As I figured, Christopher’s not at the restaurant, so I point the Passat northeast and hit I-90. I’m going to have to talk to her, because I know he’s there. He goes to her when he can’t talk to me. Somehow, in the twenty minutes it takes me to get to Euclid, where my mother lives, I start to feel more human and get some perspective.
There’s bound to be evidence that will prove my brother’s innocence. Fishner will have to believe me. I’ve never given her reason not to. I’ll do whatever is necessary: work the case as if my life depends on it, be a character witness, go to bat for him. He’s cleaned up his act, at least for the most part, so he’ll have to give a statement and a swab, and we should be able to clear him. That doesn’t stop me from feeling as if I’m going to explode.
I pull into the parking lot of Mom’s apartment building and maneuver around several chuckholes in the asphalt before swinging into a spot about a hundred feet from the front door. I should have called first. I never know what I’m walking into with her. But I’m here now, so I might as well just deal. I consider leaving my gun in the lockbox in the trunk but decide against it. This neighborhood sucks, and the last thing I need is a stolen service weapon. I pull my leather jacket tighter around me to cover it, then I unclip my badge from my belt and slide it into my pocket.
The complex is a dump. She moved here about ten years ago when she lost her job. Her disability checks wouldn’t cover the place in Willoughby. The glass front door is covered in handprints and snot prints and I don’t want to know what else. Hoping the intercom works, I press the button marked 211 - Margaret Boyle.
“Who is it?” Her voice crackles through the speaker. She sounds different than I remember.
“Mom, it’s me.”
The door buzzes, and I yank the handle. Walking through the big lobby area, I think this place used to be a hotel, long ago converted into low-income, state-supported housing. It’s a far cry from our former middle-class existence. I can’t believe she lives here. I don’t want her living here.
Both elevators have Out of Order signs taped over the doors. My mouth falls open. This is an eight-story building. Those poor people on the top floor must be in very good shape.
The stairway is gritty, with the paint peeling off the floor and unrepaired holes in the walls, like something out of a cop movie, when they’re chasing some degenerate up or down, in the dark, with guns drawn. It smells like piss, something a movie can’t really convey. A broken toaster is smashed in one corner of the first landing.
I push open the metal door to the second floor. Her apartment is first on the right. I knock sharply a couple of times.
“Lizbeth, is that you?” Mom calls from behind the door.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”
She pulls the door open. She looks better than I expect. Her color is good, and she’s dressed in a pair of green corduroys and lighter-green sweater. I try not to let the relief show on my face. I can’t remember the last time I saw her in anything but her ratty old bathrobe, and it’s still pretty early in the day. I suppress the urge to push her out of the way so I can find my brother.
She hugs me and sighs when her elbow brushes against my gun as she steps back. She’s almost as tall as I am. “I’ve missed you.” She smiles. “I need to ask you about my brakes.” She winks at me.
I sit down on the sofa—always a “sofa” for her, never a “couch”—and scan the room. It’s clean and put together, looking much better than it did the last time I was here. I don’t see any vodka or pill bottles, which is a major improvement. I allow myself a sliver, just a tiny glimmer, of hope, even though I know how dangerous that is. “How are you, Mom?”
She meets my gaze with light-gray eyes the same color as mine. “I’m better. I’m going to meetings.” Her graying auburn hair is pushed behind her ears. It’s longer than before, down to her shoulders, but still wavy. “Two weeks.”
I hear a symphony coming from the stereo in another room. I nod, even though I know better than to get too happy about it. We’ve been down this road before. “That’s great. Dvorak, huh?” I allow a flicker of a smile to cross my face.
She seems pleased. “Yes, it is.”
An image flashes into my mind of her teaching me about classical music when I was about five. We were sitting at our kitchen table, listening to snippets of various symphonies. My favorite was Beethoven’s Seventh. She used to play piano and tried to get me to take lessons. That kind of lost importance at some point. Another sudden, vivid memory hits me hard. I see her practicing Chopin, with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth and a half-empty bottle of vodka on top of the piano, while I got ready to take Christopher to his sixth-grade parent-teacher meeting.
Enough nostalgia or whatever that feeling is. I decide a change of subject is in order. What I really want to do is grab her and shake her until she tells me where my brother is, but I know that will only make things worse. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
She smiles. “Just a little. Water weight.” She pats her stomach with both hands.
“Mom, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Christopher. He’s not at home. I just wondered… have you seen him?”
“Oh, you know Christopher. He’s so busy these days.”
“Yeah.” I don’t believe her, but confrontation is the wrong way to go with Mom.
“You want something to drink? Water, coffee?”
“Sure. Coffee, yeah.” There’s a little edge to my voice that I know I have to soften if I want her to help me. I can’t believe this is happening. I wonder what the latest is at the station and if they’ve got new leads. Well, anything besides the one Jo Micalec dumped on me at seven this morning.
We sit on the sofa and make small talk for a while, and I avoid snapping at her again. She drinks a couple of cups of coffee complete with fresh cream, which I interpret as another good sign. When she’s off the wagon, she doesn’t keep perishables in the house.
