blend. Diane got up twice to refill her wineglass. I reconstructed the drug bust on South Street and how O'Shea must have been listening in on the tack channel that night and horning in on the action. But there was also no doubt that he'd kept the drug runner from using the handgun I neglected to frisk him for. I could have been dead in the street, another cop funeral in the family.
I told them of my interviews with O'Shea's ex-wife and my trip to the IAD office. When I mentioned Meagan's name, Billy looked up into my eyes. He would let me gloss over it, but I was using truth to base my assumption of O'Shea's innocence on. When Diane heard that I had been married to an aggressive, type-A personality who was always bent on being the alpha-male of her block, she kept her eyes on the rim of her glass. But I could see the twitch at the corners of her mouth.
I stopped talking and she finally looked up.
"What?"
"It only lasted two years," I said defensively.
"I'm surprised."
"At what?"
"That it went that long."
She waited a beat.
"Any children?"
"No. Thank God," I said. "She would have eaten her young."
Diane coughed into her glass. Billy patted her back.
"Sorry," she finally said.
I smiled and shook my head. Billy brought us back on line.
"OK. If I was his lawyer. If," he said. "I would obviously argue f-for no crime to begin with. No body. No evidence. But say it m- moves to indictment anyway. Then as an attorney I try to sh-show that someone else could be responsible. Who? What kind of man abducts grown, s-smart single women whose only similarity is their chosen work?"
"Someone who's a psycho, but a different one," said Diane, rejoining us. She had switched her drink to ice water in a crystal tumbler.
"If I put myself behind that bar, I see the same group of guys every night waving their dicks around trying to show who can snag the attention of the good-looking bartender. So to be successful, this one's got to have a different schtick."
"Your honor!" Billy said in mock horror. "Waving their…"
"And at the risk of sounding shallow," I interrupted, "he's good- looking himself. She's probably got a target-rich environment, if you know what I mean. She knows she's onstage and can pick from the audience."
"Someone in their age r-range, I would suspect. M-Maybe a little older."
"But not Daddy," Diane said. "You said your friend Richards profiled these girls as being far from home, not necessarily close to family, independent-minded. I see that as a girl running away from Daddy, not to one."
"Someone who appears stable. Has a job. Isn't in there scraping change together or begging off a tab. These girls have seen enough of that."
"Someone s-safe. Or p-perceived to be safe," said Billy. "They see a lot of quick hit hustle going on b-between pickup and bar stool relationships every night."
"All right," said Diane. "We've got a good-looking guy with an aura of something out of the ordinary who appears stable, self- sufficient, not boring, smart and makes you feel safe."
The table went quiet for too long. I was staring into my coffee cup and when I raised my eyes they were both looking at me.
"Where were you on the night of January third?" Diane said with that mischievous look in her eyes.
"It fits you, M-Max. And your friend, O'Shea," Billy said.
"Who doesn't trust a cop, off-duty, in a bar?" Diane said. "Especially a blue-collar girl from a blue-collar neighborhood."
"I'm not a cop anymore, and neither is O'Shea," I said, going on the defensive.
"The problem with all this dime-store psychoanalysis is that none of us knows what the women were looking for to let themselves fall into this trap. And that's if they fell at all and aren't tending bar in Cancun or Freeport or Houston for Christ's sake," I said. "And what's the killer's motive in all this if they were abducted?"
This time I got up myself and poured the final cup from the coffeemaker.
"They're lonely, Max," Diane said, answering the first question. "You don't use logic to explain what one person sees in another to save them from loneliness."
She slipped her hand under Billy's.
"Just like m-most abusers, rapists, it's not about sex," Billy said. "The guy is trying to control something and can't, not even himself."
"Colin O'Shea doesn't want control that bad," I said. "Hell. He never wanted it when he did have it."
"I agree," said Billy.
"Yeah?"
"Yes. If he gets arrested, Max. Tell him t-to call m-me."
"I appreciate it, Billy," I said, and looked at Diane, who was now squeezing Billy's hand.
"And let's all pray for Cancun," Diane said.
CHAPTER 17
Marci woke Sunday morning thinking: "How did I do this to myself again?"
She could feel it hardening in the back of her head, that uncomfortable guilt and self-admonishment like she'd put off studying for a midterm until the date of the test or once again forgotten to check the oil in her car and knew that her father would back it out to move it from blocking his truck and see the light on and say "Didn't I tell you? That engine is going to seize up on you, young lady, and that's it. You're walking."
But this was worse. She was in too deep again with a man and shit, she was starting to tell it wasn't going to work. She was lying in bed, naked under just a sheet and watching the lines of sunlight streak through the blinds and crawl across the wall. It had to be eleven. He'd been gone since seven because he was working that daytime alpha shift or whatever they called it. She pressed a pillow tighter in between her legs and felt the bruise on the outside of her thigh. It was still that high, purple color of an underripe plum and was just getting a thin ring of yellow around its edge. He'd punched her a good one when she grabbed the cell phone out of his hand and kept right on bitching about him checking all her call-back log numbers.
OK, maybe she was overreacting. It was just his nature, wanting to know everything about her and who she was talking to all the time. It's what cops do, right? Born investigators and always need to know what's going on, he said. Christ knows she'd been with guys who didn't want to know a damn thing about her except whether she'd put out on the first half-drunken date. And so what if he called her at work a dozen times a night? He just wanted to hear her voice, he said. He was always asking if she could get out early because he missed her. Shit, when was the last time she had a boyfriend who showed her that much attention?
She rolled over to her nightstand and took a drink from the bottle of spring water. There was an empty tumbler next to it that he'd filled with Maker's Mark. The man could drink. Her daddy would be pissed off about that, pull that holier-than-thou on her even if he was the one who got her that first bartending job at the VFW in Eagleton. But the police officer part, he'd be proud of that. A law- abiding, respected man who would protect you when I'm gone. And he'd been gone, what, four years now?