Messiah Josiah

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Here,” Fisk said. He dropped a bunch of paper on Jim’s desk.

“What’s this?” Jim reached out and felt a stack of files.

“Yours is the only clean desk, sorry, Jim,” Fisk said. “These are the files from the warehouse. No prints, so we get to look through them now. Good luck.”

“Yeah, but are they even related to our case?” Karen asked.

“Take a look.”

Jim lifted a couple files and held them in Karen’s direction. She took them and he heard her rifle through the papers.

“The names are kinda familiar… Winston Glad… Sherman Houston… Abigaile Little…”

“They’re all names from that list Rob Mulhaney faxed us,” Jim said. “I ran them all through the computer. Every single last one of them came up dead.”

“As dead as Richard White?”

“You kids have fun,” Fisk said, walking off.

“So there’s a chance these people are still alive?” Marty asked. He scooted his chair back to the side of Jim’s desk and lifted a couple files.

“Shit,” Karen said. “Their movements over the past year are all mapped out. Every family member and friend they’re in contact with… Every alias. I don’t believe it.”

“So you found the mother load,” Jim said. “We’ll be able to contact all these people.”

“Yeah, but why were the files there? I don’t buy the bit about Uncle Josiah just being human and making a mistake. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Maybe…” Jim shrugged. “Maybe it’s to prove what sort of power Uncle Josiah has, able to make all these people disappear. And to prove how sick he is, keeping an eye on them.”

“But what were they doing there?”

“Maybe Michael had pangs of conscience before the fight?”

“You think he’s trying to set up Josiah? By planting evidence?”

“If he’s killing people left and right and making people disappear, it’s not that hard to bring him down. If you have the proof, it’s easy to leave it lying around.”

“Let’s find these people and haul their asses up here,” Tom said.

“I’m game,” Jim said.

“I want to talk to Michael again,” Karen said.

“Me, too.”

“We’ll run these files if you two want to go work him over a little,” Tom said.

The phone rang and Karen picked it up. “Bettancourt,” she said, then listened.

“I still don’t trust a word he says,” Marty said. “If he says he killed everyone, I won’t believe him. And if he says Uncle Josiah killed everyone, I won’t believe him.”

“Great, Marty,” Jim said. “You just discounted everything our only suspect has said.”

“What, you believe him? You’re pretty trusting.”

“I’m not going to say he’s a saint, but no one can lie about everything.”

“Maybe he can. Maybe when he says Uncle Josiah killed Samantha, he means he killed her himself. And when he says he didn’t know who Glenn Bartlett was, he did.”

“You’re twisting everything he said!”

“He’s twisted enough on his own. I’m just saying—”

“Marty, you can’t—”

“Guys!” Karen said, slamming down the phone. “Come on, Tom, couldn’t you say something?”

“I’m not their baby-sitter,” Tom said.

“Karen?” Jim asked, his hands clenched on the arms of his chair.

“The paternity test came back positive. Michael’s the dad.”

Jim stood up. “I’ll let the boss know, then we’ll head down.”

“Jim…”

He stopped and waited, but didn’t turn around.

“Marty… You guys, if Fisk catches you acting like this again, you’re both going down the river, you know that, right?”

Jim squared his shoulders and opened Fisk’s door. He told the boss what they’d found and asked if they could go visit Michael.

“Bring him up,” Fisk said. “I want to see it, too.”


* * *


“Feeling better?” Karen asked. She pulled out a chair at the table in the interview room.

“No. Should I be?” Michael asked sullenly.

“Last night you told us you didn’t know what kind of poison Uncle Josiah was dealing with. Then you proceeded to pull some out.”

“Maybe I thought that was really aspirin.”

“Right.”

“It was going to make all the pain go away, wasn’t it?”

“Does it always look like aspirin?” Jim asked.

“Looks can be deceiving, don’t you know that by now?”

“Just answer,” Karen said.

“No. Some are liquid, some are put in chocolate—”

“Like for Samantha?” Karen interrupted.

Michael laughed sadly. “You should have seen her. “No, no, I can’t eat that, I’m diabetic!”” he mimicked, then paused. “And I told her, “Honey, that’s not gonna matter anymore.””

“Are you the one who gave her the poison?”

“No. I was just there for moral support.”

Karen moved around the table, changing the subject by changing position. “Do you know what a paternity test is?”

“Yeah. That’s where your kid does something so heinous you end up ripping out your hair and asking how you gave life to such a monster.”

“You know you have a kid?”

“You’re joking,” Michael said blandly. He sounded like the night in jail had greatly depressed him.

“So how do you plead?” Karen asked.

