Paul had been involved in another crime? An armed robbery?
Chapter 96
THE WAITER CAME and Bonnie paid. Then she reached across the table and patted my shaking hands.
"I didn't mean to drop all of this on you at once, Lauren," Bonnie said. "I was as shocked as you are."
Want to bet? I thought, dropping my eyes to the table.
"An armed robbery in DC?" I whispered through the cotton that had suddenly materialized in my mouth. "You're sure about it, Bonnie?"
"The brief abstract they sent with the positive match said the DNA came from a blood sample found at an armed robbery in a DC hotel. But the case wasn't solved, and it's still open. The match means that we have anonymous secretions at two different crime scenes. Semen on the blanket used to cover Thayer. And blood in some DC hotel room."
What did that mean? Obviously, they still didn't know it was Paul's. As if that mattered, I thought, dropping my pulverized head into my hands. As if anything did at this point.
Bonnie kept talking but I barely heard what she was saying. All I could do was blink and nod. The impossible had just happened. For the first time in a while, I had actually managed to stop caring about Scott's case. I had a new distraction.
Almost five years ago Paul had committed some kind of armed robbery in a hotel room? My brain labored over that thought, then promptly went on strike.
Because that was impossible.
But DNA doesn't lie.
When I looked up, I found Bonnie staring at me, waiting for some kind of comment.
"So what does this mean?" I said, as if I didn't know the answer. "Victor Ordonez didn't kill Scott Thayer?"
Bonnie looked out the window onto crowded Mott Street. There was pain in her eyes.
"I don't know. How could I, Lauren? Maybe he just borrowed the blanket off a friend, but it definitely throws some doubt out there, doesn't it?" she said. "The kind of doubt a defense lawyer would have a field day with. Not to mention the press jackals."
I looked at the neon Chinese characters in the restaurant window. A black eel in the aquarium beside our booth batted his head against the glass as if trying to get my attention and say something. Hey, Lauren. Why don't you just run screaming out of the restaurant? Don't stop till you get to Bellevue.
Bonnie straightened the papers against the tabletop, pushed them back into the envelope, and stuffed the whole thing down into my bag.
"But I decided it's the kind of doubt this city, this department, Scott's wife, and most especially you, Lauren, don't need thrown out there."
She gestured toward my handbag.
"That's why I'm giving it to you, honey. This case was screwed for everyone involved from the word go. This is my retirement present to you. The DC detective's name and contact info are somewhere in those sheets, if you ever want to pursue it on your own. Or you can chuck it off the Brooklyn Bridge. Your choice."
Bonnie planted a big kiss on my forehead as she stood up at our table.
"One thing I've learned as a cop is that you do what you can. It's not our fault that sometimes that's not enough. Lauren, you're my friend, and I love you, and it's up to you. See you around."
Chapter 97
IT WAS A FEW HOURS LATER, and dark, when I found myself standing in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan.
Manhattan, my father used to say before we'd start his thrice-weekly walks from this very park. The greatest treadmill in the world.
His postretirement exercise routine consisted of riding the subway here to the last stop, walking over to Broadway, and seeing how many of Manhattan 's thirteen concrete miles he could cover before he got tired and hopped on an uptown subway headed back home. All through law school, I'd go with him if I had the chance. Listen to him talk about the crimes and arrests that occurred at the countless intersections. It was on one of those walks with Dad that I decided I wanted to be a cop rather than a lawyer. Wanted to be just like my father.
And it was right here, at the beginning of one of those walks, all alone, that he died of a heart attack. As if he'd have it no other way than to pass on the streets of the city he served and loved.
I rested the FBI report against the rusted railing before me as I listened to the dark waves slap against the concrete pier.
Just when I'd completed the toughest puzzle ever, Dad, I thought.
I'd been handed an extra piece.
Story of my life recently.
"What do I do, Pop?" I whispered as tears fell down my cheeks. "I don't know what to do."
There were exactly two options, I knew.
I could toss away Bonnie's gift, like I had the rest of the evidence, and head to my new life in Connecticut, a blissful soccer-mom-to-be.
Or I could slap myself out of my denial and figure out what the hell was going on with my life, and with my mysterious husband.
I held the envelope over the railing.
This was an easy one, right?
All I had to do was release my fingers and it would be over.
I would go to the train and head north, where safety, my husband, and my new life waited.
A gust of wind picked up off the water, flapping the envelope in my hand.
Let it go, I thought. Let it go, let it go.
But, finally, I dug my nails into the envelope and clutched it to my chest.
I couldn't. I needed to get to the bottom of this, no matter how hard, how ugly, it got. Even after everything I had pulled, all the craziness, all the hurting my friends and covering things up, I guess there was still some scrap of detective left in me. Maybe more than a scrap.
I closed my eyes tightly. Somewhere in the darkness of the park behind me, I sensed an old man stretching his legs, limbering up for a walk. As I turned around quickly to find a taxi, out of the corner of my eye I felt a figure nodding in my direction, a smile on his face.
Chapter 98
IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT the next morning when the barista at the Starbucks across from Paul's Pearl Street office building raised an eyebrow at me in surprise.
Jeez, I thought. You'd think she'd never seen a disheveled, emotionally demolished woman ask for the entire top shelf of the pastry case before.
After last night's Battery Park epiphany, I'd called Paul and told him that Bonnie wanted me to stay over in the city for old time's sake. Then I'd wandered up Broadway, like the homeless person I now was, until about midnight.
I'd made it all the way to The Midtown, just south of the Ed Sullivan Theater, when my legs quit on me.
I had just enough strength to toss the questionable orange-speckled bedspread into the corner of my three-hundred-dollar-a-night closet before I passed out. Pretty pricey, but Paul could afford it.
I woke up at 7 a.m., left the hotel without showering, and caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, heading downtown to the financial district.
For the first time in a month, I had a game plan. I knew exactly what I had to do.
Interrogate Paul.
I didn't care what it took. I'd be both good cop and bad cop. I was tempted to bring the hotel phone book along in case I had to beat the truth out of him. One thing was certain. Paul was going to tell me what the hell was going on if it was the last thing he ever did.
And based on the way I was feeling as I stood in the Starbucks across from his office, that was a distinct possibility.
"Anything else?" the barista asked, pushing my five-figure-calorie breakfast across the counter.
"You don't have anything else," I told her.