Nick shook his head vehemently. “Those two, your partner and this Morgan kid, aren’t just checking me out, Harry. They’re out for by sweet dago ass-every pound of it. And they’re not gonna stop until they see it hanging from the nearest goddamn palm tree. Every time they look at me I can see it in their eyes. They’re gonna make their bones on my goddamn back. And all of it’s based on some computer bullshit that this kid dreamed up. But your partner, Stanopolis, she acts like this Morgan kid is some kind of genius detective, not some wet-behind-the-ears punk right out of a patrol car.”
“I still don’t get what you want me to do, Nick.” Harry, too, was now glancing toward the squad room door and this time he saw two suits enter. They had to be the people Nick had been anticipating. Harry could almost smell them from across the room. “I think we’ve got company,” he said.
Nick followed his gaze. “Shit,” he muttered.
“Look, I’ll do what I can. But it’s not gonna be much. I can’t tell them to back off.”
“I know you can’t. But Jesus, Harry, reign in this Morgan kid and his computer bullshit. Explain that it’s another cop’s blood he’s after.”
Harry nodded but made no promises. Benevuto was scared and, as a cop, he wanted to believe him, at least as far as Darlene’s murder was concerned. But he wasn’t about to impede another cop’s investigation. He started across the squad room and found himself braced by the two suits coming toward him.
“You’re Harry Doyle, aren’t you?” the larger of the two said.
“That’s right.”
“My name’s Dwight Jimmo.” He nodded toward his partner. “This is Barry Brooks. We’re from Internal Affairs and we need a few minutes of your time.” As Jimmo was talking, Brooks looked past Harry and called out to Benevuto who had started back across the room. “Don’t go anyplace, Benevuto. We need to talk to you too.”
Harry stared at each man in turn, the contempt clear on his face. “You’ll have to catch me later.”
Harry started to move past them when Brooks stepped in front of him. “We need to talk to you now.”
Brooks was a big man, most of it fat built up from sitting behind a desk. A small, cold smile gathered on Harry’s lips. His voice was just one level above a whisper. “You step in front of me like that again, and I’ll dump you on your fat ass-”
“Maybe you didn’t hear us,” Jimmo interrupted. “We’re from Internal Affairs and we want to talk to you.”
“And like I said, you’ll have to catch me later. Right now I’m working an active homicide, so you can set up an appointment with my captain, and when he tells me to drop what I’m doing and talk to you, I will. In the meantime, you can take your Internal Affairs creds and shove ’em up your ass sideways.” This time Harry stepped past them without any interference.
“You’ll be hearing from us,” Brooks called after him.
“Be still my heart,” Harry called back.
Bobby Joe insisted that he hadn’t told his daddy everything, and the man he was now talking to believed him.
“Your daddy seems to scare the hell out of you. Why is that?” The man asked the question casually, almost as though he didn’t care about Bobby Joe’s answer.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Bobby Joe said. There was a slight quiver in his voice as he spoke. “I just know what I can tell him and what I can’t.”
“You think he won’t stand by you if you tell him you did something that offends him, something that goes against his beliefs?”
Bobby Joe snorted.
“Maybe he won’t,” the man said. “Maybe his beliefs are too important to him, or maybe he’s just all used up with all the stuff you’ve pulled over the years.”
“Yeah, well maybe I’m used up with him.” Bobby Joe paused. He didn’t want this man going to his father and telling him what he had said. “No, I don’t mean that. I’m not used up with him. It’s just that sometimes he’s a hard man to get along with.”
“He’s a wonderful man.”
Bobby Joe shook his head. “Yeah, maybe he is to you. But I know one thing you don’t. He’s a hard man to have as a father.”
The man gave him a cold, distant smile. “I wouldn’t know about fathers… never had one; not a real one anyway. I just had a string of creeps my mother hooked up with from time to time, before the state sent me off to foster care.” He let out a barking laugh that sounded hollow even to him. He shook his head and continued. “The creeps, they only wanted one thing; they just wanted me out of the way so they could…” He let the sentence die. Then he smiled again. “Well, you know why they wanted me out of the way.” The smile widened, turning colder as it did. “If Darlene had a kid, you probably would have wanted him out of the way for the same reason.”
They were seated in the man’s car in the parking lot of Frank Howard Park, and beyond the low wall in front of them they could look straight out into the calm waters of the gulf. It was seven o’clock; sunset was still more than an hour away, and only a handful of people dotted the beach.
“I love the Gulf of Mexico,” the man said. “It always has a calming effect on me.” He turned slowly to look at Bobby Joe again. “Did you know that Darlene was killed on a beach? In fact, it was very close to where we are now. She was with a man she’d just picked up. He was killed too. I suppose it could just as easily have been you, Bobby Joe.” He looked back toward the water and his voice became distant and dreamy. “But that’s not really relevant. That’s just the luck of the draw.” He cocked his head to the side as if considering what he’d just said. “Anyway… whoever gave Darlene what she deserved moved her body after she was dead; took it to Brooker Creek. But the man’s body was left behind. A park maintenance crew found it a day later.” A glimmer of a smile began to form then faded away. “Pretty ripe by then, what with lying out in the sun all that time. Crabs too. They can find a body faster than anything.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Bobby Joe said.
The man nodded slowly. “Well, I would, wouldn’t I?” He continued to nod his head. “I mean I was doing what your daddy asked us all to do. I was watching her… just like you were.”
“I wasn’t watching her that night.” Bobby Joe twisted nervously on the seat.
“You weren’t?”
“No, dammit. I was nowhere near her that night.”
“Can you prove that, Bobby Joe?”
He was silent for a moment. “No, I can’t.”
“Too bad… be better if you could. The detective you’ve got hanging around your neck seems to be looking at you pretty hard. Man’s like a dog with a bone. And I don’t think he’s about to give it up. If I were you I’d get myself an alibi.”
Bobby Joe stared out the window. “You could say I was with you… like we were doing something for the church.”
The man shook his head as though Bobby Joe’s suggestion was the dumbest thing he’d heard in a long while. “Now given my situation, why would I shine that kind of light on myself? Why would I put myself in the middle of your problem? Don’t you think I’ve got enough of my own?”
“But you were watching her too. Don’t you forget that. We even ran into each other at that club that one night.” Bobby Joe’s voice had become sharp and petulant.
The man turned to face him. As he did his arm slid along the top of the bench seat until his hand was behind Bobby Joe’s head. “But I didn’t keep going back inside that club. And I wasn’t sleeping with her behind everybody’s back. Only you were doing that. Only you had that kind of personal relationship with that slut.”
“Still…”
“You’re not threatening me, are you, Bobby Joe?”
The man’s eyes had turned so cold and so hard it sent a shiver through the young minister.
“No, no, of course not.”
“Good. Because it would be a terrible mistake if you ever decided you could threaten me.” The man moved in close, his face only inches from Bobby Joe’s.