The Graving Dock (18 page)

“Sorry,” Jack said. “This is too new. My perp had an old Smith & Wesson revolver, or a Colt.”

The man shrugged. “No problem. One time, we were diving in the Hudson and we found five wrong guns in forty minutes.” He signaled to his team to keep looking, then turned back to Jack. “You wouldn’t believe the shit we’re coming across down there. So far we’ve run into a washing machine, a butcher knife, and an electric guitar. Fender Stratocaster, early sixties…”

BY LATE AFTERNOON, THE
crowd of onlookers had thinned considerably. Most of the reporters had left for other, more visually compelling scenes. The police brass had retreated to the comfort of their offices at One Police Plaza, or the Puzzle Palace, as it was sometimes known by the cops on the street.

Jack made another trip down to the end of the pier, impressed by the dedication of the scuba unit.

“Why don’t you go someplace warm?” the sergeant said to him. “I’ll call you as soon as we find anything.”

Jack just shook his head. The hunk of metal lying somewhere beneath this frigid gray water was his best chance of catching the man who had murdered his partner. Of course, the gun might not be registered, which would leave him back at square one, but he had high hopes: Despite his success rate thus far, the killer seemed like an amateur, hopefully not street-smart enough to know how to get hold of an anonymous piece.

“Sorry about this crappy job,” he told the Scuba Unit sergeant.

The man shrugged. “We’d rather be out there saving a bridge jumper or something, but this is part of what we do.”

An hour later, a diver bobbed up, lifting an old revolver as if it were a trophy.

I
BROUGHT SOME PRETZELS
,” Gary Daskivitch said. “On a long drive, you gotta have snacks.”

Jack nodded absently, staring out the passenger window, watching the blue steel girders of the Triborough Bridge flick by in the morning sun. It was good to get out of the city, away from the press and the Department brass and the crazy memories of the past few days. Good to hit the open road, with only this oversized cheery kid beside him for company. Maybe he’d be able to clear his head, sort some things out.

“You can lean the seat back,” Daskivitch said. “Catch some Zs if you want.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m fine.” Off to his right, a plane swooped up from a tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, then thundered over a small stretch of water and the barb-wired fences ringing Riker’s Island. He glanced down at a manila folder in his lap. They had been on the road for only a few minutes, yet he had already opened the thing three times. Stared down at the faxed copy of the New Hampshire driver’s license that had accompanied the gun registration. Stared at the harsh, hawklike face of the man who had shot Tommy Balfa.
Robert Dietrich Sperry.
D.O.B. March 7, 1937. Five-foot ten. Blue eyes.

“Why do you think he did it?” Daskivitch said. “I mean, the Balfa thing is pretty obvious, and the security guard, but why kill the boy?”

“We don’t know that he did for sure; we haven’t proven that connection.”

Daskivitch frowned earnestly. “All right, well…What do you think all this
G.I.
shit is about?”

Jack shrugged. “Who knows? He’s a squirrel, that’s all.” On TV, detectives lost sleep trying to puzzle out their suspects’ motivations. Maybe talking dogs had told the perp to kill; maybe he was out to kill anyone who reminded him of his grade school math classes. It wasn’t Jack’s concern. As long as he had evidence tying Sperry to at least one of the killings—and he did, now that the ballistics had matched up—all he had to do was catch the man and hand him over to the DA. That was the job; end of story.

He flipped past the fax and picked up a couple of news clippings.
COFFIN KILLER STRIKES AGAIN,
read the one from the
Post
. He set the article down. It wasn’t this one that bugged him, but the other. The one that mentioned the fact that Detective First Grade Jack Leightner had taken a little harbor swim. The one that pointed out how he had barely survived a previous shooting incident, just months before.

Daskivitch took his eyes off the highway for a second and glanced down at the clipping, with its photo and everything. “How do you like that, huh? You’re a star.”

Jack made a sour face.

“What’s the matter? You don’t want your fifteen minutes of fame?”

Jack sighed. “You don’t know how the other guys looked at me, after the Red Hook thing.”

Daskivitch shifted uncomfortably. His big square head barely cleared the roof of the car. “Whaddaya mean?”

