Mystic River

"Jesus, Jimmy. Jimmy? Jimmy! Look at me. You all right?"

Jimmy looked up at Ed Deveau, not sure how he'd ended up here, on his knees, the heels of his hands pressed to the ground, round Irish faces looking down at him.

"Jimmy?" Deveau offered him a hand. "You okay?"

Jimmy looked at the hand and had no idea how to answer that. Frogmen, he thought. In the Pen.

* * *

WHITEY FOUND SEAN in the woods a hundred yards past the ravine. They'd lost the blood trail and any evidence of footprints in the more open areas of the park, last night's rain having wiped clean anything that nature didn't cover.

"We got dogs sniffing something over by the old drive-in screen. You wanna take a walk over?"

Sean nodded, but then his walkie-talkie bleated.

"Trooper Devine."

"We got a guy out front here? "

"Which front?"

"The Sydney Street side, Trooper."

"Go ahead."

"Guy claims he's the father of the missing girl."

"The fuck's he doing on-scene?" Sean felt his face fill with blood, get hot and red.

"Slipped through, Trooper. What can I say?"

"Well, push him back. You got a psychologist on-scene yet?"

"En route."

Sean closed his eyes. Everyone was en route, like they were all sitting in the same fucking traffic jam.

"So, keep the father calm till the shrink's on-scene. You know the drill."

"Yeah, but he's asking for you, Trooper."

"Me."

"Said he knows you. Said someone told him you were here."

"No, no, no. Look? "

"He's got some guys with him."

"Guys?"

"Bunch of scary-looking dudes. Half of 'em are like semi-midget, and all of 'em look alike."

The Savage brothers. Shit.

"I'm on my way," Sean said.

* * *

ANY SECOND NOW, and Val Savage was going to get himself arrested. Chuck, too, maybe, the Savage blood? rarely down? up as all hell now, the brothers shouting at the cops, the cops looking like they'd be going knuckles-'n'-night-sticks any second.

Jimmy stood with Kevin Savage, one of the saner ones, a few yards from the crime scene tape where Val and Chuck were pointing with their fingers, saying, That's our niece in there, you dumb fucking prick pieces of shit.

Jimmy felt a controlled hysteria, a barely suppressed need to erupt that left him numb and just a little addled. Okay, so that was her car there, ten feet away. And, yes, no one had seen her since last night. And that was blood he'd glimpsed on the driver's seat back. So, yeah, it didn't look good. But there was a full battalion of cops searching in there now, and no body bags had come out yet. So there was that.

Jimmy watched an older cop light a cigarette and he wanted to pull it from his mouth, shove the burning coal deep into the veins of his nose, say, Get the fuck back in there and look for my daughter.

He counted back from ten, a trick he'd learned in Deer Island, counting slow, seeing the numbers appear, floating and gray in the darkness of his brain. Screaming would get him barred from the scene. Any outward show of grief or anxiety or the electric fear surging through his blood would result in the same thing. And then the Savages would go nuclear, and they'd all spend this day in a cell instead of on the street where his daughter was last seen.

"Val," he called.

Val Savage pulled his hand back over the crime scene tape and his finger out of the stony cop's face, looked back at Jimmy.

Jimmy shook his head. "Ease up."

Val charged back toward him. "They're fucking stonewalling us, Jim. They're holding us back."

"They're doing their job," Jimmy said.

"Their fucking job, Jim? All due respect, the doughnut shop's the other direction."

"You want to help me here?" Jimmy said as Chuck sidled up beside his brother, almost twice as tall, but half as dangerous, which was still more dangerous than most of the population.

"Sure," Chuck said. "Tell us what to do."

"Val?" Jimmy said.

"What?" Val's eyes spinning, fury pouring out of him like an odor.

"Do you want to help?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna help, Jimmy. Jesus fuck, you know?"

"I know," Jimmy said, hearing a rise in his voice that he tried to swallow against. "I fucking know, Val. That's my daughter in there. You hear what I'm saying?"

Kevin put his hand on Jimmy's shoulder and Val took a step back, looked down at his feet for a bit.

"Sorry, Jimmy. Awright, man? I'm just freaking. I mean, shit."

Jimmy got the calm back in his voice, forced his brain to work. "You and Kevin, Val? You go down the street to Drew Pigeon's house. You tell him what's going on."

"Drew Pigeon? Why?"

"I'm telling you why, Val. You talk to his daughter Eve and Diane Cestra, too, if she's still there. You ask them when they last saw Katie. What time, Val, exactly. You find out if they were drinking, if Katie had plans to meet anyone, and who she was dating. Can you do that, Val?" Jimmy asked, looking at Kevin, the one who'd hopefully keep Val in check.

Kevin nodded. "We got it, Jim."

"Val?"

Val looked over his shoulder at the weeds leading into the park, then back at Jimmy, his small head bobbing. "Yeah, yeah."

"These girls are friends. You don't have to get hard on them, but get those answers. Right?"

"Right," Kevin said, letting Jimmy know he'd keep it contained. He clapped his older brother's shoulder. "Come on, Val. Let's do it."

Jimmy watched them walk up Sydney, felt Chuck beside him, jumpy, ready to kill someone.

"How you holding up?"

"Shit," Chuck said, "I'm fine. You I'm worried about."

"Don't. I'm cool for now. Ain't no other choice, is there?"

Chuck didn't answer and Jimmy looked across Sydney, past his daughter's car, to see Sean Devine walking out of the park and into the weeds, eyes on Jimmy the whole way, Sean a tall guy and moving fast, but Jimmy could still see that thing in his face he'd always hated, the look of a guy the world had always worked for, Sean wearing it like a bigger badge than the one clipped to his belt, pissing people off with it even if he wasn't aware of it.

"Jimmy," Sean said, and shook his hand. "Hey, man."

"Hey, Sean. I heard you were in there."

"Since early this morning." Sean looked back over his shoulder, then around again to Jimmy. "I can't tell you anything right now, Jimmy."