AT JFK CIVIC CENTER the cops took my gun. They got Rittle in one room and me in another. They dispensed with the bright lights and stage-dressing third degree, but they had questions. Lots. Topping the list was why hadn’t I gone to them with the photo of Khoy and the report that he was in town. Deemys, in a rare moment of largesse, admitted that I had been by that morning looking for St. Onge. Maybe I was just a smaller-bore threat to Deemys than Francis X. was. The Ogre stood by the door with his thick arms crossed, watching the show.
“You should’ve given us a call when you found the apartment,” St. Onge said.
“And say what? Only a hundred-sixty shopping days till Christmas? A strand of tinsel would’ve gotten me a laugh.”
It went on like that for awhile, then Droney pushed away from the wall and came over. The others fell silent. In the fluorescent light, the embroidery of blood vessels in Droney’s cheeks was impressive. He said, “I’m still gauging how deep in the shit you are, Coin Op. Figure I already got you for criminal trespass and B and E. I find you interfered with the investigation, I’m gonna whack you with an obstruction charge so fast the fillings in your teeth’ll rattle. Quote me.”
I made a pretense of noting it on my palm. After awhile he stalked out. There were more questions, then the cops left the room to confer. St. Onge came back in alone.
“Rittle’s story backed yours,” he said.
“See?” I said. “Tell Droney.”
“Droney makes noise. There’s nothing on you and he knows it.”
I wiped fingers across my brow and made a sidelong flinging motion with the hand. St. Onge said, “I thanked Rittle and told him he was free to go. You stay.”
He got us Styrofoam cups of burnt coffee and took me down to his own office, where he parked a haunch on his desk, his eyes lidded against the curl of smoke from a Camel, and had me go over everything again. My gaze kept straying to the mountain meadow in the Sierra Club poster behind his desk. At last, even he seemed to tire of the questions. He sighed. “Finding corpses is getting to be a habit of yours,” he said.
“I’d rather find money.”
“Looks like you’re going to. The Stewart woman must be into you for some long green.”
“Am I free to walk?”
“Who’s stopping you?”
My feet stayed where they were. St. Onge said, “Well?”
“Now we just wait for the red tape to arrange itself in neat ribbons and bows,” I said.
“Got a different idea?”
I shrugged.
“Rasmussen.”
I was still tentative on Khoy’s link to Bhuntan Tran’s death. I told him so.
“It’s circumstantial,” he granted. “But the coke computes. And maybe Khoy wanted the money he’d lent Tran to buy the house. Druggies get desperate enough, they get crazy. So we wait for ballistics on his weapon. The point is, I like Khoy for the Castle burn. That one’s pretty straightforward.”
“And that’s the one that’ll get headlines,” I said.
For an instant, I thought he might come at me, or swear at me, at least. But he didn’t. It was late. He took his time squashing the cigarette butt. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the one.”
Outside, I stood among the locust trees in the cooling dark and watched the traffic lights on the corner go through a few cycles. A Firebird with fat tires did some roadwork on Dutton. A pair of thirteen-year-old girls in tight jeans and spike heels walked by, practicing for when they grew up. St. Onge would smoke a cigarette, get another cup of coffee and call Leona to say he was going to be late, then he would go back to the crime scene and pester the techs. I figured on being in dreamland by then.
But when I had walked the long blocks to Kearney Square where my car was still parked behind number ten, I was wide awake.
* * *
The Victorian on Christian Hill was dark behind the screen of maples. Ada’s Celica was not in the driveway. For the first time I realized I had been thinking about her all day. I wanted to say to her that we would find a way to make it all come up roses, or words to that effect. Not finding her at home now, I felt disappointment take a crisp bite out of my hope.
I was not ready for my apartment walls. I drove around the city, checking the pulse of the streets, killing time. Bars and self-serve gas stations, all-night quick marts and diners were the only places still open. As I waited for a traffic light, a woman in halter top and high shorts glanced my way. If vice picked her up, the blotter would call it common nightwalking. We were both out there in the wee hours, searching the streets for something. I had grown aware again of my vague earlier perception nagging me, some little jigsaw piece that did not have a corresponding gap in the big picture. Maybe it had to do with Suoheang Khoy’s final acts. Like why hadn’t he shot me when he had the chance? Why hang around the city in the first place? Some of the irrationality could be laid to the coke—perhaps he imagined he was safe, immune, superman. But did someone with that much blood on his head go down bluffing, trying to explain? Explain what?
On Thorndike I waited while a little yard-locomotive chugged a long train of cars past to an empty siding. It seemed an enormous labor. When the last freight car was gone and the crossing gate went up, I drove through with an idea.
* * *
Mine were the only wheels in the darkened lot behind the DSS building. I took a flashlight from the glovebox, locked my revolver in there, locked the car.
My hunch about the back door was right. Because it had swelled, it was hard to close all the way, so somebody had not quite managed the task. A few hard yanks and it quivered open. I didn’t pause to wonder what I would have done if it hadn’t.
I knew from past visits there was no electronic security—it’s the kind of thing I notice. Human-service organizations are low rung on the public ladder, so there is little anyone would bother to steal. State-of-the-art here meant reconditioned office equipment passed down from the Sewer Commission. I flicked on the flashlight and located Ada’s desk in the little cubicle in back.
I was not sure what I was looking for. I checked a file cabinet, desk drawers. Beside the computer was a plastic diskette box. I flipped through the disks, reading labels: correspondence, case reports belonging to Ada and other caseworkers, an unlabeled disk. I turned the machine on and put that disk in. When the machine had booted, I called up an index and began scrolling through lists of documents. One document name interested me, so I pulled it up on the screen. Nothing good. I tried a second and a third document. I yawned. As the files scrolled past, I yawned some more. Go home, I told myself. Getting caught here would be the thing Droney needed to hang me.
The last item in the index was a document with the simple title “X List.” What the hell, one more, then I was out of there. I hit the keys.
My heartbeat quickened.
Names moved on the monitor screen.
Names I knew because I had sent a list of them to John Potter.
Names of the dead.