Shadow Season (21 page)

It’s a good plan except he trips and slams into something that tears his shirt practically off his back. The wind deafens and disorients him. He does an awkward somersault in midair and lands in a two-foot-high bank. He’s gone over the hedges bordering the front walk of the Carriage House.

Pudge is on top of him in a second, huffing loudly. Finn drives the blade deep into Pudge’s face and twists. Feels like he’s gone up through the roof of his mouth and into the cranial cavity. Finn’s hands are suddenly hot and a burst of steam blasts against his chin. A crazed dying squeal escapes Pudge’s lips and he hacks up blood into Finn’s face. Finn spits it back.

It tastes of sunshine. The killing blizzard grows brilliant with Finn’s life.

THE CAR BOMB THAT GOT RAY
takes off the last two toes of his left foot, sends some shrapnel into his ass, and burns away his eyebrows and most of his hair.

It happens the morning he’s supposed to be deposed for Carlyle’s trial. The DA goes on without him. Finn’s called up and spends his time on the stand coming to the conclusion that Ray had planted the bomb himself. Ray’s done such a good job of it, totaling the car but barely being hurt, that Finn wonders if Ray wired the DA’s wife’s car too.

As with any bad marriage, there are still appearances to be kept up. Finn shows up at the hospital later that afternoon with flowers and a handful of books. Dani’s already at Ray’s bedside, talking animatedly about North Carolina. She thinks Ray wants to retire now and live off his disability.

Finn walks in and she says, “You’ve got to find the people who did this. You’ve got to find them and kill them.”

Finn says, “Sure.”

He puts the flowers on Ray’s chest and Ray sniffs them once then holds them out to Dani, who is starting to cry as she heads off to find a vase.

She wants Finn to kill the bad guys. It’s not to get revenge for Ray, but because she knows the trouble is hitting closer to home. She’s giving him the green light to do what he has to do to protect their home, to make certain they’ll be safe.

A lot of wives, they’d tell their husbands to buckle down. Take the cash. Lie on the stand. Lose the evidence. But Dani knows that for Finn, the lesser of two evils is to pull the trigger.

“How’d it go?” Ray asks.

“About what you’d expect. Shouldn’t you be on your stomach letting your ass get some air?”

“They’ve got me so numbed up I wouldn’t feel it if they drove a Lionel train set up my wazoo. I’m supposed to be turned on my side but I worry that in mixed company my johnny might come up to take a peek.”

“Anyone who might be interested in that will be turned off by your blistered noggin.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I probably would.”

Ray’s got a .38 only half-slid under his right leg, ready to pull it if an unfriendly face shows up.

“They took their run at me. You’ll be next.”

There’s no reason for Carlyle or anybody else to come after Finn unless Ray’s been telling lies. He’s probably getting paid twice as much as the rest of the blues on the take, pretending Finn’s been in on every underhanded deal. It’s a joke that actually makes Finn chuckle. The cops think he’s too clean and the mob figures he’s dirty up to his neck. No wonder Ray wanted to pop the whole crew. In his own way, maybe he was protecting Finn. When he wasn’t thinking about icing him.

The nurse shows up to give Ray his meds. There’s six little cups of pills. She says something quietly to Ray that sends him into his
if I laugh loudly enough I might get laid
laugh. He swallows the medication and sips the water she offers him like it’s champagne. She rubs some salve on the bald eyebrow ridges.

As she passes Finn he notes that her eyes are dilated. Her shoulders are a bit slumped. He thinks downers, but nowadays some heavy antidepressant or even Ritalin will do the same trick.

She tells Finn, “I’m Rose but everyone calls me Roz.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Why what?”

“Why do they call you Roz if it’s not your name?” She considers it a second. “I suppose because I let them.”

He gets the feeling that she’s telling him some kind of a secret but he can’t imagine what the hell it could be.

“Are you the cop who’s going to catch the bad guys who did this?” she asks.

“Catch them and kill them,” Finn says.

Over his next few visits he notices that Roz comes around to see Ray about twice as much as she hits the other patients’ rooms. She even gets in on a couple of the photo ops. Reporters quiz Ray about what happened and how it ties in with the Carlyle case. Ray never takes the “no comment” route—he talks a lot but doesn’t say much. Roz poses provocatively lying next to him in his hospital bed. One, sometimes two extra buttons on her uniform are undone. She’s got nice cleavage. The media guys eat it up. Ray eats it up. The hospital administration doesn’t.

She takes a lot of heat. She’s already got a strike against her because she’s had some trouble with meds on the job, but nowadays they don’t fire you outright for that sort of thing. They send you to rehab. She flirts hard with Ray and to a lesser extent with Finn, cocking her hips and flashing little fuck-me grins. Danielle notices and rolls her eyes.

At home she tells him, “That one, I know the type. She’s going to cause some serious troubles. Mark these words.”

“Consider them marked,” Finn says.

