Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

I started to walk down the hall toward the living room.

“Kenzie.”

I looked back at him.

“If you and your partner aren’t civilians and you’re not cops, what are you?”

I shrugged. “Two idiots who aren’t half as tough as we thought we were.”

Later, in the living room, a mottled gray light told us morning was advancing.

“You tell Theresa?” I asked Devin.

He stared out the window. “Not yet. I’m heading over there in a few minutes.”

“I’m sorry, Devin.” It wasn’t much, but it was all I could think to say.

Oscar coughed into his fist, looked at the floor.

Devin ran his finger over the window ledge, stared at the dust he came back with. “My son turned fifteen yesterday,” he said.

Devin’s ex-wife, Helen, and their two children lived in Chicago with her second husband, an orthodontist. Helen had custody, and Devin had lost visitation rights after an ugly Christmas incident four years ago.

“Yeah? How’s Lloyd doing these days?”

He shrugged. “He sent me a picture a few months back. He’s big, got hair so long I couldn’t see his eyes.” He studied his hard, scarred hands. “He plays drums in some local band. Helen says his grades are suffering.”

He looked back out at the street, and the mottled gray seemed to dampen and stretch his skin. When he spoke again, his voice was tremulous.

“I figure there’s a lot worse things to be than a musician, though. You know, Patrick?”

I nodded.

Phil had taken my Crown Victoria to the hospital, so Devin drove me over to the garage where I store my Porsche as the morning lightened around us.

Outside the garage, he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes as the heat sputtering from his cracked exhaust pipe enveloped the car.

“Arujo and his partner rigged a phone to a computer modem in an abandoned house in Nahant,” he said. “Rigged it so they could call from a pay phone down the street and the call would be traced back to the computer phone. Pretty smart.”

I waited as he rubbed his face with his hands and closed his eyes tighter, as if warding off a fresh wave of hurt.

“I’m a cop,” he said. “It’s everything I am. I have to do my job. Professionally.”

“I know.”

“Find this guy, Patrick.”

“I will.”

“By any means necessary.”

“Bolton—”

He held up a hand. “Bolton wants this to end, too. Don’t call attention to yourself. Don’t be seen. From me and Bolton’s end, we offer you privacy. You won’t be watched.” He opened his eyes, turned on the seat, looked at me for a long time. “Don’t let this guy write books from prison or give interviews to Geraldo.”

I nodded.

“They’ll want to study his brain.” He picked at a loose piece of vinyl peeling from his cracked dashboard. “They can’t do that if there’s no brain left to study.”

I patted his arm once and got out of the car.

Angie was still in surgery when I called the hospital. I asked them to page Phil, and when he got on the phone he sounded washed out.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“She’s still in there. They won’t tell me anything.”

“Stay calm, Phil. She’s strong.”

“You coming here?”

“Soon,” I said. “I have to see someone first.”

“Hey, Patrick,” he said carefully, “you stay calm, too.”

I found Eric at his apartment in the Back Bay.

He answered the door in a tattered bathrobe and gray sweatpants, and his face was drawn, three days’ worth of gray stubble along his jawline. His hair wasn’t tied back into a ponytail and it made him look ancient as it flowed around his ears and over his shoulders.

“Talk to me, Eric.”

He glanced at the gun in my waistband. “Leave me alone, Patrick. I’m tired.”

Behind him I could see discarded newspapers on the floor, a pile of plates and cups in the sink.

“Fuck you, Eric. We have to talk.”

“I’ve already talked.”

“With the FBI, I know. You failed your polygraph, Eric.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

He scratched his leg, yawned, and looked at a point over my shoulder. “Polygraphs aren’t admissible in court.”

“This isn’t about court,” I said. “This is about Jason Warren. This is about Angie.”

“Angie?”

She’s got a bullet in her, Eric.”

“She…?” He held a hand out in front of him as if not sure what to do with it. “Jesus, Patrick, is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know yet, Eric.”

“You must be losing your mind.”

“I’m completely fucking deranged right now, Eric. Take that into consideration.”

He winced, and a tide of something bitter and hopeless washed through his eyes.

He turned his back to me, leaving the door open, and walked back into his apartment. I followed him through the wreckage of a living room strewn with books and empty pizza boxes, bottles of wine and empty beer cans.

In the kitchen he poured himself a cup of coffee and the coffee maker was stained by days of splattered coffee he’d neglected to wipe off. It was also unplugged. God knew how old the coffee was.

“Were you and Jason lovers?” I said.

He sipped his cold coffee.

“Eric? Why’d you leave U/Mass?”

“You know what happens to male professors who sleep with male students?” he said.

“Professors sleep with students all the time,” I said.

He smiled and shook his head. “Male professors sleep with female students all the time.” He sighed. “And in the current political atmosphere on most campuses, even that’s becoming dangerous. In loco parentis. Not a terribly threatening phrase unless it’s applied to twenty-one-year-old men and women in the one country where the last thing we would want of our children is that they actually grow up.”

I found a clean spot of counter, leaned against it.

Eric looked up from his coffee cup. “But, yes, Patrick, a prevailing attitude exists that it’s okay for male professors to sleep with female students as long as those students aren’t currently taking those professors’ classes.”

“So where’s the problem?”