“TAL BLISS WAS MY first,” Des announced as they rocketed down Rimmon Road in Bella’s Jeep Wrangler, empty pet cages rattling around in back. It was dusk-dinner hour at the A amp; P Dumpsters on Amity Road. “I never killed someone before.”
“You didn’t kill this one,” insisted Bella, her round double chin practically resting on top of the steering wheel as she drove. “It was his own doing.”
“If I hadn’t gone to see that man, he’d still be alive today.”
“You don’t know that, Desiree.”
“Yes, I do,” Des said somberly. “I do know that.”
“Sweetheart, you must not hold yourself responsible for what he did,” Bella said scoldingly. “You’ll make yourself meshugah.”
“What’s meshugah mean?”
“Crazy.”
“I heard that.” Des nodded to herself. “Yes, indeed-in Dolby Sound.”
She had spent an entire day and night in the Internal Affairs building next door to Major Crimes being grilled by a lieutenant from Hartford who she did not know. The man was not hostile. The man was not sympathetic. The man simply wanted the facts. He had already spoken with Soave who, in spite of the unwritten code, had made virtually no attempt to help cover Des’s bootay. Not that she had expected him to. Not after the way he’d sold her out once already… “Why did you keep your sergeant out of the loop?” the I.A. lieutenant wanted to know. “There was time pressure,” she replied, leaving it at that. She was not going to whine to I.A. that she didn’t trust him. “These things happen in the heat of an investigation.” But the man clearly did not feel right about this. Nor did he like that she had failed to go through I.A. channels before looking into the personal medical history of a fellow officer. “But I didn’t search his medical file,” Des objected. “And I didn’t know before the fact that I’d find his name on that pharmacist’s list. How could I know that? I simply asked him about it, that’s all. I asked him about a lot of things. How was I supposed to know he’d blow his brains out? Man, I was just doing my damned job.”
Except they were not going to let her do that job anymore. Not for a while, anyway. She was on the shelf, pending the findings of an official Department of Public Safety review panel. Or at least that was the formal way of putting it. Here was how the Deacon put it when he gave her the news, his voice low and solemn: “This case has generated too much heat, Desiree. The superintendent doesn’t want you within ten miles of it until it’s good and cooled down.”
Translation: They were paying her to go away.
Soave could not quite manage to look her in the eye when she came back to the Jungle to gather up her things. No one could. Not big brother Angelo, not Captain Polito, not Gianfrido, Polito’s hand-picked boy from Waterbury. No one had a comforting or encouraging word to say to her. No one had a thing to say to her. It was as if she had ceased to exist.
The last thing Des did before she cleared out was take down the CATGIRL FROM HELL sign from her cubicle.
There had been television reporters waiting outside her house. She had brushed past them without a word, locked her door, closed her shutters. Thwarted, they had tried interviewing her neighbors. A huge mistake, because Bella had been only too glad to hold forth for them: “Why don’t you goddamned vultures cover the news for a change?” she demanded at the top of her lungs. “Our public schools are crumbling. Affordable health care is a fantasy. And all you’re interested in is destroying decent people’s lives!”
They cleared out right after that.
God, Des wished she had that woman’s chutzpah.
She had spent this, her first full day of forced leave, getting physical. She ran three miles. Did two circuits with twenty-pound dumbbells on the pressing bench in her guest room. Mowed the lawn, pruned bushes, weeded beds, raked. She vacuumed the entire house. Cat hair, mostly. She got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the kitchen floor. But it was no use-she remained profoundly shaken. Counseling had been offered to her. She had declined it. She had her own form of therapy.
“What did your father have to say about all of this?” Bella honked at the slow-going Toyota in front of them. The traffic on Rimmon was sluggish, folks heading out for the evening.
“Almost nothing.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“Only because I’m not.” In the world according to the Deacon, no special allowances were made for family. He would not intercede. He would not play favorites. “All he wanted to know was whether I went by the book.”
“Did you?”
“Bella, they can spin it any damned way they want. They have the benefit of twenty-twenty rearview vision.” She would get her job back, she felt sure. They couldn’t fire her over this. But from now on, there would be an asterisk next to her name. The fast track would be muddy. She was tainted now. Damaged goods.
“Screw ’em,” Bella fumed. “If I were you, I’d quit.”
“And do what?”
“Whatever makes you happy. You’re young, you’re bright, you’re gorgeous-what do you need those bastards for?”
“And do what?” Des repeated, even though she knew perfectly well what. Except that it was simply not in her nature to walk away from a fight. She was not a quitter. Never had been. “Do you know what I’m saying?”
“No, dear, I do not.”
“If everyone did exactly what they wanted, then the fabric that holds our society together would completely unravel and the whole world would go straight to…” Des broke off, aghast. “Damn, now I’m sounding just like the Deacon.”
“You’re not your father, Desiree. Or anyone else. You’re you.”
Des gazed over at her fondly. “I’d pay good money to see you go twelve rounds with him, know that?”
