Straw Men (23 page)

“If you say so. I call it a pain in the ass.”

“Fair enough.”

She reached for his hand, but the left, not the right. She held it for a moment, then let it go. Again on the verge of tears.

“You can call me anytime, you know,” he said.

“I know that.”

“Emotionally, you've got a lot of unfinished business. Not just all this. I can't imagine your anger, your sense of betrayal. The next few weeks'll be the roughest. Don't hesitate. Just call or stop by. You know my schedule.”

She nodded, took a long and calming breath. She glanced again at the spot where they all had gathered. “I'm staying for a few minutes. You go ahead.”

“You're sure?”

“I'll be fine.” She took his hand again, and he was struck by the warmth of it. “Jim, thank you.”

They moved apart, him toward the Explorer, her toward her husband's grave. Christensen's mind suddenly clouded, as if he'd walked into the shadow of a raptor passing overhead. Teresa and Milsevic? What else didn't he know about her?

He climbed into the Explorer, but his hand went immediately to the crumpled sandwich bag in his raincoat pocket, to the soft lump inside that he'd plucked from the dirt
that day in Panther Hollow. He'd picked it up on a hunch. Now, with Teresa's revelation, he was more curious than ever.

He started the Explorer's engine. In the streaky sweep of the wipers' first pass, he saw Teresa standing beside her husband's coffin. Then, as the windshield cleared, he saw her head pump forward. Just once. Just enough to spit.

The door to room 1219 was closed, so he pushed quietly through. What he saw startled him: Annie and Taylor curled like parentheses around Brenna in the institutional bed. The bed's head was cranked to forty-five degrees, with Brenna propped on pillows in the middle. Their eyes were fixed on the overhead television, so no one saw him come in. If he'd ever witnessed so intimate a moment between Brenna and the kids, he couldn't remember it. What struck him next was what he saw sitting on Brenna's tray table, well out of reach—her cell phone.

Brenna finally noticed him.

“Hey,” he said.

Annie put an index finger to her lips. “Shh.”

Christensen eased himself onto the edge of the bed. On the screen, a golden retriever was narrating the conclusion of a familiar movie.

“
Homeward Bound,
”
Brenna whispered. “Disney Channel. It's about these two dogs and a cat that get lost in the wilderness.”

“Bren, we have the video at home. They've seen it a hundred times.”

She leaned closer and spoke directly into his ear. “Does it always make Annie cry?”

“I heard that,” his daughter said. “Does not.”

“Does too,” Taylor answered. His eyes never leaving the screen. “When Shadow comes limping over the hill, you cry. I've seen you.”

Annie reached across Brenna and poked the boy, but there was no malice in it. “I should pound you, shrimpo,” she said, then shrugged back under Brenna's arm. Brenna pulled her closer and looked at Christensen. He saw tears in both of her blackened eyes.

“You OK, Bren?”

She nodded her head. She pulled her right arm from around Taylor and mopped her cheek with a corner of the white bedsheet, then put her arm back. “How was the funeral?”

“Shh,” Annie said.

Christensen sighed and looked at Brenna. “Feel like walking?”

He helped her up, let her get steady, then handed her a robe. The kids moved closer together, into the warm spot Brenna had left behind. Brenna took his arm as they crossed to the door of 1219.

“You got more flowers,” Christensen said, pointing to a small basket of mixed blooms that had arrived while he was gone. The new delivery brought to five the number of arrangements in the room, including the ones he brought and get-well gifts from Kiger, Dagnolo, and Teresa.

“DellaVecchio finally showed some gratitude?” he asked.

Brenna shook her head, and he could see the disappointment in her eyes. “Milsevic. It was really nice of him.” She took his arm as they moved toward the wide window at the end of the hall.

“He was there today, one of the pallbearers,” Christensen said, and he found himself thinking again about Teresa's long-ago affair. She had told him David found out about it, and yet the friendship between the two men apparently endured. What sort of bond could survive a betrayal like that?

“The funeral was, ah, very private,” Christensen said. “I'm glad I went.”

“Me too.” Brenna cocked her head, gingerly, back toward the room. “This was nice.”

Christensen noticed that she'd left her cell phone behind. Had it ever been that far from her hand?

