The Angel of Knowlton Park (40 page)

That was putting a mild gloss on it. He could smell the brimstone stink of his anger. Probably she could, too. She was wise about people, wise about him. It was better that he was going home and not to the station. He wanted to pound someone so badly if he got close to Cote, the man would be chopped liver before he could purse his duck's ass mouth.

"It's only going to go downhill from here. I feel like I've bought a one-way ticket on a fast train to hell and the doors won't open."

"It's really going to be that bad?"

"Bad enough so you probably don't want to be around me."

She stared out over the steering wheel. "You want me to leave?"

"I don't
want
you to leave. I'm thinking maybe you should. For your sake."

"For my sake?"

"All right. For my sake. I'm not sure I want you seeing me like I'm going to be."

"Becoming your father?"

He reached out and put a hand over hers. Despite the heat, her hand was cold. "I'd never hit you. You know that. But I might..."

"Get drunk? Say bad words? Act crazy? Break things?"

"Yes." He didn't tell her how much, in the blackest times, he could come to love his gun. He didn't want to scare her. It was a cop's job to handle things.

She nodded thoughtfully as she whipped her little Subaru wagon around a corner like she was driving a BMW. "Joe," she said. Hesitant. "Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"You know that little teapot in the kitchen. The dumpy little clay one you think is so ugly? When you start breaking things, would you please leave it alone?"

With just a sentence, she'd sneaked under his armor and stabbed him in the heart. "You don't deserve this," he said.

"Neither do you." She snapped on her blinker and zipped in front of a van. The driver laid on the horn and Chris flipped him the bird. "Guess you're not the only one in a bad mood," she said. She pulled into the driveway, stopping so abruptly she made his brain slosh. As crazy behind the wheel as Stan Perry. "Honey, we're home."

He waited for the pain to subside. She came around and opened his door. "Whenever you're ready," she said. "I'll be upstairs, running you a bath."

"I don't want..."

"Do I tell you how to be a cop?"

"Not usually. But don't I recall, little while ago, someone was about to read me the riot act for quitting a case."

"Oh, that. You wouldn't like me half so much if I weren't passionate about things. Admit it. And don't try to tell me how to be a nurse." She walked away, let herself in, closed the door behind her. He sat and stared at the closed door. God, how his mother would have loved Chris.

She got him out of his clothes and into the tub, then out of the tub, redid the bandage on his shoulder, and got him into bed. He settled back against the pillows and closed his eyes, reveling in the clean, cool sheets and the air-conditioned comfort, in the idea that he could actually lie here and rest, holding the reason he was able to do these things at arm's length like a difficult collar. Keep it away and control it. He heard her walk out of the room and then come back. She cleared her throat. "May I have your attention, please?"

He opened his eyes. She stood at the foot of the bed, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder, clutching her little teapot. "You've been a solitary creature for a long time," she said. "If you think you need to be alone, I have to respect that, so I'm going back to my place. I only ask this—that you'll call and let me know what's going on. I don't want to read important things about you, or this case, in the newspaper. Understood?" He nodded. "One more thing."

"Ma'am?"

"Don't you ma'am me, Joe Burgess. I can see right through smarmy cop bullshit. One more thing—" He waited. "If you need me, I'll come. You want to talk, I'm there. If you ignore me, you do so at your peril."

"Are you threatening a police officer?"

"You bet your ass I am."

"I never bet my ass. It's the only one I've got."

"You big jerk." She came and kissed him then, and, as usually happened when she got that close, he wanted her to stay. In the end, that was how they'd be able to tell if he was dead. It wouldn't be heartbeat or brain activity. It would be bring her close and see if he responded. If he didn't, he was dead. She paused at the door. "Leave 'em hungry for more, that's my motto. The door's unlocked, in case your buddies stop by." She left him with only the humming air conditioner for company.

He'd meant to think about the case, but his eyelids were heavy and his body, now that he wasn't sharing his room with a yippy MDEA agent, craved sleep. It was better than smashing things.

