We’re in Bobby’s car and driving before I notice the blood. Bobby’s wearing a light-blue shirt and a gray jacket. Both are spattered with tiny red drops. The left side of his face, too, and his hair.
“I didn’t rescue Serena,” he tells me. “She saved herself, at least temporarily. It was Lieutenant Ford who called a halt. She watched most of the interrogation and she doesn’t think Carolyn Grand killed her father. That’s because Serena stood up to everything Greco threw at—”
I reach out to stroke the side of his face. “Tell me what happened. No bullshit, Bobby. I’m so tired I’m ready to collapse.”
The sun’s not quite up yet, but the doughnut shops, the fast-food joints and the diners are doing business. Men and women on their way to work drift through the dawn light. They move toward a subway platform two blocks away. Bobby seems focused on their progress, his eyes moving from side to side. Finally, he speaks.
“O’Neill’s dead. I killed him.” He flinches and his fingers tighten on the wheel. “I can’t really focus on this right now. In fact, I’m supposed to be in an emergency room undergoing some kind of evaluation. But I’m gonna tell you what happened anyway. Just one time, right?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’ve been tracking O’Neill ever since he disappeared. I talked to anybody who knew him, sisters, brother, mother, cousins, parolees at the shelter, hookers and pimps at the inn. They wouldn’t tell me where he was, if they knew, but they claimed he told people that he wasn’t going back to prison. Me, I’ve done this hundreds of times and I stayed with it until his sister gave him up. According to her, O’Neill borrowed money from the family, then threatened his mother when she asked him to pay it back.”
Bobby stops talking, the transition too abrupt, and my first impulse is to fill the empty space. I wait instead, only reaching out to lay my hand on his arm.
“I drove from the sister’s apartment in East Harlem,” he finally resumes, “to the address she gave me in the Bronx. No way did I intend to knock on the door, so I set up down the block and settled in. He came out an hour later and I confronted him. As it turned out, he meant what he told his sister. He pulled an automatic and got off two shots. They missed.” He runs his fingers through his hair but doesn’t look at me. “Security cams recorded the confrontation. The shooting was righteous, a hundred percent righteous.”
Bobby’s tone doesn’t project defiance or even certainty. He seems oddly wistful. Far away for now but knowing he’ll pay later on. For me, when I finally lock the door to our apartment, I become dizzy with relief. A big part of me thought I’d never see home again.
Bobby reaches out to steady me. “Take it slow, honey. You push it, you’ll collapse.” He leads me to the couch, sits me down, drops down beside me. I don’t have all that many words in me, but I can’t contain myself.
“I was only there for bits and pieces of Serena’s questioning,” I say. “But I have to believe that the only reason Greco didn’t arrest us was because he was lying. About the witnesses and the DNA both.”
“Exactly right. From what I was told, the two witnesses were so wrecked they had problems standing up. Neither ID’d you in the lineup. As for the DNA, the test results aren’t in yet. That’s the last barrier, Eleni. You come up clean, you’re home free.”
We sit for a few minutes, the part about the DNA bouncing through my brain. Then Bobby gets up and walks into the kitchen. He returns with an open bottle of wine and two glasses. I take the glasses from him, watch him fill them halfway, finally hand one back. I drink, drink again, oblivion sounding like a good idea. Sex and booze, a refuge I’ve embraced many times in the past. But Martha has other ideas.
Ask him, she demands.
I don’t want to ask him, now or later. I’m too afraid of the answer, too afraid of losing him, not a cheap fuck in a motel room, but a lover at last.
“Ask him.”
This time the voice belongs, not to Martha or Kirk, but to Tina. Tina speaks gently, even regretfully, but there’s no escape. I have to ask.