Mystic River

"Brendan, how old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"And when'd you graduate high school?"

"Graduate," Esther said.

"I, ah, got my GED last year," Brendan said.

"So, Brendan," Whitey said, "you have no idea where Katie went Friday night after she left you at Hi-Fi?"

"No," Brendan said, the word dying wet in his throat, his eyes beginning to grow red. "She'd dated Bobby and he was all psycho over her and then her father doesn't like me for some reason, so we had to keep the thing between us quiet. Sometimes she wouldn't tell me where she was going because it might be to meet Bobby, I guess, to try to convince him that they were over. I dunno. That night she just said she was going home."

"Jimmy Marcus doesn't like you?" Sean said. "Why?"

Brendan shrugged. "I have no idea. But he told Katie he never wanted her to see me."

The mother said, "What? That thief thinks he's better than this family?"

"He's not a thief," Brendan said.

"He was a thief," the mother said. "You don't know that, huh, GED? He was a scumbag burglar from way back. His daughter probably had the gene in her. She would've been just as bad. Count yourself lucky, son."

Sean and Whitey shot each other looks. Esther Harris was quite possibly the most miserable woman Sean had ever met. She was fucking evil.

Brendan Harris opened his mouth to say something to his mother, then closed it back up again.

Whitey said, "Katie had brochures for Las Vegas in her backpack. We hear she was planning to go there. With you, Brendan."

"We?" Brendan kept his head down. "We, yeah, we were going to Vegas. We were going to get married. Today." He raised his head and Sean watched the tears bubble in the red undercarriage of his eyes. Brendan wiped at them with the back of his hand before they could fall, and said, "I mean, that was the plan, right?"

"You were going to leave me?" Esther Harris said. "Just leave without a word?"

"Ma, I? "

"Like your father? That it? Leave me with your little brother never says a word? That's what you were going to do, Brendan?"

"Mrs. Harris," Sean said, "if we could just concentrate on the issue at hand. There'll be plenty of time for Brendan to explain later."

She threw a glance at Sean that he'd seen on a lot of hardened cons and nine-to-five sociopaths, a look that said he wasn't worth her attention right now, but if he continued to push it, she'd deal with him in a way that'd leave bruises.

She looked back at her son. "You'd do this to me? Huh?"

"Ma, look?"

"Look what? Look what, huh? What'd I do that was so bad? Huh? What did I do but raise you and feed you and buy you that saxophone for Christmas you never learned how to play? Thing's still in the closet, Brendan."

"Ma? "

"No, go get it. Show these men how good you play. Go get it."

Whitey looked at Sean like he couldn't believe this shit.

"Mrs. Harris," he said, "that won't be necessary."

She lit another cigarette, the match head jumping with her rage. "All I ever did was feed him," she said. "Buy him clothes. Raise him."

"Yes, ma'am," Whitey said as the front door opened and two kids came in with skateboards under their arms, both kids about twelve or so, maybe thirteen, one of them a dead ringer for Brendan? he had his good looks and dark hair, but there was something of the mother in his eyes, a spooky lack of focus.

"Hey," the other kid said as they came into the kitchen. Like Brendan's brother, he seemed small for his age, and he'd been cursed with a face both long and sunken, a mean old man's face on a kid's body, peeking out from under stringy hanks of blond hair.

Brendan Harris raised his hand. "Hey, Johnny. Sergeant Powers, Trooper Devine, this is my brother, Ray, and his friend, Johnny O'Shea."

"Hey, boys," Whitey said.

"Hey," Johnny O'Shea said.

Ray nodded at them.

"He don't speak," the mother said. "His father couldn't shut up, but his son don't speak. Oh, yeah, life's fucking fair."

Ray's hands signed something to Brendan, and Brendan said, "Yeah, they're here about Katie."

Johnny O'Shea said, "We went to go 'boarding in the park. They got it closed."

"It'll be open tomorrow," Whitey said.

"Tomorrow's supposed to rain," the kid said as if it were their fault he couldn't skateboard at eleven o'clock on a school night, Sean wondering when parents started letting kids get away with so much shit.

Whitey turned back to Brendan. "You think of any enemies she had? Anyone, besides Bobby O'Donnell, who might have been angry with her?"

Brendan shook his head. "She was nice, sir. She was just a nice, nice person. Everyone liked her. I don't know what to tell you."

The O'Shea kid said, "Can we, like, go now?"

Whitey cocked an eyebrow at him. "Someone say you couldn't?"

Johnny O'Shea and Ray Harris walked back out of the kitchen and they could hear them toss their skateboards to the floor of the living room, go back into Ray and Brendan's room, banging around into everything the way twelve-year-olds do.

Whitey asked Brendan, "Where were you between one-thirty and three this morning?"

"Asleep."

Whitey looked at the mother. "Can you confirm that?"

She shrugged. "Can't confirm he didn't climb out a window and down the fire escape. I can confirm he went into his room at ten o'clock and next I saw him was nine in the morning."

Whitey stretched in his chair. "All right, Brendan. We're going to have to ask you to take a polygraph. You think you're up for that?"

"Are you arresting me?"

"No. Just want you to take a polygraph."

Brendan shrugged. "Whatever. Sure."

"And here, take my card."

Brendan looked at the card. He kept his eyes on it when he said, "I loved her so much. I?I ain't ever going to feel that again. I mean, it don't happen twice, right?" He looked up at Whitey and Sean. His eyes were dry, but the pain in them was something Sean wanted to duck from.

"It don't happen once, most cases," Whitey said.

* * *

THEY DROPPED BRENDAN back at his place around one, the kid having aced the polygraph four times, and then Whitey dropped Sean back at his apartment, told him to get some sleep, they'd be up early. Sean walked into his empty apartment, heard the din of its silence, and felt the sludge of too much caffeine and fast food in his blood, riding his spinal column. He opened the fridge and took out a beer, sat on the counter to drink it, the noise and lights of the evening banging around inside his skull, making him wonder if he'd finally gotten too old for this, if he was just too tired of death and dumb motives and dumb perps, the soiled-wrapper feeling of it all.