Mystic River

"He doesn't weigh much."

Whitey closed his collar back over the tie. "Which brings me back to the footprints."

"The fucking footprints," Sean said.

"Yes!" Whitey yelled. "The fucking footprints." He closed his top button, slid the knot up to his throat. "Sean, the doer's chasing this woman through a park. She's running full-out, he's gotta be charging after her like a raped ape. I mean, he's booking through that park. You telling me he's not going to dig in at least once?"

"It rained all night."

"But we found three of hers. Come on. Something's screwy about that."

Sean leaned his head back against the cupboard behind him, tried to picture it? Katie Marcus, arms pinwheeling as she came down the dark slope toward the drive-in screen, skin scratched by bushes, hair soaked with rain and sweat, blood dribbling down her arm and chest. And the killer, dark and faceless in Sean's mind, coming up over the rise a few seconds behind her, running, too, his ears pounding with bloodlust. A big man, though, in Sean's mind, a freak of nature. And smart in a way, too. Smart enough to put something in the middle of the street and get Katie Marcus to bang her front tires into that curb. Smart enough to pick a spot on Sydney where few people would be likely to hear or see anything. The fact that Old Lady Prior had heard something was an aberration, the one thing the killer couldn't have predicted, because even Sean had been surprised to learn anyone still lived on that scorched-out block. Otherwise, though, the guy had been smart.

"Smart enough to cover his tracks, you think?" Sean said.

"Huh?"

"The perp. Maybe he killed her and then went back and kicked mud into his own tracks."

"Possible, but how's he going to remember every place he stepped? He's in the dark. Even, let's say, he had a flashlight? That's still a lot of ground to cover, a lot of footprints to identify and make disappear."

"But the rain, man."

"Yeah." Whitey sighed. "I'll buy the rain theory if we end up looking at a guy weighs a hundred fifty or less. Otherwise?"

"Brendan Harris didn't look like he tipped the scales at much over that."

Whitey groaned. "You honestly think the kid has that in him?"

"No."

"Me, either. What about your pal, though? He's a slim guy."

"Who?"

"Boyle."

Sean came off the counter. "How'd we get to him?"

"We're getting to him now."

"No, wait a sec? "

Whitey held up a hand. "He says he left the bar around one? Bullshit. Those car keys stopped that fucking clock at ten of. Katherine Marcus left that bar at twelve-forty-five. That's solid, Sean. This guy's alibi's got a fifteen-minute gap that we know of. How do we know when he got home? I mean, really got home?"

Sean laughed. "Whitey, he's just a guy who was in the bar."

"The last place she went. The last place, Sean. You said it yourself."

"What'd I say?"

"We could be looking for a guy who stayed home on prom night."

"I was? "

"I'm not saying he did this, man. I'm not even in the ballpark of saying that. Yet. But there is something wrong about the guy. I mean, you heard that shit about this city needing a good fucking crime wave. He was serious about that shit."

Sean put his empty Coke on top of the kitchen counter. "You recycle?"

Whitey frowned. "No."

"Not even for a nickel a can?"

"Sean."

Sean tossed the can in the wastebasket. "You're telling me that you think a guy like Dave Boyle would kill his wife's? what?? second cousin because he's pissed about gentrification? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

"I busted a guy once killed his wife because she gave him shit about his cooking."

"But that's a marriage, man. That's shit building up between two people for years. You're talking about a guy saying. 'Damn, these rents are killing me. I should go kill a few people until they drop back to normal.'"

Whitey laughed.

"What?" Sean said.

"You put it that way," Whitey said. "Okay. It's dumb. Still, there's something about that guy. If he didn't have a hole in his alibi, I'd say okay. If he didn't see the victim an hour before she died, I'd say okay. But he does have a hole, and he did see her, and there's something off about the guy. He says he went right home? I want his wife to confirm that. I want his first-floor neighbor to have heard him walking up the stairs at one-oh-five. You know? Then I'll forget about him. Did you notice his hand?"

Sean didn't say anything.

"His right hand was almost twice the size of his left. That guy got into something recently. I want to know what. Once I know it was just a beef down the bar, something like that, I'm good. I'll let it go."

Whitey drained his second Coke and tossed it in the wastebasket.

"Dave Boyle," Sean said. "You seriously want to take a look at Dave Boyle."

"A look," Whitey said. "Just a little look."

* * *

THEY MET in a third-floor conference room shared by Major Crimes and Homicide in the DA's office, Friel always preferring to hold his meetings here because it was cold and utilitarian, the chairs hard, the table black, the walls a cinder-block gray. It wasn't room that gave itself to witty asides or rambling non sequiturs. No one hung around in this room; they did their business and they got back at it.

There were seven chairs in the room this afternoon, and every one was taken. Friel sat at the head of the table. To his right sat the deputy chief of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Homicide Unit, Maggie Mason, and to his left Sergeant Robert Burke, who ran Homicide's other squad. Whitey and Sean faced each other across the table, followed by Joe Souza, Chris Connolly, and the other two detectives from State Homicide, Payne Brackett and Shira Rosenthal. Everyone had stacks of field reports or copies of field reports on the table in front of them as well as crime scene photos, the medical examiner's reports, CSS reports, plus their own report pads and notebooks, a few napkins with names scribbled on them, and some crudely drawn crime scene diagrams.

Whitey and Sean went first, running down their interviews with Eve Pigeon and Diane Cestra, Mrs. Prior, Brendan Harris, Jimmy and Annabeth Marcus, Roman Fallow, and Dave Boyle, whom Whitey, to Sean's gratitude, referred to only as a "witness from the bar."

Brackett and Rosenthal went next, Brackett doing most of the talking but Rosenthal, Sean was sure if past history was any indicator, having done most of the legwork.