Apprentice in Death (In Death 43)

“Right again. Do you need me to run it down for you?”

“No.” Patroni lifted a hand, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “We were both Army, me and Mac, both weapons specialists, trained at the one-nine-seven. We didn’t train at the same time, but we knew some of the same people from back then.”

“You connected.”

“Yeah. I got a boy, ten, from a busted relationship, and he had Will. We’d have a brew a couple times a week, catch a game, hit the range. He’d bring Will whenever he had her—to the range, I mean. Girl’s got some serious skill, I mean she’s a killer on the . . .”

Obviously he heard his own words. “Jesus.”

“Let it go,” Eve told him. “You went with them to the practice range regularly.”

“Yeah, not for the last year or so, but before. I brought my own kid a few times, but he’s not interested much. Wants to be a scientist. And anyway, our kids didn’t much hit it off.”

“Age difference?”

“Not really. Owen, he gets on with everybody, old, young, whatever, but he didn’t like her. He told me after the couple of times I took him along that he didn’t want to hang with Mac when she was around. He didn’t like the way she looked. I was surprised, because like I said he gets along with people. I said how he couldn’t judge people by how they look. But he said it wasn’t the way she looks. It was how she looked. At him, at people,” Patroni explained. “She had too much mean in her eyes. He said when she shot at a target, she saw people, and liked imagining them dead.”

“That’s pretty perceptive for a kid.”

“Yeah, well, he’s got that, you know, extra. We think. We haven’t had him tested yet, both his mother and I think he’s too young for it. But he’s got that extra, so when he said he didn’t want to hang with her, I stopped taking him. Mostly, I put it down to Will not liking anybody pulling her dad’s attention off her, and Mac really likes Owen. Mac’s crazy about Will, don’t get me wrong, but he wanted a son. I guess he sort of thinks of Will that way. Not much girlie about her, you know?”

“He got married again.”

“Yeah, Susann was the love of his life, no question. He said Will loved her, too.”

“He said?” Eve prompted.

“Yeah, well . . .” After shifting in his seat, Patroni frowned into his coffee. “My perspective, Will was okay with Susann. From what I could see Susann never got between Mac and Will, encouraged them to have time together. And he was looser, happier, with Susann. Over the moon when she got pregnant. When she died . . . Broke him to pieces, took him down into the dark, man, deep down. Drinking till he blacked out, every night. I couldn’t talk to him. He shut out everything and everybody but Will. I hauled him out of bars a few times, but then he started just drinking at home, locked in.”

“You didn’t report that behavior to me, Patroni.”

Patroni looked up, met Lowenbaum’s eyes. “It got bad after you had him take the hardship leave, LT. I didn’t see what good it would do to report he was drinking himself sick on leave. And I honestly didn’t think he’d come back on the job. He wasn’t ready to come back on the roll, LT, you knew it. He’d pulled it together some. He was careful there, but we all knew it. You gave him desk work because you knew it, and nobody was surprised when he took his twenty and stepped out. But after that, after he put in his papers, I think he did more than drink himself blind.”

His ex-wife thought the same, Eve remembered. “What more?”

“I went over a few times. He’d lost a lot of weight, looked sick. He had hand tremors, and his eyes . . . Even in the early stages, even when it’s just a little use, you can start to see it in the eyes.”

“You think he went on the funk,” Eve said.

“Goddamn it, Patroni, why didn’t you tell me?”

“He was retired,” Patroni said to Lowenbaum. “You weren’t his lieutenant anymore. And I couldn’t prove it. I knew it in my gut, but I couldn’t prove it. When I tried to talk to him about it, he denied it. I went back a couple times after that, but Will was there, said he was sleeping, said he was doing better, was pulling out, how she’d talked him into taking some time away with her, out west.”

“She talked him into it.”

“Camping, she said, fresh air, change of scene. She had it all worked out. The fact is, he’d taken her out to Montana, maybe up to Canada a couple of times before, and Alaska maybe more than a couple.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“A while now, maybe three or four

months. He made it pretty damn clear he didn’t like me dropping by, and I couldn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s go have a brew.’ I tagged him a couple times about catching a game, or hitting the range, but he put me off, always had something going with Will. Or she’d answer his ’link, tell me he was busy, he’d get back to me, but he wouldn’t.”

“Did he ever talk about payback, for Susann?”

“Not in the I’m-going-to-kill-a-bunch-of-people sort of way. He’s my friend, Lieutenant Dallas, but I’m a police officer, and I know my duty. If he’d made serious threats or if I’d suspected—”

“I get that, Patroni.”