8

We took Lemon’s van. He drove, and I watched for followers. A cold drizzle slicked the pavements and I huddled in my peacoat, glad of the warmth of the three of us jammed in the front seat. Roz sat between us, by virtue of her barely five foot height, her short legs straddling the hump. I wasn’t sure she was awake at first, but gradually she came around. I could tell because she started firing questions.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said.

“Yeah,” she replied warily.

“Could be genuine, could be a trap,” I said.

“Meet me at the abandoned warehouse at midnight,” she mumbled. “Expecting anybody in particular?”

“I met an INS agent who doesn’t like me,” I said. “But I don’t think this is his style.”

“Immigration and Naturalization,” Lemon said proudly. He’s a bright kid, really.

“If they wanted to know if I knew where the woman was, they might have faked a help message, but they wouldn’t have given me an address,” I said. “They’d have waited outside the front door to tail me.”

“So then it’s not the INS,” Lemon said. “Probably.”

“Yeah. So what I want here is backup. I don’t go scooting off in the middle of the night to rescue damsels in distress. Not solo. Not since I read my first Nancy Drew.”

“What kind of backup?” Lemon asked.

“I go in alone. I don’t come out or give you an all-clear signal in five minutes, you come in.”

“You armed?” Roz said, proving she was still awake.

I nodded. My .38 Police Special was tucked in the waistband of my slacks, under my sweater, the metal cold against the small of my back. I keep it in the locked bottom drawer of my desk, unloaded and wrapped in one of my ex-husband’s undershirts.

“Okay, then,” she said, and seemed to go back to sleep. I didn’t have to tell her how much I’d hate to use it. Guns are necessary in the business, what with all the crooks waving them around. I admit that—and I keep my hand in at the pistol range—but I don’t like guns. I’ve killed two men with guns, one when I was a cop, one after I turned private. Both killings had to happen, and I don’t spend a lot of time rehashing my life, but neither was easy to swallow.

Lemon drove well, effortlessly shifting the gears on the old van. The rain was the kind of stuff that messes up your windshield, too light for the regular swipe of the windshield blades. The glass steamed up, and Roz leaned forward and wiped a ragged circle with a wad of Kleenex. It fogged again immediately, so we cracked the windows open and froze.

The journey took maybe twenty minutes. Memorial Drive, then over the B.U. Bridge, along Park Drive to Brookline Ave. Lemon took a wrong turn and I had to straighten him out.

The detour took us back along the Fenway, and that’s when I noticed the flashing lights. Automobile accident, I told myself, although the first worry pangs hit my stomach just about then. I remembered the newspaper article Manuela had shown me, about the body in the Fens. It must have been found nearby.

Up close I could tell the flashers belonged to police units. No wreckers, no tow trucks. When I saw Mooney’s battered Buick parked with two wheels up on the curb, I hollered Lemon to a halt. Then I was out of the car and running, and Lemon was yelling after me, something about where the hell was he supposed to leave the damned van.

I didn’t care.

The cops hadn’t set up a cordon yet. They were milling and talking, and only one of them tried to head me off, worried I might be the advance press guard. I brushed him off with Mooney’s name, and one of the other guys knew me and gave the first guy a wink.

I don’t know what Department gossip says about Mooney and me, but it’s a hell of a lot more colorful than reality. I’m not a cop now, so it doesn’t matter. And yet I guess I still resent it. Otherwise I wouldn’t get so pissed, right? Over a simple leering wink from a guy whose IQ was probably a tenth of his badge number.

The old anger gave me something to concentrate on while I sped down the path toward a stand of elms, eerily lit by flashlights and rotating cherry beacons.

Mooney loomed up out of the dark, all six-four two hundred and forty linebacker pounds of him.

“A body?” I said, dreading the answer.

“What are you—”

“Let me see her,” I said. “I think I can make the ID.”

“It’s not pretty,” he said.

“It never is.”

“Why are you—”

“I got a call. I tried to get you—”

“This way,” he said. “If you puke, the medical examiner’s gonna give me hell.”

I followed him, biting my lower lip, hardening myself, getting ready. “Just another stiff,” I murmured to myself. “Just another body. Nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do.”

They hadn’t bagged it yet. A police photographer stood at her feet and the sudden explosion of light temporarily blinded me.

The height and weight seemed right. The dark hair. The face was bruised and swollen, unrecognizable, cut and covered with dark blood. And the hands were gone. Just gone, hacked off at the wrists.

“Well?” Mooney said.

I couldn’t say anything.

Not until I saw something sparkle on the ground.

It was a thin silver band. The filigree ring I’d last seen on my client’s left hand.