“What’s that worth?” I asked. “From a booth? From what location?”
“Not so lucky. He called from the cell phone of the guy he carjacked. Only used it once, best I can tell. May have thrown it away after that. But this clocks him in for four and a half minutes with his baby sister. We can start there.”
“Is Trish here?”
“Yeah. Across the hall in the captain’s office. Roast beef on rye with a root beer. I don’t think she’s eaten in a week. Two of the guys picked her up at home after Mercer called. Peterson wants a team sitting on her house full-time now in case Brendan makes a guest appearance.”
I waited for Mike to finish eating. Mercer left the room and came back with our vending-machine lunch. A choice of entrées-M amp;M’s, red licorice Twizzlers, or a Milky Way-and a soda for each of us.
“Kate Meade seals the deal. Very sentimental type. Saved an album with photographs of the wedding party and letters Amanda wrote on her honeymoon. There’s a snapshot of Amanda and Brendan at the Trevi Fountain, with a date stamp on the back. All in sequence with the rest of their travels. Get Brendan Quillian out of your brain, Ms. Cooper. He didn’t kill Rebecca Hassett.”
Mike rolled up his empty bag and tossed it in the garbage. “Why don’t you come with me, Mercer? Alex, you can watch through the one-way mirror. Better you don’t set Trish off, okay?”
“She’s all yours, Detective.”
I took my soda and went off into the room adjacent to the one they would use for the interview. A few minutes later, Mike opened the door for Trish Quillian, who looked nervously around the small, bare rectangular space before sitting down and resting her elbows on the table. She was wearing a black polyester track suit that zipped up the front and clung to her thin frame.
“I have to be getting home, Detective. I’ve got to be feeding my mother some lunch.”
“It’s been a pretty rough time for you, Trish, with Brendan going wild on us right on the heels of Duke’s funeral. Are you managing okay?”
Trish picked up her head and stared into the mirror. She couldn’t see me, I knew, but I was staring right into the hard, sharp features of her unsmiling face. “Is it concern for me now that you sent two cops to pick me up?”
“No. You might say it’s concern for your brother.”
“For Brendan?” She slowly circled the palm of her hand on the tabletop and looked at Mike. “You’re playing me for a fool, aren’t you? You make some hokey case about him killing Amanda that wouldn’t stand up in a kangaroo court, and now that he’s beat you at it, I’m supposed to think you’re worried about him?”
Mike sat across from her. “He shot a woman to death at pointblank range, Trish. Killed a court officer in front of a judge and lawyers and several other decent people. Wounded three others. He stole two guns and he hijacked a car. Brendan’s what they used to say was ‘armed and extremely dangerous.’”
The lean woman looked a decade older and harder than she had a week ago, rocking in her chair as she continued to trace designs on the wood with her fingertip.
“What do they call it now?” she asked.
“I’d say he’s more like a fucking bull’s-eye. I’d say your brother’s a walking target, Trish, with a great big X painted on his forehead. Some cop sees him and knows how trigger-happy he is, Brendan gets nailed by the first shot, before he can even focus the only eye he’s got.”
One side of Trish Quillian’s mouth pulled back, almost in a grin. “My brother’s been dead for me a really long time, Detective. You trying to make me think you care what happens to him? I gave up worrying about Brendan years ago. Right after he gave up worrying about us.”
“I talked to Phin Baylor.”
The smile faded. “I’m the one who told you to, wasn’t I?”
“He said you shouldn’t be pointing fingers at any of the Hassett boys. Phin said there were things about your own brothers-about Brendan and Duke-that we ought to talk about with you.”
There was no change in Trish’s expression. She kept on rocking back and forth, rubbing her finger around and around on the wooden surface. “Like what?”
“Tell me what else you remember about Brendan. Tell me how he got along with your friends.”
“My friends? That’s a long way to think.” Trish Quillian sat still for more than a minute. “Maybe you know how it is with big brothers, Detective.”
She made eye contact with Mike for the first time, and he nodded at her.
“All the guys I went to school with, they looked up to Duke. He was the strong one, he was the street fighter-took on anybody’s cause for a friend. Sick as he was, when they thought he was going to die of the cancer, he came back tough as a bull. Wasn’t a soul who’d mess with me ’cause they knew Duke would take care of business.”
“He hurt people, didn’t he?”
Trish’s eyes narrowed to the size of slits. “He never hurt anybody who didn’t cause trouble first. And you can be sure no one complained about it to me. I wouldn’t have listened.” She wagged a finger at Mike as she spoke.
“And Brendan?”
“Boys didn’t understand him-him being afraid of the tunnels and the sandhog jobs and all. Liking books so much, inside doing homework most nights while kids were playing on the street. Girls? Well, some of them get kind of stupid around guys like him. He was good-looking-even with the bum eye-and popular with all the fancy girls. From the time he started high school at Regis, he always dressed better and talked smoother than the neighborhood kids. He was something special.”
“Your friends, Trish, did he hang out with them?”
She dismissed that thought with a snort. “You must be kidding. Six, seven years difference at that age? I think he liked the attention, liked the girls fawning all over him. But he didn’t have any interest in none of them. Just a nuisance, that’s all they were to him.”
Mike took his time making his approach. “How about Bex?”
“Yeah? What do you want to know about her now?”
“Well, you said she was at your house all the time, am I right?”
“Practically living there. Part of the family. My very best friend.”
“And Brendan. Did they get along?”
There was no sign of tension in her face or movements as she answered Mike. She didn’t seem to get the significance of his questions.
“I’d say they got along fine. He was good to Bex. Helped her with her homework, even. Things like that. Especially in those few months after her father was killed in that accident-right before Brendan got married-he was trying to be a big brother to her, help her through it.”
“They spent time together?”
Trish cocked her head and looked at Mike. “I’ve just told you what kind of things they did. Family stuff. Schoolwork. Even took her out driving a few times when she got her permit. In old Mr. Keating’s car, if I’m not mistaken. He was being good to her, if you don’t mind. You’re not making something else of it, are you? Sticking Brendan with something else?”
“Not anything-”
“We were kids, Bex and me, Detective. Sixteen years old when he got married to that snooty dame. She hated to lose him, same as I did. Like a brother.”
“Think of those last few months, Trish, before the wedding. Was Brendan around?”
“In the city? Sure. He and Amanda had to do Pre-Cana. They had to go to Amanda’s church, not ours.”
I knew that Pre-Cana was a requirement before Catholic weddings, couples meeting in sessions with a priest to discuss the responsibilities of their marriage, a reminder that it was considered a sacrament of the church.
“Were he and Amanda living together?”
“Before the wedding? Not like you mean. He stayed in the Keatings’ home, in the guest room from time to time,” Trish said. “My mother used to tell me-like it was the only good example she could draw from the Keatings-what a fine thing it was that Amanda had been raised with such important religious values. She liked that Amanda insisted on keeping herself pure till they were married-that’s what Mother called it. ‘Pure.’ Brendan told her that, she used to say.”