“Lighten up, Chet,” I said. “You too, Marlon. If I was a cop, the last thing you’d want to do is bring out a gun.”
But Marlon, red faced now and sweating hard, pointed the big revolver at me, right at my chest. “Cop!”
“Come on,” I said. “What is this, something you guys pull on the first-timers? Marlon, don’t point that thing at me. Chet... what’s going on here? I didn’t pay good money to—”
“He’s a cop!” hissed Danny. “Tapped my phone. Made me set you guys up. Said he’d get me on the news if I didn’t, wreck my whole family. His name’s Naughton.”
Chet looked at me, then at Danny. His gears were meshing.
It all happened at once. Johnny grunted to the top of the cinder-block wall on the far side of the pool. Marlon turned his head to the sound and Danny smashed his fist down onto the big man’s wrist. Caryn whispered shit and ran. Danny picked up Marlon’s revolver and looked at me, slurred I’m gone and blew a hole in his temple. His head jerked one way and a spout of dark blood wobbled out the other. He slumped over on the pool deck. Chet had already jumped the drink table and disappeared inside the house. Marlon held his wrist and lumbered toward the screen door, his eyes big and his mouth open in a silent O. I grabbed Lauren on her way by and fell on her. She screamed, then sunk her teeth into my face. I got my hand over her mouth. When I looked up Chet was hauling back out of the house with a little automatic in his hand. Marlon trailed him, blubbering. Louis the exterminator screamed from behind them — Sheriffs, freeze! Chet stopped at the pool and looked at Johnny and Frances, drawn down across the water from him. Then he reeled back for a look at the house. Marlon had already proned himself out, his arms over his head. Chet looked at me. Don’t shoot, he said. He dropped the gun and put up his hands. I want my lawyer. Caryn’s vulgar rasp grated from inside the house and then I could see her — all hair and flailing fists — thrashing in the grip of Louis, who pushed her through the open screen door, down to the patio deck, and cuffed her.
Underneath me, Lauren was crying. I could smell the bourbon on her breath and feel her wet face against my neck. I cradled her head in my hand, but I was careful not to hold her too tight. I knew that I had done something good. I couldn’t keep from thinking of Matthew.
Two
I watched us on County News Bureau that night with Melinda. CNB gave us the good spin, playing the suicide like an incident that tarnished an otherwise heroic op. I was warm with pride, though my cheek was throbbing from Lauren’s teeth and the six stitches it took to close the two punctures. Bites hurt. CNB was careful not to show my face on camera, but not because of the blood. Our arrangement is that I am not to be revealed. That’s how I can continue to get away with things like today.
The reporter was Donna Mason, and she was her usual lovely self, calm and somehow dignified in her role as a digger of dirt. For the last two months, since The Horridus started his campaign here in the county, the media’s been eager for anything with kids and sex. That old taboo has been broken, or at least suspended for a while. So Donna Mason really let the Sharpes and Marlon have it. Her cameras ambushed them being led from the house, and of course, you can’t cover your face when your hands are cuffed behind your back. The CNB shooters tracked the miserable trio all the way to the Sheriff van. Got an angle on Marlon crying like a child. I had told Donna not to tape Lauren, and she had been good to her word. She always has been. So far.
Melinda brought me another tequila on ice. My drink of choice. She curled onto the sofa a few feet away from me, and gently brushed my cheek with her fingertips.
“That’s good work, Terry,” she said.
“Well... thanks.”
“How close was Marlon to shooting you?”
“I don’t think he would have.”
“The girl going to be okay?”
I looked at her and sighed. “No.”
CNB started in with a sidebar on Danny — Dr. Christopher Muhlberger, professor of mathematics — and the shocking secret life he might have led. I thought of his family and felt bad. I thought of him taking his own life in the backyard of a rented house and felt bad about that, too. I am long on compassion for the innocent, but there is always a little left for the guilty, too. Maybe this is a flaw in my character. But it’s not to say I wouldn’t tear the lungs out of any criminal who harms a child. I have and I will again. It’s my reason for being. But after the death of Matthew two years ago, everyone and everything became, to me, somehow forgivable. I can’t tell you why.
“That didn’t have to happen to him,” I said. “I could have disarmed the fat guy and it wouldn’t have gone down that way. The prof didn’t even have the guts to bring his own piece. Drunk. Scared. I could have seen it coming.”
“You did what needed doing. He blew out his own brains, Terry. You didn’t.”
“I still think there was something I could have done.”
“Precious little, Naughton.”
As an investigator — Fraud and Computer Crime — Melinda’s judgment of me can cut deeply. She knows my world and its limitations, and she can flatten me not only as a woman but as a professional equal. In fact, she is not my equaclass="underline" she’s a sergeant 4, one grade above mine of sergeant 3. She’s two years older and at least ten wiser. More to the point, Melinda feels no compassion whatsoever for the wicked or the inept. I believe this comes from her own sense of victimhood. Her mother died when she was young and her father abandoned her when she was six. She feels the pain of the innocent. And she feels the fury of the wronged. In fact, in our year of domestic life together I have seen her almost consumed by that pain and fury. Maybe the fact that she can feel so much for the innocent reduces her pity for the guilty. I can be touchy about her comments on me and my work. Melinda is a hard woman to please in most ways, so success with her is all the sweeter.
“Thanks, Mel.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Am I a liberal?”
“A real do-gooder.”
“A pinko?”
“A commie.”
“A poet?”
“A queen.”
“You pour a mean drink, Melinda.”
“Got to keep you up with me.”
“You keep me up.”
“I’ll bet she could, too.”
Donna was on-screen again for her wrap. I looked at Melinda, then back to the tube. I will mention now, then forever hold my peace, that Melinda is a jealous companion. In some ways this pleases me. And she can joke about it now. Like this crack about a TV reporter. But it never hurts to set things straight.
“Not my type.”
“Too young and beautiful?”
“It’s not the youth and beauty. She’s just not you.”
“You’re a world-class liar, Terry.”
“I know.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“Look at Louis and Johnny there, see how long they...”
On-screen, Johnny and Louis stood at the curb until they realized the camera was pointed their way, then hustled off-screen. Frances did most of the talking for us — she’s well spoken, credible and unabashedly ambitious to rise in the ranks. Truth be told, though, it was hard not to look at Donna Mason. Maybe that’s why they gave her the job.
“Freshen up that drink, Terry?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Penny, Melinda’s daughter, came out of her room around nine. She’d been doing homework. She’s a natural student, very much like her mother in the long, silent intensities she can bring to things. She’s nine, chunky and pretty like her mom, with straight blond hair and placid gray eyes. Penelope Anne. A year ago we began the hesitant dance of getting to know each other closer than friends, but not as father and daughter. She has a continuing relationship with her real father, and I would never try to compete or interfere with that. He’s a loving, if self-serving soul, and she needs him. My son, Matthew, would have been seven. Well, in August.