Keeper

by Greg Rucka

  Pascal came on, saying, “Kodiak? What is up?”

  “My people are done in,” I said. “We’re bringing in some guards from Sentinel for the night to take over. I was wondering if you wanted some of your folks there.”

  “Until the morning?”

  “Tomorrow, too. We’ll resume coverage for the funeral.”

  “When do you need them?”

  “As soon as possible. I’ve only got one person covering her right now.”

  “I’ll send two men over. Where’s she at?”

  I gave him the address of the safe apartment, then got off the phone. Bridgett was sitting on the front fender of her Porsche, watching me. I crossed Bleecker to where she was, taking the cup she held out for me.

  “Black and sweet,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Can you give me a lift to the safe house?”

  “Sure.”

  As we drove, she asked, “Where are you sleeping tonight?”

  “I thought I’d stay at the safe apartment.”

  She signaled a turn, sliding over a lane. “You’re staying at my place, and if you offer one word of argument, I swear I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll never walk right again.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I took the teddy bear off the floor and put it in my lap.

  The marshals and Sentinel had beaten us to the safe apartment. They were inside with Dale when we arrived.

  “They say they’re taking over,” Dale said, eyeing one of the Sentinel bodyguards. “What’s that mean, they’re taking over?”

  “ ’Til Monday morning,” I said. “Go home, get sleep, be back at seven Monday.”

  He looked at the marshals and the guards, weighing their worth, then said, “I’m out of here.” Before he went to the door he put a big hand on my arm, saying, “I’m sorry about your place.”

  “See you.”

  The new crew settled in easily enough, and although I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the marshals as bodyguards, they paid attention to what I told them. It’s not that I don’t like the Federal Marshals Service; it’s more that I just don’t see how apprehending fugitives qualifies them as personal protection specialists.

  Done with them, I went to look in on Felice. She was asleep. I debated for a moment by the side of the bed, then called her name. The third time I said it, she stirred, reaching for the light. It came on to reveal her disheveled, her hair stuck straight up on one side of her head. She found her glasses, put them on, then sat up, pulling the sheets around her.

  “There are two federal marshals here,” I told her. “And some people from Sentinel. They’re going to stay with you tonight and tomorrow. We’ll be back Monday, early.”

  “You’re done?” she asked.

  “Not until after Katie’s funeral. We’ll be there. But we all need rest. You’ll be okay with the marshals until then.” She nodded, her hands moving to her hair, trying to smooth it. “I survived,” Felice said.

  I handed her the teddy bear. “I’ll see you Monday, okay, Doctor?”

  “The last day,” she said.

  Lozano was thrilled to see me. “What the hell are you doing back here?” he asked.

  “I want to talk to him again,” I said. “I want some answers from that son of a bitch.”

  “Go home, Kodiak,” Lozano said, and then probably realized how impossible that was. He started to say something else, then changed his mind and scowled.

  “Where’s Fowler?” I asked.

  “He’s in the box with Rich.”

  I turned around and walked out of the room, heading back to the cubicle where earlier we had watched Rich in interrogation. Bridgett came with me. Lozano followed, grumbling.

  “You can’t just walk in there,” he said.

  “I know.”

  We passed a couple of uniforms, then went into the observation room. Pascal was inside, watching the proceedings through the glass.

  “I thought you were done for the night,” Pascal said. “He say anything more?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “But he doesn’t know about Barry yet. Fowler’s still playing him.” He reached over and clicked the switch on the speaker, so we could hear the conversation inside.

  “. . . got to know who this guy is, Sean. We know you know him,” Fowler was saying.

  “Maybe I do. Might have seen him before,” Rich said. “We have a lot of members.” He looked wilted now, tired. But the energy in his voice was still there.

  Scott played with the stud in his ear, then shook his head. He looked better than Rich, but not much.

