There was a photo album on the coffee table. Sharon picked it up and put it on her lap. “Jake took this out a week ago,” she said. “Just left it here. He never said anything, but I know he was hoping I'd pick it up, look through it. It's full of Brian. I think Jake figured it wouldâwould help me feel better. I've been thinking it would just make me sad. What do you think?”
“I think you're already sad.”
She looked up at me and nodded.
“Why don't you show it to me?” I said.
She flipped it open. Brian had been a well-photographed child. There were pictures of Sharon lying in a hospital bed holding a tiny baby on her belly. She looked about sixteen in the picture. There was Brian crawling around in diapers, Brian pulling himself upright by holding on to somebody's pantsleg, Brian on a tricycle â¦
At first, Sharon just turned the pages silently, pointing to the pictures, smiling to herself. Gradually, she began telling me about themâthe occasions when they'd been taken, what she remembered about those days, what Brian was like. He'd been a smart little boy, precocious, even. He began reading when he was four, and he could do subtraction before first grade. He'd always been a good student, very conscientious, well-organized. There was a photo of Brian pushing a lawn mower that was taller than he was, and Sharon said he'd started doing chores to earn an allowance when he was about six. He'd always been interested in making money. He was funny about it, so serious and frugal.
“He saved his money?” I asked.
“Oh, lord, yes,” she said. “This is the boy who made his own bed and vacuumed his room. A very organized, sensible boy. He squeezed every penny.” She laughed. “Just like Jake. Not like me, that's for sure. When he started getting an allowanceâit was a quarter a week, I thinkâJake got him a piggy bank. But Brian said piggy banks were stupid. Real banks paid interest. He was in first grade, and he wanted to earn interest.”
So why, I thought, would he rip several hundred dollars' worth of bills into shreds and hide them in the bottom of a locked steamer trunk?
I watched Brian get older as the album pages turned. Brian on a merry-go-round, Brian at the beach, Brian dressed up in his first suit, Brian and his soccer team with Ed Spragueâthe same photos I'd seen on the wall at the police station. There was even a picture of seven- or eight-year-old Brian shooting hoops in the driveway with me and Jake.
By the time Sharon turned the last page and closed the album on her lap, Brian had morphed from a bald-headed, toothless, red-faced newborn on his mother's belly into a slender adolescent boy.
Sharon leaned forward and carefully placed the album on the coffee table. Then she sat back on the sofa and sighed.
“You okay?” I said to her.
She turned her head, smiled at me, and nodded. “I like thinking about him. Jake's right and my mother is wrong. I think I need to remember him.” She reached over and put her hand on my arm. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Nothing to thank me for.”
We sat there quietly for a few minutes, and then Sharon said, “Do you want more tea?”
I glanced at my watch. “It's late. I better get going.”
I stood up, and she did too.
She followed me to the front door and helped me with my coat. Then she put her hands on my shoulders, tiptoed up, and kissed my cheek. “I'm sorry for falling asleep like that,” she said. “It was incredibly rude.”
“Don't apologize.”
Sharon had her hand on my wrist. She gave it a squeeze. “Thanks for everything, Brady. You're a good friend.”
“Please be well,” I said.
She smiled. “I will. I'm tougher than you think. Don't worry about me.”
“You can call me anytime.”
She smiled. “I know. I will.”
I opened the door and had started to step outside when she said, “If you talk to Jake, you tell him I'm still here waiting for him, okay?”
“I'll do that,” I said.
I got into my car and aimed it for Boston. The back roads of Reddington were dark, and I was filled with sadness for Sharon. I remembered her dreamâBrian pressed against the glass, beseeching her, and Sharon on the other side unable to do anything, unable even to speak.
It was her vision of her boy under the ice, and at night, when her defenses were down, it was haunting her.
It would haunt her for a long time.
And I thought about my own boys, how far away they were and how I missed them, how I wanted to hug them and tell them I was glad they were alive.
And I thought of Evie. When I got home I'd call her, and my mind flipped to the music she liked to put on the stereo when she was feeling romantic, Ella and Duke and Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and I found myself humming “How Important Can It Be” ⦠and when I noticed the blue light flashing in my rearview mirror, I had no idea how long it had been there.
I
pulled to the side of the road, and the cruiser pulled in behind me. His high beams and the blue lights from his roof bar were flashing in my eyes.
Normally he'd sit there running my plates through the cop computer to see if my car had been stolen or if I was wanted for violating the Mann Act or sticking up a liquor store, taking his time, enjoying the power of it, making me wait with those irritating lights reflecting in my eyes, fuming and rerunning old scenarios, remembering every damn speeding ticket I'd ever gotten, how officious and patronizing a patrolman could be, some smart-ass kid fresh out of cop school, and me an honorable attorney, for Christ's sake, an officer of the court myself â¦
But this time it didn't happen that way. He didn't pause to run my plates. He climbed out of his cruiser and came to the window beside me. He tapped it with his big flashlight, and I rolled it down.