They came to him, Shakespeare's wicked dreams. Hand-in-hand, like Hansel and Gretel, two young children with expectant faces and hopeful eyes walked into his room and stood at the foot of his bed, as Chris had done. They didn't need speech.

He'd spent his life speaking for the dead, the battered, the terrified; he knew how to imagine for them what they couldn't, or wouldn't, say. How to tell their stories. Not so different from Missy Steinberg, the ASL interpreter. She spoke for Iris. He spoke for Timmy. For Kristin Marks.

The Watts family wasn't the sort to take home videos, so he'd never had the chance to see Timmy alive, but now his imagination, using all the bits and pieces people had given him, animated those stiff, skinny limbs and breathed life into that small butchered body. Timmy didn't so much walk as skip, a head-long dash through the houses and his neighborhood, blond hair flying, singing to himself. Timmy, sitting on the Gordon's steps, intently playing with Power Rangers. Timmy in Grace Johnston's living room, perched on a soft blue afghan, having tea. Curled up beside Darlene Packer listening to a story. Dancing giddily through his own house, merry as a demented pixie, until Dwayne's big fist knocked him down, showing a stubborn courage and optimism in the face of a life that had too often made him cringe.

Then the dream changed. Instead of Kristin Marks, Timmy Watts had a new companion. Timmy and Neddy Mallett were racing across the grass on the Eastern Promenade toward the playground, flying hair and churning limbs, voices raised in excited competition. They reached the playground and began swarming around on the equipment, climbing and swinging, calling to each other for admiration of each new feat, each height achieved, each structure mastered. Even deep in a dream, he felt an awful sense of foreboding. Someone else was watching the boys. A long, dark shadow ran across the sunlit grass, piercing the fenced area where the boys played.

From his strange dream vantage-point in midair, Burgess watched Timmy Watts see the shadow and began making the high, keening sound he, himself, had been hearing since he first stood in the park and looked at the body. It went on and on, rising and falling like a siren. Gradually, it permeated his stupor that it was his phone. He reached out and pulled it to his ear, grunting a faint, "Hello?" as he pawed through the sticky cobwebs of sleep.

There were a few seconds of quick breathing, a small sigh, and the line went dead. He looked at the clock, stunned to find he'd slept six hours. He was getting soft. No cop in the midst of a case like this took more than minimum time to sleep. But then, according to his bosses, he wasn't in the midst of this, was he?

He shaved and dressed, stood at the counter eating the remnants of steak cold, feeling like an ancient, wounded carnivore as he tore into it. He put the dishes in the sink and went to the window. While he was sleeping, his Explorer had come back. He limped down stairs. Someone had put his keys through the mail slot. Anything to keep him from showing up at the station, where he might also want to pick up papers, or his messages, or his mail. Where he might talk to someone about the case. The hot hall smelled of fried peppers and onions, his downstairs tenants' staple foods.

He went back upstairs, poured a glass of water, and sat at the kitchen table, feeling like Methuselah's father, trying to remember what Valerie Lowe had said just before she flicked the lighter. Something about where Timmy was going. He rubbed his head, as though he could massage the memory back into being. Chris's standard remedy, when she forgot something, was to wait a minute and it would be back. He sure hoped so.

He skipped along to the next thing on his mind. The images from his dream. Burgess didn't exactly believe in the prophetic power of dreams. He was a concrete guy. A concrete guy steeped in all the mysticism of the Catholic church. So what the hell was Neddy Mallet doing in his dream with Timmy Watts? As far as he knew, they'd never met, never played together. No one had ever linked them in anything they'd said to him. Yet he felt that Neddy was in danger. Was it simply that Neddy was another parentless boy in that part of the city?