  “I don’t think you see your situation, here,” Fowler said. “Let me explain it to you clearly. You’re dead-to-rights on the bomb, and that’s not only state, that’s federal. I’ve got you for conspiracy, possession, harassment, three counts of attempted murder, and one successful straight-up—”

  “I keep telling you, I didn’t kill the retard.”

  “Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger, but accessories are tried just the same as murderers, Sean. And now that New York has the death penalty, you might just want to think about how a plea could help you. . . .”

  Pascal switched the speaker off. He sighed, rubbed his chin. “It’s been like that since Fowler went in there. Real illuminating.”

  I shifted my weight off my sore ankle. “Can you get Scott out for a few minutes? We’ve got some information that may help.”

  “Like what?” Lozano said.

  Bridgett said, “We can link Grant to Dr. Romero.”

  “How?”

  “Call the Two-six,” she said. “See what you can find on the murder of Melanie Baechler. Paul Grant and she were going out.” She spelled out “Baechler” for him.

  “And?”

  “Baechler was murdered ten days ago,” I said. “Katie knew her.”

  We were in the box with Rich. On the table in front of him lay the photograph that Francine had taken of Grant and Baechler at the Yankee game. Beside it were photographs of Baechler’s body at the crime scene, and a copy of the autopsy report. The photographs showed ugly bruises around her neck. The left rear portion of her skull was caved in.

  Rich sniffed the air. “Now that smells like gasoline.” He looked at each of us, then settled on me. “Have an accident, boy?”

  I pictured what his eye would look like with a pencil through it and smiled.

  “Look at the photographs, Sean,” Fowler said.

  He did, then asked, “Who’s the bitch?”

  “Melanie Baechler. She’s dead,”' Fowler told him. “Grant beat her to death.”

  Rich shrugged.

  “You know why he killed her?”

  “Tell me,” Rich said.

  “He beat her to death because she aborted his baby,” Scott said.

  Rich looked at Bridgett. He smiled. “Sound like the gash got just what she deserved.”

  Bridgett cuffed him at the back of his head. Her eyes were like glacial ice. “Be polite, Sean,” she said softly.

  “Funny thing, though,” Scott said. “Melanie wasn’t even pregnant.” He tapped the autopsy report. “See? Says so right there. Wasn’t pregnant, no sign of an abortion.”

  Rich’s smile stayed on his face. “Then the report’s a lie, but that isn’t a surprise, now, is it? All them doctors are in it together, changing the facts and spreading lies.”

  “No lie, Sean,” Bridgett said. “She never had an abortion.”

  “You say.”

  “Grant murdered her,” Fowler said. “And he murdered Katie Romero, and he wants to murder Felice Romero. With your help.”

  “He still might,” Rich said. His eyes were on me. “You don’t have this guy, do you? Whoever he is?”

  “He won’t be able to do it,” I said.

  “He’s not alone. The army still marches on.”

  “You mean Barry? Crowell?” Bridgett asked.

  Rich kept looking at me. “Like that.”

  “Barry is dead,” Fowler said. “
Got himself shot at Mr. Kodiak’s apartment.”

  Rich’s smile flickered.

  “He was about as good with demolitions as you are,” I said. “Hope you didn’t need that Semtex.”

  “It’s easy to get.”

  “Not where you’re going.”

  He sniffed the air again and I felt my anger start to rise. “Well, maybe Clarence didn’t need the Semtex? Your apartment? What happened, boy, did he torch it? Is that why you smell like a truck stop?” He leaned forward in his chair. “Did he torch your little nest, boy? Did you lose again, like you lost when the retard got capped?”

  I was over the table before Fowler or Bridgett could move, driving Rich out of his chair and back into the wall with both my hands on his neck. I was pulling back, preparing to start slamming his skull against the concrete, when Fowler caught my arm, and then Bridgett had her arms around me, pulling me back.

  Rich was laughing.

  The door to the box flew open and Lozano came in, grabbed me, and with Bridgett, got me out of the room.

  The look Fowler gave me as I went through the door was one of disgust.

