IT RAINED WHILE he was in McCloskey’s and the glistening streets smell cold and metallic. Harkness thinks about the other drinking men who stumbled down these same paths in different times, wearing square-buckled shoes, beaver hats, or zoot suits and wide ties—all buffered by beer and whiskey. It’s long after midnight but in office buildings people are sorting mail, watching the Tokyo markets, putting proposals together—and their presence, signaled by the bright squares of lights in the darkened towers, reassures him that all is well in the city at night.
Alone except for the occasional rat stirred by his boot steps, Harkness walks through the orange neon of Chinatown, past the silent South Station with the scolding eagle over its clock, across the green-black water of the channel, and into the seaport, where the ambitious and sober are already tapping away on their laptops, where Candace and May are sleeping.
Harkness paws at the wall in the dark, looking for the light switch. The dim apartment makes his head spin. The light snaps on and he sees Candace on the other side of the living room, arms crossed. “Let me give you a hand.” She pulls off her plastic hand and throws it at him.
The hand hits Harkness on the chest and rattles across the floor.
“Congrats, Eddy,” she says. “I get mad enough to do that about once a year.”
“What are you so pissed about?”
“It’s like two in the morning, Eddy. You said you’d be home by midnight.”
“Sorry, I was in a bar,” he says. “Doing some research.”
“Doing some shots, smells like.”
“That too.”
“Thought we decided that was all over, Eddy.” Candace stalks toward him and picks up her plastic hand, pops it back on with a quick twist. “Where were you?”
“McCloskey’s.”
Candace’s eyes narrow and her shoulders rise. “That dump you used to go to with Thalia? Don’t tell me you’re starting that again.”
“No way.” Harkness tries to drift into the bedroom but Candace blocks his path.
“Those times are over,” Candace says. “Really over. No more wild nights. No more rogue-cop shit. If that’s the kind of thing you want to keep doing, you need to tell me now. Because I’m starting to actually depend on you.”
Harkness sits on the edge of the couch. “That’s not it,” he says. “It’s work—I’m way out in front of an investigation, a big one.”
Candace goes into the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water, hands it to him.
“What’re you up to, Eddy?”
“I’m trying to fix a big mistake.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Then just let it go. You can’t fix everything, Eddy. That’s not your job.”
“I know.”
“You’re doing it again.” Candace picks up a coffee cup and struggles to stop herself from throwing it against the living-room wall. She sets the cup back down on the table. “Well, don’t let me stop you. I mean, you say you like being with me and May, but maybe it’s more important to try to get away with more punk-rock-superhero-cop shit, right?” She waves her hands at the last words like they’re toxic.
“That’s not what I’m doing, not at all.”
“All I know is that your day job is dangerous enough without your making it worse,” she says. “Just promise me that this Christmas, there’s still going to be three of us around here—you, me, and May.” Candace wipes her tears on her Replacements T-shirt, which hikes up to reveal a tattoo of a distorted clock on one pale hip with Time’s Running Out in black script beneath it. “Say it—now!”
“I promise.”
“Louder.”
“I promise,” he shouts.
Escalating screams echo through the apartment.
“Good job, Eddy. You woke May,” Candace says as she strides down the hallway.
“You know what?” Harkness yells after her. “You’re cute when you’re unreasonable.”
Harkness wakes in the middle of the night after the emotional squall has passed, Candace nestled against him, May curled up against her, May’s ragged stuffed bunny held close to her chest.
He slips out of bed slowly and stands in his BPD T-shirt staring out the window at the thick darkness over Boston, watching the early flights glide toward Logan like slow comets.
He figures it’s just a morning-after wakeup, when the alcohol in his system runs out and his body, confused, wants more. In his drinking days, Harkness might have obliged with a maintenance swig from the whiskey bottle. But now, he just sorts through the daily jumble of facts, dreams, worries, looking for whatever woke him.
Jimmy’s smooth voice keeps talking in his mind, a podcast for one, demanding to be heard again and again. The confounding detail surfaces like a forgotten name, and Harkness pulls on his uniform and walks quietly toward the door—shoes in one hand, gun belt in the other.
Not quietly enough.
Candace stirs. “Where you going?”
“Early-morning meeting.”
“Where?”
“Hamilton School, out in Waltham.”
“Is Deaf Kid okay?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
It’s not even light yet when Harkness pulls into the parking lot by the quiet brick main building of the Hamilton School for the Deaf, as elegant as any prep school.
At the front desk sits a tired-looking woman who straightens up as Harkness strides forward and raises his badge.
“Morning, ma’am,” he says. “I’m Detective Harkness, Boston Police Department.”
She nods, then speaks in the thick, twisted voice of someone struggling with every syllable. “Good morning.”
“I’m looking for a student living here, young guy from the Lower South End. We enrolled him a couple of months ago. Nickname’s Vince. Last name’s Ashmont.”
“I think you mean Edward, that’s the name he’s going by now,” she says, slowly.
The news surprises Harkness. “Well, whatever he’s calling himself, I need to see him.”
“I need to speak with the director of the school first to do that.” She struggles so long to get this sentence out that Harkness considers signing. But she’s here to talk, to show progress.
Harkness summons up his most compelling cop voice and signs at the same time. “No time for that. It’s an emergency. I need you to wake him up and bring him here. Now.”
“Yes. Please wait here.”
Harkness sits on a bench next to a wall lined with pictures of dozens of smiling kids.
The front-desk woman returns with her hands on the shoulders of a sleepy-looking Edward wearing gray sweatpants and a white V-neck T-shirt.
Harkness signs that he’s sorry to wake him up, that this is important.
Edward shrugs, leans forward, and holds Harkness tightly for a long time.
Harkness signs that he has something important to ask about, a secret that shouldn’t stay a secret.
Edward looks interested. He also looks like he might fall asleep.
Harkness asks Edward the question that’s been circling through his thoughts all night, that he should have asked when he and Patrick found him chained to a radiator in the Hotel Blackstone.
Who killed your uncle?