Mystic River

"Cooling his heels," Whitey said to Sean. "That sound like the Bobby O'Donnell you know?"

"Not at all," Sean said.

"Not at all," Whitey said to Roman.

Roman shrugged. "I'm telling you what I know. That's all."

"Fair enough." Whitey wrote in his notebook for a bit. "Roman, where'd you go last night after you left the Last Drop?"

"We went to a party at a friend's loft downtown."

"Oooh, a loft party," Whitey said. "Always wanted to go to one of those. Designer drugs, models, lots of white guys listening to rap, telling themselves how 'street' they are. By 'we,' Roman, you mean yourself and Ally McBeal over here?"

"Michaela," Roman said. "Yes. Michaela Davenport if you're writing it down."

"Oh, I'm writing it down," Whitey said. "Is that your real name, honey?"

"What?"

"Your real name," Whitey said, "is Michaela Davenport?"

"Yes." The model's eyes bulged a little more. "Why?"

"Your mother watch a lot of soaps before you were born?"

Michaela said, "Roman."

Roman held up a hand, looked at Whitey. "What I say about keeping this between us? Huh?"

"You taking offense, Roman? You going to go all Christopher Walken on me, try to come on strong? Is that the idea? Because, I mean, we could go on a drive till your alibi clears. We could do that. You got plans for tomorrow?"

Roman went back into that place Sean had seen most criminals go when a cop came down hard? a recession into self so total that you'd swear they'd stopped breathing, the eyes looking back at you, dark and disinterested and shrinking.

"No offense, Sergeant," Roman said, his voice a flat line. "I'll be happy to provide you with the names of everyone who saw me at the party. And I'm sure the bartender at the Last Drop, Todd Lane, will verify that I left the bar no earlier than two."

"Good boy," Whitey said. "Now what about your pal Bobby? Where can we find him?"

Roman allowed himself a broad smile. "You're going to love this."

"What's that, Roman?"

"If you're liking Bobby for Katherine Marcus's death, I mean, you're really going to love this."

Roman flicked his predator's glance in Sean's direction, and Sean felt the excitement he'd felt since Eve Pigeon had mentioned Roman and Bobby wither.

"Bobby, Bobby, Bobby." Roman sighed and winked at his girlfriend before turning back to Sean and Whitey. "Bobby was pulled over on a DUI Friday night." Roman took another sip of his latte, drawing it out. "He's been in jail all weekend, Sergeant." He wiggled his finger back and forth between the two of them. "Don't you guys check these things?"

* * *

SEAN WAS FEELING the day in his bones, sucking at the marrow, by the time the troopers radioed that Brendan Harris had returned to his apartment with his mother. Sean and Whitey got there at eleven, sat in the kitchen with Brendan and his mother, Esther, Sean thinking, They don't make apartments like this anymore, thank God. It was like something out of an old TV show? The Honeymooners, maybe? as if it could only be truly appreciated seen in black and white through a thirteen-inch picture tube that cackled with electricity and watery reception. It was a railroad apartment; the entrance doorway had been cut dead in the center so that you walked out of the stairwell and into a living room. Past the living room on the right was a small dining room that Esther Harris used as her bedroom, stacking her brushes and combs and assorted powders in the crumbling butler's pantry. Beyond that was the bedroom Brendan shared with his little brother, Raymond.

To the left of the living room was a short hallway with a lopsided bathroom branching off it on the right, and then the kitchen, tucked back there where the light reached for a total of maybe forty-five minutes in the late afternoon. The kitchen was done up in shades of faded green and greasy yellow, and Sean, Whitey, Brendan, and Esther sat at a small table with metal legs that were missing screws at the joints. The tabletop was covered in yellow-and-green floral Contact paper that peeled up at the corners and had come away in chips the size of fingernails in the center.

Esther looked like she fit here. She was small and craggy and could have been forty, could have been fifty-five. She reeked of brown soap and cigarette smoke and her grim blue hair matched the grim blue veins in her forearms and hands. She wore a faded pink sweatshirt over jeans and fuzzy black slippers. She chain-smoked Parliaments and watched Sean and Whitey talk to her son as if she thought they couldn't be any less interesting if they tried but she didn't have anyplace better to be.

"When's the last time you saw Katie Marcus?" Whitey asked Brendan.

"Bobby killed her, didn't he?" Brendan said.

"Bobby O'Donnell?" Whitey said.

"Yeah." Brendan picked at the tabletop. He seemed to be in shock. His voice was monotonous, but he'd suddenly take these sharp breaths and the right side of his face would curl up as if he were being stabbed in the eye.

"Why would you say that?" Sean asked.

"She was afraid of him. She'd dated him, and she always said if he found out about us, he'd kill us both."

Sean glanced at the mother then, figuring he'd see some sort of reaction, but she just smoked, chugging out streams of it, wrapping the entire table in a gray cloud.

"Looks like Bobby has an alibi," Whitey said. "How about you, Brendan?"

"I didn't kill her," Brendan Harris said numbly. "I wouldn't hurt Katie. Never."

"So, again," Whitey said, "when's the last time you saw her?"

"Friday night."

"What time?"

"About, like, eight or so?"

"'About, like, eight,' Brendan, or at eight?"

"I don't know." Brendan's face was twisted with an anxiousness Sean could feel jangling across the table between them. He clenched his hands together and rocked a bit in his chair. "Yeah, eight. We had a couple of slices at Hi-Fi, right? And then?then she had to go."

Whitey jotted "Hi-Fi, 8p, Fri." in his report pad. "She had to go where?"

"I dunno," Brendan said.

The mother crushed another cigarette into the pile she'd built in the ashtray, igniting one of the dead cigarettes so that a stream of smoke pirouetted up from the pile and snaked into Sean's right nostril. Esther Harris immediately fired up another butt, and Sean got a mental image of her lungs? knotty and black as ebony.