  Rich kept laughing. I heard it all the way out into the hall. I heard it when Lozano told me to go home and get some rest. I heard it when Bridgett and I got our gear back, and again when she disarmed the alarm on the Porsche.

  Sisters of Mercy screaming on her tape deck did little to shut it out.

  We had stopped for groceries and to buy me clean underwear, and after we unpacked, Bridgett told me to stay out of her way, she was going to make dinner. I sat on the old couch and tried to watch the television. A framed photograph hung over the bureau, a picture of a lighthouse with the mother of all waves crashing about from the far side. In the photograph you could see a person, either a man or a woman, it was impossible to tell, standing in the little doorway of the lighthouse. The wave threatened to swamp him or her, to wrap around the pillar of light and toss the little person off into the maelstrom. It was a beautiful picture, though sad, and I stared at it, trying to understand what I was feeling.

  I thought about calling my parents or my brother or Alison, letting them know what had happened, but I didn’t.

  Bridgett brought two bowls of soup over to the coffee table, and a bottle of beer for each of us. “Fresh from the can,” she said. She sat in the chair by the couch, took her bowl into her lap and then put her feet up on the coffee table. Her shoes were off. She knocked over a stack of magazines, mostly periodicals but one or two literary journals, too, and I saw Time, Harper’s, The Advocate, and On Our Backs.

  We watched CNN and ate the soup. They ran a short piece about the fire, without identifying Barry as a member of SOS, then followed it with a seemingly unrelated piece about the bomb scare at Common Ground that afternoon. They ended with a reminder that no arrests had taken place in the search for Katie Romero’s murderer, but that the FBI had someone who was “assisting in their inquiry.”

  “That Rich, he’s so helpful,” Bridgett said.

  By the time they started talking sports, we’d finished our soup and beer. I took the dishes into the kitchen, washed the bowls, then washed the pot Bridgett had made the soup in.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You want a drink? There’s Scotch in the far cabinet. You drink Scotch, right?”

  “Scotch is good.”

  “Pour me one, too.”

  She had a bottle of Glenlivet, so I poured two glasses, then returned to the couch. Bridgett flipped channels, and I looked around the apartment some more. On the wall by the bathroom door were two pictures, one of a young woman that I took to be Bridgett, her black hair cropped short. The other was of Bridgett looking much like she did now, her arm slung around the shoulder of a man in his fifties, and a woman of roughly the same age. All were smiling.

  “Who’s that?” I asked her.

  She followed my finger and said, “That’s my ma and da.” She pointed at another framed photograph, this one by the door to her office, and said, “And that’s my baby sister.”

  Her sister looked to be about Bridgett’s height, maybe a little shorter, but there was no practical reference in the photograph to really give scale. She was very beautiful. She was wearing a heavy winter coat in the photograph and a stocking cap, and was looking out of the frame at something that made her laugh.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Cashell. You have siblings?”

  “A younger brother. Alex. He’s in grad school.”

  I looked around for other photographs and didn’t see any that looked to be of friends or relatives. She had an Ansel Adams shot of Half-Dome in a black frame, but that was about it. I looked back at the picture of her parents. “What does he do for a living?”

  “He was a cop,” she said. “A Good Irish Cop. He died two years ago. Lung cancer. And Ma was a Good Irish Cop’s Wife.”

  She opened a tin of Altoids and sucked on one. She smiled to herself, one of those smiles that you know means whoever is doing it has gone inside and is amused by what they see there. She sipped her drink, then shook her head and said, “Two tastes that don’t mix well at all.” She swallowed the mint, then set her glass back on the table and looked at me. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wanted to rip his throat out with my hands, Bridgett.” I emptied my glass, looked at it. “He went right for my buttons and I took off like a rocket. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t know what’s going on in my head. Since before Katie died . . . I’ve been having nightmares.”