“Not a chance,” Bella scoffed. “He wouldn’t stay on his feet more than seven rounds.” She pulled bumpety-bump into the A amp; P parking lot and began easing the Jeep around back to the Dumpsters. “So did he call you?”
“Did who call me?”
“Mitch Berger. As if you didn’t know who I meant.”
She shook her head. “Wouldn’t expect him to.”
“Really? I would. Maybe he’s shy. Is he shy?”
“Not so I’ve noticed. And, for your information, it’s not like that-him and me, I’m saying.”
Bella let out a whoop. “Tie that bull outside, as we used to say on Nostrand Avenue.”
“And just exactly what does it mean?”
“It means, my dear, that you are full of you-know-what,” Bella replied as she pulled up and killed the engine.
Big Willie was lurking there in the bushes, acting like he wasn’t waiting for them. God, he was mangy. Looked like he’d gotten himself in yet another fight, too. The dried blood that was caked around his left ear hadn’t been there early that morning.
Des and Bella baited their cages with the jars of strained turkey and stationed themselves a safe distance away, strings in hand. Big Willie moved in closer, crouched low to the ground. Looked at them with his one good eye. Looked at the cages. He inched closer still. Looked at them. Looked at the cages… Des talking to him softly, telling him it was all going to be okay.
It was, she reflected, uncanny how after all these weeks Big Willie chose now to come in from the cold. It was almost as if he sensed that Des was hurting. Or maybe he just knew that this was one moment when she really and truly did not need any more aggravation in her life. Whatever it was, this was the night Big Willie crept nearer
… and nearer… and finally went all the way inside the trap as Des slammed it shut behind him.
They had him. He hissed. He yowled. He hugged the ground, swatting at them. Damn, he was mean. Like a little caged lion. But they had him at long last.
“Big Willie is in the house!” exulted Des, triumphantly highfiving Bella.
“You go, girl!”
Dr. John would have to check him over in the morning. Until then, they quarantined him in Bella’s garage-Des had a full house right now with Dirty Harry being back in residence. But Des had no doubt that once the vet gave Big Willie a clean bill of health he would end up with her. He was her kind of he-cat. Although she would have to find Dirty Harry a new home first. Where?
Des had herself a hot shower and a cold Sam Addams, good and tired from her day of physical activity. She heated up Bella’s stuffed cabbage and wolfed it down. Then she went in her studio for her therapy.
She had two photos of Tal Bliss pinned to her easel. One was his official I.D. photo, the one that had been distributed to the media. It was a standard head-on portrait of a lawman, gaze direct, his jaw strong. Tal Bliss had been the living image of a state trooper-brave, determined and fair. He had an honest face.
The other picture was a crime scene photo of him slumped at his redwood picnic table with most of that face gone.
Des stared at it long and hard, slowly reawakening her senses. Summoning up the smell of bacon and sage in the air. The sound of laughter from the kayakers out on the lake. The sunlight streaming through the trees and onto the deck. Remembering how at peace Tal Bliss had seemed, standing there in his kitchen making fruit salad in his spotless white T-shirt and apron. Remembering her horror, her anger. Remembering…
Now she began to draw him in vine charcoal, stroking boldly and rapidly. Gesture drawings at first, one after another. Placing Tal Bliss on the page. Finding her major contours and shapes. Locating her light source, her core shadows. Then she began to get more specific, gradually taking away with her kneaded eraser, squinting as she searched for the values in his shattered face, the cast shadow of the gun on his chest. After two hours she had a drawing that was beginning to work on a technical level. It was three-dimensional. She had her information down, her shapes and values. What she did not have was her emotion. The drawing was not alive yet. It merely sat there, cold and remote.
Draw what you see, not what you know.
She switched to a hard graphite stick, focusing less on values and more on lines. To free herself from what she knew, she turned his photograph upside down and tried drawing it that way. An exercise she had once been taught. She drew a portrait of Tal Bliss with her left hand. Another with her eyes closed. She drew for hour upon hour, deep into the night, until the floor around her was heaped with discarded drawings. But it still didn’t work. She could not make it work. Exhausted and frustrated, she hurled her stub of graphite stick against the wall.
She didn’t believe it. That was why.
Tal Bliss was no killer. He was an old-school cop-a good, decent man who lived to serve. Tal Bliss had believed in the code. He was prepared to put his own life on the line to protect someone else. That was his job. That was his duty.
Des got up and went into the bathroom to wash the charcoal from her hands, her mind beginning to race… What if… Jesus, what if that was what really happened? It sure made a hell of a lot more sense, didn’t it? What if Tal Bliss hadn’t committed those murders at all? What if he had shot himself to spare the life of the woman he loved? What if he had been protecting Dolly Seymour?
Des didn’t know the true story. But she did know that her portrait of the man wouldn’t come to life until she did. Nor would she be able to rest. Not until she knew what happened. She had to know what happened.
She was staring long and hard at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, wondering what on earth she was going to do about this, when her phone rang.