“What do I mean? They looked at me like I was a freaking Jonah.”

Daskivitch frowned. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Jack turned and stared out the window. “Let me tell you a story. Back when I was on patrol, there was this great old cop in the house named Harry Geraghty. One day, in the middle of a tour, he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and walked right into a mess. This E.D.P.”—Emotionally Disturbed Person—“had gotten behind the counter and was waving a knife. Harry was a great talker; people used to say he could talk a rabid dog off a meat truck. So he decides to try and calm the guy down. He’s talkin’ away when suddenly the perp lunges forward and stabs the girl working the register. He didn’t kill her, but he did some nasty damage. And Harry had to pop the guy. It was a fucked-up situation, like that film they show you in the Academy, where the crackhead is coming at you waving a machete and carrying a baby. What do you do? There’s no simple answer.”

Daskivitch made a face. “Yikes.”

Jack sighed. “Everybody second-guessed Harry. They said he should’ve drawn his piece right away and taken the guy out. They said the Department would’ve backed him up, called it a good shooting: People started edging away from him.”

Jack fell silent, remembering the part of the story he didn’t want to tell. He had come out of the station house one afternoon and bumped into the man on the steps. Harry had asked if he wanted to go out for a beer, and he had responded with a lie, saying he had to run some errands for his wife. The memory still shamed him.

“What happened to him?”

Jack shrugged. “Nothing dramatic. He didn’t eat his gun, or become a drunk or anything. But he retired soon after. He was a great cop, but he just faded away.”

Daskivitch considered the story. “No offense, but I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way. I mean, sure, you got caught up in a couple of incidents recently, but you survived. Twice. You’re not a Jonah, man; you’re
lucky
. And here’s what’s gonna happen when we catch this Sperry creep: You’ll be a hero. Cops’ll be lining up to work with ya.”

Jack snorted. “You’re a good kid; Gary.” He made his seat recline a bit, and let the drive lull him. All around him on the highway sat other people in little self-contained bubbles, everything so orderly, everybody imbued with such a sense of direction, of purpose. On the road, Americans.

He chewed over what Daskivitch had said. Maybe he
was
lucky. Maybe he should be having those enjoy-every-moment-you’re-alive feelings, like, somebody on an afternoon talk show. Now that he had time to think about it—and the drive ahead would certainly give him that—he found that he didn’t want to think about it. He was sure of one thing, though: Tommy Balfa had certainly run out of luck. He wondered about the man’s wife and child, and what would become of them now. If the daughter really was sick, maybe the compensation from the City would at least pay for the new treatment…

He turned to Daskivitch. “Did Balfa ever talk to you about his daughter?”

The young detective spoke around a mouthful of pretzel. “Nope. The guy was only around for a couple of months, and he never discussed his private life.”

Jack loosened his seat belt; the damn newfangled models always cinched him tighter and tighter. He thought about Balfa’s upcoming funeral, about the inevitable pomp and circumstance, and what the hell he could manage to say to the man’s wife.

There was no point in worrying about it right now. Instead, he closed his eyes, and soon he was busy imagining his upcoming proposal to Michelle. They’d share some bubbly, pull some Fred-Astaire-and-Ginger-Rogers moves out on the dance floor, enjoy the festivities. And then, at the height of the countdown, he’d drop to one knee and bust out the ring. And then would come a midnight kiss to beat the band.

RURAL NEW HAMPSHIRE WAS
a surprise.

The towns looked the way Jack had expected, with their picturesque commons, quaint steeples, cheery Victorian houses, everything blanketed in snow like some Hallmark greeting card, but once they got out into the countryside an ominous note crept in. The weather had something to do with it—a gray, wintry afternoon with the threat of more snow—but some of the roads just seemed downright creepy.

