Before I Sleep (34 page)

It was Seamus who had suggested they wait for Wieberneit to get outside before they approached one of his neighbors for questioning. They wanted the man to see what was going on, and maybe get nervous.

Barney Wieberneit was a solidly built man, still straight and powerful-looking in his early seventies. He had steel gray hair and a square, pugnacious jaw.

“I can see him as a Marine in WWII,” said Gil. “Bet he was a gunny.”

“Probably.” Seamus, who'd done his own time in Marine green in his reckless youth, recognized the type. They sometimes got the notion they were a law unto themselves.

Herman Glowinsky was the man they were going to see first. Rico had felt that if Wieberneit had actually killed Mayberry, Glowinsky would be the one most closely involved.

“He's seen us,” Gil said.

Indeed he had. Wieberneit had paused by the flower bed and was staring openly at them. Good neighborhood watch activity.

“Let's go.” Seamus climbed out of the car first and stood on the sidewalk. He was about twenty feet from Wieberneit. “Excuse me,” he called to the man. “I'm Seamus Rourke, St. Pete PD. Are you Herman Glowinsky?”

“No.” The man continued to stare.

“Which house does he live in?”

“You got some ID?”

Seamus obligingly produced his shield.

“Over there,” Wieberneit said with a jerk of his head. “He got a problem?”

Seamus smiled. “We just want to ask him a few questions. Thanks for your help.”

Together he and Gil walked to Glowinsky's front door, feeling Wieberneit's gaze on them every step of the way.

The door was answered by a fragile-looking woman with thin white hair and a wide, warm smile. “Can I help you?”

Seamus showed his shield while Gil explained that they wanted a word with Mr. Glowinsky about the Mayberry murder.

The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Glowinsky and invited them inside. In a matter of two minutes, they found themselves comfortably seated with tall glasses of iced tea and a plate of cookies, and a view of a small swimming pool full of sparkling blue water.

“Herman's in the garage,” she said. “He's building a cradle for our next grandchild, who's due in two weeks. He's built a cradle for each of the grandchildren, you know. They'll make wonderful heirlooms. I'll just go get him.”

“Hell,” said Gil, after she left them alone. “These are good people.”

“So was Mayberry.”

Gil nodded, but Seamus suspected he wasn't any happier about this than he was himself. If it turned out that the good folks of this neighborhood were the bad guys after all, it wasn't going to feel very good.

Herman Glowinsky joined them just a couple of minutes later. He was a small man, lean like his wife, and stooped around the shoulders, but there was no mistaking the vitality in his step, or the strength in his arms and shoulders. His wife brought him a glass of iced tea and handed it to him as soon as he was seated in a wicker chair. She sat beside him, her knees primly together, and her hands folded in her lap.

“We have a few questions about the murder that happened here two months ago,” Seamus said.

Glowinsky nodded. His wife's hands fluttered in her lap.

“We understand you started a neighborhood watch because drug activity was spilling over into this area.”

The old man nodded again. “They were standing out there, at the mouth of the street, brazen as you please, and walking through our neighborhood as if they owned it But it wasn't just the dealers. It was the kind of people they brought with them.”

“It was terrible,” Mrs. Glowinsky said. “It used to be so peaceful here. We hardly ever needed the police. Maybe that's why they came here in the first place.”

“They move around a lot,” Gil said. He sipped his tea and complimented Mrs. Glowinsky. “Once we start cracking down on them in one area, they move to another.”

“That's what I said,” Herman agreed with a nod. “I said all we had to do was stay on the streets so they knew we were watching, and ask the police to come here more often, and they'd move on. The whole reason they came here in the first place was that it got too hot over on Twenty-second.”

“Probably,” Seamus agreed with a nod.

“But it was scary,” Mrs. Glowinsky said. “I didn't even want to drive by myself because they'd shout things at me when I drove past. At least after we started the watch, and started doing things in groups, they weren't as threatening.”

Seamus set his tea down on the low glass table and pulled out his notebook, pretending to peruse it. “Unfortunately,” he said slowly, “we've received some… information. It has been suggested to us that the neighborhood watch might have done more than watch.”

