Chasing Tomorrow

“You knew him,” said Jean, once their appetizers arrived, two Caesar salads with extra anchovies. He and Tracy had remarkably similar tastes. “I know we’ve been grilling Elizabeth for days. But what were your perceptions?”

Tracy rubbed her eyes. She was tired too. “I really didn’t know him. He was a shadow to me. Always a step or two behind. Never really a threat. I guess I thought he was kind of . . .”

“What?”

She searched for the right word. “Pathetic? I don’t know. He was smart. Jeff used to think he was in love with me,” she added, laughing.

“And was he?”

“He never gave me any reason to think so. In fact he spent years of his life doing everything he could to send me back to jail, so I’m gonna say no! Jeff thought he was dangerous.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Not really. Which is weird because I had a lot more reason to hate him than Jeff ever had.”

Rizzo raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Daniel Cooper knew I was innocent of the crime I went down for. He actually came to see me in that hellhole in Louisiana and told me as much.”

“Cooper came to the penitentiary?”

Tracy nodded, an involuntary shiver running through her. She never spoke of her time in prison. Never. Those were the darkest days of her life. It had taken her decades to stop dreaming about Big Bertha and Ernestine Littlechap and Lola and Paulita. The beatings. The terror. The hopelessness.

“The insurance company sent him. He sat there and told me he could prove I never took that Renoir. That Joe Romano framed me for the insurance money. But when I asked him for help, he refused. He left me in that filthy prison to rot.”

Jean digested this information. “Why do you think he did that?”

Tracy considered. “I don’t know. It was as if . . .” She struggled to put her impressions into words. “I got the sense it wasn’t personal. He was like a machine. I guess he and Elizabeth have a lot in common in that regard. I honestly don’t think it occurred to him that he should have gotten me out of there.”

“That’s very forgiving of you to say,” Jean observed.

Tracy shrugged. “You asked me my impressions of Cooper. I’m telling you. When I got out of jail there were a long list of people I needed to get revenge on. Joe Romano, Anthony Orsatti, Perry Pope, that bastard judge, Lawrence. They were so corrupt, so wicked, and they thought they were untouchable.” Tracy’s green eyes flashed with anger at the memory. Not for the first time Jean Rizzo thought how beautiful she looked when her blood was up. “Daniel Cooper was many things but he wasn’t corrupt. Quite the opposite in fact. There was something of the zealot about him.”

“And yet he’s spent the last decade as a world-class art and jewelry thief,” said Jean. “Isn’t that corruption?”

“It depends on how you look at it,” said Tracy. “I doubt he sees it that way.”

“So you’re not surprised Cooper turned to crime?”

“To be frank with you, I haven’t given Daniel Cooper a thought in the last ten

years.”

“Do you think he killed those girls?”

The question was so direct, Tracy was taken aback.

“I don’t know.”

She watched Jean’s face crumple, like a paper bag with the air sucked out of it.

“I know that’s not the answer you want. You want me to have a gut instinct on this, but the truth is I just don’t know. Part of me always felt a little sorry for him. Now that I know all that stuff from the FBI files, about his mother being murdered when he was a kid and him finding her body . . .” She trailed off. “I don’t know. He seems to have led a sad and lonely life, that’s all.”

“A lot of killers do,” Jean Rizzo said darkly.

His phone rang. Tracy watched him answer it. Then she watched the blood drain from his face. She knew what had happened before Jean said a word.

“It’s happened again, hasn’t it? They found another girl.”