I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

“Hello?”

“This is Patricia Reese, Tara McLellan’s assistant. Is this Detective Michael Bennett?”

“Speaking,” I said with mock cheeriness.

“Detective, Ms. McLellan wanted me to let you know that it looks like your testimony is going to happen today, and we need you in court.”

I took the phone off my ear and just looked at it. Of course I had to go to work today. What was I thinking? That I could actually have a day off to repair my wrecked family life? How silly.

“Ten o’clock, Foley Square. Will you be there?” Tara’s personal assistant wanted to know.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “where else would I be?”

After I found a suit, I went to the powder room, where Seamus was shaving.

“This just in. I’m going to work.”

“Work? What about Mary Catherine?”

“I’m testifying today in the city on the Perrine case. You’ll have to be in charge of the brood for now.”

“Me?” Seamus said, putting down the razor. “Who’ll take care of me? I’m elderly.”

“Please, I’m dying here. Juliana and Jane know where everything is. Refer to them. That’s what I do when Mary Catherine isn’t around. Also, you need to be on the lookout for Mary Catherine. Please text me the second she comes back. If she comes back.”

“Ah, don’t be too worried,” Seamus said, dipping his razor into the sink before passing it down his pale cheek. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. I have a funny feeling she hasn’t just flat-out left the kids. You, maybe, but them? No way. We’ll find her, but you have to stop losing her.”

CHAPTER 81

IT WAS HURRY-UP-AND-WAIT time when I arrived in the witness room at Foley Square that morning. I was growing more and more anxious until I got a chance to

speak to the parents of the murdered Macy’s waiter, Scott Melekian, in the courthouse cafeteria during the lunch break.

The Melekians were retired restaurant owners from Bethesda, Maryland, and told me that their only child, Scott, had attended the U.S. Naval Academy before coming up to New York to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing sax for a living.

“He’d worked on cruise ships and sold some stuff on iTunes, but once he subbed for someone at The Phantom of the Opera, that was it,” the beefy dad, Albert, said. “Down in the pit with the stage lights and all the excitement, he’d found his destiny, he told us. He’d also finally gotten the call from the Local 802 of the musicians’ union to work on an upcoming musical. Can you imagine? He’d just given Macy’s his two-week notice. Then this bastard kills him.”

The round-faced mom, Allie Melekian, started crying.

“He used to play for the whole family every Christmas Eve. ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Silent Night.’ We’d all be sitting around, smiling and crying our eyes out, it was so beautiful,” she said. “And whenever he’d come home, he’d always come down into the kitchen and play ‘You Are So Beautiful.’ I always thought it was a corny joke, but I know now that it wasn’t.”

The red-faced woman looked up at me, trying to gather her tears with her fingertips and failing.

“Did you ever think, Detective Bennett, that there would come a day in your life when you wanted to die? When you actually longed for it?”

I squeezed the woman’s hand.

“I know one thing, ma’am,” I said. “I know your son is watching us right now, and he couldn’t be more proud of you guys for coming here today to see that his killer never gets a chance to hurt anyone ever again.”

When we went back up after lunch, Ivan Vogel, the chief prosecutor of the narcotics unit in the U.S. attorney’s office, stood at the front of the small, windowless gray courtroom.

“The prosecution would like to call its first witness,” the short, stocky, former collegiate wrestling champ said. “We call Detective Michael Bennett to the stand.”

Mrs. Melekian’s words still rang in my ears as the court clerk asked me to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then I lifted my hand off the Bible and turned and stared Manuel Perrine right in his pale blue killer’s eyes.

“Would you please state your name and occupation?” Vogel said.

“My name is Michael Bennett, and I am a detective with the New York City Police Department. I have been with the department for the last twenty years.”