The Glowinskys exchanged quick looks.

Herman spoke, his voice cracking. “I don't know what you mean.”

“No?”

Gil leaned forward. “Really, we can understand why you might have felt as if you were under siege. People ought to feel safe in their own homes, and ought to feel safe on their own streets. And we know how intimidating these scum can be. Heck, you couldn't ever be sure one of them wouldn't pull a gun just because he didn't like the way you looked.”

“That's right,” Herman said flatly. He put his tea glass down sharply, for emphasis. “Do you know what it's like to know your wife is being terrorized by some young punk? And that man who was shot—well, I don't care what the papers say, he was probably one of them. He'd been around here a lot.”

“Herman …” His wife reached out a hand and gripped his forearm. She looked apologetically at the detectives. “He has high blood pressure. Besides, we all feel awful about that young man. Maybe he wasn't the hoodlum who was hanging out on the corner all the time with his friends. But he
did
look like the one who was. Maybe one of the other drug dealers made a mistake?”

“Or maybe,” said Seamus, “somebody in the neighborhood watch made a mistake?” He noted how Herman's face paled. “Someone like Barney Wieberneit?”

Herman's face was now chalky, and his breath sounded labored. “I don't know what you mean.”

Seamus nodded and closed his notebook. “We're going to find the person who did this, Mr. Glowinsky. Rest assured. And I
do
understand why the neighborhood would want to protect him.”

But Herman didn't say another word.

Outside, they found that Barney Wieberneit was still in his yard, watering the flowers with a watering can. They walked over to him, and he set the pot down.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Seamus answered. “We need you to come down to the station with us, Mr. Wieberneit.”

He nodded, his jaw setting. “Can I tell my wife I'm leaving?”

“Sure. You won't be gone long. Only an hour, if that. We just need to ask you some questions.”

Wieberneit looked at him. “You're not fooling me. I knew you'd find out it was me sooner or later. It was nice of my neighbors not to say anything, but I knew you'd figure it out. I didn't mean to kill him, you know. I only wanted to scare him.”

It was well after midnight when Seamus got home. The long day and lack of sleep were definitely catching up with him, and he found himself thinking that if Mary hadn't died, she probably would have divorced him by now. No woman in her right mind would want to live with a man whose hours were as long and as unpredictable as his sometimes were.

Between one breath and the next, the thought caught him like a punch to the solar plexus, washing away his fatigue in a sudden flood of … what? Guilt? Pain? He couldn't even tell. All he knew was that something inside him felt as if it were on the edge of a major explosion.

He stood there shaking like a dog caught in a thunderstorm, and he didn't even know why. He couldn't move, he couldn't stand the feeling, and he didn't know what the hell to do about it.

Then he heard himself draw a gasping, ragged breath, as the will to live reasserted itself over shock, and his brain started working again.

Mary would have left anyway.

The thing he had refused to admit for seven years was staring him in the face like a grinning death's-head.

Mary would have left anyway.

And that was why he felt so damn guilty. It was why he'd kept Carey at a distance that had eventually killed their relationship. No, it wasn't Carey's mouth, or the tough time she'd been having at the end there, or anything else she had done. It had been
him.
Just him.

Mary would have left anyway.

The signs had been there for months, starting just before Seana's birth. Mary had begun talking about how he could be anything in the world he wanted to be, that he didn't have to be a cop forever. She had started complaining about his hours. In a thousand little ways, she had let him know that she didn't like his job and that she wasn't happy with the way they were living.

She hadn't come right out and said it. She hadn't threatened to leave. She had just hinted in a woman's gentle way, like water dripping on stone, planting ideas as she tried to bring him around to her way of thinking. And he, not really catching on to the deep discontent she was trying to express, had laughed the hints off and said he was born to die a cop.

Her response had been that a dead cop made a lousy father.

And he hadn't caught it. He'd thought she was just complaining the way wives will. The way his mother had about his dad's long absences. But his mother had never left his dad, and so he hadn't taken it seriously.

