The Angel of Knowlton Park (49 page)

"You'd hate it, Stan," Burgess said.

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "There aren't half as many chances to get laid. Women don't get all hot and bothered over a real estate broker, but tell 'em you're a cop..."

"That's another thing. It's been a pretty dry summer. It's not so bad for you guys. You've got girlfriends. But night after lonely night..."

"You're breaking my heart," Burgess said. "If you didn't love 'em and leave 'em like some Downeast Don Juan, you'd have a girlfriend. Been too hot for sex anyway."

"No fuckin' way!" Perry hooked his thumbs into his belt, thrust his pelvis out and swayed his hips, grinding his foot back and forth on Regina McBride's arching back. "It's never too hot for sex."

"Let me up!" their prisoner squawked. "I will not listen to this filthy talk."

"Shut the fuck up, lady," Perry said mildly. "Talking about filthy. You just stabbed a police officer."

Someone's head appeared at the top of the stairs. A woman's voice said, "What's going on down there? You guys doin' a circle jerk or what?" Andrea Dwyer's shift had ended hours ago, but the case involved kids and she'd wanted in.

"Oh, hi, Dwyer," Perry said. "Lady down here just stabbed a police officer. You want to take charge of the prisoner and search her, you being a female officer and all? And ask someone to bring Delinsky a Band-Aid?"

"A Band-Aid? You've got her face-down on the floor in handcuffs when all he needs is a Band-Aid?"

"Honeybun," Kyle said, and Burgess knew the endearment was carefully chosen, for Kyle didn't have the ingrained sexism many cops did, "clever Officer Delinsky was wearing a vest. Otherwise he'd either be on his way to the ER or heaven. I hope you're wearing your vest because we're about to hand you the accountant from hell, and she's probably got more knives hidden in her panties."

"Honeybun and panties? You're some kind of anachronism, you know that, Kyle?"

Kyle swept her a graceful bow. "I've never been called an anachronism by a more beautiful colleague," he said.

"Thin ice," she said, "and sinking fast."

They grabbed her elbows and hauled Regina McBride to her feet. Delinsky, still holding himself together as though he didn't quite believe he wasn't hurt, stepped down to let them pass, then followed them up the stairs. They stood by while Dwyer searched Regina McBride, then put her in the living room and left her with Dwyer and another officer to wait for the transport van.

Melia was in the front hall, directing the search. Burgess called him into the kitchen. "Vince? We need you."

He steered Delinsky to a chair. "Despite our foolishness down there and our jokes about the Band-Aid, this is very serious," he said. "You're right to be shaken by it."

They got Devlin in to photograph the slashed shirt, then had Delinsky take off the shirt and got pictures of the vest and the wound. Plodding through the careful collection of evidence—this time, of the attempted murder of a police officer—they were all so punchy they could barely function. Burgess ached for a cup of coffee.

Dwyer stuck her head around the door. "She says she needs to go to the bathroom."

Burgess shook his head. "Let them deal with it down at the jail."

"That seems a bit harsh."

"Dwyer, I don't care if she wets her pants, okay. This woman, after her son raped and murdered a small boy, cleaned the body, dressed it, and drove it to the park. She got rid of the clothes and the carpet, and painted over the bloodstains. Then she had the nerve to tell me that she'd never liked Timmy Watts because he was dirty and had a poor vocabulary. This is not June Cleaver. This is a mother so protective she carries knives in her pocket in case she needs to kill a few police officers. Her comfort is not one of my priorities."

"As you wish," she said. "I thought
we
were still supposed to be civil."

"Don't give me that look, Dwyer. You want to take her to the bathroom, go ahead. Just be prepared to shoot her if necessary."

Perry looked at Kyle and shrugged. "Did you know Burgess has a reputation as a hard-nosed cop? I wonder where he gets it?"

"Beats me," Kyle said. "He's always been very nice to me."

"Me, too." Perry nodded solemnly. "I've got an idea. Let's do something nice for him." Melia smiled faintly, an indulgent father watching his children play.

Like a bad actor simulating thought, Kyle tapped a finger against his forehead, then rubbed his chin with his hand. "I've got it!" he said. "Let's give him a present."

"Nice idea," Perry said. "Can you think of anything Burgess really wants?"

Kyle turned to Melia. "Lieutenant, we want to give our friend Joe a present. You got any ideas?"

"Got one," Melia was working on bland, but the lines around his mouth betrayed him. He patted his pockets, searching for something, finally reaching inside his sport coat and pulling out a small paper bag. He held it up triumphantly. "This."

"No way, Lou." Perry gave a vehement shake of his head. "Not nearly grand enough. Joe Burgess is our special friend. He needs a special present."

With a flourish, Melia handed him the bag. Burgess pulled out a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs. "They're beautiful," he said. "Thank you. I know Chris will appreciate them just as much as I do." Delinsky looked like he thought they were crazy.

"Wait. Wait!" Melia held up his hand, shaking his head in disgust. "That's not what I was looking for." He patted his pockets again. Found another one that rustled. Pulled out a second small paper bag. "Sorry, Joe. This is what I was looking for."

Carefully, because the faces around him had now grown serious, Burgess opened the second bag. Inside was a plastic, Zip-loc bag full of what looked like dirty rock candy.

Perry looked at Delinsky. "Cover your ears, son," he said. "I'm about to confess to conduct unbecoming." Delinsky put his hands over his ears. "A few of us paid a visit to fat Wayne Bascomb recently, bit of routine follow-up. We were concerned about some missing evidence. Things like that make all of us nervous, street police and detectives. Next thing you know, cases start going down the drain, it gets even less worthwhile to spend our waking hours chasing down bad guys. We wanted to be sure Wayne understood how concerned we all were." His twinkling eyes went around, soliciting agreement. They all nodded.

