“It’s all in there, man,” Rohan said. “Just take it.”
Morgan knelt, unzipped it. Banded stacks of money, a G-pack of vials. He shook it all out onto the floor. Rohan lowered his hand, pressed it to his shoulder inside the coat, the white jersey turning red.
Morgan stood, pointed the Beretta at him, his finger on the curved trigger. He nodded at the couch. “If you’re gonna reach for that piece, son, now’s the time.”
Rohan shook his head. “I ain’t reaching for anything.”
“All right, then,” Morgan said, and fired three times. Casings hit the floor. Bits of insulation from Rohan’s jacket floated in the air.
Morgan put the cash back in the knapsack, hefted it, left the G-pack on the floor. A reward for whoever found the bodies.
He decocked the Beretta, put it in his pocket, went around and picked up casings. He had to hunt for the last one, found it under the couch. He was breathing heavy by the time he was done.
When he was satisfied he’d left nothing behind, he went back out through the hallway, picked up the two casings there. Raj lay still, but there were red-flecked bubbles on his lips. Beneath the bloody T-shirt, his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths.
Morgan left him there, undid the locks on the kitchen door, closed it behind him. Wind pulled at him as he walked back to the Monte Carlo. The street still empty, he opened the trunk, dropped the knapsack inside, shut the lid. He unlocked the driver’s side door, got behind the wheel.
As he pulled away from the curb, he turned the stereo up. The same song, Teddy Pendergrass singing to an ex-lover, telling her how he’d changed.
Morgan made a right onto Lyons, back toward downtown Newark. At the next intersection a crossing guard stepped out into the street. She wore an orange vest, blue uniform, carried a STOP sign.
He braked smoothly. The guard moved to the middle of the crosswalk, and the kids came across. Fourth, fifth grade maybe. Girls with ribbons in their hair, winter coats, pink vinyl knapsacks, the boys running ahead, laughing.
Last to cross was a girl no older than nine or ten. She turned and looked at Morgan, met his eyes through the windshield. Not smiling.
Don’t look at me like that, little girl, he thought. I know what I’ve done.
The crossing guard hurried her along, smiled at Morgan. He raised a hand to her, drove on.
The snow was sticking now, the wind driving it against the windshield. He switched the wipers on, listened to them thump, turned the music louder, Teddy still pleading: Miss you, miss you, miss you.
THREE
She found him sitting at the bar at Tiger Tail’s, a shot glass and Heineken in front of him, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” coming from the jukebox.
“You played that, didn’t you?” she said.
He turned. “Hey, Sara.”
She took the stool to his right. Althea the barmaid saw her, came over.
“Evening, Deputy Cross. Guinness?”
“Please.”
Billy sipped from his beer, toyed with the empty shot glass.
“What was that?” Sara said.
“Peppermint schnapps.”
“I didn’t think anybody over sixteen drank that.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty awful. But it gets the job done.”
Althea came back with the pint of Guinness. Billy pushed a wet twenty toward her. She took it, moved away.
“Hard to believe you’re still on your feet,” Sara said. “You get any sleep today?”
“A little.”
Althea brought the change. The Guinness was colder than Sara liked, but dark and strong. For a while, she’d taken to black and tans, mixing it with a lighter beer. She drank little these days, though, and when she did she found she preferred the Guinness straight. It always surprised the men she met, the few she drank with.
“They give you a hard time this morning?” she said.
“Boone from the state attorney’s, he’s okay. Used to be a deputy down here, you know that?”
“No.”
“Yeah, bottom of the ladder, just like you and me. Made his way up to undersheriff under Hammond. When Winston ran for state attorney, Hammond put a block of votes his way. Flip side was if he won, Winston had to take Boone. Before your time, I guess.”
“He rewarding him or getting rid of him?”
“Maybe a little of both. Boone’s a good man, he’s just a little…” He took a sip of beer. “Ambitious. He and Elwood did the interview together. Videotape, the whole thing.”
“Who’s writing it?”
“Boone, I think.”
“What’d he say?”
“That it looked like a clean shoot. What else could they say? It was. Part that bothers them is I was the only person there to say one way or another. At least the only one still breathing. They talk to you yet?”
“No,” she said. “Elwood called me. I’m meeting them tomorrow. I won’t have much to add, though, except what I saw when I got there.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“About what?”
“That you had to be there, take the call. I didn’t even know you were on.”
“When you called it in, I was closest to your ten-twenty. I just wish I’d gotten there sooner. It might have gone a different way.”
He looked at the clock over the bar. Almost ten. “Kind of late for you to be out, isn’t it? Who’s watching Danny?”
“JoBeth. I was worried about you. Figured I’d drive past just in case. Saw your truck.”
She turned on her stool, looked around the bar. Two Mexicans-or Guatemalans more likely-playing pool in the alcove in the back. A couple of booths on the far wall were occupied. She saw Angie, the dispatcher, at one, with two men Sara didn’t know, a pitcher of beer on the table between them. Angie was laughing, waving a cigarette. She caught Sara’s eye, saw who she was with, and turned away again. Great, Sara thought. Maybe coming here was a mistake after all.
There were a handful of serious drinkers at the bar on either side of them, a couple of whom Sara recognized. She’d met most of the hardcore alcoholics in St. Charles County, either booking them for DWI or helping pull them out of their overturned pickups.
Billy signaled to Althea, pointed at his shot glass.
“How many of those you have?” Sara said.
“This is my third. Was my third, I mean.”
“Better take it easy. You’ll pay for it in the morning.”
“I’m paying for it now.”
Althea came down, poured from the bottle, took his money.
Billy raised his glass to Sara. From the jukebox came Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”
“Now this, I know you played,” she said.
“More than once.” He sipped the schnapps. “ ‘Dad, get me out of this.’ ”
“Is Lee-Anne around? Maybe you ought to call her.”
“She’s down with friends in West Palm. She’s coming back in a couple days.”
“She know what happened?”
“She knows.”
“And she’s not coming back sooner?”
“Soon enough,” he said and drank.
She sipped Guinness. In the mirror behind the bar she could see Angie in the booth, talking to the men but looking toward her every few minutes. Sara suddenly wanted to be somewhere else.
“So what happened?” Billy said. He’d turned to her.
“With what?”
“With us.”
“Ah, Bill.”
“It’s one of the things I regret most, you know. Out of everything. Not being able to make it work.”
“Let’s not start this up again.”
“I could have been better for you, I know. Sometimes I wish I could go back, figure out exactly when it was things started to go wrong.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe about the time you started sleeping with Dolly Parton back there, what do you think?”
He looked over at Angie’s booth.
“That was a mistake,” he said.