“What'd you think of Dagnolo's news conference?” he said. “I listened to it on the radio on the drive back.”

“We were watching the movie,” she said. “But he called a while ago and told me what was up. So I knew.”

Christensen ran his fingers over the fading bruises at her wrist. “It's over, Bren, and it all started with your DNA results. DellaVecchio's free and clear, with an official apology.”

She shrugged. “Damage control. Dagnolo knows what's next. I know for a fact that Vince Petrocelli already talked to Carmen's dad.”

“The King of Compensatory Damages?”

“Can you spell
malicious prosecution?
They're gonna reach as far as they can into those deep pockets. Dagnolo's got no choice but to grovel and put up a good front about finding the guy who helped Harnett.”

A familiar passion was missing from her words, as if she were talking about events she'd simply read about in the newspaper. Christensen said, “At least somebody's going to make some money off this case.”

Brenna smiled. “I'm sure they'll depose you. So you need to be ready for that.”

Christensen cleared his throat. “Can I ask you to help me with something?”

“Anything.”

“That lab that did your DNA stuff, DigiGene. Anybody there owe you a favor?”

“I've kept them in the newspapers for three weeks now. They'd couldn't buy that kind of pub—” Brenna stepped away and stared. “Wait a minute. Why?”

“It's just … something bugging me. I don't know if it means anything or not, but there's something I want to get tested.”

“And you can't talk about it?”

He nodded. “Sorry.”

“And it's not something the police or the D.A. should handle?”

Christensen backed her off with a look. “Can you make a call? I could drop it off tomorrow morning.”

“I'll make a call,” she said after a long, anxious look. “Jim, if this is evidence of some sort, you should really—”

“Bren, it's probably nothing … I'm just curious. It might answer some questions I have. Maybe it'll raise more. I just don't know. Can we leave it at that?”

Brenna nodded. “You'd tell me if there was something I needed to know, right?”

“Trust me.” Christensen kissed her forehead, then nodded back toward the room. “You know, every reporter in town is probably trying to reach you. Want me to go back and get your phone?”

“No.”

At the end of the hall, she put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. The concussion had affected her balance, so they swayed together in front of the window. Twelve stories below, the rain had snarled traffic on Fifth Avenue.

Brenna closed her eyes, holding him close. “This is almost like dancing,” she said.

“There's no music, Bren.”

“I could hum.”

“OK.” Christensen leaned down and kissed her again. “Anything but Springsteen.”

Brenna hummed, and the tune was instantly familiar. “
The White Album,
”
he said. “Nice.” It took him a minute to pin it down, but the lyrics came back in a rush. He held her tight and listened, and soon Paul McCartney was singing in his head. When she reached the chorus's final verse, Brenna softly sang the words:

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to
—I will.

Christensen looked up from his desk, startled by the unexpected visitor. Teresa was leaning against the frame of his office door at the Harmony Brain Research Center. He was struck immediately by the contrast between her self-confident posture at her husband's grave three days earlier and the way she looked now.

She hadn't even entered the room, but stood safely at its perimeter. Her shoulders slumped. She wasn't looking him in the eye, but at the floor. Christensen thought,
depression.

“Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

Teresa stepped forward, a small step, then another. Christensen stood and gestured to the chair across his desk.

“Sit, Teresa, sit. How's it going?”

She sat, but on the edge of the chair. “Had my regular rehab appointment upstairs. I try not to miss. It's OK I stopped by?”

He nodded. “Anytime. I told you that.” Christensen sat as well. “Who wants to meet you?”

“Carmen DellaVecchio,” she said. The name hung between them. “There's a story in the
Press
today. He said he wants to meet me.”

Christensen thought of a dozen possible reasons why DellaVecchio would want to meet her, none of them good. Such a meeting might be marginally therapeutic for Teresa, but Christensen couldn't imagine putting the unpredictable DellaVecchio in the same room as the woman who'd sent him to prison for eight years. It would be incredibly risky on a lot of levels. Emotional. Legal. Besides, Brenna would never go for it.

“Do you want to meet him, Teresa?”

She shook her head in a way that left no doubt. “But I would like to apologize somehow. He lost eight years of his life, and I know what that's like.”

“You need to stop blaming yourself for what he went through, you know. It wasn't your fault.”

