"Sí."
"And who was there?"
"The girl, Señor Mike, and the boy."
"Andrew? The boy you identified in the lineup?"
"Sí."
Hardy took a breath. This wasn't good. If Salarco had seen Andrew at the house, close up, there was much less chance that he'd been mistaken at the lineup, or would recant at the trial. He sipped some beer to get his concern under control, and the question came out almost casually. "And what then? Did they tell you they'd stop fighting?"
A questioning look crossed Salarco's face.
"What is it?" Hardy asked.
But it passsed. "Nothing," Salarco said. "I don't know. But yes, they said they'd stop."
"And then it was quiet?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"No se. When the baby is crying, time just goes, you know. But again, we just got her to sleep again and Anna and I, we come out here, to this room, and turn on the TV, real quiet, but then there is this… this scream, the girl, and then a… a bump. You could feel it up here, like something dropped. The house shook. Then right after, a crash, the sound of a crash, glass breaking. And a few seconds later, suddenly boom again, the house shakes another time, somebody slamming the front door under us."
Salarco on his feet now, acting it out. "Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. He stops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to… to yell at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying. Madre de dios!" Salarco, living it again, turned to Hardy and put both hands to his head. "Is it never going to end?"
"And then?"
"Then I… remember, I am… I have no sleep and my baby has been crying for ten hours straight. I run downstairs. I go to yell at them all, but when I hit the front door, I hit it with a fist and it… it opens." His hands hung at his side. "And I see them."
"Mooney and the girl?"
"Sí. On the floor, with so much blood. I walk in. The girl is shot, I think, in the chest, and is by the back wall. There is a big stand-up lamp knocked on the floor, broken, all smashed, next to her, but there is still light above and from in the cocina. And Señor Mike is on his back with a hole in his face. I will never forget."
"No," Hardy said. "I'm sorry."
Salarco crossed back to the couch, sat now on the edge of it. He seemed to remember his beer and picked it up, drained it, looked across to Hardy. "Otros?"
Hardy hadn't put much of a dent in his first beer, and didn't want another, but he wanted to keep Salarco talking. "Gracias. Sí."
When he came back with the two cold ones, he put them on the coffee table and began without any prompting. "So the phone is there, and I go to it and push nine one one, and tell what I see, where I am. And while I am talking, I notice the gun on the little table in front of the couch." He leaned forward, knocked wood. "Just the same as this one."
"And then what did you do?"
"Then I see how bad this looks, me in this room with the gun. I think the boy, maybe he's going to come back. If he sees I am there, he can say it was me."
"What was you?"
"Who killed these people."
"Why would you have done that?"
Salarco turned his palms up. "The noise. I already come down one time to stop it. Maybe next time, I bring the gun and make sure. Then the woman on the phone, she tries more to get my name, and the other thing comes to me, la migra. I know I have to go. I cannot be there when the authorities come. So I come back up here and watch out the window until the boy comes back, and the authorities."
"You mean Andrew again?"
"Sí."
"You saw him under the streetlight there out the window?"
"Sí."
"The same boy? You're sure."
Salarco put down his beer bottle, turned and faced Hardy directly. "I'm sorry, señor, but it was him. The same hair, the same clothes…"
"And what were they, the clothes?"
"Like all of them wear. I don't know how you say… loose?"
"Baggy?"
Salarco nodded. "Sí. The pants, baggy. And then the…" He made a gesture of pulling something over his head. "Like Eminem in the movie."
"You mean he had a hood? A sweatshirt with a hood?"
"Sí. That was it."
"And even with the hood, you saw his face? And it was the same face?"
After the shortest pause, Salarco nodded. "Sí. Of course. It was the same boy, I say."
Hardy believed him. In fact, it had to be Andrew returning from his walk, or from wherever he had gone. Perhaps having run away and then realizing he'd left the gun, which could be traced back to him. Looking up, Hardy caught a glimpse of Salarco's wife hovering in the doorway back to the kitchen. He might have to talk to her one day as well, but for tonight, he took a last pull from his beer, then stood up. "I want to thank you for your time. You've been very helpful."
"I am sorry about the boy, señor. Truly I am."
"Thank you," Hardy said. "I am, too."
16
It was well past nine o'clock by the time Glitsky sat down to dinner at the small table in his kitchen.
Treya had gotten good at meals that took fifteen minutes to prepare, and she waited until she heard his tread on the steps up to their duplex before she threw the halibut on to broil in the oven. When she turned it the one time, she would smear it with jalapeño jelly, which would melt, forming a fantastic glaze. The asparagus sat in a shallow covered pan with a quarter inch of boiling water. She'd finish that with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sea salt. A small, still warm, dense loaf of homemade bread-machine bread- roasted-garlic with Asiago cheese- would round out the meal, after which they'd split a plate of frozen grapes for dessert.
Glitsky had fed Rachel in her high chair and for the past few minutes had been doing magic tricks, making a quarter disappear. Now Treya put the adult plates down. "Arranged yet," he said. She'd garnished with a few sprigs of fresh rosemary. A crystal vase sat between the place mats on the small wooden table, and in it bloomed one perfect daffodil.
Glitsky put a finger on his daughter's nose, turned to his food and picked up his fork. "Do I thank you enough for doing all this?"
Treya kissed the top of his head. "Every day." She touched her baby's cheek. "You gave me her, didn't you?" She came around the table and took her seat. "Now shush and eat your fish. It's brain food."
"I'd better, then. I'm going to need it." He chewed, swallowed. "This Boscacci thing."
"At least it's not LeShawn Brodie. I checked, and you'd dropped right off the news tonight, just like it never happened."
"Fresh kill," Glitsky said. "Anyhow, you'll be glad to hear Amy Wu's almost certainly out of it."
"She was never really in, though, was she?"
"No, not really, although she could have timed her last meeting with Allan a little better. The real story, though, is that because of her, I got to give Diz a little grief."
Treya smiled. "Always a plus."
"And even more so because I swung by his office to give him his earful of righteous cop, and while I was there, I found a way to repay him for his little caper with my peanut drawer."
"I thought you weren't sure who that was."
"I wasn't, then I realized it had to be Diz. No one else is that immature."
"I can think of one other person," she said.
The corners of Glitsky's mouth rose a fraction of an inch. "Thank you," he said. "Plus, anybody at the Hall, it's too risky if I catch them. They're flayed, then fired. Diz, I get him red-handed and he says, 'Ha ha, you got me, so what?' It was him."