Weir followed the line of Blodgett’s pointing finger, up the bay-front to Becky Flynn’s dock. Her boat — once our boat, Weir thought — rocked against her lines.
“I don’t understand anything anymore, Weir,” said Blodgett. “I’m getting to the point where there’s too many things I don’t want to know.”
They headed back into the house.
Dennison broke away from Ernesto Cruz and came over to Jim. His suit was a dark blue chalk-stripe, expensive, but cut too tight around his barrel chest. His eyebrows were furrowed, his face flushed. From captain to interim chief to mayor, all in one year, thought Jim. But Brian could pull it off. His confidence was astounding, contagious. And somehow — maybe it was his face, or his modest public demeanor, or maybe it was the perpetual air of the underdog that Dennison employed so disarmingly — you forgave him the sin of ambition. You wanted to root for him.
He rested a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “What a day. I’m awful sorry, Jim. It was a lovely service, for what it’s worth.”
“What have you gotten from the tie tack?”
“Ann’s blood, no prints. We’re still working on a trace, but nothing yet.”
Weir was aware of the men looking over at him again, trying to appear as if they weren’t.
“Kind of like yours, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figured some genius would make that point. The difference is, mine wasn’t found with Ann.”
Dennison reached down and fingered his tie tack. It was a dark blue stone set in gold.
“God knows where Ruff really found it,” said the chief. “For right now, I’ll believe him. He’s a great witness, don’t you think?”
Jim followed his hooking thumb to where Ruff was attempting to stuff a bottle of rum down his pants. He wouldn’t put down his drink to do it, though: It sloshed in one hand as he aimed the bottle through his waistband with the other. He swayed like a man in a hurricane.
Weir caught the laughter from the cop corner as Dennison glanced with satisfaction toward his men.
Becky angled her way over to Jim and Dennison. Weir could feel the interim chief stiffen at her approach. Whatever she and Virginia had been hatching must have worked out, thought Jim; there’s a glow on her. The warmth of the room had brought a fine glistening to her upper lip and cheeks, and her wavy brown hair had loosened in the humidity. She offered her hand to Dennison, who took it with a formal smile. “Tough precinct for you,” she said.
“It sure is.”
“It’s the heart of the city.”
“It’s a big city, Ms. Flynn.”
“Really it’s just a small town, Chief. It needs to be treated that way, by people who care about it.”
“We’ll see what the people think in June.”
Becky made a show of looking out over the crowd, settling on the cop corner. “Which one of them did it?”
Dennison actually choked on something, washing it quickly down with a sip from his drink. “What?”
“Come on, Chief,” she said, turning an inquisitive smile on him. “Everybody knows what Ruff saw. Everybody knows you put Jim here on the case — the department’s case. Everybody knows your secretary copied the time cards and personnel files so Jim could take a look at your people. Like I said, this is a small town.”
Dennison’s unsure eyes found Jim, and Becky heard the unspoken line.
“He didn’t tell me a goddamned thing, Brian,” she said. “He kept his end of the deal. So I’m asking you.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to know if you’re going to continue investigating this case or not.”
“Of course we are.”
“After you get Goins?”
“It’s up to the DA after that. If he indicts, our work is done. You can’t prosecute two people if only one of them is guilty.”
“Exactly,” said Becky.
“We’ve already got a solid case against him, and we haven’t even talked to him yet,” said Dennison. “D’Alba’s given the green light to George Percy. Percy’s satisfied they can indict on what we’ve got now.”
Weir remembered George Percy, an Orange County assistant district attorney, from his days with Sheriffs. He was a lithe, good-humored man with thick black hair that cascaded down onto his brow like a cheap hairpiece, which it wasn’t. In court, he was courteous, disingenuous, and cunning when he needed to be. There was something about him of the front porch, the family picnic, the station wagon. Juries liked him because he reminded them that the state i was made up of people just like them: a little bewildered, a little overworked, and, of course, outraged at what had happened.
Becky laughed, curling her mouth up in a mocking smile. It was the look that, when turned on Jim, had always brought his blood to a boil. The sheer depth of its disdain made the ground shift under you. “Saying he can indict doesn’t mean he can, and pulling it off still leaves him with a long, hot jury trial to handle.”
“What’s this,” asked Dennison, “you think Goins is innocent?”
Becky shrugged. “Let’s include that on our debate topics.”
Dennison colored. “I’m looking into that.”
“Got to get Paris’s expert opinion on whether you should talk in public? You’re going to have to start guiding your own ship, Chief. Your hesitation on the issues is starting to show.”
No wonder he doesn’t want to argue with her in public, thought Jim; she’d cannibalize him.
“Don’t confuse hesitation with prudence and good judgment,” said Dennison.
“I don’t know how you got them into the same sentence, Chief.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Come on... let’s debate. Let’s fire up this election.”
“Politics isn’t a spectator sport for me, Ms. Flynn — it’s serious business.”
Becky nodded, a little condescendingly, Weir thought. “I should think that bringing a case against Horton Goins would be pretty frivolous business,” she said. “No physical evidence putting him at the scene; an eyewitness — undependable as he may be — who saw a cop. No motive except his own illness, which you can’t use because Goins already did his time and took his cure. We get a change of venue out of Orange County, half your steam goes out.”
Weir suddenly realized what Becky was saying. He felt himself blink. Becky Flynn had never, not once in her life, lost her ability to astonish him.
It took Dennison another moment to get it. “You’re going to defend him?”
“I intend to. If you catch him before you kill him, that is. I’ve already talked to his parents.”
What does she know, thought Weir. It’s an incredible risk, unless she knows something that we don’t.
Dennison’s battered expression indicated the scope of his discomfort. He looked toward his men again, a reflexive search for Paris, Weir decided. “Then I guess we don’t have a lot to talk about,” he said.
“I’ll get it through discovery anyway,” she said.
Dennison nodded, then bowed slightly, a gesture intended to be courtly but that came off instead as backwoods and clunky. “Good luck with the election, Ms. Flynn,” he said. “And the trial.” Weir could see the fury building in Dennison’s eyes.
“Give the people of this town a debate,” she said. “It’s the least you can do with Cantrell’s bankroll behind you.”
“My financing is no secret,” he said. “Everything’s above the board.”
“Except who that diamond tie tack belongs to.” Becky fingered the sapphire stone that held Dennison’s tie to his shirt. “Could be anyone.”
Dennison’s mouth parted for a beat, before he turned and walked away. Becky looked at Jim impishly, the same expression Ann used to get when as kids they’d put masking tape on the kittens’ feet. She took a sip of her drink, then a longer one, then finished it right down to the ice. She leaned up close to Jim. The musky smell of perfume and sweat enclosed him. “Virginia and I found out who ordered the roses for Ann,” she whispered. The end of her tongue, cooled by ice, slid very lightly along the outline of his ear.