Burgess felt dangerously close to tears. The effect of too many hours out, too intense an evening. He turned toward the window, looking to reassert control. Saw his face reflected back at him, stitched and battered, eyes shining, grinning like a madman.

Perry leaned back nonchalantly against the doorframe. "Fat Wayne, he says he doesn't know what I'm talking about. He doesn't see the problem. It's just the one thing that's gone missing, what's the big deal?"

"Gee, Stan, that makes sense to me," Kyle said, "What
was
the big deal?"

"Well, I saw then that Fat Wayne just didn't get it. If one of our most meticulous officers brings in a crucial piece of evidence in a high profile case, and that goes missing, what faith do we have that the everyday stuff won't start disappearing? So I say maybe he hasn't looked hard enough. That he should check again, see if that stuff is in the back of a locker or something." Perry passed a big, bruised hand over his bald head. "Fat Wayne just shakes his head and says it isn't there. So I ask him how he knows?"

"Because he's already looked very carefully?" Kyle asked.

"That's what I asked," Perry said, "but he says he just knows. So then I ask, and you know I'm a detective, so I'm pretty good at asking questions—"

"Hey," Kyle interrupted, "when do we get to the good part?"

"The good part?"

"The part about the conduct unbecoming?"

Delinsky looked like he thought they were all crazy. They were, of course. Crazy from exhaustion. Crazy from exposure to violent, crazy people. Crazy from knowing that no matter how bad you imagine things can get, in the cop business there's always someone who takes it one step farther. Punch-drunk crazy and taking refuge in the company of their brothers.

"I had brought my nightstick." Perry's voice got low and soft. "Moving it from my locker to the car, so I happened to have it in my hand. Actually, a number of us did. Why, you even had yours, Kyle, as I recall."

"I've been out of the room for the past five minutes," Melia said.

"Right, Lou. You and Delinsky are doing something upstairs. We're just here in the kitchen, talking to Joe."

Perry's grin was manic. "I'm tryin' to give Fat Wayne a little advice. Fat Wayne, you know, hasn't got many friends. So I'm saying how bad life can get when people lose confidence in you. How your car can break down, stranding you places, maybe go off the road into the water. How a guy's gun can jam when he's at the range, blow his hand off. Just, you know, talking to him about the risks. He says well that won't happen to him. I ask does he have some guardian angel or what? He says he's got friends where he needs 'em. I woulda thought there in that room was where he needed friends, wouldn't you, Kyle?"

"I would," Kyle agreed. "I did. But Fat Wayne gets this stupid expression on his face and says, are we threatening him?"

"Who's telling this story?"

"Sorry, Stan. Pray continue."

Burgess's eyelids were dropping. He pulled out a chair and sat down. "Tired, Sarge?" Perry said. "I'll make it quick. Then we can all go home and go sleepy-bye. The Lieutenant won't mind if we don't write our reports until morning. I told Fat Wayne a threat implied something that might happen in the future if the desired something didn't happen first. That there was nothing implied or future about this. This was a promise. He handed over the missing meth or I promised a boatload of bad shit would be coming down."

"I thought Bascomb would wet his pants," Kyle said happily. "He looks around and says, you guys all heard that, right? And everybody says no. That was when—"

"Yeah," Perry interrupted, "Fat Wayne pulled the stuff out of his desk drawer, rolled up inside a fuckin' Playboy magazine."

"We never," Kyle began.

"Laid a hand on him."

Burgess stood and bowed solemnly to his colleagues. "Words fail me," he said. "I think you know how much I appreciate this." He handed the bag back to Melia. "Maybe you'd better keep it. I might lose it again."

A commotion in the next room turned their heads toward the kitchen wall. A gun went off and a bullet exploded through the plaster, bounced off the cupboards, and landed with a metallic clang in the spotless aluminum sink. Burgess considered the miracle that none of them had been hit. "I told her to shoot McBride, not us. Sometimes they just won't listen."

Chapter 38

Hospitals in the dead of night are spooky places. In the dimmed down rooms, machinery hisses and pulses, monitors flash, IVs drip, patients moan and stir. The corridors have a bright, echoing emptiness that seems both harsh and desolate. Burgess hated the smells, the sounds and lights, the way it could trap him in a net of memory. No one had made him come, but he was here, walking the corridors with the painful stiffness of a very old man, the burden of exhaustion weighting every step.

Portland's meanest cop could have gone home to bed. He longed for rest, soft sheets, for the sheer delicious act of getting horizontal with every acid-filled muscle fiber and every swollen, bruised piece of his body. But he couldn't rest until he'd checked on his children.

He disliked the expression "every cloud has a silver lining." His take on it was the opposite—that every silver lining was surrounded by a big dark cloud. Yet life still possessed the capacity to surprise him, and occasionally, even in his line of work, the surprises were pleasing. The room he'd just left contained such a surprise. There Iris Martin lay deeply asleep, her small hand clasped tightly in the huge, grubby fist of her slumbering uncle. Devereau might dwarf the chair, snore like a chainsaw, and stink up the room, but he had come because Iris needed him, and he had stayed to reassure her.

In the face of the mass of abominable violence the degraded citizens of Portland had visited on each other during the past week, it was a small thing. But hope is made of small things. In a life filled with so much inhumanity, it was the small acts of love and grace that kept Burgess connected to his humanity. His humanity and the humanity of those around him. Like Stan and Terry and Vince in the kitchen. The hot pink handcuffs and the small bag that helped restore his honor. Melia's courage in letting him back into the investigation.