Big mistake. An even bigger mistake, maybe, than not being home the night Seana was taken ill. He'd been blind to his wife's discontent.

But only on a conscious level, it seemed, for as the sewer of his unconscious opened up to show him exactly what he'd been steadfastly ignoring, he discovered that he felt guilty for Mary's death because he had ignored her. Because his selfishness might have directly contributed to her despair. Because he feared she had hanged herself not only because of grief over their child, but because of the way he had abandoned her emotionally.

Jesus. Oh, Jesus.

Grief gripped him, squeezing his chest so hard that he could barely breathe. But even as he gave in to the full realization of his part in the tragedy, some soothing wind in his mind whispered the truth:
Mary would have left anyway.

And somewhere in the dark night of his soul, he understood something else. He had lost his daughter, but only because Seana hadn't been in her car seat, and because a drunk driver had hit the car. It hadn't been
his
fault at all.

He had lost his wife, but he hadn't handed her the rope she had used, or even suggested her suicide. She had made that decision herself. Instead of turning to him with her grief, she had turned away. He, too, had been swamped in the anguish of loss and guilt, but he hadn't killed himself. And while he may not have offered enough support to Mary after Seana's death, she had offered him none at all.

His wife had made her own fatal decisions, from the choice not to put Seana in her car seat, to the choice to end her life. And it was time to stop taking full responsibility for things over which he had had no control.

What he needed to do, what he had to do, was cure the fault that
was
under his control—the distance he put between himself and the people he loved.

Sometime later, after he got a handle on his emotions and showered away the day's sweat, he pulled out the photo albums. Sitting in the lamplight in his living room, he looked at them for the first time since Seana's death and let himself relive it all, good and bad.

He would miss Seana forever, he realized. But Mary—

Mary had nearly killed something in him by her actions, and he found now, as he looked at photographs of her, that he had long since let her go.

It was over.

At quarter to nine in the morning, freshly showered and shaved, Seamus called Carey. “Did you get the governor?” he asked.

“You're kidding, right? The best thing I got was a promise that somebody would call me back first thing Monday morning.”

“You're doing okay. They wouldn't promise to call
me
back at all.”

“What about Jamie? Have you got anything?”

“His picture's on the street. He'll have to hide under a rock to avoid notice.”

“Thank God. Four days, Seamus.”

He didn't respond to that. What could he possibly say? “I'm going to visit my dad this morning. Want to get together afterward?”

He heard the hesitation and couldn't blame her. He'd hurt her enough before. Why would she want a second round?

“All right,” she said. “Let's go to the beach, okay? If I don't spend a little time getting some rays and unwinding, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown by Monday morning.”

“You and me both. Listen, sweetie. Everyone's really serious about finding Jamie. Everyone knows what's at stake. It's all we can do right now.”

“Yeah. Okay. When do you want to meet?”

“Say I pick you up at noon? Want me to bring a picnic?”

“I'll take care of the picnic, Seamus. You go see your dad.”

Danny Rourke was sitting on the patio out behind the treatment center. A molded plastic chair seemed almost to swallow him. He'd shrunk, Seamus thought. He'd shrunk even more since being admitted.

But for the first time in years, Danny's eyes weren't bloodshot, and his hands weren't trembling. He was wearing pajamas and a robe, despite the warmth of the morning, and had found himself a patch of sun to sit in.

Danny probably spent a lot of time out here, Seamus thought. His dad had lived most of his life outdoors, and hated being cooped up.

“Seamus.”

“Dad.” He pulled up another molded plastic chair and sat facing his father. “You look good.” Better than he had in a while. In fact, for the first time in a long time, he looked into Danny's eyes and saw a spark of the man his father had once been. “They treating you well?”

“Well enough.” Danny smiled. “I don't remember much about the first few days.”

“Probably just as well. How are you feeling?”

Danny nodded. “Better, son. Better. The IRS thing …”

Shit, thought Seamus, he had completely forgotten about it. “Carey was talking to them about negotiating a settlement. She'll come up with something more reasonable.”