Mystic River

He heard her muffled voice again: "This one?" and then the scrape of her lifting the phone off the counter. "Hello?"

"Baby," Jimmy managed before he had to clear his throat.

"Jimmy?" A slight edge to her voice. "Where are you?"

"I'm?Look?I'm on Sydney Street."

"What's wrong?"

"They found her car, Annabeth."

"Whose car?"

"Katie's."

"They? The police? They?"

"Yeah. She's?missing. In Pen Park somewhere."

"Oh, Jesus God. No, right? No. No, Jimmy."

Jimmy felt it fill him now? that dread, that awful certainty, the horror of thoughts he'd kept clenched behind a shelf in his brain.

"We don't know anything yet. But her car's been here all night and the cops? "

"Jesus Christ, Jimmy."

"? are searching the park for her. Tons of them. So?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm on Sydney. Look? "

"On the fucking street? Why aren't you in there?"

"They won't let me in."

"They? Who the fuck are they? Is she their daughter?"

"No. Look, I? "

You get in there. Jesus. She could be hurt. Lying in there somewhere, all cold and hurt."

"I know, but they? "

"I'm on my way."

"Okay."

"Get in there, Jimmy. I mean, God, what's wrong with you?"

She hung up.

Jimmy handed the phone back to Chuck, knowing that Annabeth was right. She was so completely right that it killed Jimmy to realize that he would regret his impotence of the last forty-five minutes for the rest of his life, never be able to think about it without cringing, trying to crawl away from it in his head. When had he become this thing? this man who'd say yes, sir, no, sir, right you are, sir, to fucking cops when his firstborn daughter was missing? When had that happened? When had he stood at a counter and handed his dick over in exchange for feeling like, what, an upright citizen?

He turned to Chuck. "You still keep those bolt cutters under the spare in your trunk?"

Chuck got a look on his face like he'd been caught doing something. "Guy's gotta make a living, Jim."

"Where's your car?"

"Up the street, corner of Dawes."

Jimmy started walking and Chuck trotted up beside him. "We're going to cut our way in?"

Jimmy nodded and walked a little faster.

* * *

WHEN SEAN REACHED the part of the jogging path that circled around the fence of the co-op garden, he nodded at some of the cops working the flowers and soil for clues, could see a tight anticipation in most of their faces that told him they'd already heard by now. There was an air saturating the entire park that he'd felt at a few other crime scenes over the years, one that carried an edge of fatalism, a dank acceptance of someone else's doom.

They'd known coming into the park that she was dead, yet some infinitesimal piece of all of them, Sean knew, had held out for otherwise. It was what you did? you came on-scene knowing the truth, and then spent as much time as you could hoping you were wrong. Sean had worked one case last year where a couple had reported their baby missing. A ton of media showed up because the couple was white and respectable, but Sean and every other cop knew the couple's story was bullshit, knew the kid was dead even as they consoled the two assholes, cooed assurances to them that their baby was probably fine, ran down dumb-ass leads on suspicious ethnics seen in the area that morning, only to find the baby at dusk, stuffed in a vacuum cleaner bag and crammed in a crevice under the cellar stairs. Sean saw a rookie cry that day, the kid shaking as he leaned against his cruiser, but the rest of the cops looked irate yet unsurprised, as if they'd all spent the night dreaming the same shitty dream.

That's what you carried back home and into the bars and locker rooms of the precincts or barracks? an annoyed acceptance that people sucked, people were dumb and petty-bad, often murderously so, and when they opened their mouths they lied, always, and when they went missing for no discernibly good reason, they'd usually be found dead or way the hell worse off.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims? they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who'd loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen.

Like Jimmy Marcus. Sean didn't know how the fuck he was going to look that guy in the eye and say, Yeah, she's dead. Your daughter's dead, Jimmy. Someone took her away for good. Jimmy, who'd already lost a wife. Shit. Hey, guess what, Jim? God said you owed another marker. He's come to collect. Hope that puts it in perspective, pal. Be seeing you.

Sean crossed the short plank bridge over the ravine and followed the path down into the circular grove of trees that stood facing the drive-in screen like a pagan audience. Everyone was down by the steps that led up to a door on the side of the screen. Sean could see Karen Hughes snapping away with her camera, Whitey Powers leaning against the doorjamb, looking in, taking notes, the assistant ME on his knees beside Karen Hughes, a goddamn platoon of uniformed troopers and BPD blues milling behind those three, Connolly and Souza studying something on the steps, and the big brass? Frank Krauser from BPD and Martin Friel from State, Sean's commanding officer? standing off a bit along the stage that stretched under the screen, talking to each other, heads close and tilted downward.

If the assistant ME said she'd died here in the park, it fell within State jurisdiction and made it Sean and Whitey's case. Sean's job to tell Jimmy. Sean's job to become intimate and obsessed with the victim's life. Sean's job to put the case down and give everyone an illusion, at least, of closure.

BPD, however, could ask for the case. It was within Friel's power to give it to them since the park was surrounded on all sides by City turf, and because the first attempt made on the victim's life had occurred within City jurisdiction. This would attract attention, Sean was sure. Homicide in a city park, the victim found near or in what was fast becoming a local and pop culture landmark. No motive readily apparent. No killer, either, unless he'd offed himself down there by Katie Marcus, which seemed doubtful or Sean would have heard. Huge media case, when you really thought about it, the whole city having been pretty much devoid of those the last couple of years. Shit, the press would fill the Pen with their drool.