“It was me up there on the witness stand, Jim. I'm the one who ID'ed him. I'm the one the jury believed. And I was wrong. He knows that. Maybe Brenna could tell him how sorry I am. But face to face? I'm not ready for that. It's … I'm…”

Christensen waited while she composed herself.

“There's this dream I had for years, a nightmare. I've had it twice since David died,” she said.

“The attack?”

“I'm in my kitchen. It starts all over again. I sense somebody behind me, just like always. I start to turn, just like always. And it's always DellaVecchio. Even now, even though I know it wasn't him. The thought of facing him down, looking into his ratty little eyes—”

“It's still DellaVecchio when you dream?” Christensen asked.

Teresa nodded and sat forward. “I know it wasn't him. I
know.
But in my mind, in my goddamned
mind,
it's still his face I see. I can't shake it. I just can't put another face on the freak who was standing behind me that night. I've tried, and I can't.”

Or won't, Christensen thought.

“There might be reasons for that, Teresa, subconscious reasons. You
know,
and that's a rational process. But emotions aren't rational. We feel them.”

Christensen tapped the side of his head. “Even if it wasn't David who actually attacked you, you know in here that he was responsible for it. But seeing him in that role is another matter. Maybe it's just easier for you to see DellaVecchio. Your subconscious might be trying to protect you that way.”

Christensen studied her, then added: “Maybe you
should
meet him.”

Teresa stared.

“For yourself. For closure,” he said. “Maybe it'd help you put this behind you and move forward. Otherwise, that nightmare may haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Teresa ran a finger along the edge of his desk. Her hand shook, and Christensen wondered what else was bothering her.

“I'm not ready,” she said.

“And that's fine, Teresa. You'll know when you are.”

Teresa's eyes began to drift. Christensen found it unsettling.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Anything.”

“What you said about the subconscious … you're saying there may be things too scary for me to confront, even now?”

“Sometimes denial is a good thing,” he said.

She stood up and crossed to the office's tiny window, clutching her handbag to her chest. Christensen thought she might turn and leave. Instead, she looked outside at the bare birch tree that stood at the center of one of Harmony's many small courtyards.

“You learn about somebody when they die,” she said. “About yourself, too. Sometimes more than you even wanted to know.”

David Harnett had murdered his accuser, Vulcan Tidwell. He'd arranged to have Teresa killed so she wouldn't blow his alibi for the night of that killing. What could she possibly have found out about her husband since his death that would be more devastating than that?

“I know what you're thinking,” she said. “And I don't know why this would get to me after everything else. But it did.”

“What did?”

She turned back, then hesitated.

“It's OK, Teresa. What is it?”

She opened the top flap of her handbag and reached into it as she approached his desk. As she dug through the contents, Christensen saw the gnarled, upthrust handle of a small handgun between a compact and her car keys. She noticed him looking and quickly closed the flap.

“Relax,” she said. “I'm not going squirrelly on you. I've always carried one.”

She pulled a spiral notebook about the size of a paperback novel and held it out to him. It shook in her hand, so she tried to give it a casual toss. It skidded and landed on Christensen's lap.

He picked it up and flipped open the cardboard cover. The opening page was filled with blocky, neatly printed numbers in complicated combinations. A ledger of some sort?

“David's handwriting,” she said.

He'd divided the first page into five columns. The column headings, too, were numbers. Christensen read silently from right to left: 2297, 4993, 2344, 4868, 5012. Beneath those headings, along the left margin, were what looked like dates. Those began with 7/7/89 and proceeded in a tidy column down the page. Each date was two weeks apart. Christensen flipped a few pages. The chronology continued from page to page.

Beside the dates were cryptic combinations of numbers and letters—4K, 9K, 3K. Money amounts? Christensen traced a finger across the page. The amounts seemed to change with each notation, but the amounts for any given date were equal across the five columns. He looked up at Teresa, baffled.

“But what is it?”

“Money,” she said.

“I guessed that,” Christensen said. “But none of it makes any—”

“Divided five ways. It's a record of payments, and how the money was divided up.”

He shrugged.

“Look at the last entry,” she said.

Christensen riffled through page after page of numbers. The last page ended halfway down. The date was October 13, 1991.

“I did a little checking,” Teresa said. “The last entry was about the time all the IAD stuff started. About the time Tidwell started talking.”

