The detective came to the screen door, hesitated, and then came out onto the porch. He extended his hand to shake mine. I didn’t take it.
“I was as surprised as you must have been to see those reports on your daughter,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. “But they’re conclusive.”
Feeling cold and merciless, I said, “I had you wrong, you know?”
“How’s that?” he asked, frowning.
“I’ve known my share of dirty cops in my time, but you didn’t trip my alarms at all when I met you,” I said. “You came across as one of the good guys. Bree thought so too.”
“I am one of the good guys,” Pedelini said, looking me in the eye. “The best around here.”
“That’s not saying much, is it?”
His eyes narrowed. “If I’m out there doing my job, you can jaw all you want at me like that. But here on my own back porch, I won’t tolerate it. I’ll ask you to leave now before one of us does something stupid.”
Pedelini looked at me expectantly.
I stood my ground, said, “My wife saw you accept a payoff from Finn Davis the other night. Right here. And your daughter was there to witness it.”
He was rocked by that, took a step back, said, “Wasn’t like that.”
“What wasn’t like that?” I asked. “Payoff’s a payoff.”
Pedelini’s entire body tensed as if he were going to launch himself at me; he rose up on his toes, his fists curling and uncurling, before he said in a thin voice, “You have no idea of the pressures I’m under.”
I could see it everywhere about him, then. What I’d taken for a pre-attack pause was actually his body’s tensing under some heavy burden.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said.
“Why would I?”
“I’m a shrink as well as a cop,” I said. “I’m offering you a twofer.”
Pedelini almost smiled. Then he gazed around as if looking for an escape route.
“Maybe I wasn’t wrong,” I said, wanting him to open up. “Maybe my initial read of you was the correct one. Maybe you are a good man and I just lack understanding.”
“Damn right you do,” he said.
“Tell me.”
He struggled, finally said, “Come with me.”
The detective turned and entered the house. I followed him into a short hallway off a country-style kitchen where a small-screen television was showing the baseball game. A younger girl, eight, maybe nine, was sitting at a round table eating pretzel sticks, transfixed by the game.
“Braves up by two, Daddy,” she said.
“There’s a God after all, Lassie,” Pedelini said.
“When’s dinner?” Lassie asked.
He glanced at a timer on the stove, said, “Thirty-two minutes.”
Pedelini left the kitchen. His daughter never glanced at me as I followed him into a family room with a large window that overlooked the lake.
“Beautiful place,” I said.
“If you think dirty money bought it, you’re wrong,” Pedelini said. “My late wife inherited it from her father.”