28
Wednesday, July 12, 4:43 P.M.
Las Piernas Police Department
In the end, Pete had helped him. He tried to keep that in mind now as he faced renewed sullenness in the office.
Frank had stopped Pete in the hallway before he came into the homicide room. Pete had assured him that none of the others knew the details of Frank’s afternoon. They knew that Pete had been sent on an arson call, but when he returned long before Frank, he pretended that there had been nothing to it — a questionable case of arson with no one hurt. He gave out no exact addresses and no names. A waste of time, he told them.
“No one asked why I hadn’t come back?”
“I told them I talked to you on the phone, that you’d be in later. Reed asked if you had had a chance to see if the face was as good as the figure for the babe in the black veil. I told him she was one of the cop-hating Nereaults.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
But Pete just shook his head and walked away without another word.
Even before he went to his desk, Frank knew he was in for more of the chill. The men in that room were expert observers. None of them would have missed the change in Pete’s mood regarding his partner. It would quickly become contagious.
When he arrived at the scene of the fire, Pete had been concerned for his partner’s safety, but that had quickly given way to anger over the fact that Frank had not told him where he was going that afternoon. He dismissed outright Frank’s theory that someone from the department had been the arsonist, and was infuriated that Frank could imagine such a thing to be true.
“It’s Whitey Dane’s bunch — you can bet on it,” Pete said.
Elena, who had been using Frank’s cell phone to call her insurance agent, said, “What about Dane?”
Pete remembered her, and Frank watched his manner change in the way it often did with women. Pete was short and balding, yet seldom failed to charm a woman. He was crazy about his wife — a gorgeous Amazon of a woman — and as far as Frank knew, Pete hadn’t ever strayed after marrying Rachel. But Baird enjoyed flirting with good-looking women, and he was all solicitude to Elena. Still, it wasn’t until Pete became aware of Seth, and became protective of him, that Frank was sure of Pete. By the time Elena and Seth moved off to beg the firefighters to allow them to retrieve a few essential items from the condo, Pete was saying, “You know, that kid is as sharp as his old man.”
Frank raised a brow.
“Oh, he’s Phil’s kid, all right. At the funeral, I thought maybe he was a nephew, speaking French with Lefebvre’s sister and all. Now I see him with Elena, I see a little of her, a little of him. Has Phil’s eyes. And no matter how I feel about Phil, it’s still a damn shame. I mean, a kid ought to know his dad.”
“Yes,” Frank said, thinking of the sugar in the fuel tanks of Lefebvre’s plane.
“Tell me what you want me to do for them,” Pete said.
So Frank had asked him to keep secrets. Knowing Pete, it was the most difficult of requests, simply because he would honor it, contrary though it was to his talkative nature. Being trustworthy meant something to Pete, and realizing that, Frank said, “I knew you wouldn’t want to hear any of this or be involved in it. I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re willing to do this for Seth and Elena.”
“I’m doing this because you’re my partner,” Pete said. “You know what pisses me off, Frank? How easily you forget that.” He walked away.
Frank thought of shouting after him that Pete’s own memory hadn’t been so great lately, but held back. For all the satisfaction that might give him, he had to consider Seth’s and Elena’s safety.
Frank spent two hectic hours helping Seth and Elena before they were settled at his house. Because of the damage to the stairs and the beams above the garage, the fire department had declared the condo out-of-bounds. Responding to Elena’s pleas and the careful description of where she had left it, one of the firefighters had brought her wallet out to her.
Frank drove Seth and Elena to a pet store, where they bought a cage and some food for the guinea pig. Next to a drugstore for basic toiletries. Frank dropped off the roll of film from the funeral, then came back for it when they finished shopping at a department store for a few articles of plain but essential clothing. Both Elena and Seth changed out of their clothes at the store — Frank, still reeking of smoke, envied them.
Neither Seth nor Elena had taken long to make their purchases. Soon they were on their way to the house — where the cage proved useful in saving the guinea pig from the attentions of Irene’s cat, Cody. Seth and the dogs formed an immediate mutual admiration society. The boy was given the guest room; Elena said she would opt for the couch. Frank showered and changed clothes, but he could still smell nothing but smoke.
The strain of the day was telling on all of them, but on Seth especially, who fell asleep sitting next to Elena on the couch. Frank carried him into the guest room and tucked him in.
“You sure your wife won’t mind our staying here?” Elena asked as he prepared to go back to the office.
“No,” Frank said. “She’ll be happy we’re able to do something for Phil Lefebvre’s son.”
He had tried several times to call Irene to warn her about their guests and had ended up leaving a message on her voice mail at work.
Back at his desk, he quickly sorted through the paperwork that had accumulated on it during the day. He was leaving to go down to the property room when Reed dared to speak to him.
“Going to play hockey tomorrow night?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Frank said, thinking of his houseguests and all the work that lay before him.
“You sick?” Reed asked. “You sound awful.”
“Mild laryngitis. I’m fine.”
“Our team doesn’t mean shit to him,” Vince said, and no one thought he was talking about hockey.
“Vince…” Reed said in a warning tone.
“I’ll be there if I can,” Frank said.
“No, do what you want to do on your own,” Vince said. “Besides, you’re a lousy fucking defenseman. We won’t miss you.”
It was true, Frank thought. He’d only been playing a year.
“Make up your mind, Vince,” Pete said. “Is he fucking up all your beautiful teamwork or can you manage defense all by yourself?”
“What’s with you?” Vince said, obviously feeling betrayed.
Pete glanced at Frank, then said, “Nothing. Lieutenant’s been chewing my ass out. But what’s new with that? I swear, if I’m ever killed by a bomb, just go looking through the rubble for an ass. If the bite marks on it match Carlson’s dental records, it’s mine!”
The others laughed, but Vince said, “Jesus, Baird, what the hell are you dreaming up? Who’d want to look for you, let alone hunt for your ass?”
“I see you eyeing it all the time, Vince. In fact, from now on, I’m putting my hockey gear on at home.”
Frank shook his head and made his way out of the room as Vince did his best to recover lost yardage. Frank figured that after fifteen years of this kind of exchange, Vince should have realized that he didn’t stand a chance. If they stayed true to form, they would ridicule each other unmercifully for another twenty minutes or so.
He revised this thought — not unmercifully, really. If the subject was sexual prowess, stature, physique, hair loss, or nationality, virtually no insult was forbidden. But there were certain taboos. While Pete’s first wife was fair game, Rachel was not. Neither was Vince’s current — and fifth — wife, Amie. Vince’s kids were never the subject of a joke Vince didn’t make himself. Three of Vince’s four ex-wives could be joked about, but not his second one, Lisa, the one who had spent the last twelve years in a psych ward. Lisa was totally off-limits.