He got out his notebook and found the number. Then remembered that he'd already put Andrea Dwyer on the case, and she'd been trying to reach him. They'd played phone tag all day before the great debacle. He started to dial her number, then reconsidered. If he called her at work, he ran the risk of being told not to talk with her. Better if he found another way. He dialed the Munjoy community center, asked if Dwyer was around.

"She was here a minute ago. I'll check. Can I tell her who's calling?"

"Tell her it's a secret admirer."

"She's got plenty of those," the woman said, sounding both jealous and approving. "Secret and not so secret. I'll check."

Eventually the phone was fumbled and a voice said, "Officer Dwyer."

"Joe Burgess," he said. "Unless you've been warned not to talk to me."

"I've been staying away from anyone who might do that," she said. "You'd think they didn't want this guy found. Unless maybe Cote did it himself?"

"Pardon the language," Burgess said, "but he hasn't got the balls."

"Breaks my heart to think the PC police have gotten to you, Joe."

"PC police, hell. My mother's responsible for how I talk around a lady."

"Really? Melinda Beck says you're blunt as a drill instructor."

He wasn't going there. "You ever catch up with Nina Mallett?"

"I did my best," she said. "She wasn't talking."

"I'm worried about the little boy. Neddy."

"You and me both," she said. "I don't see this as an isolated thing, do you?"

"No. Melia talk to you about a photo line-up of Osborne with your witness?"

"Did it this morning. Kid picked him without hesitation. Damn, that felt good."

One predator off the street? It did feel good. "Rocky said you took some of Osborne's pictures?"

"Yeah. A couple kids looked familiar. I wanted to show them to Delinsky, get a second opinion. Then I took a few of some older kids. Pin-up photos. Playing a hunch. I was gonna show them to Nina Mallett, but she didn't let me get that far. She's one tough kid for thirteen. Shut me down and showed me the door."

The missing thought fell into place. "Iris Martin," he said.

"Iris Martin?" she echoed, puzzled.

"Just something I was trying to remember. So you struck out with Nina, huh?"

"You might give it a whirl. She thinks you're pretty cool."

"For an old guy."

"So? I think you're pretty cool for an old guy, too."

"You think Nina's mystery guy might have been in Osborne's photo collection?"

"Don't you? Like I said, it's only a hunch, but I was thinking..."

"...that the guy she was talking to was interested in Neddy, not Nina," he finished.

"Your gut says that, too?" Someone must have interrupted her, because she said, abruptly, "Look, I gotta go. I'll leave those pictures here at the desk, in case you get a chance to talk to Nina. And if I turn up anything, I'll call, okay?"

He weighed his options. Visit Iris Martin. Pick up those photos and go see Nina Mallett. Have that talk with Matty McBride. Iris topped the list. Maybe he could make her understand how important her information might be. He worked his way through a couple of vague people before finally reaching Missy Steinberg. He explained what he wanted and asked if he could arrange another meeting with Iris.

"She isn't here," Missy said.

"Has she gone home?"

The silence was so long he wondered if he'd been cut off. Finally she said, "I don't know, Detective. When I came in this morning, her housemother told me she'd left. She left no note or information. We don't even know how she left, whether someone came to get her, or what. I'm sorry. I wish I could be more help. I guess you'll have to try her family."

He immediately thought of Henry Devereau, who occasionally picked up Iris for a visit. If Devereau was involved in this, had his interview stirred something up? Might Iris be at risk? He tried the Watts number. No one answered so he decided to go over there. Once he was out, he might as well knock off a few other interviews. He tried Libby Insurance, where the receptionist told him Matt McBride wasn't available. She was unwilling to offer any further information. Then he tried Mary Turner and got no answer. While he was asleep, a lot of people had disappeared.

Then, though he missed the other two, the one musketeer buckled on his sword and reluctantly left the comfort of the apartment. A full six hours of sleep didn't seem to have made much difference. Maybe it was projection, but just as last night when he felt hurried and solitary, the city had felt empty, today, when he felt slow and sluggish, the city moved at his pace again.