  “About the shooting?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. In one of them, I’m on a killing spree, I . . . it’s the same feeling I had when I saw Crowell at the hospital, the same feeling as when I was holding Barry’s gun. And now Rich, and he’s nothing, he’s fucking nothing, and I let him set me off like that.”

  “Some of it may be fatigue,” she said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want a refill?”

  I looked at the glass again, thought about nodding. She went and retrieved the bottle, refilled my glass, refreshed hers.

  “I’ve got no home,” I said. “I keep thinking about how I’m guilty, here, how I’ve done this to myself. I couldn’t protect Katie. I pushed Barry too far and I didn’t need to push him at all.”

  “Barry was waiting for an excuse,” she said. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  I finished my drink and stared at the glass. Eventually she got to her feet and turned off the television.

  “There’s clean towels in the bathroom,” she said. “I bought you a toothbrush. Go take a shower and I’ll make up the bed.”

  She had a good shower, plenty of water pressure, and the head was high enough for me to stand under without stooping. There was a bar of oatmeal soap in the dish in the shower, and I used that and managed to get the smell of burning out of my nose and mouth. Her selection of shampoos was generous, and I sampled the organic one made in Australia. It made me smell like a mango, but that got the gasoline stench out of my hair.

  The mirror was covered with condensation when I shut off the water, the clouds of steam hanging in the room, sticking to the plaster and tile. I turned on the overhead fan, realizing I should have done so before taking the shower, and dried myself off with one of the thick, clean, fresh towels. My ankle throbbed when I touched it.

  I put on my glasses and looked at my face, and it brought me down. Pale brown eyes and too-long hair and a shadow of stubble and lines starting to find permanent homes about my mouth, eyes, and forehead. The bruise on my cheek was turning yellow-green. And I thought, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’m in the wrong line of work.

  I opened the new toothbrush and cleaned my teeth, and then, with the towel wrapped around me, I left the bathroom, heading back to the couch where Bridgett had made a very passable bed. It wa
s a long couch, and it would hold me. She came in from the kitchen and looked me over. Then she said, “Sit down,” and went into the bathroom. I heard her rattling around and took the opportunity to put on a new pair of boxers.

  She came back out with an Ace wrap and tape and told me to lean back on the sofa. She began to wrap my ankle. She sat on the couch to do it, her back to me, leaning forward to my legs. Each time she touched me I felt it, a little stroke, the caress of her hair, and it made me think about her, it made me very aware of her.

  When she finished she said, “That better?” and I said, “Yes,” and she nodded and moved into me, one hand lightly on my shoulder, the other slowly tracing its way up my neck, and I put my arms around her, lost my fingers in her hair, and we kissed.

  She tasted of her mints and the Glenlivet, and her first kiss was kind. Her second was safe and reassuring, gliding into a rising passion at the third that I fell into gratefully. Her grip on me tightened, and she fit into me, her skin pleasantly hot, and we moved slightly. I brought my mouth from hers, and with her hands now in my hair, she guided me to her neck, and I tasted her skin at the hollow of her throat.

  That was all I could do.

  I stopped, and she held me against her, and I could feel her heart beating against my chest, feel my breath as it bounced back from her skin. We lay like that, neither of us moving, just my breathing and her heart, and then the sounds of traffic. She began to stroke the back of my neck.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  She kept her hands in my hair and on my neck, moving them gently. For a while my mind fumbled for more words but then just gave up, gave out, unable and unwilling to work to label emotions that wouldn’t keep in line and that I couldn’t properly articulate.

  Bridgett slid her hands to my shoulders, and I brought my head back to face her. She brushed my lips with hers and then shifted off the sofa, standing, her hands still on me. “Lie down,” she said. When I did, she covered me with the blanket and took my glasses off my face and set them on the coffee table. I watched her walk away, heard water running from the bathroom, the sounds of her brushing her teeth and washing her face. They were enduring noises, and they lulled me closer to sleep, and my eyes closed and shut out the light. I opened them when the water stopped, hearing her move from the bathroom to her bedroom, and I shut them again, thinking that was all.