I don’t take off my jacket. Even though she felt it, I don’t want her to see my gun and know that I’m actually here on kind of a police matter. Her eyes are clear. She talks with her hands as she always does, as I do. She prattles on about her brake problem, the meetings, and how she’s doing really, wonderfully well. She even invites me to dinner next weekend, adding how nice it would be with just the three of us.
I surreptitiously glance at the clock on the side table while she talks. She doesn’t seem to notice. Kevin Whittle has been dead for four and a half days now. My phone vibrates at 9:04. Shit, we need to get to the station before they come after Christopher. The muscles in my shoulders turn into rocks.
I hold up my index finger. “Just a second, Mom. I’ll be right back.” Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I move into the kitchen. Checking the screen, I see Fishner’s name. Damn it, Tom. I asked you to cover for me. “Boyle.”
“Boyle, are you planning to come to work today, or did you decide you need more time off?”
I’m staring at my mom’s refrigerator, at the pictures on the freezer door. There we are at Christmas last year. I was wearing black, as usual. My hair was longer then, almost to my shoulders. Christopher was wearing his new Browns jersey. Mom looks sloshed. There’s me at about six, playing in a sandbox with Josh. Next to that is a gangly Christopher at my high school graduation, standing with my mom and me. I have blue hair and a lot of eye makeup. Below that is a small photo of Jupiter, a black-and-white dog we had when I was a kid.
Up high, another photo shows Dad wearing boxing gloves and a white undershirt. It must be a picture from the service. I trace around the sides of the photograph with my index finger. “Yeah, Lieutenant. I’m dealing with a family thing right now, but I’ll be there soon. Sorry. I’ll explain when I get there.”
“You need to get back here for the briefing then go talk to the rest of the Winky’s people before you go speak to the grandparents again.”
; “Yes, Lieutenant.” I put the phone back in my pocket before returning to the living room.
As soon as my butt hits the couch cushion, Mom says, “Hey, maybe you should come to my church. It’s in Midtown. That’s where my AA meetings are, too. I went to one this morning.” She reaches for her cup. “Oh, I’m out. I’ll go put on a fresh pot.”
While she’s in the kitchen, I take a look around. The bedroom is clean. The gray carpet looks freshly vacuumed, and the bed is made. The blinds are open, letting in a ray of sunshine. A mystery novel by a popular author is on the nightstand next to a clock radio that’s set to the correct time. All these I take as promising signs. I don’t have time to search the closet, but a quick glance doesn’t reveal anything suspicious. There’s nothing under the bed except a pair of slippers and her fat orange tabby cat, Bubbles.
I walk over to the bathroom door, but the knob won’t turn. I knock, gently enough that she won’t hear it from down the hall. “Christopher, open the fucking door.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Mom, I need to pee,” I call out. “Why’s the bathroom locked?”
She appears in the hallway with a worried look on her face. “I, ah, I accidentally locked it. The maintenance man is on his way to open it for me.” She’s lying. I know because she has a tell. She always looks down and to the left when she’s lying.
“Mom, I need to talk to you, and I need for you to be okay about it.”
Her eyes search mine, worry creasing her brow. “What about?” I catch her glancing in the direction of the bathroom door.
I lose my nerve. “I really need to know where Christopher is. He’s helping me with something for work.”
“He was going to go to breakfast with me before my meeting. I’ll get him.” She walks past me to the bathroom door.
I hope this isn’t going to make her relapse. Please, dear God, I don’t even know if you exist—in fact, I’m pretty sure you don’t, but if you do, please. He’ll try to stay calm in front of her. He knows I wouldn’t tell her details. We both try to act casual, normal, around Mom.
“Christopher,” she says through the door, “come out. Lizbeth needs to talk to you. She says you’re helping her.”
“Okay, just a sec,” he replies. I hear a quaver in his voice.
“Promise me you’ll take care of him,” she whispers.
A long time ago, I made the same promise to my dad. “I will.”
She squeezes my arm as he emerges, red faced and red eyed. I pretend that I don’t think it’s at all strange that he was hiding in the bathroom or that it took her pleading through the cheap door to get him out.
She doesn’t like that he can’t go to breakfast with her now, since he has to help me with this case. That’s what we tell her, at least, even repeating it a couple of times. She’s upset, but we all manage to hold it together and avoid a big scene. I offer to give her a ride to meet her friend at St. Martha’s, since her brakes are bad. It’s on the way, anyway. She agrees.
Mom is scary smart. She used to do logic problems for fun and could have had any academic career in the universe, but she was content to work at the pharmacy and tend to us like a good old-fashioned Irish Catholic. She senses that something is going on. I’m sure of it. But she won’t say anything. He’s not in jail, and she’s not getting some phone call in the middle of the night to say he’s in trouble. So she can go to mass and her meetings and read her novel and do her damn puzzles and remain unaware of all the craziness, at least for now. I hope I’m not going to have to tell her that he’s been arrested for murdering a five-year-old.