Roz is twenty-seven and has never been married. She came close once but the guy ran out at the last minute to do a drug deal in Mexico, where he was shot-gunned out of his boots by
federales
. Finn learns all of this over the course of an afternoon while having coffee with her in the hospital cafeteria during her break. She’s eager to talk. He likes her voice, the oddball way she sees things, even the shit she gets into. It’s an aggressively forged, kooky kind of path.

A couple of infections have set into Ray’s foot and it gets a little dicey as to whether he’ll lose it or not. Ray shows no fear through any of it. He’s pretty mellowed out, says the drugs are good and Finn should try them.

Finn’s been getting a fair amount of pressure from all corners during the Carlyle trial. Nobody believes he knows as little about the inner workings of the organization as he does. He thinks, Maybe a half a stick of dynamite affixed to the undercarriage of my car, a little shrapnel in the ass, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

IAD comes around to ask questions. They know the precinct is deep in Carlyle’s pockets and they’re on a
scouting mission to see who’s taking what. Ray stonewalls, pretending to be too loaded on pain meds to give a coherent response. They turn their attention to Finn.

One midnight, maybe five minutes after Finn and Dani have finished making love, his cell goes off. They’re both still breathing heavily and she’s holding him close, licking his neck the way he likes, her wet thighs cooling his hot skin, and she tells him, “Don’t even think of getting that.”

But he has to, and she knows it. He presses his lips to her brow and leaves them there, tasting her warm salt caught in the crease of her frown. She shoves him off with both hands and goes to the bathroom. He snatches the phone and barks his name into it.

It’s Roz. She’s crying, sounds high, and he hears the serious strain in her voice. She’s at a breaking point over something, and if she’s calling Finn then it’s got to be over something that has to do with Ray.

She wants him to meet her at an all-night diner six blocks from the hospital.

When he gets there, she’s got a cup of coffee in front of her. She’s been having trouble sipping it because of a split upper lip. She’s been smacked around pretty good.

Even in bed with his leg turning yellow from infection, three IVs in his arm, and a catheter up his crank, Ray can do a nice job of quickly slapping the fuck out of somebody. Finn knows the work well.

Sliding in across from her, he says nothing. It’s strange, but for the first time he realizes she’s very attractive, even with the swollen nose, bruises, and welts. Or maybe it’s because of them. He perks in his seat a
little. He’s got plenty of issues and maybe this is one of them. It’s been a long time since Ray has worked a woman over, and Finn feels the old outrage rising in him.

“I have no idea how much you know about the situation,” she says.

“Nothing,” he admits.

“How can that be? You’re partners.”

“That’s a good question.”

“I thought partners knew everything about each other.”

“I know what he’s capable of, I just don’t know what he’s been up to lately.”

“If you had to guess.”

“I’d guess that you’re stealing and running drugs for him.”

“Not too hard to figure out, is it?”

“No.”

The waitress asks if Finn wants anything and he’s a bit surprised to find that he’s hungry. Being out of the house after sex with Dani has revved him up, broken the usual pattern of reading for an hour and falling asleep in her arms. Then having deep, vivid, sometimes amazing and horrifying dreams.

He orders a large breakfast platter, pancakes, sausages, home fries. The waitress says they don’t serve breakfast until six, even though it’s right there on the menu. He gives her a cold eye and she tells him, “Hold on, I’ll ask the cook if he’ll accommodate you.” Finn has no doubt that the cook will.

Roz explains how she’s been stealing meds for Ray, who has a lot of contacts on the street and on the force.

She mentions a couple of names that Finn knows are informants, a few others he recognizes. He’s a little shocked to hear that one cop he always thought was clean is actually involved.

Ray is making a bundle and so is Roz, but it’s all going to blow up soon if she doesn’t slow down. The other staffers are getting suspicious. They’ve got to put the operation on hold until the heat is off. She mentioned it to Ray earlier tonight after giving him head. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and punched her silly.

“We had to take another toe,” Roz tells him. “There’s a possibility he’ll lose the leg up to the knee as well.”

She speaks with great sympathy and heart. She’s at least a little in love with Ray even if he did smack her around. Like so many beaten women Finn has met on duty, Roz has her wires crossed where love and abuse are concerned.

Finn tries to stick to the topic of drugs. “How much are you pushing?” She tells him quantities of pills, some meds he’s familiar with, a lot that he isn’t. More and more tranqs are popping up every day.

He adds, “Cash-wise?”

“Not much, really. A couple grand a week profit.”

Doesn’t sound like much until you add it up. A hundred g’s in their pockets means a quarter mill of pharmacology flying out the window annually. The hospital is going to come down hard on her when they figure it all out, unless she cuts some kind of deal.

“What do you want from me?” Finn asks.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to talk to someone. I’m afraid all the time now.”

It’s the first smart thing she’s said. She’s either going to get thrown in prison or have to turn on Ray when he’s wounded and already under fire, backed to the wall, amped up, ready to explode.

Finn tells her, “You should be.”