“I plead virginity, detective.”

“Why’d you try to kill yourself?” Jim asked.

“Because I wouldn’t make a very good messiah. It’s either me or him. And it’s always him.”

“That’s not the way it works.”

“What would you know?”

“The world doesn’t—”

“This isn’t the world! See, detective, you should have been a goner. At the church, I don’t know how you managed as well as you did. Maybe Josiah took pity on you. But I wasn’t going to. You started to leave. I stopped you.”

“I remember bumping into someone,” Jim said. He narrowed his eyes, thinking back.

“See, I’m not very good. If Josiah had bumped into you, you would have jumped off the nearest building.”

It took all of Jim’s strength to suppress the shudder. His stomach clenched, but he kept himself otherwise neutral, as if it didn’t matter.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Karen said finally. “How well did you know Samantha back in high school?”

“Barely,” Michael said. “Pretty girl like that? So normal and voluptuous. What would she be doing with a criminal like me?”

“You were a criminal? In high school?”

“It’s all predetermined. I was born with a criminal mind.”

“You didn’t have a choice?”

“God doesn’t decide what you have for dinner every day. But that’s about the only choice we get in this life.”

“You’re good at chemistry, right, Michael?” Jim asked.

“Yeah.”

“So what’s your part in all these drugs?”

“Assistant. I was still learning.”

“And what all does Josiah deal in?”

“Mostly medications. The one poison, like you know.”

“Any street drugs?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m just wondering why all his followers are so happy to have nothing.”

“The power of the mind shouldn’t be underestimated. You don’t need a chemical boost in order to seem happy in the most dire circumstances.”

“Do you like Josiah or not?” Jim asked.

“What’s not to like?”

“You tell me.”

“If you dislike a saint, you go straight to hell.”

Jim turned to Karen. “Is that true?”

“I would doubt it,” she said with a small laugh. “Not every saint was always… saintly.”

Jim nodded and turned back to Michael. “In that case, you were good friends with him, right? Even if you didn’t always agree with him. I’m just wondering what happened before you met up with me at the warehouse.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been planning something a long time. What is it, a hostile takeover? Why’ve you been dropping the name Pipsqueak? Obviously because you know it’ll lead straight back to Uncle Josiah.”

Michael grunted.

“And those files you planted? You had this all planned out, didn’t you?”

“All it proves is he’s not a nice guy,” Michael said. “That’s all I’m trying to prove.”


* * *


Samantha screamed. She was crying as she yelled, “It’s too late, too late,” like she was getting attacked.

The tape was edited. She’d been talking to someone, but that person had been cut out of the tape.

She screamed again.

Then she laughed. “I knew it would be like this.” She giggled. “Don’t worry so much.”

The message ended, then another one started. They’d called back repeatedly.

“Hi, Mom! Clem and I are doing great!” she said brightly.

Mrs. Whittleton said, “She was bi-polar. When she’d get depressed, it didn’t matter what she said or who she hurt.” She stood up and backed away from the tape recorder. “One day she’d love me to death, then later, she’d do anything in her power to hurt me for being such a bad mother.” She sniffed. “So hearing her happy in one message, then angry, that’s not a stretch.”

The screaming started again and Mrs. Whittleton shuddered audibly.

Karen reached for the off button. “Do you have any enemies, Mrs. Whittleton? Besides your daughter?”

“What?”

“Maybe someone she would have conspired with? Because she didn’t just make the tapes. Someone’s still calling to play them. Who?”

“I assume it was someone Samantha knew.”

“Why? Anyone she knew would know she was dead. They’re not just covering for her; they’re trying to hurt you.”

“Do you know this kid?” Fisk asked, sliding a piece of paper across the table to Mrs. Whittleton.

There was a pause as she looked it over. “Yeah… He went to junior prom with Sam.”

“His name’s Michael?” Fisk said.

“Yeah.”

Fisk made an affirmative grunt. “Do you know of any other contact besides junior prom?”

“He came around the house for a while, but my husband didn’t like him. This was back when I was still married, before the affair. My husband threw him out—repeatedly.”

“Why?” Fisk asked.

“Graham said Michael wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t that he was such a bad kid, but he wasn’t good enough for our daughter. And sometimes he was just… obsessive.”

“Do you think there’s any chance he’s using these phone calls to spite your husband for that?”

“His family moved away—what would he be doing with Samantha?”

“He’s the father of your grandson… They got back together at some point.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


He’d asked her because that’s what every guy wanted to do. He’d married her because any guy would have, if she’d said yes. And she’d said yes. Maybe he’d half expected her to turn him down, but she said yes. What was he supposed to do, turn her down? Not likely. He’d chosen his wife and he was sticking to it. Any man would be proud of her.