He bent to the window, and I saw that it was the tall female officer I'd met at the police station the day after Brian's accident. V. Whyte, her nameplate had said.
“Mr. Coyne,” she said, “would you mind following me?”
“Did Iâ?”
“You didn't do anything wrong, sir. Follow me, please.”
I nodded. “Sure. Okay.”
She went back to her cruiser, turned off all the flashing lights, and pulled out in front of me. I followed her for about a mile down the road and then into the parking lot of a small strip mall, now closed down for the night.
She stopped in front of a bank, and I pulled in beside her. She got out of her cruiser, opened the passenger door of my car, slid in beside me, and closed the door, dousing the dome light.
“What's up, Officer?” I said.
“It's Tory,” she said. “Tory Whyte. I wanted to talk with you.”
“About what?”
She was staring out the front window of my car. The dim night lights from the bank exaggerated the shadows on her face. “About what's been going on around here,” she said.
“Why me?”
“Yeah, good question.” After a minute, she turned and looked at me. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I don't know who else I can trust, and I gotta talk to somebody. You're a lawyer, right?”
“Right.”
“So I can trust you.”
“Oh, we lawyers are eminently trustworthy.”
She laughed quickly.
“This about what happened to your chief?”
“I don't know,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“How did you know I wasâ?”
“We've been told to keep an eye on the Golds' house.”
“In case Jake comes home?”
“Yes. I saw your car, ran your plates and remembered you, that you were a lawyer. So can I talk to you?”
“Sure.”
“Confidentially, I mean.”
“Yes. Consider me your lawyer.”
“Good.” She cleared her throat. “I can't make any sense out of this. Maybe I just need to get it off my chest. That accident?”
“The two kids,” I said.
“Right. I came up with a witness.”
“I didn't thinkâ”
“Right. Exactly. The official word was, there was no witness. But I found one. He didn't actually see it happen, but he was heading south on River Road, and just before he got to the place where those kids went into the river, he saw this car coming at him, going like a bat out of hell. You understand?”
“This car your witness saw, it was headed in the same direction that Brian and Jenny Rolando were headed?”
“North. Right.”
“So it could've been behind them, seen it happen, and it kept going.”
“Maybe. The timing was right. Certainly worth tracking down. But there's something else.” She hesitated, glanced out the window, then looked back at me. “I saw the car those kids were in. I was there when they dragged it out of the water. There was a big scrape along the driver's side.”
“That car had crashed on the rocks, hadn't it?”
“Yes. But this was a different kind of scrape. And there was red paint in it. The kids' car was blue.”
“You're saying they got sideswiped by a red car?”
“Yes. I believe that's what happened.”
“And you think the car your witness saw did it?”
“I don't know that. But it's certainly worth a follow-up, wouldn't you say?”
“I would say that, yes,” I said. “And I surmise there was no follow-up.”
“No, there wasn't. Sprague read my report, thanked me, said he'd take care of it, and that was it.”
“Did you mention it to him again?”
“Sure. Several times. First he told me that he was on top of
it, whatever that meant. Then he told me it was a dead-end, and I know damn well he didn't pursue it at all.”
“What about the car? The one the kids were in? What happened to it?”
“Good old Ed, helping the dead girl's parents, he got the insurance company to settle the next day. It was a total, of course. So they took it away.”
“If I might say so,” I said, “you don't sound exactly enamored of your late chief.”
“I'm not happy that he got murdered, if that's what you mean.”
“But?”
She hesitated. “But nothing. Everybody's in shock.”
“So who's running the show?”
“The DA is for now. He's going to appoint someone temporarily until they can find a replacement for Ed.”
“Are you in line for the job?”
“Me?” She laughed. “Hardly. Reddington isn't ready for a female chief. No, I think Luke's got his eye on it.”
“Lukeâ?”
“McCaffrey. He's been here the longest, put up with more of Ed's shit than anybody. Luke deserves it.”
“How would you feel, working for McCaffrey?”
She shrugged. “It'd be an improvement.”
“I do get the sense that you weren't a great admirer of Chief Sprague.”
“Yeah, well, I try to keep personal things separate,” she said softly.
I cracked my window, lit a cigarette, and said nothing.
After a minute, Tory said, “Yeah, okay, we had a thing, Ed and I. Shortly after I started here in Reddington. I knew it was stupid. Christ, screwing my boss?” She snorted a quick laugh through her nose. “Anyway, he got sick of me, and that was that. Back to business, on to the next conquest. He didn't let it get in the way of the job, I'll give him that. He treated me pretty much like he treated all the other officers.”
