Mystic River

Jimmy shrugged. "Not problems, really. I just don't care for the kid."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Jimmy put the cordless in his front pocket. "Some people just rub you wrong. You know?"

Sean stepped in close, put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "He was dating Katie, Jim. They were planning to elope."

"Bullshit," Jimmy said, his eyes on the floor.

"We found brochures for Vegas in her backpack, Jim. We made a few calls and found reservations under both their names with TWA. Brendan Harris confirmed it."

Jimmy shrugged off Sean's hand. "He kill my daughter?"

"No."

"You're a hundred percent positive."

"Close to it. He passed a poly with flying colors, man. Plus, the boy don't strike me as the type. He seemed like he really loved your daughter."

"Fuck," Jimmy said.

Sean leaned against the wall and waited, giving Jimmy time to take it all in.

"Elope?" Jimmy said after a while.

"Yeah. Jim, according to Brendan Harris and both of Katie's girlfriends, you were dead set against them ever dating. What I don't understand is why. Kid didn't strike me as a problem kid. You know? Maybe a bit dim, I dunno. But he seemed decent, nice really. I'm confused."

"You're confused?" Jimmy chuckled. "I just found out my daughter? who is, you know, dead? was planning to elope, Sean."

"I know," Sean said, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper in hopes Jimmy would follow suit, the man about as agitated as Sean had seen him since yesterday afternoon by the drive-in screen. "I'm just curious, man? why were you so adamant that your daughter never see the kid?"

Jimmy leaned against the wall beside Sean and took a few long breaths, let them out slow. "I knew his father. They called him 'Just Ray.'"

"What, he was a judge?"

Jimmy shook his head. "There were so many guys named Ray around at the time? you know, Crazy Ray Bucheck and Psycho Ray Dorian and Ray the Woodchuck Lane? that Ray Harris got stuck with 'Just Ray' because all the cool nicknames had been taken." He shrugged. "Anyway, I never liked the guy much and then he cut out on his wife when she was pregnant with that mute kid she's got now and Brendan only six, so I dunno, I just thought, 'The acorn don't fall far from the tree' and shit, and I didn't want him seeing my daughter."

Sean nodded, though he didn't buy it. Something about the way Jimmy had said he'd never liked the guy much? there was a small hitch in his voice, and Sean had heard enough bullshit stories in his time to recognize one no matter how logical it may have sounded.

"That's it, huh?" Sean said. "That's the only reason?"

"That's it," Jimmy said, and pushed himself off the wall, started back up the hallway.

* * *

"I THINK IT'S a good idea," Whitey said as he stood outside the house with Sean. "Stick close to the family for a bit, see if you can pick up any more. What'd you say to Boyle's wife, by the way?"

"I told her she looked scared."

"She vouch for his alibi?"

Sean shook his head. "Said she was asleep."

"But you think she was afraid?"

Sean looked back up at the windows fronting the street. He gestured to Whitey and tilted his head up the street, and Whitey followed him to the corner.

"She heard us talking about the car."

"Fuck," Whitey said. "She tells the husband, he might skip."

"And go where? He's an only child, mother deceased, low income, and he ain't got much in the way of friends. Ain't like he's going to blow the country, try living in Uruguay."

"Doesn't mean he's not a flight risk."

"Sarge," Sean said, "we got nothing to charge him with."

Whitey took a step back, looked at Sean in the glow of the street lamp above them. "You going native on me, Supercop?"

"I just don't see him for this, man. Lack of motive, for one."

"His alibi's shit, Devine. His stories are so full of holes, they were a boat, they'd be sitting on the ocean floor. You said the wife was scared. Not annoyed. Scared."

"Okay, yeah. She was definitely holding something back."

"So, you think she really was asleep when he came home?"

Sean saw Dave when they were little kids, getting in that car, weeping. He saw him dark and far away in the backseat as the car turned the corner. He wanted to bang his head against the wall behind him and knock the images right the fuck out.

"No. I think she knows when he came home. And now that she overheard us, she knows he was at the Last Drop that night. So, maybe, she had all these things in her head about that night that didn't jibe, and now she's putting all the pieces together."

"And those pieces are scaring the shit out of her?"

"Maybe. I dunno." Sean kicked at a piece of loose stone at the base of a building. "I feel like?"

"What?"

"I feel like we got all these parts banging around near each other, but they don't fit. I feel like we're missing something."

"You really don't think Boyle did it?"

"I'm not ruling him out. I'm not. I'd buy him for it, if for one second I could imagine a motive."

Whitey stepped back and lifted his heel, rested it against the light pole. He looked at Sean the way Sean had seen him look at a witness he wasn't sure would hold up in court.

"Okay," he said, "lack of motive's bothering me, too. But not much, Sean. Not much. I think there's something out there that could tie him to this. Otherwise, why the fuck's he lying to us?"

"Come on," Sean said. "That's the job. People lie to us for no other reason but to see what it feels like. That block surrounding the Last Drop? There's some serious street trade there at night? you got regular hookers, transvestites, friggin' kids all working that circuit. Maybe Dave was just getting a hummer in his car, doesn't want the wife to find out. Maybe he has a lady on the side. Who knows? But nothing, so far, connects him to within a mile of murdering Katherine Marcus."

"Nothing but a bunch of his lies and my feeling the guy's dirty."

"Your feeling," Sean said.

"Sean," Whitey said, and started ticking off points on his fingers, "the guy lied to us about when he left McGills. He lied to us about when he got home. He was parked outside the Last Drop when the victim left. He was at two of the same bars as she was, yet he's trying to cover that up. He's got a badly bruised fist and a bullshit story about how it got that way. He knew the victim, which as we've already agreed, our suspect did, too. He fits the profile? to a fucking T? of your average thrill killer; he's white, mid-thirties, marginally employed, and, guessing by what you told me yesterday, he was sexually abused as a kid. You kidding me? On paper, this guy should be in jail already."