She had her job and he had his. They lived their own lives, crossing paths when convenient. It suited them.

They fought sometimes. Every married couple fights. Jim wasn’t an idiot, he’d known before he met her, the moment he first saw her, how little they would have in common. That was bound to create conflicts.

Somehow, married, he felt empty. Alone. More empty and alone than he’d ever felt as a bachelor. Maybe because he didn’t have that option of picking out a new woman to learn about and taking her home at night if he chose. He just always went home. To the same woman. Who sometimes didn’t seem to care whether or not he was there.

He’d found himself wanting more. Don’t the rich always get greedy?

“Jim,” Karen said.

Jim looked over at her, but she didn’t say anything else. He couldn’t believe how distracted he was. Usually he could keep his personal life completely separate and not even think about Christie at work. He needed that separation in order to do his job. But Christie’s phone call that morning… “Damn it.” He stood up. “Karen, I’m going out to lunch.”

“”Damn it, Karen,” that’s a nice answer,” she said.

He set his jaw as he stopped with his coat half on. He wanted to say it again, but he finally just took Hank by the harness and walked away.

Christie’s office was in an upscale, all-windows building. He’d been there a few times, but usually he asked her to meet him somewhere else. He had a hard enough time at parties, making small talk with those people; he didn’t need to see them during the day.

Once inside, a secretary had asked if he needed help, calling over to him, then walking around something, probably a large desk, to get to him. He didn’t remember where Christie’s office was, so he stopped Hank and waited for the woman.

“I’m looking for the office of Christine Dunbar,” he said.

The woman paused, probably looking him up and down. Jim was reminded of how they used to check him out before and wondered what was going through her narrow brain as she took in the dog and the cuts on his face, the bruise just under his eye. “Do you have an appointment?” she finally asked stiffly.

“If you don’t show me her office, I’ll find it myself,” he replied.

“This way,” she said.

Jim ordered Hank to follow. The sound of her high heels disappeared abruptly and Jim almost stopped walking, thinking she might have stopped even though Hank hadn’t, but a step later his foot settled onto carpeting. He hadn’t been prepared for how much the plush carpet would mute the sounds he’d been following. He forced the tension out of his shoulders and followed Hank, picking up a mild swishing sound from the way the woman walked.

She pushed open a door and he walked through. “He’s here to see Mrs. Dunbar,” she told someone, then walked away with a swish, back out the door that had just closed.

“Do you have an appointment?” a younger woman asked.

“No.” He turned to face her, dropping Hank’s harness and crossing his arms. He listened as she asked if Christie was busy because some man was there to see her.

“May I show you a seat?” she asked finally. He heard her hang up a phone.

“No thanks, I’ll stand.” He cracked his neck. “Tell her her husband’s here to see her.” He debated flashing his badge and muscling his way in, but instead he waited while she made the call.

“It’ll be a few minutes. May I show you to a chair?”

“You don’t want me standing over you?” he snapped. “If I want to sit, I’ll find a chair. But I don’t plan to be here long enough to make myself comfortable.” He clenched his teeth, wondering what Christie was doing, who she was in there with, what they were talking about.

A door opened a minute later and he turned, hearing a couple people walk out and Christie’s placating tones quietly apologizing.

“Jimmy?” Her hand was on his arm.

He took Hank by the harness. “Let’s go in your office.” He followed her without taking her arm.

“Jimmy, is everything okay?”

“I’m fine. You know I’m fine.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I came to talk. Don’t you want to talk?”

“You don’t look like you just want to talk.”

“No?” He dropped Hank’s harness and stepped away from the dog, then froze. “Did you move anything in here?”

“No.”

He nodded. He could have just stood there and made them both uncomfortable, but he had to move.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You called me at work.” He stopped at the floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the right wall of her office and ran a hand over one of the shelves. A set of tiny marble figurines lined the shelf in front of books.

“Isn’t that allowed?”

“You called me. I was busy. I’m working a case; do you even know what I do all day?” He turned one of the figurines toward her, then walked away.

“Fine. You came down here. I was busy. I had a meeting.”

He sighed. “I’m not going to just stay home for a few bruises, Christie. This is my job and it’s important. To me. Do you understand?”

“I shouldn’t have called,” she said, her voice icy. “I was worried.”

“Great!” He threw up his hands, turning away from her. “If you can’t handle it—”

“Who said I can’t?”

“You did!”

“Maybe I thought, since this case hasn’t been going anywhere, that just this once you could call in sick and let yourself get better.”

