“I wanted to see you both,” she says, “because I know some of the things I’ve said to the media must have sounded like criticism, and I want to say I’m sorry. It was not directed at you.”
Cavallo tries to silence her with a lifted hand.
“It’s all right,” I say. “You don’t need to justify yourself to us.”
“I also wanted you to know that I’m done. I won’t talk to them anymore. I didn’t want to at first, and I only did it in the off chance it might help bring my baby home. But now there’s no reason, and I won’t talk to them again. I wanted you to know.”
She speaks quietly, with a determination that doesn’t seem congruent with the subject, as if the decision she’s referring to runs much deeper than the one her words avow. An embrace of silence encompassing much more than television interviews, as if she’s sworn off saying anything ever again.
Her gloved hand closes around mine briefly, squeezing, her eyes gazing at me through the netted veil. “I know you’ll do everything you can. Thank you.”
I step back. She gives Cavallo a similar blessing, and then we both retreat out into the hallway, joined by Gina Robb and her silent husband. He comes close to me, leaning almost to my ear, speaking in a harsh whisper.
“I want to talk to you later. I want to do more this time.”
This time, as if there’s a second round to play and everything might still come right.
We leave them, rejoining the other mourners. Cavallo wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, pretending I’m not beside her, probably embarrassed by her show of emotion. We file into a wide, soaring auditorium, a stadium of worship with a semicircle of seats around a raised platform. Behind it, a multi-tiered choir loft and a backstop of abstract stained glass, but I’m not looking past the platform. My eyes get no further than the casket at its base. The lid is closed, and a large portrait of Hannah is erected on an easel behind it. A hush descends on everyone who sees it, the crowd growing still, struck by the reality of that small wooden box.
Another casket flashes in my mind, another body. I see Charlotte pale with grief, the vein in her forehead throbbing, the bruises from the car accident still evident under a layer of makeup. My eyes sting.
“I can’t stay,” I say, turning back, not waiting for any reply, hoping she won’t come after me, hoping she won’t try to follow.
CHAPTER 25
Hedges casts a disapproving eye over my cubicle, staring the way he might at a spelling error in the first line of a report. I weather the scrutiny. There’s nothing I can do about the mess. Casework grows like weeds all around me. My cup overruns, and so does my murder book. In addition to evidence recovered with Hannah’s body, the copious lab work that’s been trickling in all morning, and the first wave of file boxes couriered over from the former task force hq in the Northwest, there’s also a layer left over from the Thomson investigation, things I haven’t had time to box up for Wilcox. Aguilar has been detailed to help, and Bascombe checks in every half hour or so, looking at me the way a kid looks at a magician, wondering what’ll happen next time I reach into my hat. So I haven’t had a lot of time for tidying up.
“Everything all right, sir?” I ask, hoping to move him along.
He can’t bring himself to give the order – Clean up around here, all right? – but I can see how bad he wants to.
“You have everything you need?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods, clears his throat. “You’ve been doing good work, March. Keep it up. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re back on form.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As he leaves, a little ember of pride burns in my chest. It means something, coming from him.
Lorenz drops by, too, blowing on a steaming cup of coffee, and I notice some kind of encrustation on his collar, a speck of dried milk maybe, though I imagine it’s baby spit. I recall having seen something similar before, only I didn’t appreciate the significance. I try to picture him cradling a newborn on the bridge of his belly, bouncing back and forth. I put baby talk in his mouth, trying to conceive of the sound.
“You were lucky to get out from under the Morales shooting when you did,” he says. “If that thing goes down now, it’ll be a miracle. No hard feelings, huh? If I overplayed my hand, I’m sorry. I got a talking to from Terry Cavallo yesterday, telling me you were good people. I shouldn’t have come down so hard. What can I say? It was a big break for me, and I kind of blew it.”
He cocks his round head, smiling anxiously, practically willing me to accept his apology. But I’m too stunned to react all at once. I buy myself some time by nodding and shrugging, a song and dance of body language meant to convey something like it happens to us all and don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s easy to be gracious in the ascendant.
“Forget about it,” I say, hoping the words don’t sound as hollow to him as they do to me.
Lorenz takes me literally, blinking a couple of times, smiling, and generally acting as though he doesn’t know who he is or how he got here. He tips his cup in salute and walks away.
When she arrives a while later, Cavallo turns a number of middle-aged heads, but if she notices the stir, she gives no sign. Aguilar grows attentive all the sudden, abandoning his own desk and pulling a chair up to mine. The crowding seems too ridiculous not to comment on, but Cavallo says nothing so I keep quiet, too. Every time I glance his way, he gives a subtle, conspiratorial grin. My desk phone rings.
“Can you come up here?” Wilcox says. “There’s something I want you to see.”
I grab my jacket and leave the field to Aguilar, who seems grateful for the uninterrupted view.
“You need me?” Cavallo asks.
Over her shoulder, Aguilar’s eyebrows rise slightly in alarm.
“I can handle this one on my own.”
For the first time in more than a year, Wilcox’s lips curl upward at my approach, though his smile is charged not with friendship but triumph. He pulls me into the office, then closes the door.
“We got him.”
I turn. “Who?”
“Have a seat,” he says. “All will be revealed.”
My heart’s already racing as I sit down. He circles the desk, grabs a thin folder, and slaps it down in front of me, the same way a poker player throws down a winning hand. The paper trembles in my hand. Inside the folder are test results on the handgun recovered from Salazar’s boat.
“First off, there was dried blood on the muzzle and slide, which had been wiped down but not too carefully. The samples match Joe Thomson.”
A long breath escapes me. “This is it.”
“There’s more. The drop-in barrel and the rounds in the magazine both had prints all over them, also Thomson’s.”
“And the frame?”
His smile’s as wide as a crocodile’s, showing just as many teeth. “That’s where it gets really good. Like I said, the gun was wiped down. The lab had a hard time lifting prints from the frame and slide. But they pulled a partial off the hammer, another partial off the front of the trigger, and a thumb that wasn’t Thomson’s on the magazine.”
“Are you going to tell me whose it was?”
“Look and see.”
I flip the page over, scanning the lines, until my eye rests on the name. REGINALD ALLAN KELLER. I let out another breath. “The man himself.”
“And it gets better. That particular P229, the serial number traces back to Keller, too.”
“So it’s airtight.”
“Exactly.”
We observe a moment of silence. This was a long time coming, and now that it’s here, now that my old nemesis is literally in my hands, it doesn’t seem real. The feeling’s very different from the sense I had kneeling next to Hannah Mayhew’s corpse, the numbness at the end of what I knew all along would be an unfulfilled quest. There’s nothing conflicted or ambiguous about this. If anything, I’m giddy, and Wilcox must be, too, the way he’s grinning ear to ear, the way he insisted on us sharing this moment together.