“You think it was him?” she said. “You think it was Liam Byrne?”
“Seems a bit far-fetched. But after what you learned about the guy who signed the death certificate, I’d certainly want to go up to Rahway and ask him what he knows. And we’ll see if this Liam Byrne had any fingerprints on file to match what they already peeled off the car.”
She turned and gave the corpse a quick glance. “You want to know something that makes me believe it, Henderson? Spangler had a bizarre integrity about him. I don’t think he would have lied about it.”
“He was certifiable. Who the hell knows what he was thinking?”
“And we’ll never know now.”
“He had taken at least two lives already, and he would have taken two more if things worked out tonight the way he wanted. Maybe even three. You did the right thing.”
“Okay.”
“And even with all that he was, you tried to save him. I heard you trying.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve tried and failed before,” she said, “but never like this.”
She had been trying, pleading with Bobby Spangler to put down his gun. She had made no threatening moves, beyond, of course, keeping her gun aimed at his heart, and had promised whatever she could think of promising to avoid having happen what actually happened. But whatever she was saying was obviously counteracted by the witch, who was whispering incessantly in his ear and who gave him that nauseating kiss of death.
“What did you say to him?” she screamed at the old lady when it was over. “What did you say?”
“I told him to stop all this nonsense,” said Mrs. Truscott with her hands suddenly becalmed and her lips tight. “I told him to put down the gun and surrender to the nice police officers. I told him that was the only way.”
She was lying, Ramirez knew she was lying, but all she had to go on was what actually happened. Spangler slowly rising, Spangler gently caressing the old woman’s cheek, Spangler slowly turning as the gun swiveled from the senator to Kyle Byrne, Spangler slowly squeezing the trigger.
Ramirez shot him three times in the chest. Henderson fired at the same time, hitting his shoulder and spinning him around, but it was Ramirez’s shots that killed him. Spangler, already dead, fell back as his shotgun spurted upward along with the blood from his chest. When the shotgun fired, finally, the blast took out not Kyle Byrne or Senator Truscott but the imposing portrait above the fireplace.
It played out as quickly as that, so quickly that Kyle and the senator didn’t have time to throw themselves onto the floor until all the danger had passed. And when it was over, Lucia Ramirez, God forgive her, had her first kill.
“Why did you try so hard to help him?” said Henderson. “Most cops, seeing a killer with a weapon pointed at a politician, would have shot first chance they had. And there were chances, moments when his attention wandered, when the gun was pointed nowhere specific. Why didn’t you take him out when you could?”
“I don’t know, Henderson. What are you, my therapist? What do I get, forty-five minutes to pour out my soul before you tell me my time’s up?”
“I’m just asking.”
“I felt sorry for him, all right? I saw his apartment, I saw his desperation. He was living a twisted little life, and I know the witch who was doing the twisting. I had my choice, I’d have shot her.”
“You’ll be thinking about this man next year, and ten years from now, and ten years after that when you’re in my position, standing on the lip of things, looking over the edge. And when you do, knowing that you cared, even a little bit, and did your best to save him . . . well, knowing that is the only thing that’s going to keep you from tearing out your heart, or drowning it in alcohol. Trust me, I know.”
“What do you know?”
“I know what it feels like when you do it on the other side of caring, and let me tell you, it leaves you haunted.”
“Old man.”
“You got that right, but my hair turned gray a long time ago.”
Ramirez looked at Henderson and for the first time saw the hurt in his eyes. Something had happened to him, something had damaged him badly. And all this time he’d been trying to protect her from the same fate. Someday she’d get the story, she was a detective, after all, someday she’d wring it out from him, but not this day. This day she was just glad he was by her side.
“Detectives,” came a voice from the hallway, “can I get the hell out of here? I’ve been here way too long already, and this shirt is getting ripe.”
It was Byrne. Ramirez offered a quick and uneasy smile to Henderson in thanks, and then she stepped away from the man she had killed and out of the room where she had killed him.
“Didn’t we tell all of you just to stay put?” said Ramirez as she and Henderson approached Byrne. Byrne’s jacket was off, his tie loose, but he looked calm, as if he’d already gotten over the violence that had burst about him just an hour ago.
“Yes, you did,” said Kyle Byrne. “But the senator was whisked out with his lawyer before the news trucks showed up, and Mrs. Truscott did that little fainting thing that got her a quick trip to the hospital, which leaves just me.”
“And you’re lonely, is that it?”
Kyle smiled. “Actually, yes. So I wanted to know if I can get out of here, too.”
“Do we have anything we can hold this boy on?” she said to Henderson.
“Extortion?” said Henderson.
“I don’t know,” said Ramirez, staring at Kyle with a critical eye, as if he were a painting, or a horse. “From what we heard over the radio frequency he gave us, he wasn’t trying to trade the file for money.” “A rson?”
“Based on the burns on Spangler’s skin, I’d put the arson on him.” “How about theft of a valuable file?”
“Taking his dead father’s file from his own former home? That won’t stick.”
“Obstruction of justice?”
“Maybe,” said Ramirez. “But we wouldn’t have found Spangler without him.”
“Abject stupidity?”
“Well, there you go,” said Ramirez. “We’re just going to have to hold him over on the grounds of abject stupidity. Because who else but an idiot would put himself in the middle of this craziness for no apparent purpose?”
“If stupidity was a crime,” said Kyle, “I’d have been locked up long ago.”
“Answer one question and we’ll let you go,” said Ramirez. “Who was in the car?”
“What car? The rental thing?”