A part of me wants to tell her to fend for herself, that I’m dealing with something much bigger than giving her a ride to church, but then I think better of it. I force a smile and hurry her into the car. She spends the entire ride talking nonstop about how great it is that all three of us are in the same place for once, and I almost tell her to shut up but clench my jaw instead.
“Are you all right, Lizbeth?”
“Yup, I’m just peachy.” I make a fist. She would lie to the police to protect Christopher, and then they’d both be in jail. It’s almost funny, and I stifle a laugh, knowing that I’m having some kind of weird, inappropriate response to the situation.
When we arrive at the church, I get out of the car and help her to make sure she doesn’t leave her purse or something. “Do you need me to pick you up, Mom?”
“No, I can get a ride home from Angie. Thank you for the ride.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand then gives me a wan smile. I pull her into a hug, and she stiffens, probably in surprise, but then relaxes into it.
Christopher gets out of the backseat and hugs her. “Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, Christopher. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
He nods. “Sure, Mom.”
“When are you two coming over? We should go to dinner next week. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I try to smile, but I know it’s distorted. “I’ll call you.”
“But we could just—”
“Okay, fine. Dinner next Wednesday. See you then.”
Mom squeezes my shoulder then heads up the steps to join another woman. She turns and waves with a smile before they both disappear inside. Christopher continues to stand beside the car, the passenger door hanging open.
“Get in the car,” I tell him. He looks as though he might run away, so I gently take his arm. “Christopher, please get in the car. We need to get this over with. We need to get you to the station before they come after you. It’s better. Get in the car.”
Chapter Thirteen
When we get to the station, Jessie Hedges is sitting by the elevator. I introduce her to Christopher then lead them directly to the interrogation room. I ignore all the stares as we pass through the squad room.
“Christopher, I need you to wait here for a few minutes while I talk to my boss. Talk to your lawyer. Be honest with her.”
“Can I have something to drink?”
“In a bit. Just wait here.”
The second I walk back into the squad room, Fishner is on me like a mongoose on a cobra. “Who is that? I thought you had a family thing! Instead you bring in another suspect? Who already has Jessie Hedges working for him?”
Sitting at his desk, Goran raises his eyebrows at me.
I remove my jacket and carefully hang it on the back of my chair. “That’s the family thing.”
Fishner points at her door. “My office. Now.”
Goran makes the “you’re in trouble” face at me before turning back to his paperwork. I stride into Fishner’s office.
“Close the door,” she says as she moves behind her desk. Once I sit down, she says, “Tell me what’s going on.”
I try to explain everything in a nice, calm tone. “He’s my brother. Jo called me and said that the hair turned up a hit to my mitochondrial DNA. I talked to him, and I’m sure he didn’t do it. He’s an idiot, but he’s not a murderer. We got Hedges, and here we are.”
She hasn’t blinked in ninety seconds. She leans forward and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe Jo didn’t call me right away. That you didn’t call me.” She shakes her head. “This is a shit show.”
I just stare at her. She’s pretty much nailed it. I start counting the second hand ticking on my big silver watch.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” she says right after I get to a hundred eighty-two. “We have to talk to him as if we think he did it, Boyle. It’s the only physical evidence we have right now. Sure, he’s your brother, but we’re the police.”
“I know.”
“If the media gets wind of it, will you be all right?”
No, I won’t. I shrug. “I guess.”
She picks up her cell phone. “I’m calling Becker. She should be here for this. We’ll try to keep it quiet and hope that, one
, you’re right that he didn’t do it, and two, that we can find evidence to prove that.”
I drum my fingers on the chair arm. “Is she going to keep her mouth shut?”
“Of course she will.” She stares at me. “Boyle, I am really concerned about you, about all of this. You know that you can’t be involved in this.” She points at me. “Go finish your paperwork. Get Goran in here. He and I will handle the interview. You have to step back. You know that.”
Part of me wants to argue, but another part is relieved that Fishner and Goran will take over and shoulder some of this burden. “Okay.”
“That’s an order,” she says as if I argued with her. “Desk. Catch up on your paperwork. Until I tell you otherwise.” She makes a typing gesture.
I get up and go back to the squad room. After sending Goran to her office, I plop down behind my desk and fake doing paperwork until they emerge to go down the hall. Once they’re in the interrogation room, I slip into the observation room.
Julia Becker steps in a minute later. “Are you supposed to be in here?” she asks.
We both look through the mirror. Goran is sitting across the table from Christopher, while Fishner leans in the corner, in her typical Fishner way. Christopher’s got his head in his hands, and Jessie Hedges, sitting next to him, leans over and whispers something to him.
“No, but he’s my brother.” I promised I’d take care of him.
Goran asks Christopher a couple of softball questions, which my brother answers in a soft voice.
“This, Detective”—Becker gestures with her bottled water at the three people in the interview room—“does not look good.” She stares at me. What is she looking for in my face?
What the hell am I supposed to say? Of course it doesn’t look good. It looks like a steaming pile of smelly shit.
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