“And how
did
he treat you and all the other officers?”
“Like we were stupid and incompetent. He told us what to do, and we did it. Anybody showed a spark of initiative, started to become popular with the kids or something, they were out of there.”
“He fired them?”
“He got rid of them, one way or the other. Usually just made their lives so miserable they quit. A lot of cops have come and gone here in Reddington. I've been looking for something different practically since I got here.”
“What about Luke McCaffrey?”
“Oh, Luke just hunches his back and does what he's told and doesn't complain. He just bought a house in town, got a pregnant wife, big mortgage. He's kinda stuck.” She cranked her window halfway down and waved at my cigarette smoke. “Anyway, all that's irrelevant. The townspeople loved Ed. I guess they should. He was like everybody's big brother. Coaching his soccer teams, putting on his parties for the teenagers. Halloween parties, Christmas parties, last-day-of-school parties, Friday-night parties in the summer. It was like open house at the chief's. Sprague's Teen Center, people called it. They thought it was great. A place for kids to go, keep out of trouble. He's got about twenty acres, nice swimming pool, woods, pond, big barn.”
“He sounds like the perfect small-town police chief,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “if you didn't have to work for him. Anyway, all that, myâmy personal feelings about him, that's not the point.”
“The point is,” I said, “you think there was another vehicle involved in that accident.”
“Yes.”
“Are you thinking that it wasn't an accident?”
She let out a long breath. “I don't know. But regardless of whether it was an accident orâor on purposeâyou've obviously got to find the person who was driving that other vehicle. Hit-and-run, leaving the scene of a fatal accident? Jesus.”
“And Sprague ignored it.”
“Covered it up, if you ask me,” she said.
“And now he's been murdered.”
“Yes.”
“And Jake Gold, the father of the boy who was in that car, is the most likely suspect.”
“I guess he is. Him or some other soccer dad.”
“Your chief fooled around with the soccer moms? Is that what you're saying?”
“I told you,” she said. “Everybody loved him.”
“And you're thinkingâ?”
“I don't know,” she said. “The accident, and then Ed getting murdered? I can't quite make sense out of it. But it sure doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “I've got a suggestion.”
“What's that?”
“You should tell this to the DA. Gus Nash. He should know this.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I don't like him.”
“Who, Gus?”
She nodded.
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Just, he and Ed were friends, and a couple times when Mr. Nash was here in Reddington, I caught him kinda looking at me funny. Like he knew something, like there was some joke, you know? I always thought Ed talked about me to him. Locker-room stuff.”
“I can talk to Gus Nash if you want.”
“You mean about that witness?”
“Sure.”
“You'd have to tell him you heard it from me, right?”
“I'd have to tell him something.”
“Don't. Please.”
“Butâ”
She reached over and touched my wrist. “Just don't. Look, I'm sorry. This was stupid. I should just forget the whole thing. Those poor kids are dead, so what difference does it make?”
“Sprague was murdered,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “But they'll catch Mr. Gold, and then it will all be clear, and that will be that.” She opened the car door, and when the dome light flashed on, I saw that Tory Whyte had been crying. “I'm sorry I bothered you, Mr. Coyne. Please. Just forget the whole thing. Okay?”
“I promised you I wouldn't tell anybody,” I said. “And I meant it. But I doubt if I'll forget it.” I took out a business card and handed it to her. “Call me anytime, okay?”
She nodded and put the card into her pocket. Then she handed me a card. “My pager number's there if you need me. I'll return your call.”
W
hen I got back to my apartment, I climbed out of my office clothes and into my sweats, poured an inch of Rebel Yell over some ice cubes, and took it out onto my balcony. The moonlight reflected off the harbor and lit up the night, and a springlike breeze was huffing in off the water. It reminded me that Punxsutawney Phil had slipped out of his hole exactly three weeks ago, and he'd seen no shadow to scare him back in. March was less than a week away.
The air smelled salty and warm and promising, but I couldn't shake the spooky, jangled feeling I'd picked up that afternoon when I walked into Brian Gold's room and found the torn-up bills hidden in the bottom of his trunk.
Coincidences, I know, occur all the time. Things happen that make no sense, that have no cause or explanation or connection. They just ⦠happen. But we human beings are uncomfortable with coincidences. It's our nature to crave explanations. That's why we call ourselves
homo sapiens.
We need to know. A child's first sign of intelligence is the word
why
. For every effect, we need a cause. When the cause isn't obvious, people who
are too lazy or too stupid to look beyond the obvious shrug and call it “fate.” The concept of fate is sort of a poor man's explanation. It presumes some kind of orderly plan, however beyond our understanding that plan might be. Fate takes various formsâgods, or demons, or the alignment of the stars and planets. For those who believe in it, fate is infinitely preferable to coincidence.