“Or not.” Carlyn unlooped her filmy scarf, draped it around her shoulders. “I still have difficulty believing that. Even though I know the truth.”
“Question is, what did she know?” Tuck said. “Ella. And if it was all a mistake-which is really the only explanation, isn’t it?-did she know why it happened?”
“And now,” Jane said, “both people who brought you two together are dead.” Jane had driven here with Tuck only to support her in this uncomfortable situation. Now, “uncomfortable” seemed an understatement. “I mean, were Brannigan and Finch allies? Or antagonists? Or is it all simply coincidence?”
Carlyn fussed with the scarf again, this time winding it around her neck, then tying the fringed ends. “Tuck? Should we join forces? See if we can get to the bottom of this? Your real birth mother is out there, somewhere.”
Tuck nodded. “Yes, and I-”
“And my daughter, too.” Carlyn went on. “Somewhere. Maybe waiting for me.”
A flock of sparrows wheeled outside the kitchen window, fluttering the snow from the pine branches. In the silence, Jane couldn’t think of what to say. Both women had such a loose end in their lives. A missing connection. Mom, she thought. Now that you’re gone, there’s a hole in the fabric of the universe. But at least we had our lives together.
“I may not be your mother, Tuck, but I can still be your friend,” Carlyn was saying. “How about a little surprise visit to the Brannigan? Together? And let’s just see who sent me the wrong girl.”
“And why.” Tuck nodded, almost smiling. “And yes. Together.”
Another riff of marimbas came from Jane’s tote bag. “Oh, sorry. I should probably take this call.”
Maybe it was Alex. She’d been feeling guilty, away from the office. Even though Alex had sent her away, she didn’t want him to think she was neglecting her job. Maybe he had a story assignment. Something she could be doing from home. Ugh. She should have thought of that.
But it wasn’t his photo on the screen. “Blocked,” it said.
“This is Jane.” She smiled, held up a palm at Carlyn and Tuck. Silly to answer the phone, but there it was. She could feel her smile fade as she listened.
“What?” Tuck leaned toward her, frowning as she watched. “You look like you’ve seen a-”
“Kind of dumb for you to leave home again,” the voice was saying. The same disturbing voice she’d heard two days ago on Cambridge Street after she’d left the Kinsale. Ominous. Hard. “Thought I made it clear you were to keep back from the Callaberry Street thing. Thought I told you I needed quiet. Okay, then, Miss Ryland. Are you all having fun out there in Connecticut? This is call number two.”
Jane stared at the now-silent phone.
“Who was that?” Tuck asked.
“Jane, are you all right?” Carlyn crossed to her, put a hand on her arm.
“I don’t know.” Jane answered both questions at once. She clenched the phone, white-knuckled, staring at the blank screen. The cat collar in her car. Her open door. The noise in the night. The phone calls. Jake. She had to call Jake.
55
“Is this day almost over?”
Jake needed another coffee, a couple thousand aspirin, a beer. And a vacation. Instead, he and DeLuca once again trudged up the front path of 343B Edgeworth Street, where Curtis Ricker used to live, trying to clean up someone else’s mess. Or maybe it was Jake’s own mess. Jake arrested Ricker for murder, and less than twenty-four hours later, Ricker was dead. Jake couldn’t shake the guilt.
“He must have done something, you know?” DeLuca crumpled his coffee cup, looked around as they walked, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “An innocent guy doesn’t do what he did. Set himself up to get shot.”
He must have done something. Jake hated that. A cop’s excuse for a bad collar. But in this case, he had to agree. Or was he rationalizing? Letting himself off the hook for what happened in the garage? Hennessey. What an asshole.
Kurtz had been given compassionate leave, and was already on her way to her mother’s on the South Shore. Covered in grease and soggy with basement grit, she’d clamped on her filthy hat and insisted to the Supe that she was fine, all set to go back on duty. The Supe ordered the rookie home, accompanied by an officer from Human Resources. They’d investigate her botched handling of the prisoner transport later.
Hennessey, all bluster and conquest, was in the hands of Internal Affairs. His weapon confiscated. His life on hold while IA investigated the shooting. “Moron deserved it,” Hennessey’d bellowed as two blue-suited IAs escorted him from the basement. “It was righteous.”
Curtis Ricker was in the morgue. But Kat McMahan didn’t have to make any decisions about his cause of death. Ten cops had watched him die.
“Jake.” DeLuca clamped a hand on Jake’s shoulder, stopping him just before they got to the front steps. Withdrew it, as if caught in a too-emotional gesture.
Jake had to smile. D was a good guy. Trying to help.
“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t your fault. Ricker. Hennessey lost it, no question, he’ll fry. Deserves it. The asshole. But you held it together. You did good. Ricker’d grabbed Kurtz. That’s a life sentence. He could have killed her. Would have. You saved her.”
Jake saw it again, the moment Kurtz ducked and rolled, the flash of relief, this worked. And then, from behind him, the shot. He’d looked at his own weapon for a weird twist of a second, wondering, Did I…? But he knew he hadn’t. The whole thing should never have happened.
“I appreciate it, D. Thanks. Now let’s see if we can find some next-of-kin information and get the hell out of here,” Jake said. “The DA’s deciding what to do about the Tillson murder case now that the guy we arrested for it is dead. We arrest someone else? Defense attorney’ll have a field day. Talk about reasonable doubt. No way anyone’ll be convicted of it. We better hope Ricker was guilty.”
“Or that someone confesses,” D said.
“Oh, yeah. That’s gonna happen.” This sucked beyond belief. Jake hadn’t been certain of Ricker’s guilt. As it turned out, the arrest had been Ricker’s death sentence. What’s more, if the real killer-the real killer?-was still out there, he was gonna walk.
They climbed the front steps to the wooden porch. No one had moved the soggy phone books. Water-soaked newspapers in yellow plastic bags still lay scattered in wet patches across the double-wide porch, like someone had gone on vacation and forgotten to stop delivery. Two rusty rectangular mailboxes, lids open, were attached to the dirt-streaked siding.
“He’s got mail,” DeLuca said. “Huh. Some in the ‘A’ mailbox, too.”
Jake shrugged, patted his pockets for the key to 343B. All of Ricker’s effects were in lockup, so they’d signed out the key. They still didn’t have the damn cell phone. Why had Ricker dunked it into the water? Not that it mattered at this point.
Jake slid the key into the front door, twisted it. D lagged behind.
“Ah,” D said.
“What?” Jake paused in the open door. “Hey. You can’t look at the mail, bro. It’s a federal-”
DeLuca handed him a white envelope.
“So arrest me,” D said. “But first, look at this. Electric bill. From the other side’s mailbox. Not Ricker’s.”
“Even worse,” Jake said.
“Jake.” DeLuca gave him a full-out eye roll. “Look at the damn letter. The letter to the empty side of the house.”
Jake took the envelope. Whatever. Addressed to-“Leonard Perl?”
“How about them apples,” DeLuca said.