The shopkeeper was fine; the robber was dead. The only thing for me to do was to not disturb the scene any more than I already had. I needed to go back outside and tell Lockhart everything was all right.
That was when I saw the leg.
It protruded from behind the end of the second aisle. The foot ended in a sandal, and the toenails were colored a deep scarlet, too smoothly and regularly for the color to be blood. These toenails were painted. But the little octopus arm of red that was inching slowly from behind the endcap… that was definitely blood. It seemed the shopkeeper had gotten off more than one shot before making his swan dive.
Coming around the counter, I went to the end of the aisle and got the full view. Ghislaine Morris lay on her back, eyes closed, one leg folded up and backward at the knee. The blood that was spreading from her body came from her chest.
Lisette had said that Ghislaine had loaned Marc her car so he could go to parties he didn’t even take her to. Now he’d borrowed her car again, the blue one in the alley, and taken her to a shootout. A ragged hole at the center of the bloodstain on Ghislaine’s chest bubbled noisily, and the surrounding material fluttered wetly. A sucking chest wound; they’ll get you pretty quickly. I still hadn’t heard sirens in the distance.
Ghislaine had set herself on this course. She’d had more choice than she’d given Cicero.
No sir, I told an imaginary future inquisitor. I didn’t see her. I was attending to the owner of the liquor store. I had no idea that there was a third victim.
Ghislaine’s wound bubbled again. Her mouth was turning blue around the lips. She wouldn’t make it to the ambulance.
Yes sir, I imagined saying. It’s just a terrible tragedy.
But all along I knew I couldn’t do it. “Goddammit, Cicero,” I said aloud, and then I ran behind the counter for a plastic bag to seal the wound with.
I’d gotten the lung reinflated as best I could when a pair of hands pulled my shoulders back. I looked up and saw the fine, calm features of Nate Shigawa.
“We’ll take it from here, Detective Pribek,” he said.
Glad that he remembered me, I nodded and got up, out of his way. And since I was in motion, I just kept moving back, toward the storeroom. His partner, Schiller, was attending to the store owner. Everything was under control.
I walked away, out the back door, and found myself standing alongside Ghislaine’s car. This time I noticed something I hadn’t before. A child’s safety seat, in the back. I bent and looked through the window. Surely not.
But Shadrick was inside, his small head nodded forward. He’d slept through the whole thing.
The back door was unlocked, and Shadrick wakened as I opened it. He was silent as I unhooked the restraining straps and lifted him from the car seat.
With Shad in my arms, I walked around to the front of the store, and once again I was in the middle of the whole 911 circus. A radio coughed and crackled, and emergency lights flickered off the pavement and the front wall of the liquor store. Emergency workers trotted past, doing their jobs, but no one seemed to need me. No one was looking at me, in fact. Except for one person, standing at the very edge of the scene, inventorying me in a way that was familiar from my prostitution detail, long ago. Gray Diaz.
He was slightly rumpled, in shirtsleeves, and there were deep lines underneath his eyes. He looked tired, I thought, like he’d been working too hard. He didn’t have a warrant in his hand, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten one.
“Detective Pribek,” Diaz said, meeting me halfway. “I heard I might be able to find you here.” He looked more closely at me. “What happened to your face?” he asked.
“I fell,” I said. “At the scene of a structure fire.” Now he’d get on with it.
“I just came around to say goodbye,” Diaz said. “I’m going back to Blue Earth.”
“You are?” I said.
“My investigation here is over,” Diaz said. “The Stewart case will remain open, officially, but inactive.”
He looked around at the other officers, our peers, none of whom seemed to be paying any attention to us. Then he turned back to me.
“I know you killed Royce Stewart, Sarah, I just can’t prove it,” Diaz said levelly. “I guess you thought a life like Stewart’s didn’t matter, and in terms of the system, it seems you were right.”
He did not wait for me to respond, nor did he say anything else. That was his leavetaking.
Shadrick chose that moment to put both his soft, slightly cool hands on my face, turning my attention from Diaz’s departing figure. Shad looked into my face, as if to receive instruction or counsel.
“Don’t look at me, kid,” I said.
37
When you’re sleeping well, the trapdoor at the bottom of your mind opens and you have deep, strange dreams: psychodramas full of symbolic imagery that you rarely remember on waking, and when you do, you tell a friend, Last night I had the weirdest dream. It’s when you’re restless and not sleeping well that you dream close to the surface of your mind, more like thinking in your sleep than dreaming.
In other words, the details of the dream that follows were just speculation, nothing more.
I was back in the courtroom. Hugh Hennessy was on trial, but this time I wasn’t the prosecutor. I was just observing, or that’s what I thought, until Kilander laid his hand on my shoulder.
Hugh can’t speak for himself, he said. Any judge would throw this case out so hard it’d bounce.
You said that already.
But they’ve found someone to speak for him, Kilander said. They want you to do it.
I said, I can’t do that.
Don’t keep the judge waiting, Kilander said.
Empathetic thinking is an important skill for a detective. No matter how much you might dislike a suspect, it’s useful to adopt his viewpoint, understand his motives. I kept this in mind as I settled myself behind the stand.
Whenever you’re ready, the judge said.
I leaned forward and spoke for Hugh. I know how bad it looks, I said.
A little louder, Ms. Pribek, the judge said.
I know how bad it looks, I repeated. But normally my desk was locked. And normally the kids didn’t even go in there; I didn’t keep anything in my study to attract them, no toys or candy. I kept the pistols there because there was no furniture in our bedroom that locked. My desk did. The guns would be just down the hall if I needed them. I kept the pistols loaded because the lake area wasn’t as built up back then as it is now. It was pretty isolated, and I wanted to protect Lis and the kids from break-ins. I don’t know why I forgot to lock the desk that one time. I just did.
How could it happen that the one time I forgot, Aidan went in there and found the gun? And he didn’t just shoot into the air, or his foot, but his chest. His chest!
I wasn’t afraid to call the paramedics and have the shooting on record; that’s not why I drove Aidan to the hospital myself. I know that’s what it looked like, but it’s not. I was afraid to wait for the ambulance. I grabbed him in my arms and ran for the garage. If there had been any speed traps on the road, the police would have had to chase me all the way to the hospital, because I wouldn’t have stopped. I wanted so badly to save him. But no one chased me, no cops saw me. I got all the way to the hospital, and still no one seemed to notice my arrival. And then I looked back at Aidan, and he wasn’t breathing. He was blue. And I knew he was gone.