‘I figured you were gonna say that.’
Twenty past two, Miller looked up, shook his head. ‘That’s it. Everything stops in June 2003. There’s nothing earlier. Looks like she didn’t exist before three and a half years ago.’
‘Which is when the Spanish woman died in the car crash . . . the Cordillera woman, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So we have Catherine Sheridan assuming a dead person’s social security number but not their name, she comes to this house from wherever, and whatever records might have existed about her prior to that point stay behind.’
‘Fucking crazy shit,’ Miller said. ‘This is—’ He shook his head. ‘I just don’t know what the fuck this is . . .’
Roth arched his back and stretched his arms above his head.
‘Witness protection, maybe . . . ?’ Miller asked, more a comment than a question.
Roth smiled sardonically. ‘Didn’t do so fucking good protecting her then, did they?’
The rain had eased off, and Natasha Joyce hesitated beneath the awning of a convenience store before she hurried across the street and up the steps of Carnegie Library. At the desk was a woman, badge on her lapel said Julia Gibb.
‘Newspaper section,’ Natasha said.
The woman smiled warmly. She leaned towards Natasha. ‘Current or archives?’
‘Five years ago?’ Natasha asked.
‘That will be archives . . . second floor, turn right at the top of the stairs, keep going, and through a door at the end you’ll find politics, then history, and then beyond that we have media archives, okay?’
‘Thank you,’ Natasha said, and made her way towards the stairs.
It was a small piece, really nothing to speak of, but she found it.
Washington
Post
of October 8th, 2001, page five: Drug Raid Leaves One Dead. Natasha scanned the article, barely reading it, barely paying any attention to what the police had to say, what the mayor’s office had to say, what any of these assholes—
And then she found him.
Michael McCullough.
Sergeant Michael McCullough, wounded in the warehouse raid. Natasha took a pen and a bus timetable from her purse and wrote down the man’s name. Michael McCullough. Was this the man that Darryl had been working with, the one who had taken him on the raid, the one who - indirectly, at least - had gotten him killed? Why the fuck did they take Darryl King on a drugs raid?
Natasha closed up the newspaper files, nodded her thanks to Julia Gibb as she left, and then made her way down the street towards the nearest police precinct.
‘McCullough,’ the desk sergeant at the Washington Fourth Police Precinct said to himself. ‘M, small c, big C, u-l-l-o-u-g-h, right?’
‘Right,’ Natasha said. ‘McCullough.’
‘And you wanna know what?’
‘What precinct . . . if that’s possible. He was on a case about five years ago and I need his help with something.’
‘And you say he’s retired now?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Sergeant Ronald Gerrity, face like a sack of walnuts, small dark eyes like holes in snow, smiled and said, ‘If he exists he’ll be in the system somewhere.’
Natasha waited, trying to be patient, trying to will the old guy to type faster, to read faster.
‘Here we are,’ he said.
Natasha’s heart leapt.
‘Oh shit, no . . . sorry, we got a Mark McCullough here. They related maybe?’
Natasha shook her head. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know anyone but Michael.’
The sergeant continued reading, scrolling, reading, and then he paused. ‘Jackpot. Michael McCullough. Sergeant. Retired from the Seventh Precinct in March 2003.’
Natasha had her bus timetable out. Scribbling. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate your help.’
‘That’s not a problem, ma’am . . . that all you wanted?’
‘Unless you have an address or something?’ she asked hopefully.
Gerrity smiled, shook his head. ‘That we don’t have here . . . don’t know how you’d find that. They retire and they become regular joes like everyone else. We don’t keep track of them here.’
‘It’s okay . . . thank you. This really helps.’
‘Good ’nough,’ Gerrity said. He turned back to his computer, typing slowly, methodically.
Natasha Joyce left the Fourth and made her way back to the bus depot. She had a name, a precinct, a date of retirement. It might be nothing, but then again it might be something. Had she enough time, had Chloe been with her instead of at school, she would have stayed in the city to find out more information regarding this retired police sergeant, but it was getting on and she had to hurry back to collect her daughter.
