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It was approaching nine o’clock when a uniformed officer summoned me to the command center where I found Adele waiting alone. I wanted to put my arms around her, but settled for a wink. A moment later, Bill Sarney stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘you won.’

‘It’s not a game,’ Adele replied.

‘Don’t go there.’

But Adele was on a roll and she simply continued. ‘It’s not a football game, lieutenant, one side wins, the other side loses, next week we get to do it all over again. It’s real people really getting killed and the NYPD acquiescing to an innocent man being framed for another man’s crime.’

Far from losing his temper, Sarney folded his arms across his chest and completed his mission. It was over now, for better or for worse.

‘You’re being put on paid administrative leave until you’re cleared to work by a department shrink,’ he told us without addressing Adele’s accusation. ‘Make the appointment whenever you’re ready. You wanna take a month, fine. You wanna take a year, that’s also fine.’

But Adele wasn’t about to be bribed. She reached into her purse, withdrew the wallet holding her badge and ID, then tossed the wallet to Sarney. ‘You’re never going to get the message,’ she declared. ‘Never.’

Sarney looked down at the wallet in his hands, then slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. ‘What about you, Harry? You wanna give up your shield?’

‘Not me, boss. And I’m gonna make that appointment right away. I can’t wait to get all this horrible killing off my chest so I can come back to work.’

FORTY

It was eleven o’clock before CSU cleared my vehicle, and another twenty minutes before Adele and I were able to clear the snow around it. I remained patient throughout the process. Not so Adele, who strode back and forth, her hands folded across her chest, watching the crime scene cops as if she believed they were aware of our plans and willfully delaying us.

I discovered the reason for her agitation only as we pulled away from the curb. ‘We have another stop to make,’ she told me. ‘At Sparkle’s.’

‘Are you talking about Linus Potter?’

‘Yes.’

Though I steered the Nissan toward the requested destination, I didn’t reply for a moment. I’d been speculating on the identity of our anonymous informant from the beginning. Certainly, I’d suspected Linus Potter. I’d even called him by name in the course of our phone conversations, casting a bait to which he hadn’t risen. But my suspicions were no more than a hunch based on our face-to-face talks. There was no evidence to connect him to any of the known co-conspirators.

I looked at Adele. She was staring out through the windshield, her expression set, a woman who knew exactly what she had to do and why she had to do it. There could be only one reason for her determination.

‘It was Potter who attacked you,’ I finally said, my tone more final than accusing.

‘His face was covered, Corbin. But the tiny head, the shoulders, the gorilla chest — there’s no doubt in my mind.’

‘So, why didn’t you tell me? Better yet, why did you say that you had no memory of what happened to you?’

Adele drew a breath, then turned far enough to look into my face. ‘That night, when you came into my room in the hospital, I didn’t know exactly where you stood. Later, after we made love, I was afraid that you’d go after him if I told you what really happened. There was other work to do first.’

The explanation only provoked another burst of resentment, even though I knew she was right. Our methodical, step-by-step investigation had sealed the fate of all the conspirators, including Linus Potter. There was no escape for any of them. If I’d started with Linus, on the other hand, we might have lost everyone.

‘That night,’ Adele continued, ‘I saw Potter as he came out from behind a parked SUV. He was carrying an aluminum baseball bat, holding it above his right shoulder with both hands. Somehow, I managed to raise an arm as I tried to duck into his body. I didn’t get clear, of course, that’s obvious. But I was able to move close enough to avoid the heavy part of the bat. Potter hit me with the thin part, the handle, which is the only reason I’m talking to you right now.’

I watched her eyes fill as she re-lived her attack, as the fear returned, and I had to wonder how many times the memories had swarmed, like bats from a cave, to invade her consciousness. In many ways, my own life had been an attempt to avoid the various terrors that propelled me through early adolescence, an attempt never entirely successful. Sure, I can hold them at bay, vampires before a cross, while I’m awake. But at night, in my dreams, they often come out to play.

‘I know I’m not an easy person to live with,’ Adele continued. ‘I think that’s why I stayed with Mel, even after I knew we were finished. A warm body on the other side of the bed? Better than nothing, right?’

‘Are you saying that I’m just another warm body?’

‘I’m saying that I love you, and I’m not used to that, either.’

Again, as when she asked me to bandage her wounds, I had the sense that Adele was opening herself up for my inspection. She was offering me a secret and the cost was obvious, in the tilt of her head, in the resigned tone. She held my gaze for a moment, then seemed to flinch as she fell back in the seat.

‘Tell me what you want to do?’ I asked. ‘With Linus?’

‘I need to pay him back, Corbin. Personally.’

‘You need to be a lot more specific here, partner, because that part I already figured out.’

Adele smiled then. We were now thinking alike and my only fear, as we began to discuss strategy, was that Linus Potter, deterred by the weather, wouldn’t be in Sparkle’s when we got there.

I needn’t have worried. When Adele and I stepped through the door a few minutes after midnight, Potter was sitting at his usual table, his back to the room, staring into an empty mug. Otherwise, the bar was deserted except for the boss, Mike Blair. Blair was standing in front of a small sink, washing and drying glasses. He looked up as we came through the door, then tossed the dish rag into the sink and pulled a bottle of Dewar’s off the shelf. By the time I reached the bar, he’d poured me a double.

‘You still drinkin’ through a straw?’ he asked Adele.

‘I’d like a glass of whatever white wine you have in the refrigerator.’

Blair shuddered, perhaps recalling a day when cops had simpler tastes, then ducked under the bar to fetch a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay. It even came with a cork.

I waited until Adele’s wine was poured, then turned to Sparkle and raised my glass. ‘To the job,’ I said. For some reason, my ex-partner failed to echo the toast.

‘I heard you had some trouble tonight.’ Always nimble, always suspicious, Blair’s eyes flicked from me to Adele. ‘I heard you had a close call.’

I think Blair was searching for that line in the sand, the one you have to draw for yourself. True, Adele and I had brought disgrace on the job. But did that merit assassination? Perhaps there was some sort of technical exception that allowed the blue wall of silence to be momentarily breached. Or, perhaps, any hole in the dike would bring on a catastrophic flood.

‘They were Paco Luna’s men,’ I said.

‘You sure?’

‘I’d be willing to bet my next six pay checks on it.’

‘And you say there were cops involved in this?’

Adele finally spoke up. ‘We were investigating cops and ex-cops, not Paco Luna. If Luna came after us, they sent him.’

That wasn’t entirely true because I’d talked up Luna to my snitches, then again to Nina Francisco. But I didn’t correct my partner. Instead, I picked up my drink, took a sip, then carried it to Linus Potter’s table.

I sat down without asking, on the far side of the table with my back to the wall. Potter’s eyes opened, but he didn’t look up. Myself, I was in no hurry. I simply allowed the clock to run for several minutes as I carefully centered myself. Under no circumstances would I show Potter the rage boiling just beneath the surface. Under no circumstances would I let him know just how much I wanted to kill him. This was especially important because I’d already passed my back-up Smith amp; Wesson to Adele. My job was to provoke. The honor of killing him, if it came to that, was hers.