“Greg.”
“Right.”
Mel looked around at his boxes, then back at Louis. “Well, hell, maybe Kavanagh looked at it like this,” he said. “He could put Carolyn Osborn in jail and go back to being a poor guy with an ugly scar, or he could keep quiet and be a rich guy with an ugly scar.”
“I get that,” Louis said. “But I’m not going to let this drop.” He looked at Mel. “Thanks for making the copies.”
Mel tossed the envelope into a box and gestured to the sliding glass doors that looked out over the beach. “Andrew stopped by to bid us farewell,” he said. “Better go tell him the news. He’s outside with Queenie.”
“Queenie?”
“His dog.”
Louis looked out the window. Against a blended blue backdrop of ocean and sky, Louis saw Swann. He was wearing baggy denim shorts, a lemon-yellow T-shirt, and, on his thigh, a thick white bandage that contrasted sharply with his tan. Queenie was an Irish setter, the same dog Louis had seen in a picture on Swann’s desk.
“Give him this for me,” Mel said.
Mel was holding a comic book. The cover showed a Frankenstein face looming over a puffed-chest Superman. The title was Escape from Bizarro World.
“I don’t think he’ll appreciate the joke,” Louis said.
“Yes, he will,” Mel said.
Louis took the comic book and walked out to the beach. Queenie was in full gallop after a stick, Swann watching her with pride. Queenie snagged the stick and started back to them, her body lithe and graceful as she bounded across the beach. In the slanting afternoon sun, her copper fur shone like wavy silk threads against the canvas of white sand.
“She’s a beautiful animal,” Louis said.
Swann heaved the stick again and faced Louis. “Yeah. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.”
“Where’d you get her?”
“She found me,” Swann said. “I was sitting in a park reading, and she just wandered up. No tag, no collar. I put ads in the paper, but when no one claimed her, I kept her.”
Louis nodded and looked at the two crutches in the sand, then at the second bandage on Swann’s left shoulder.
“You’re crazy to be up on that leg so soon,” Louis said.
“I know, but I wanted to come over and say goodbye to you and Mel.”
Queenie came back and dropped the stick at Swann’s feet, then started a dance around his legs. Swann gave her another throw and looked at Louis. His eyes paused for a second at the thin scar on Louis’s cheek.
“So, when do we arrest the senator?” Swann asked.
“We don’t.”
“Why not?”
Louis told him the story, including the face-to-face outside the Osborn home. Swann listened but in the end seemed less surprised than Mel, if that was possible. Maybe that’s what happened to normal people who stayed there too long, Louis thought. They became shock-proof.
“You know,” Swann said, “the worst part is that without a prosecution of Carolyn Osborn, we’ll never find out why they did it.”
“Samantha Norris was a psychopath,” Louis said softly.
“That’s a legal label for a very complicated personality,” Swann said. “What about Tink Lyons and Carolyn Osborn? What was going on in their heads that made them vulnerable to someone like Samantha Norris in the first place?”
Louis was quiet, watching Queenie.
“Did you know there’s not been one documented case of a female serial killer using the level of violence we saw here?” Swann said.
Louis sighed.
“And what few female serials there have been have almost always used poison or some other impersonal method of murder. They don’t kill for lust or thrill,” he said. “That’s what makes Samantha Norris so fascinating. I mean, think of how much we could learn if-”
Louis looked down at the sand.
Immediately, Swann felt silent. Queenie was back, nuzzling his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice her.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” Swann said.
“Forget it.”
Swann finally noticed Queenie and gave her another run with the stick.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Burke Aubry,” Swann said after a long silence. “I was thinking how lucky he is.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah, the guy hasn’t got anything, no money, no family, lives in that broken-down house with only a dog for company.”
Louis didn’t say what he was thinking, that Burke Aubry still had a woman he had loved for decades, and the memory of their son.
“But that man loves what he does.” Swann paused, squinting out at the ocean. “My dad is like that. I used to hate him for it. Now I think I envy him.”
They were both quiet, watching Queenie chase a flock of gulls.
“I sent away for an FBI application,” Swann said.
Louis turned to face him. “The FBI?”
Swann nodded. “I got the idea when I was reading about the serial killers. I speak four languages and have a degree in psychology. Maybe I can be useful there.”
Louis nodded. “I know someone up there in the Behavioral Science Unit,” he said. “I can give her a call and try to open some doors for you.”
Swann smiled. “That would be great. I’ll need some help explaining why I got fired here.”
“You were fired for the right reason, trying to do your job. Sometimes they like hearing that kind of honesty.”
Queenie came back, and Swann tossed the stick again.
“Did you tell your father yet?” Louis asked.
“I’m going to wait until I’m accepted. That way, it’ll be easier to finally thank him for cleaning up my record all those years ago.”
“I think he’d appreciate that.”
The silence flowed in again.
“So, what about you?” Swann asked.
“I’m going home, sit on my beach with a beer, and wait for the next case to come along,” Louis said.
When Swann didn’t say anything, Louis looked over at him. Swann opened his mouth to say something, then looked out over the water.
“What?” Louis asked.
“Nothing.”
“You want to bust my chops one last time about how PIs are just pieces of shit?”
“Are you kidding?”
“What then?”
Swann shook his head. “I just don’t get it. You’re really good at this stuff. Why’d you give up the badge, man?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Louis said. “I was run out of Michigan.”
“Why not try again here?”
Louis kicked at the sand, wishing this rusty box hadn’t been opened. When Queenie returned with her stick, Louis picked it up and gave it a hard throw. He watched the dog lope down the sand.
“Hey, I know how hard it is to start over,” Swann said. “But you can’t just sit on the beach waiting for shit to come to you.”
Louis couldn’t look at Swann. Queenie brought the stick back and dropped it in front of Louis. He picked it up and held it out to Swann. “I’ve got to get going,” he said.
Swann took the stick. “Well, listen,” he said, “it’s been great working with you. I mean that.”
“Same here, Andrew.”
“And thanks for getting me fired.”
Swann stuck out his hand. Louis shook it. “Good luck, Andrew.”
“Say goodbye to Mel for me.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Louis pulled the comic book from his back pocket. “Mel wanted me to give this to you.”
Swann unrolled it and chuckled. “I looked it up, you know.”
“What?”
“Batzarro. I know he was a fuckup.”
“Mel has a warped sense of humor.”
Swann rolled up the comic book and smiled. “Tell him I’m going to frame this and hang it on my wall at Quantico. It’ll be something to help me remember you two assholes.”
Chapter Forty-five
When Louis came back in from the beach, Mel was finished with the pigpen. He handed Louis the black Social Register.
“You want this?”