Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

No one wants to think they actually heard a gunshot, were actually witness—if only aurally—to a murder.

So the killers had killed Kimmie quickly and silently, probably without warning. But Wee David—they’d been pointing that shotgun at him for a while. They’d wanted him to see the curl of the finger against the trigger, hear the hammer hit the shell, the explosive click of ignition.

And these were the people who held Amanda McCready.

“You want to trade the two hundred thousand for Amanda,” Angie said.

There it was. What I’d known for the last five minutes. What Poole and Broussard were unwilling to put into words. A cataclysmic breach of police protocol.

Poole studied the trunk of the dead tree. Broussard lifted a red leaf off the green grass with the toe of his shoe.

“Right?” Angie said.

Poole sighed. “I’d prefer that the kidnappers not open a suitcase full of newspaper or marked money and kill the child before we get to them.”

“That’s happened to you before?” Angie said.

“It’s happened to cases I’ve turned over to the FBI,” Poole said. “That’s what we’re dealing with here, Miss Gennaro. Kidnapping is federal.”

“We go federal,” Broussard said, “the money goes into an evidence locker, and the Feds do the negotiating, get a chance to show how clever they are.”

Angie looked out at the tiny yard, the dying violet petals growing through the chain-link fence from the other side. “You two want to negotiate with the kidnappers without the Feds.”

Poole dug his hands into his pockets. “I’ve found too many dead children in closets, Miss Gennaro.”

She looked at Broussard. “You?”

He smiled. “I hate Feds.”

I said, “This goes bad, you’ll lose your pensions, guys. Maybe worse.”

On the other side of the yard, a man hung a throw rug out his third-story window and started beating it with a hockey stick that was missing the blade. The dust rose in angry, ephemeral clouds, and the man kept whacking without seeming to notice us.

Poole lowered himself to his haunches, picked at a blade of grass by the mound. “You remember the Jeannie Minnelli case? Couple years back?”

Angie and I shrugged. It was sad how many horrible things you forgot.

“Nine-year-old girl,” Broussard said. “Disappeared riding her bike in Somerville.”

I nodded. It was coming back.

“We found her, Mr. Kenzie, Miss Gennaro.” Poole snapped the blade of grass between his fingers at both ends. “In a barrel. Soaked in cement. The cement hadn’t hardened yet because the geniuses who killed her had used the wrong ratio of water to cement in the mix.” He slapped his hands together, to clear them of dust or pollen or just because. “We found a nine-year-old’s corpse floating in a barrel of watery cement.” He stood. “Sound pleasant?”

I looked over at Broussard. The memory had blanched his face, and several tremors spilled down his arms until he put his hands in his pockets, tightened his elbows against the sides of his torso.

“No,” I said, “but if this goes wrong, you’ll—”

“What?” Poole said. “Lose my benefits? I’m retiring soon, Mr. Kenzie. You ever see what the policemen’s union can do to someone trying to take away the retirement money of a decorated officer with thirty years in?” Poole pointed a finger at us, wagged it. “It’s like watching starving dogs go after meat hung on a man’s balls. Not pretty.”

Angie chuckled. “You’re something else, Poole.”

He touched her shoulder. “I’m a broken-down old man with three ex-wives, Miss Gennaro. I’m nothing. But I’d like to go out my last case a winner. With luck, take down Chris Mullen and bury Cheese Olamon deeper in jail while I’m at it.”

Angie glanced at his hand, then up into his face. “And if you blow it?”

“Then I drink myself to death.” Poole removed the hand and ran it through the hard stubble on his head. “Cheap vodka. The best I can do on a cop’s pension. Sound okay to you?”

Angie smiled. “Sounds fine, Poole. Sounds fine.”

Poole glanced over his shoulder at the guy whacking his throw rug, then back at us. “Mr. Kenzie, did you notice that gardening spade on the porch?”

I nodded.

Poole smiled.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

I went back through the house and got the spade. As I came back through the living room, Helene said, “We outa here soon?”

“Pretty soon.”

She looked at the spade and the plastic gloves on my hands. “You find the money?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

She nodded, looked back at the TV.

I started walking again, and her voice stopped me at the doorway to the kitchen.

“Mr. Kenzie?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes sparkled in the glow from the TV screen in such a way they reminded me of the cats’. “They wouldn’t hurt her. Would they?”

“You mean Chris Mullen and the rest of Cheese Olamon’s crew?”

She nodded.

On the TV a woman told another woman to stay away from my daughter, you dyke. The audience hooted.

“Would they?” Helene’s eyes remained fixed on the TV.

“Yes,” I said.

She turned her head sharply in my direction. “No.” She shook her head, as if doing so would make her wish come true.

I should have told her I was kidding. That Amanda would be fine. That she’d be returned and things would go back to normal and Helene could drug herself with TV and booze and heroin and whatever else she used to cocoon herself from just how nasty the world could be.

But her daughter was out there, alone and terrified, handcuffed to a radiator or a bedpost, electrical tape tied around the lower half of her face so she couldn’t make any noise. Or she was dead. And part of the reason for that was Helene’s self-indulgence, her determination to act as if she could do whatever she chose and there’d be no consequence, no opposite and equal reaction.

“Helene,” I said.

She lit a cigarette, and the match head jumped around the target several times before the tobacco ignited. “What?”

“Are you getting all this finally?”

She looked to the TV, then back at me, and her eyes were moist and pink. “What?”

“Your daughter was abducted. Because of what you stole. The men who have her don’t give a shit about her. And they might not give her back.”