“Did Murphy go into specific details?”
Gail’s laugh was made tinny by the phone. “Not a chance. She’d cross the line only so far. She knows what I do for a living, and she knows who I sleep with.”
“Which probably won’t happen tonight,” I muttered sadly. “Did she say if Jan’s being treated, and if so, how successfully?”
“One of the aspects of this disorder is that the patient is often in an abusive relationship, and that when the therapist suggests getting out of it, the patient regresses. In fact, in order for any detachment to begin to work, Anne said the counselor first shouldn’t argue the contention that the abuser is a great guy. ’Course, Jan’s not even close to that stage. As soon as Anne mentioned Norm might be part of Jan’s problem, the discussion came to an end.”
“So she’s still under his thumb.”
Gail’s energy was pumping into my ear. “Right, which put me on another track. Anne also told me Jan’s super-connected to her kids. She’s not a great mother-you told me that much-but she’s incredibly attached to them. It probably ties into the dependency thing. Anyhow, I was thinking they might be the way to get her to turn on Norm.”
I furrowed my brow in the darkness. “How?”
“Use SRS to apply a little pressure. Let her think that unless she makes some serious changes-Norm above all-she could lose her kids.”
I could hardly believe this was Gail. The state’s Social and Rehabilitation Services were famously tough-minded when motivated and definitely had the power to do what she’d just suggested. “Jesus. That’s hardball.”
She picked up on the implied criticism. “Only if you don’t give a damn. I’m not doing this to nail Norm-he’s your problem. I want this woman and her kids free of him. She may have her kinks, but from what Anne told me, a little care and attention could get her straight. I don’t mind playing hardball for that.”
I smiled at the familiar passion. I should have known better. “All right. So what’s your plan?”
“I contacted an SRS investigator friend of mine. She’ll be visiting Jan tomorrow morning. Norm’s supposed to be at work then.”
“What if your friend finds the kids are doing fine?”
“It doesn’t matter. After the visit’s over, you can put whatever spin on it you want.”
Up to now, I’d been hoping for a break along evidentiary lines-some clue we’d overlooked. But with Gail’s strategy already underway, my horizons had been broadened, and with them possibilities I’d almost abandoned.
Slowly catching her enthusiasm, I muttered, “Since it looks like Norm used his wife to get to Padget, maybe we could pull the same scam in reverse.”
She didn’t respond, waiting for more.
But I didn’t want to jinx my luck. “Gail, could you do me a favor? Find out what town Jan and Norm were married in. Maybe Anne knows.”
She hesitated, obviously tempted to ask what I was up to. Instead, all she said was, “I’ll see what I can do.”
There were two cars parked in Brian Padget’s driveway when I pulled up, one of which I assumed was Greg Davis’s. Despite my initial disappointment on the phone with Gail, I was curious why I’d been summoned. I doubted, however, that it was because Padget had followed my advice and figured out how and why he’d landed in his present predicament. As promising as Latour thought him, Padget was also young and inexperienced, and more prone to wallow than to dig his way out.
Davis met me at the door, his weary expression confirming the worst. “Thanks for coming.”
He stood aside, ushering me into a dense atmosphere of stale, fetid air, tinged in equal parts with sweat, booze, and vomit. A faint but refreshing tang of coffee struggled feebly in the background.
“Great,” I commented. “When did this start?”
“I checked on him last night. He’d been drinking some, but I thought I’d shaken him out of it. A couple of hours ago was the first chance I had to drop by since. Looks like he’s been at it all day.”
I wandered past the small kitchen, down the hallway to the back bedroom, where the smell approached critical mass. In the dim light leaking in from behind me, I saw Padget lying face down on the bed.
“Brian. It’s Joe.”
“Fuck you.” His voice was muffled by a pillow.
“Hear you’ve been having a rough time.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
I picked my way carefully across the room, noticing a dry pool of vomit on the rug near the night table. I sat in a small rocking chair. “You’ve probably had enough of people getting out of your hair.”
His head shifted. A pale half-moon of face appeared from out of the pillow. “What?”
“What’s been going on, Brian?”
“What the hell do you think? I’m the crooked cop-might as well be a leper. The paper calls me that, the guys at the station’re thinking it, that asshole Shippee wants me fired yesterday, and the chief’s letting me cook in it.”
“You talk to Emily?”
The face vanished back into the pillow.
“You’re not telling me she cut you off.”
Silence.
“So you did it for her, right? Won’t let her come by, won’t talk to her on the phone?”
I could barely hear him. “No.”
“She’s the best friend you got.”
“I messed her up enough already.”
“You were used, Brian. Somebody put water in your gas tank so your car would malfunction and Emily would have to drive you to work. It was a double setup to taint you both.”
“Then why’m I still going to court?”
It was a good question, and reflective of his thinking clearly despite the self-abuse. In fact, what I’d just said was speculative, absurdly optimistic, and procedurally inappropriate. Alleged dirty cops were supposed to stew on their own, not be comforted by the investigating officer.
But I didn’t care much about the rules of protocol anymore. “ ’Cause I can’t prove it yet,” I answered him. “I am getting closer, though. Did you do any thinking about how you got nailed, like I asked?”
He turned to face me again. “You think this is a crossword puzzle or something? Some bastard planted dope in my house-in my body, for Christ’s sake. How the hell’m I going to figure how that happened?”
“The dope in the toilet tank and the stuff in your system don’t match. They came from two different sources. You need to start thinking about that.”
He raised himself up on his elbows so he could shout at me. “Fuck you. What the hell you think I been doing?”
“Feeling sorry for yourself.”
He grabbed the pillow and tried to throw it at me, collapsing in the process and smacking his reading lamp, which I caught before it hit the floor. I heard Greg nervously shift his weight in the doorway.
“You know,” I said, “it would help if you were straight with me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That in the middle of all this shit, and with people like me and Greg and Emily all pulling for you, you’ve been holding back on the truth.”
He didn’t answer. I let the silence last as long as was necessary. The response, when it came, was predictably feeble. “I have not.”
“You told me you’d first met Jan on a call to her house for a domestic dispute.”
“So?”
“That was a lie. You were never on any of those calls.”
He lapsed back into silence.
“Emily, on the other hand,” I continued, “was on almost every one.” I thought back to what I’d said about both of them having been framed, and wondered why they’d earned that much attention.
He rolled over and slowly began sitting up, swaying with the effort. I glanced at Greg. “Could you get a cold, wet towel?”
He disappeared without comment.