“Merci,” he said quietly.
As they ate ham sandwiches made on thick slices of bread, Matt, Seth, and Yvette kept the conversation rolling. Arden talked about his visit to Bredloe, which had shaken him. He began to reminisce about the captain and their days together on the force. Frank noticed that these war stories were strictly G-rated, with a careful concern for Seth, who was clearly drinking in every word.
“I knew him when he was just a rookie,” Arden said. “He went up the ranks quickly — like you must have done, Frank.”
“I’ve only known him as a captain,” Frank said, skirting the issue of his own advancement. “I hope he’ll be able to come back.”
“They tell me he’s making progress,” Matt said. “If that’s progress…” He shuddered.
“Frank said the captain knew my father,” Seth said.
Elena shot Frank a look of displeasure, but Matt answered, “Yes, he did. Maybe if he gets better you can talk to him about your dad.”
Yvette looked at her watch. “We need to get going soon, I think, Matt.”
Matt asked if Frank could help him load Yvette’s bags into his car. “I’d do it myself, but my damn — er, I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy.”
“I’ll help you, Matt,” Elena said.
“Oh, hell no, Elena. You and Seth should spend time saying good-bye to Yvette — in fact, I’d enjoy spending a few minutes shooting the bull with Harriman about my old friends in the department.”
She eyed Arden skeptically, but allowed Frank to carry the suitcases.
“Yvette tells me you’re open-minded about Phil,” Arden said when they reached the bottom of the stairs. “I can’t imagine you’ll stay at your present rank if that’s the case.”
“You want to say something, or am I just going to get the B side of the record Elena keeps playing?”
Arden smiled. “No, I’m not as cynical as she is — and I’m damned cynical. I’m just afraid that you may not realize what you’re getting yourself into.”
“So I should follow your example and keep my mouth shut for a decade or so?”
Arden’s mouth flattened and his face turned red. But after a moment he said, “I suppose I deserve that — at least it must look that way from where you’re standing.”
“I can’t help but wonder why a man with your skills, let alone your clout with the department, couldn’t have done more.”
“You think I haven’t wondered about that very same thing every day for the last ten years? But a man’s best choices have a nasty way of being easier to see in hindsight. I’m still not sure I would have done anything differently. Look at it from my perspective — Phil called me and told me a story I wouldn’t have believed at all if anyone else had been telling it to me. But I knew him, and I knew he wasn’t a fool who would be seeing bogeymen in every corner. But this son of a bitch he told me about is inside the department, has killed a god-damn police commissioner, has perfectly set up Whitey-fucking-Dane, and — worse yet — is now on to the fact that Phil doesn’t buy the story that Dane did the killing. That was enough to make me fear for Phil’s life. And this is all on my faith in him — you understand? Because Phil couldn’t get a handle on who the hell it was, didn’t have one single goddamned piss drop of tangible proof. So, yes, I was scared — I admit it. Scared for him. The only thing I could think of was to get him the hell out of here.”
They had reached the car by then. Arden opened the trunk and Frank loaded Yvette’s bags. “So when he didn’t show up at your place, what did you do?”
“Worried, that’s what. Worried my ass off. I had told Phil to try to take a look at the shoes in the evidence box — to see if they were new or worn. If they were worn, we could find a way to see if they matched wear patterns on Dane’s other shoes, and if they didn’t, that might be a way to pry a little doubt into the department’s certainty that Dane killed the Randolphs. Where we could go from there, I didn’t know.”
“Smart, though,” Frank admitted, deciding he would see what he could learn from the evidence photos of the deck shoes.
“You think so?” He slammed the trunk closed and turned back to Frank. “Me, I’ve always wondered if that got Phil murdered. That and my other smart idea — that he should come to see me. If he hadn’t scared someone by looking at the evidence or been in that fucking plane, on his way to see me, maybe…”
He broke off and quickly passed a gnarled hand across his eyes. After a moment, he said quietly, “That’s what I have on my conscience, Harriman — did I give Phil a suggestion that got him killed?”
“The killer knew Lefebvre loved to fly. The way the plane was sabotaged — it didn’t matter where Lefebvre was going.”
Arden didn’t seem convinced. “When his lieutenant — poor old Willis — called me at almost midnight that first night and asked if Phil was at my place, I knew something was wrong — really wrong. It could have been the middle of the day and I would have known — I could hear it in Willis’s voice. He was upset. If things had gone right, there wasn’t any reason for Willis to be upset. So I lied to him. I lied and he told me what had happened to Seth Randolph, and that the evidence was missing, and that it looked like Phil did it — Phil! And I felt the damned room spin, because until that moment I just thought it might be trouble, but when Willis told me that, I swear to you, I knew Phil was dead. I knew it in my gut. And I didn’t spend all those years in that line of work without knowing when I could trust my gut, you know?”
Frank nodded.
“Yeah, of course you do. Anyway, talking to Willis, for all I knew, I was on the phone with Phil’s killer. So I denied that Phil had said he was coming to see me and prayed to God that Elena would keep her mouth shut, because I had also figured out that we were both in danger. Maybe that was chickenshit of me, Harriman, but it wouldn’t have made Phil come back to life if I had told the truth, would it? And until we could figure out who was behind the murders, the only way for us to be safe was to make the killer feel safe. I figured I’d get a chance to look into things when all the noise died down.”
“So what happened?”
“I got nowhere. Phil looked damned guilty. So guilty, my so-called legendary rep — the one you’ve been throwing in my face all afternoon — wasn’t worth shit when it came to trying to learn the first thing about the case. They suspected me of hiding Phil or of knowing where he was. I was under surveillance. They didn’t want to hear anything I had to say about looking at anyone else.”
“Who were his enemies?” Frank asked.
“Phil’s? I don’t think he had any.” He smiled at Frank’s open look of disbelief. “No, I’m not kidding. He didn’t have any friends, either — at least not after I retired.”
“Elena—”
“Naw. I’m not saying he was just playing around with her — that wasn’t like him at all. He must have felt something for her. Who knows, maybe it was the real deal between them.”
“You seem to be close to her.”
“I’ve come to know her and understand why Phil liked her. And the boy — you know, if he hadn’t come along…” He shook his head. “You picture the most cynical, bitter bastard you’ve ever known in your life and multiply him about a thousand times, and you’ve got a slight notion of what I was like after Phil disappeared. I’d failed a man who might as well have been my son, and the department I’d given most of my life to was treating me like a foul little turd — a creep who was hiding a cop who killed a young witness. Yvette called and told me that Elena was going to have his kid. It was — well, the best news of a pregnancy since the archangel Gabriel made his big announcement, as far as I’m concerned. I love that child. Seth is Phil all over. When that boy was born, I cried like a baby myself.” He smiled. “He’s taken a liking to you, that’s for damned sure.”