Something was moving. Something was happening. Her conversation with Frances Gray had been awkward, disconcerting, but at least she had taken something from it. Something that might give her something else. All she wanted to do was find out what happened. Darryl had been trying to do something, trying to make a difference. It made her feel better, it gave her some sense of hope that at least one of the decisions she’d made had not been completely irresponsible. Darryl King had been a good man. She had to believe that. She had to believe that so she could look her daughter in the eye and tell her the truth.
That was all she wanted. The truth. The truth about Darryl King and what happened in October 2001. And if she knew that she could rest easy. She could let go of the past and maybe look toward the future, and that - if nothing else - would be a world apart from what she’d been used to.
T
hey figured it out.
What did I tell you?
Didn’t even take as long as I thought it would.
The Democrat’s tentative control of the
U.S.
Senate is now in danger. Democrats hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber. Democrat senator has a stroke. If he doesn’t make it, if for any reason he does not return to resume his seat when the Senate reconvenes on January 4th, then the Republican representative will have to choose his successor. Go figure. Who will he choose? That’s right friends and neighbors . . . he’ll choose someone of his own color. 50-50 Democrat to Republican. A tie? Not so fast . . . Vice-President Cheney has the tie-breaking vote, and he’s right in there with George Jnr, as Republican as they come. As simple as that. Take one Democratic senator, move him quietly to the side, have his Republican contemporary select a Republican successor, give the vote to the vice-president and the job’s done. The Republicans are back in control. They don’t have a lame duck president for another two years.
Democrat senator’s doctor was quoted as saying,
‘The
stroke was not immediately life-threatening. A successful surgical procedure has evacuated the blood and stabilized the malformation. He is recovering without complication in the critical care unit and we expect him to make a complete and fully satisfactory recovery.’ His wife was
‘encouraged
and optimistic’
.
You asking the same as me? Would they? Could they? You know, give a guy a stroke in order to wrest back control of the most powerful government body in the world?
I’ll say this much: I am not encouraged and optimistic.
It is now Tuesday the 14th. Catherine has been dead for three days. Her house is off-limits. I took the morning off work and went over there. Parked up two hundred yards down the street and saw two detectives arrive. One of them is named Robert Miller. He looks serious, dedicated, the kind of man who has committed himself to a life of asking questions and waiting for answers. The other one is a little older, a family man for sure. Wears a wedding ring, has that tone-on-tone, matching-shirt-and-tie appearance of someone who is taken care of at home. I like the way they look - Miller and his partner. I learned Miller’s name from a newspaper article. Mentioned that he was heading the Ribbon Killer investigation. Gave the thing a name. Got to give it a name. Something ain’t something unless it has a name, know what I mean? Anyway, Miller is there, and the article said he was involved in the investigation of the killing of Margaret Mosley back in March. They’re no further forward now than they were eight months ago. And until I walk right in there and hand them something on a plate they will never get where this thing came from or where it’s headed. And then again, maybe they will. Perhaps I should credit them with greater intelligence.
So I watched them arrive and I waited a little longer. I left before they did. Had to make it to work for the afternoon periods.
I’m thinking a day, maybe two or three. Thinking that they’ll start to get lucky when they get back to Natasha Joyce with the photos I put under the carpet. She’ll tell them what they want to hear, and then it will be down to Miller and his partner to make of it what they can.
I’ll be ready for them.
Been ready for a long time.
Things I’ve had to do . . . hell, those are things that teach you to wait like a professional.
FIFTEEN
Miller stood patiently at the door of Natasha Joyce’s apartment. He could see his breath, could feel the chill aching at his bones. Wanted to be home. Wanted to be pretty much anywhere else.
‘Not in,’ Roth said unnecessarily.
Miller raised his fist again and pounded on the edge of the door frame.
