“Pictures,” he was saying.
I came to stand behind him, feeling a bit wobbly, and steadied myself on his shoulder. Without looking at me, he stood and gave me the chair, keeping his eyes on the screen, his hand on the keyboard, flipping through what looked like fifty or sixty black-and-white photographs.
Four men stood in a loose group at the edge of a dock, hands in pockets, hunched against the cold. Three of them wore long black coats. The water behind them was gray and choppy. The fourth appeared to be dressed only in a suit. His shoulders were hiked up in tension, arms wrapped around his middle obviously for warmth. In the next frame one of the coated men had a big hand on the arm of the suited man. In the next a gun appeared. Each frame-grainy, moody-was separated from the last by a matter of seconds. I could almost hear the rapid shutter clicks. The next frame zoomed in and with a start I recognized two faces-Marcus and Ivan. Ivan, the man with the gun. Marcus with his arm locked in another man’s grasp.
“Is that Marcus?” asked Jack, incredulous.
But I’d lost my voice. In my head I heard the screaming, that horrible keening, and all the hairs on my arms and neck started to rise. As Jack flipped through the frames, faster now, we watched as Marcus laid his hand across the hand on his arm and moved into a quick, hard, practiced twist that dropped the other man to his knees and left him on the ground, his mouth open in a scream. The camera caught a muzzle flash from Ivan’s gun, but in the next frame the gun was in Marcus’s hand. Each successive frame saw another man on the ground until it was just Marcus and Ivan surrounded by bleeding corpses. Two frames showed them standing there, Marcus holding the gun, Ivan with his hands up in supplication. In the next frame Ivan was on the ground. Marcus started rolling bodies into the river, the dock splattered with blood. Then it was just Marcus and Ivan again, the big man lying on his side writhing, his face a mask of pain, arms around his center, Marcus standing over him, the gun aimed at his brother’s head. He lowered the gun. The camera caught him walking away, Ivan’s mouth open in a scream of pain or rage or both.
“Izzy” said Jack, after a moment of us both staring at the screen. “Are you okay?”
I leaned forward and continued scrolling to watch Marcus walk, unhurried, up the dock and disappear between two large warehouses. He was wearing the suit he’d been wearing when he left me.
“He killed three people,” Jack said, his voice dropping to an amazed whisper. “Left the other one to die.”
I felt myself separating from a rising tide of emotion-grief horror, fear. I rafted it like a white-water current, otherwise I would have drowned.
“Where would you say that is?” I asked. He leaned in close and I could smell the scent of Ivory soap on his skin, mingling with the vodka on his breath. He put a finger on the screen. I saw the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the distance.
“Brooklyn,” he said. “Somewhere between Bensonhurst and Coney Island.”
“You were right,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. “We would have been better off not seeing that.”
“Always listen to your agent,” he said. He was trying to lighten things up a bit, but he just sounded sad and a little afraid.
I backed up the thumb drive on his computer, ejected and pocketed the small device. He stood by and watched me do it, folded his arms across his chest. I walked to the door and turned around to look at him.
“This is the point where I say you don’t have to come with me, that I don’t want you to. I want you to stay here and be safe, call the police if I don’t come back or call.”
He released a long, slow breath, held my eyes.
“I was hoping that this was the point where you realized you’re not writing this. That the tragedy and danger are real, that you’re grief-stricken and injured, that you need to lie down and let me take care of you.”
I smiled at the temptation. “If I did that, I wouldn’t be who I am.”
He nodded. “And if I let you go alone, I wouldn’t be who I am.”
He helped me on with my coat. I gathered Camilla’s things and put them in her bag, slipped the thumb drive in there, too, and slung it over my shoulder. I left my own bag behind, not wanting anything to happen to my last bit of cash, my passport and credit cards. I kept her gun in the pocket with Detective Crowe’s card. I put her cell phone in the other, noticing that the charge was low.
“Do you have my cash?”
“Not on my person. But I have it in the house, yes. We’ll talk about that later.”
I nodded, took the revolver out of my pocket one last time and did what I hadn’t yet done, looked to see if it was loaded. It was.
“Do you even know how to use a gun?” Jack asked.
“I do.”
He looked at me quizzically, skeptical.
“Research,” I said.
He opened the door for me and we walked out into the night.
“WHY DON’T YOU give it up, Crowe? Seriously, buddy. We’re going on two years here.”
Grady Crowe was sitting alone in the car outside the precinct. He’d dropped Jez off at the door, told her he’d park and be right up to deal with Erik Book. Book, as they suspected, had already contacted his lawyer and was refusing to say anything until he arrived. They’d had him ride in the back of a radio car with two uniformed officers, not cuffed, but not necessarily free to go, either. And Crowe suspected that Book was unsettled enough that he might turn on the charm and get a word or two out of him the nice way. Book seemed like a reasonable guy in over his head, maybe making mistakes out of fear, a desire to protect. He’d give him the “Look, you’re not a suspect, don’t need a lawyer, we just want to help” speech.
There were fewer parking spots on the street in front of the precinct than there were police vehicles, so he found a space in the back of the lot across First. With a few seconds alone in the car, he did what he’d been wanting to do all day: He called Clara’s cell.
She was still thinking about him. Her late-night call told him that. Maybe she wasn’t as happy with Keane as she thought she’d be. Big surprise there. He had a lofting feeling of hope in his center until Sean Keane, the man currently fucking Grady’s wife, answered her phone.
Grady stared ahead, his view a chain-link fence, a patch of overgrown grass and weeds, and the tall redbrick wall of the building adjacent to the lot. To his right was the outdoor basketball court where he and Keane used to shoot hoops after a rough shift to blow off steam. Around the corner was the bar where they’d grab a beer and a burger. They’d bitch about their wives. When they were friends, more than once he’d thought, with a twinge of envy, that Keane was a really good-looking guy. Lean and muscular, sandy-blond hair and strong jaw, jewel-green eyes with girlish lashes. All the girls in the precinct brushed the hair out of their eyes, smiled too much, laughed too loudly when he was around. Stupid. If they knew what a dog he was, those smiles wouldn’t last long.
Little did Grady know that Sean would one day be making Clara smile and so much more. He saw them talking at the Christmas party. He noticed the way she tilted her head and twirled a strand of her hair. They’d fought about it, actually.
You shouldn’t be flirting at my fucking Christmas party. It’s unbecoming.