Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

35

By the time the cops sorted everything out, Angie was in her second hour of surgery.

Phil was allowed to leave around four, after he’d called City Hospital, but I had to stick around and walk four detectives and a nervous young ADA through everything.

Timothy Dunn’s body had been found stuffed naked into a trash barrel by the swing sets in the Ryan Playground. The assumption was that Evandro had lured him there by doing something suspicious enough to catch Dunn’s eye, but not so obvious as to be taken as a direct threat or sign of danger.

A white sheet was found hanging from the basketball hoop that would have been directly in Dunn’s field of vision from his unmarked cruiser. A man hanging a sheet to a hoop at 2:00 A.M. on an icy night could conceivably have been odd enough to draw a young cop’s curiosity, but not a call for backup.

The sheet froze to the pole and hung there, a diamond of white against a pewter sky.

Dunn had been approaching the playground steps when Evandro came up behind him and buried the stiletto in his right ear.

The man who shot Angie had come in through the back door. His footprints—size eight—were found all over the back yard, but disappeared on Dorchester Avenue. The alarms Erdham had installed were rendered useless by the blackout, and all the man had to do was pick a second-rate bolt lock on the back door and walk on in.

Both Angie’s shots had missed him. One was found in the wall by the door. The other had ricocheted off the oven and shattered the window over the sink.

Which left only Evandro to explain.

Cops, when one of their own has been killed, are scary people to be around. The anger that commonly seethes just under their surfaces comes fully to the fore and you pity the poor bastard they arrest next.

Tonight was even worse than usual because Timothy Dunn had been related to a decorated brother cop. A promising cop himself, he’d also been young and innocent, stripped of his blues and stuffed in a barrel.

As Detective Cord—a white-haired man with a kind voice and merciless eyes—interviewed me in the kitchen, Officer Rogin—a balled-up bull of a cop—circled Evandro’s body, opening and closing his fists.

Rogin struck me as the kind of guy who becomes a cop for the same reason a lot of guys become jail guards—because they’re sadists who need socially acceptable outlets.

Evandro’s corpse was as I’d left it, defying the laws of physics and gravity as I’d come to know them by remaining on one knee, hands by his sides, looking down.

He was heading for rigor that way, and it pissed Rogin off. He looked at Evandro for a long time and breathed through his nostrils and balled his fists, as if by standing there long enough, exuding enough menace, he’d resurrect Evandro long enough to shoot him again.

It didn’t happen.

So Rogin took a step back and kicked the corpse in the face with a steel-toed shoe.

Evandro’s corpse flipped onto its back and the shoulders bounced off the floor. One leg collapsed under him, his head lolled to the left, and his eyes stared at the oven.

“Rogin, the fuck you doing?”

“Nice going, Hughie.”

“You’re going on report,” Detective Cord said.

Rogin looked at him and it was clear they had a history.

Rogin shrugged elaborately and spit on Evandro’s nose.

Showed him,” a cop said. “Fucker won’t have the nerve to die on you twice, Rogin.”

And then the house was cored by a deep quiet. Rogin blinked uncertainly at something in the hallway.

Devin entered the kitchen with his eyes on Evandro’s corpse, his face pink with cold. Oscar and Bolton came in behind him, and stayed a few steps back.

Devin kept his eyes on the corpse for a full minute, during which no one spoke. I’m not sure anyone breathed.

“Feel better?” He looked up at Rogin.

“Sergeant?”

“Do you feel better now?”

Rogin wiped a hand on his hip. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“Pretty simple question,” Devin said. “You just kicked a corpse. Do you feel better?”

“Ahm…” Rogin looked at the floor. “Yeah. I do.”

Devin nodded. “Good,” he said softly. “Good. I’m glad you have a sense of accomplishment, Officer Rogin. That’s important. What else have you accomplished tonight?”

Rogin cleared his throat. “I established a crime-scene perimeter—”

“Good. That’s always good.”

“And I, ahm—”

“Clubbed a guy on the porch,” Devin said. “Correct?”

“I thought he was armed, sir.”

“Understandable,” Devin said. “Tell me, did you engage in a search for the second shooter?”

“No, sir. That was—”

“Did you, perhaps, provide a blanket for the naked body of Officer Dunn?”

“No.”

“No. No.” Devin nudged Evandro’s corpse with his toe, stared down at it with pure apathy. “Did you take any steps to ascertain the location of the second shooter or interview neighbors or conduct a house-to-house search?”

“No. But again, I—”

“So, outside of kicking a corpse and clubbing a defenseless man and stretching out some yellow crime-scene

tape, you haven’t accomplished much, have you, Officer?”

Rogin studied something on the stove. “No.”

“What was that?” Devin said.

“I said no, sir.”

Devin nodded and stepped over the corpse until he was standing beside Rogin.

Rogin was a tall man and Devin wasn’t, so Rogin had to lean down when Devin beckoned him to do so. He bent his head and Devin turned his lips toward his ear.

“Leave my crime scene, Officer Rogin,” Devin said.

Rogin looked at him.

Devin whispered, but the whole kitchen could hear:

“While your arms are still attached to your shoulders.”

“We fucked up,” Bolton said. “Actually I fucked up.”

“No,” I said.

“This is my fault.”

“This is Evandro’s fault,” I said. “And his partner’s.”

He leaned his head back against the wall in Angie’s hallway. “I was over-eager. They offered bait, and I bit. I never should have left you alone.”

“You couldn’t have predicted a blackout, Bolton.”

“No?” He raised both hands, then dropped them in disgust.

“Bolton,” I said, “Grace is safe. Mae is safe. Phil is safe. They’re the civilians in all this. Not me and Angie.”