"Do you remember the case of that mother drowning her kids in Texas?" he asked.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just"- he closed his eyes for a moment-"just bear with me, okay? Do you remember that case? This overworked mother drowned her kids in the tub. I think there were four or five of them. Awful story. The defense made an insanity plea. Her husband supported her. Do you remember, on the news?"
"Yes."
"What did you think?"
She said nothing.
"I'll tell you what I thought," he continued. "I thought, who cares? I don't mean that to sound cold. I mean, what's the difference? If this mother was found insane and spent the next fifty years in a loony bin or if she was found guilty and spent the rest of her life in jail or on death row- what does it matter? Either way you killed your own children. Your life is over, isn't it?"
Sonya closed her eyes.
"That's how it is with Matt Hunter to me. He killed our son. If it was an accident or intentional, I only know that our boy is dead. The rest doesn't matter. Do you understand that?"
More than he could ever know.
Sonya felt the tears escape from her eyes. She looked at her husband. Clark was in so much pain. Just go, she wanted to say. Bury yourself in your work, in your mistress, in whatever. Just go.
"I'm not trying to hurt you," she said.
He nodded.
"Do you want me to stop seeing him?" she asked.
"Would it matter if I did?"
She did not reply.
Clark rose and left the room. A few seconds later, Sonya heard the front door close, leaving her yet again all alone.
Chapter 20
LOREN MUSE MADE even better time on the way back from Wilmington, Delaware, to Newark. Ed Steinberg was alone in his office on the third floor of the new county courthouse.
"Shut the door," her boss said.
Steinberg looked disheveled- loose tie, collar button undone, one sleeve rolled up higher than the other- but that was pretty much his normal look. Loren liked Steinberg. He was smart and played fair. He hated the politics of the job but understood the necessity of the game. He played it well.
Loren found her boss sexy in that cuddly-bear, hairy-Vietnam-vet-on-his-Harley vein. Steinberg was married, of course, with two kids in college. Cliché but true: The good ones were always taken.
When Loren was young, her mother would warn her to wait: "Don't get married young," Carmen would slur through the daytime wine. Loren never consciously followed that advice, but she realized somewhere along the way that it was idiotic. The good men, the ones who wanted to commit and raise children, were scooped up early. The field became thinner and thinner as the years went by. Now Loren had to settle for what one of her friends called "retreads"- overweight divorcées who were making up for the years of high school rejection or those still cowering from the anguish of their first marriage or those semi-decent guys who were interested- and why not?- in some young waif who'd worship them.
"What were you doing in Delaware?" Steinberg asked.
"Following a lead on our nun's identity."
"You think she's from Delaware?"
"No." Loren quickly explained about the implants' identification code, the initial cooperation, the stonewalling, the connection to the feds. Steinberg stroked his mustache as if it were a small pet. When she finished, he said, "The SAC in the area is a fed named Pistillo. I'll call him in the morning, see what he can tell me."
"Thank you."
Steinberg stroked his mustache some more. He looked off.
"Is that what you needed to see me about?" she asked. "The Sister Mary Rose case?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"The lab guys dusted the nun's room."
"Right."
"They found eight sets of prints," he said. "One set matched Sister Mary Rose. Six others matched various nuns and employees of St. Margaret's. We're running those through the system, just in case, see if anybody had a record we don't know about."
He stopped.
Loren came over to the desk and sat down. "I assume," she said, "you got a hit on the eighth set?"
"We did." His eyes met hers. "That's why I called you back here."
She spread her hands. "I'm all ears."
"The prints belong to a Max Darrow."
She waited for him to say more. When he stayed quiet, she said, "I assume this Darrow has a record?"
Ed Steinberg shook his head slowly. "Nope."
"Then how did you get a match?"
"He served in the armed forces."
In the distance, Loren could hear a phone ring. Nobody answered it. Steinberg leaned back in his big leather chair. He tilted his chin to look up. "Max Darrow isn't from around here," he said.
"Oh?"
"He lived in Raleigh Heights, Nevada. It's near Reno."
Loren considered that. "Reno's a pretty long way from a Catholic school in East Orange, New Jersey."
"Indeed." Steinberg was still looking up. "He used to be on the job."
"Darrow was a cop?"
He nodded. "Retired. Detective Max Darrow. Worked homicide in Vegas for twenty-five years."
Loren tried to fit that into her earlier theory about Sister Mary Rose being a fugitive. Maybe she was from the Vegas or Reno area. Maybe she'd stumbled across this Max Darrow sometime in the past.
The next step seemed pretty obvious: "We need to locate Max Darrow."
Ed Steinberg's voice was soft. "We already have."
"How's that?"
"Darrow is dead."
Their eyes met and something else clicked into place. She could almost see Trevor Wine pulling up his belt. How had her patronizing colleague described his murder victim?
"A retired white guy… a tourist."
Steinberg nodded. "We found Darrow's body in Newark, near that cemetery off Fourteenth Avenue. He was shot twice in the head."
Chapter 21
IT FINALLY STARTED to rain.
Matt Hunter had stumbled from the Landmark Bar and Grill and headed back up Northfield Avenue. Nobody followed him. It was late and dark and he was drunk, but that didn't matter. You always know the streets near where you grew up.
He made the right on Hillside Avenue. Ten minutes later he arrived. The Realtor's sign was still out front, reading UNDER CONTRACT. In a few days this house would be his. He sat on the curb and stared at it. Slow raindrops the size of cherries pounded down on him.
Rain reminded him of prison. It turned the world gray, drab, shapeless. Rain was the color of jail asphalt. Since the age of sixteen Matt wore contact lenses- was wearing them now- but in prison he'd stayed with glasses and kept them off a lot. It seemed to help, making his prison surroundings a blur, more unformed gray.
He kept his eyes on the house he'd planned to buy- this "saltbox charmer" as the ad had called it. Soon he'd move in with Olivia, his beautiful, pregnant wife, and they'd have a baby. There'd probably be more kids after that. Olivia wanted three.
There was no picket fence in the front, but there might as well have been. The basement was unfinished, but Matt was pretty good with his hands. He'd do it himself. The swing set in the back was old and rusty and would need to be thrown out. While they were two years away from purchasing a replacement, Olivia had already located the exact brand she wanted- something with cedar wood- because they guaranteed no splinters.
Matt tried to see all that- that future. He tried to imagine living inside this three-bedroom abode with the kitchen that needed updating, a roaring fire, laughter at the dinner table, the kid coming to their bed because a nightmare had scared her, Olivia's face in the morning. He could almost see it, like one of Scrooge's ghosts was showing him the way, and for a second he almost smiled.
But the image wouldn't hold. Matt shook his head in the rain.
Who had he been kidding?
He didn't know what was going on with Olivia, but one thing he knew for certain: It marked the end. The fairy tale was over. As Sonya McGrath had said, the images on the camera phone had been his wake-up call, the reality check, the "It's all a joke on you!" moment, when deep down inside, he'd always known that.