‘Seriously, Robert, she ain’t in. Let’s go back to the car.’
Miller conceded defeat, headed back to the car, but once inside they decided to wait in the hope that Natasha Joyce might return. Thirty-five minutes, that was all, and Miller nudged Roth, who looked to his left and saw Natasha and the little girl make their way down the cracked section of sidewalk and around the edge of the chickenwire fence.
‘Hell kind of place is this for a little kid,’ Roth said, and reached for the door lever.
Miller put his hand on Roth’s shoulder. ‘Wait up,’ he said. ‘Leave them be for a little while. Let her get inside, get her coat off. I don’t want to talk to her outside in the cold with the little girl in tow.’
Roth leaned back, said nothing, waited a good eight or nine minutes, and then they made their way back up to the apartment.
‘Figured I was gonna call you people,’ Natasha Joyce said when she opened the door and let them into the hallway.
‘Call us?’ Miller asked.
Natasha nodded, walked through to the kitchen. Miller and Roth followed her, the question he’d asked remaining unanswered until they once again sat at the narrow kitchen table.
‘Found out some things,’ Natasha said.
Miller looked at her. She seemed less nervous. It had been only twenty-four hours since they’d been there. Felt like a month.
‘What things?’ Al Roth asked.
‘Little about what happened to Darryl,’ she said. ‘I called the police administrations people at the mayor’s office—’
‘You did what?’
Natasha frowned. ‘You make it sound like I did something criminal.’ She laughed then, almost naturally, and Miller recognized in her something of the girl she must have been before Darryl King tore through her life with his addiction and all its attendant horror.
‘There’s an administration unit at the mayor’s office,’ she went on. ‘They have information up there about everything to do with the police. Called them. They said they’d call me back but they never did, so I went up there and spoke to some woman. She told me that Darryl was a police informer.’
Miller glanced at Roth. A moment of recognition between them that harked back to the August 2001 cocaine charge that never materialized. The case file. The pizza delivery number.
‘And the man he worked with, the cop he was working with, I found his name. Michael McCullough. Seventh precinct, here in Washington. Retired back in March 2003.’
‘This woman, what was her name?’
‘Gray, Frances Gray.’
‘She told you this? That Darryl worked with a cop named McCullough?’
Natasha shook her head, and then she smiled, pleased with herself. ‘She let slip that Darryl had been on some kind of warehouse drugs raid thing when he was shot. Went to the library and checked out the newspapers, found the police guy’s name. So I went over to the Fourth precinct and got someone there to check him out on the computer. Guy there told me this McCullough retired back in March of 2003.’
Miller leaned forward, his expression intense. ‘And now you have his name, Natasha . . . now you have his name what are you going to do about it?’
‘Gonna track the motherfucker down, ain’t I?’
Miller raised his hand. ‘Under no circumstances, Natasha.’ He shook his head, his expression intense. ‘Seriously, you cannot do this—’
‘Do what the damn hell I like,’ Natasha retorted. ‘Gonna track him down and find out what happened to Darryl. I want to know what happened so I can tell Chloe when she’s a little older. You don’t see how much difference this makes to the whole thing?’
‘Difference to what?’ Miller asked.
‘To what that girl is gonna think about her father when she gets old enough to understand. He was shot. He was shot while he was helping the cops do something about the drug dealing in this neighborhood. You don’t see what kind of difference that makes about who he was?’
Miller opened his mouth to speak but Natasha kept on talking.
‘His mother had to go down there and identify his body. She didn’t last more than six months. That old woman died of fucking shame about what her son had become. If they’d told her the truth I guarantee you that old woman would still be alive today.’
Roth raised his head. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Could I just ask you where your daughter is now?’
‘She’s down the hall. Old lady named Esme. She likes to go see her every once in a while, keep her company for a coupla hours. They just watch TV together, make some hot chocolate and marshmallows, whatever they like.’