After they rendezvoused with FBI man Ray Hillhouse, who had flown up to join them—feds had better discretionary budgets—and a couple of swaggering state troopers, who had secured a search warrant, their little caravan made its way out of the town of Keene and soon was winding along some serious country roads. The terrain was steeply ridged, and the houses widely separated, each with its own deep front yard and mailbox out on the road. The stark, bare woods afforded glimpses of a world that was far from picturesque. Rusting carcasses of cars up on blocks, broken-down heavy machinery, piles of trash, dilapidated trailers or humble ranch houses with little trails of smoke ribboning up from chimneys—it looked like a poverty-stricken Appalachian backwoods. A mangy dog rushed down a snow-covered hillside, barking furiously, and Jack had a premonition of what he was about to find. He had come on such scenes in his days as a patrol cop, following some anonymous tip about child abuse: filthy homes piled with junk, TVs blaring, smells of dogshit and bad cooking, half-clothed kids running around dirty in the general chaos…

The state troopers pulled over to the side of the road and the others followed suit. Everybody piled out and pulled armored vests and weapons out of car trunks. Jack was getting mighty tired of pulling on the Kevlar. It was brutally cold; the hairs inside his nose froze stiff within seconds of their exposure to the winter air. The staties—one young and one old—were dressed for the weather, with their lined jackets and thick boots, but the city slicker detectives stumbled along the snowy road in their black dress shoes. They came to a driveway and the young trooper pointed up a hill, but the house was not visible.

The older trooper opened the roadside mailbox: It was stuffed full of junk mail.

“Maybe he’s not home, but don’t relax,” Jack said grimly, his breath puffing out into the cold. “This bastard is full of surprises.”

The shotgun-bearing staties led the way as the team tromped up the long driveway. They tried to maintain a quiet approach, but that was impossible; the landscape was preternaturally still and their feet crunched and squeaked in the thick snow, which looked undisturbed—another reason for everyone to breathe a touch easier. They came over a rise and looked down on a trim, dark green, two-story house, which sat in a small hollow. The yard, to Jack’s surprise, was well kept, devoid of cars or junk, though a modest motorboat rested at the back of the small clearing, up on blocks and covered with a green tarp. Just as he had expected: Sperry was familiar with the water.

After a quick whispered conference, Hillhouse and the older trooper split off to go around the back of the house, and the rest of the team warily approached the front porch. The ridge behind the house blocked much of the sun, and it was colder in the gloomy late-afternoon shade. It went deep into the marrow of Jack’s bones, reminding him of the freezing harbor.

Snow had drifted up onto the porch. The front windows were all shuttered. A red metal swing seat creaked in the wind; there was no other sound, save for the tense breathing of the three men as they crept up the steps and took positions at the sides of the door.

“He’s not home,” the young statie muttered, but he was looking considerably less cocky now. Jack was glad for Gary Daskivitch’s comforting bulk.

The big young detective looked like he could use a little comforting himself. He was staring down at the doormat with a queasy look. Jack glanced down: The damn thing was printed with the New Hampshire state motto:
Live Free or Die.

Jack reached out and slowly opened the screen door, which squeaked loudly. He winced, then knocked on the heavy wooden door. The three men waited for a moment, their breaths puffing out like nervous thought balloons. Jack knocked again, louder.

Still no answer.

“Anything back there?” he called out, his voice echoing in the stillness of the hollow.

“Nothing here,” Ray Hillhouse hollered back.

The statie reached out and tried the doorknob. “Stand back,” he said, and raised his shotgun.

“Whoa!” Jack said. “That’s gonna ricochet and put somebody’s eye out.”

The statie looked like a kid whose firecrackers had just been confiscated, but he lowered the 12 gauge.

Jack edged over to a window and tried to raise it. No luck. He tried the next one, then stepped down off the porch, and tromped awkwardly into a heavy snowdrift on the side of the house. The first window there, about five feet off the ground, rose easily. “Shit,” he muttered. The thought of going in first gave him the heebie-jeebies, conjuring ugly images of a bloody Red Hook basement. Michelle had been incredibly patient with him so far, but he couldn’t imagine that she would put up with him taking another bullet. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine sending someone else in his place. Fuck it, he was a cop—he hadn’t signed on for a lifetime of driving a desk. He looked around for something to boost himself up with.

Daskivitch and the statie lumbered into view.

“Lemme go in first,” whispered the big detective from the Seven-six.

Jack snorted. “First of all, there’s no way I could get you up there. Second, you wouldn’t even fit through the window.”

“I’ll go,” the statie said, visions of merit badges no doubt dancing in his head. “This is my territory.”