It took Christensen a moment to catch up. “The drug dealer in East Liberty,” he said at last. “Shot to death…” Christensen checked the last date again. “…about two months after this last entry.”

Teresa turned away, moving back to his office window. She stared at the bare birch.

“Teresa, where'd you find this?”

“David had a safe deposit box. It was in there, along with more cash than I've ever seen in my life.”

“So this Tidwell…” Christensen said. He flipped back through the pages, astounded by the amounts and the regularity of the transactions. “You're saying these are pay­offs? That Tidwell wasn't just talking?”

“David
was
involved,” she said. “Jim, I did the math. There's almost two million dollars logged there between 1989 and 1991. Split five ways, that's four hundred thousand dollars apiece.”

Christensen thought back to his conversation with Kiger. The chief had said Harnett's name was one of several Tidwell mentioned.

“And you're sure David was one of the five?” he said.

She nodded. “All cops.”

“Wait,” Christensen said. “How do you know?”

Without turning from the window, without looking back at him, Teresa said, “Go back to the first page. The very first numbers.”

Christensen did. “They're different. Four digits, not abbreviated. And there's no date next to them.”

Teresa wavered in front of the glass, so much so that Christensen crossed the room to catch her in case she fell. She leaned back into him, and he smelled her hair for the first time. She used the same shampoo as Brenna.

“You OK? Maybe you should sit.” Christensen cupped her elbow, and she opened her eyes. When he tried to guide her over to the chair, she resisted. She went again to the window, turned and leaned against the ledge.

“They're badge numbers,” she said.

Christensen froze. He opened the notebook again and scanned the column headings. “Teresa—”

“First column, 2297,” she said. “David's badge. That one I knew. Once I figured that out, I just made a couple calls to fill in the blanks.”

The notebook seemed to grow heavy in Christensen's hand. He struggled for the right words. “So you know who the others are?” he managed.

“Yes.”

Christensen let go of the notebook, and it thrashed to the floor like a wounded bird. If Teresa was right, he'd just dropped a handwritten record that could ruin careers, send people to prison, destroy lives. Teresa picked up the notebook and tucked it back into her handbag. A one-word question formed on his lips—Who?—but Teresa cut him off before he could speak.

“Don't,” she said. “You don't need to know. You don't want to. I didn't, but now I do.”

Christensen stepped toward her. “Teresa … that's why you're carrying a gun, isn't it? You know what it means. If David was in charge of tracking this money, that means four other people out there probably know this notebook exists. Teresa, you need to—”

She turned again toward the glass, but Christensen pulled her away, an instinct. He twisted the miniblinds shut and the office dimmed.

“Don't push this,” she said, avoiding his eyes this time. “Please. I'm not ready.”

“Teresa, if what you're saying is true—”

“Jim, stop,” she said.

“But—”

“Two of the five died about eight years ago, all right? I knew them. Well, I don't remember them, but I must have known them.”

“Why do you sound so sure?” he asked.

“We were classmates at the academy. I must have known them.”

“But you know they're dead?”

She nodded. “I found a newspaper story. They were ambushed. Together. Went to a warehouse in Bloomfield for some reason, but it was a setup. They never had a chance.”

A pause. “That happened the same day as Tidwell, about six hours before.”

Another pause. “I'm not sure anyone else has made the connection.”

Christensen felt his knees get weak. Three of the six people who knew the truth about the payoff scheme were shot to death on the same day, Tidwell and two of the cops he apparently was paying to protect his drug operation. The killings happened two months after Tidwell started cooperating with the IAD investigators, which left three survivors to share an incendiary secret.

“And now David's dead,” he said. “That's four, Tidwell and three of the cops.”

She nodded. The truth was unfolding, a terrifying origami.

“Who else?” he said. “Teresa, you may be in danger. Who else?”

“Please!”

“There are two others out there—”

Teresa reached into her purse and pulled out the notebook again. She flipped it open to the first page and jabbed her finger at one of the badge numbers, 4993. When she reached into her purse again, Christensen remembered the gun. He flinched, but Teresa grabbed his arm and held it tighter than he would have thought possible. Then she laid something on the desk between them. Badge 4993. She looked into his eyes.

“It's mine.”