Stone flopped down in the chair opposite me, his collar open and his tie askew.He’d gotten a little heavier since I’d seen him last and it showed in his middle and in his face.
The other detective sat in the chair to my right.He looked mildly Asian and younger than me, with his dark black hair combed forward in the front.Red port wine splotches of birthmark stood out on his cheek.He wore a pair of thin, square glasses, which he adjusted several times after sitting down.
Stone pointed at him, but looked at me.“This is Detective Matsuda.I’m Detective Stone.”
I gave a short nod, but said nothing.
He turned to Matsuda.“This,” he said, pointing to me, “is Stefan Kopriva, formerly of the RCPD.”
Matsuda nodded, as if this was news to him.I knew better.This was an orchestrated dance, the steps to which the two of them had worked out before ever coming into this room.
“Steffie here is famous,” Stone went on.“Did you know that?”
Matsuda shook his head, turning a pencil slowly in his fingers.The sheet on the notepad in front of him remained blank.
“No?” Stone asked. “Well, let me educate you on a little River City police history.See, Steffie is actually famous for two reasons.Long about eleven years ago or so, we had us a pretty nasty serial robber.They called him Scarface on account of the long scar that ran here.”He drew his finger from above his brow down to his chin.“Scarface hit eighteen, maybe twenty convenience stores at gunpoint.He even shot at a cop one night after one of the robberies.Then he killed one of the clerks, some half-retarded kid.After that, the brass got serious on his ass and set up a task force to catch him.”
Stone leaned back and adjusted his tie.I stared at him flatly.
“You know that plaque out in the lobby, Richie?” he asked.“The one near the Front Desk?”
“The one that says ‘Fallen Heroes’ on it?”Matsuda’s voice had no accent.And though he seemed to know his lines, he wasn’t a great actor.
“Yep, that’s the one,” Stone said.“On that plaque is the name of one Police Officer First Class Karl Francis Winter.He was a friend of mine and this robber, this Scarface piece of shit, shot him dead one night on a traffic stop.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Young Steffie here watched Winter die, didn’t you?” Stone’s voice had grown hard.
I was there, I thought. I held Winter’s hand and watched the blood spread out from beneath him, black in the moonlight, resembling a pair of dark wings on the asphalt.
“You just sat that there like a dipshit rookie and watched the life bleed right out of him,” Stone said.
I didn’t answer.The doctors all said that Scarface’s bullet had nicked Winter’s aorta.They said he’d have probably died even if he’d fallen straight onto an operating table after being shot, with a host of emergency room doctors already scrubbed and prepped for surgery.
Even so, Stone’s words hit home.
“Scarface didn’t quit there, Richie,” Stone said, but he continued to look at me.“No, he was a heroin addict and we found out later that he was supporting at least two whores and their habits, too.So out he went again.Only the next time he came out of a store, our hero, this man right here, had the dumb luck to roll right up on the whole thing in progress.”
Matsuda sniffed, feigned contempt on his face.
“What were you pulling into the Circle K for, Steffie?”Stone asked, sneering.“There to get some Bubble Yum?Or maybe a dirty magazine?”
Coffee, I whispered inside my head.All I wanted was a cup of coffee.
Stone glanced over at Matsuda.“They had themselves a little gunfight.‘Shootout at the Circle K,’ they called it.Scarface got hit in the exchange, but Steffie couldn’t quite finish the job.Thomas Chisolm had to, didn’t he?”
My stomach burned.He was leaving a lot out, like the part about Isaiah Morris and his flunkie ambushing me from behind, but I didn’t bother correcting him.
“Chisolm?” Matsuda asked.“He was my last FTO before I got out on my own.”
“There was a real cop,” Stone said, turning back to me.“Tom Chisolm. He sure carried your water, didn’t he?”
I winced and rubbed my knee, trying to ignore the rising bile in my gut.
“You were the toast of the department there for a year or so, weren’t you?” he asked, shaking his head while he spoke.“A little hero in our midst.”
“I wasn’t a hero,” I said.“I just did what I had to do-“
“No,” he interrupted, “You’re right.I guess you weren’t a hero, after all.I think Amy Dugger would agree with that.She’d be about sixteen or seventeen right now, wouldn’t she?A perfect age for your newfound career.If she were alive, that is.”
Newfound career? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Stone turned to Matsuda.“I suppose you don’t know the Amy Dugger story, either.”
Matsuda shook his head, sticking to the script.
Stone gave me a look.“Rookies,” he sighed.“Take ‘em out of the uniform and put ‘em in the dick’s office and they act like rookies again.”
I didn’t respond.
Stone continued.“Amy Dugger was a little six-year-old girl that went missing one fine spring day in…what was it, Steffie?Ninety-five?Ninety-six?”
I shrugged.
“It was ninety-five,” Stone said.“I’m sure of it.Anyway, she was snatched up off the street by what turned out to be her own grandma.It was some messed up situation where the mom and the grandma were fighting each other and fighting over the kid.One or the other of the bitches was crazier than forty bastards, if I remember right.But the grandma was definitely a suspect.Not the prime suspect, not at first, but she definitely needed a talking to.”
Stone leaned in toward me.“And who else should they send, if not the hero from the Circle K?”
I ground my teeth, willing myself to remain still.
“Such a hero,” Stone muttered, then looked at Matsuda.“What do they teach in the Academy, Richie?Huh?If a suspect gives you permission to search, what do you always do?”
Matsuda responded immediately.“You always search.”
“Why?”
“Because the assholes give us permission all the time when they’re holding something.They think we won’t really search or we won’t find it.”
Stone nodded in agreement.“That’s right.But when Stef went to see Grandma and she gave him permission to search her house for little Amy Dugger, do you think he did?”
“No,” Matsuda said.“I don’t think he did.”
“Right again,” Stone said.“He didn’t.Even though Officer Jack Willow, who was a youngster at the time with less than a year on the street, argued and pleaded with him to do the search.But Steffie wouldn’t.No, he was a hero and heroes know best, don’t they?”
Stone fell silent and his sarcasm hung in the air.My jaw was clenched and I forced myself to relax it.I couldn’t let him get under my skin.That’s what this whole charade was about.He was enjoying himself, that much was certain, but the point of the whole thing was to get me off balance. Then he could attack me on whatever it was they were charging me with right now.
“The thing is,” Stone continued, “we eventually got around to figuring it was the grandma and her stupid pedophile husband who had kidnapped Amy.And rather than give her back to her mom, especially after what the husband had done, they killed her.They killed that little six-year-old girl.Can you believe that?”
Matsuda shook his head.“Terrible.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” Stone said.“The husband eventually copped to the whole thing.The kidnapping and how Grandma killed little Amy.He wouldn’t confess to the sex stuff, but DNA on her body took care of that.He told us everything else, though.He sat right there in a chair just like that one Steffie’s in and he spilled his guts.And you know what he said?”
“What?” Matsuda asked, on cue.