“I am better!” He took a deep breath. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“What do you think is wrong?” she asked. That was one of her favorite questions and he was sure she used it to drive him crazy and prove to him that he didn’t know everything.

He slammed a hand down on her desk, knocking over a picture frame. “Don’t pull that today, Christie. Just tell me.”

She was quiet a minute, then her voice was low. “I miss you,” she finally said.

He narrowed his eyes, wishing he could see her. If he squinted… but he reached out to take her hand across the desk, where it seemed she was hiding, taking refuge.

She wouldn’t take his hand. He left it there a moment, then dropped it back to the desk, using it to guide himself around to her. “Damn it, Christie,” he said. She didn’t move away from him. “What the hell does that mean, you miss me?”

“I miss you, the Jimmy you were when we first met.”

He took her by the shoulders. “What changed?”

“Everything. Sometimes it’s like you don’t love me anymore.”

“You know I love you.”

“No, I don’t. Why else would you—”

“How many times do I have to apologize?”

“I was so worried last night and you said we’d talk in the morning! But you weren’t there!”

“Christie, I can’t do much to prove I’m a good husband now. As for my job, I’ve done nothing to disprove that I can do that.”

“I know.” She was shaking. He could tell she was near tears. “But when Marty told me yesterday that you’d been hurt—I just couldn’t stop remembering how it was right after you got shot. What if that happens again? What am I going to do if I lose you?”

Jim bit his lip and leaned his forehead against hers. “I don’t know. But it’s a chance you have to take.”

“You don’t know what it was like.”

“No.”

“You can’t imagine yourself doing anything else?” she whispered.

“I’m a cop,” he said and closed his eyes, concentrating on her breathing. “You know that. I’m good at what I do, Christie, and I enjoy doing it.”

“And if you died doing it?”

“I think I’d be happy. I never really thought of that.” He pulled back, but she wouldn’t relinquish one of his hands. She moved up behind him and wrapped her arms around his stomach. “If I’d died at the bank…” He gave a low laugh. “I’d have hated Terry for it. But if I’d gotten the gunman off the street beforehand, I would have been happy.”

“Even though you and I were fighting? There’s more to your life than just your job, you know.”

Jim paused. “At that point, I thought you would have been better off without me anyway. We’d been talking about a divorce…”

“But not about you dying.”

“You never know how you’ll go. Or when. Christie, I don’t want to think about this.” He turned around in her arms.

“I don’t want to let you go.”

He smiled down at her. “I’ll have a hard time doing my job if you don’t.”

“I mean it, Jimmy. I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“I’m careful.”

She squeezed him tighter. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I’m not giving up my job.”

“Then I’ll have to trust you, won’t I? And that’s so hard.”

“If you can.”

“You don’t make it very easy.”

“I know.” He finally put his arms back around her. “I’m sorry.” He held her close. “Christie,” he whispered into her hair, “I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’m trying.”

“I know,” she said.

“And I’ll be careful, I promise.”

She sniffled. “There’s more to your life than just your job,” she emphasized.

He ran a hand through her hair. Her long dark hair, he’d always loved the way she wore it, no matter the style. He’d always loved the way it flowed, the way it caught the light, the seduction when she turned quickly and it floated away from her shoulders. “I remember, when I first got home from rehab, your hair was the only thing I wanted to touch. Not books of Braille, not a cane, just your hair.” He breathed deeply, the smell of her shampoo and her perfume. He closed his eyes and just let her overwhelm him, his hands lost, his senses floating. He didn’t need to see her.

“You never told me that.”

He swallowed hard. “There’s a lot I can’t tell you.” Her hair was the only that that felt the same way it looked, the only thing he’d thought he wasn’t missing out on right after he lost his sight. He couldn’t see her eyes or her smile or watch her walk into a room and he’d been afraid he’d lost her to the blindness.

“I have to get back to work,” she whispered.

Jim untangled his fingers and stepped back. He slapped his thigh. “Me, too.” Hank jumped up.

Jim left the building, thinking how, of all the things Christie had ever said to him, when she said he shouldn’t be a cop anymore, that’s the one that hurt the most. Yet he still loved her. Maybe even more, for her honesty. All he could do was let her come to her own conclusion, and hope she stayed. He couldn’t force it, not this time.

He headed Hank toward the nearest subway station, shivering in the cold. It was almost noon, but the temperature must have dropped since that morning. He couldn’t feel the sun.

Christie had always been there, he thought. Even if she was unpredictable, even if he could never say or do the right thing, she was always there for him. And now, when she disagreed with him most, she was still going to be there for him. Even though he couldn’t understand how it scared her, how she’d been affected by the shooting and him losing his sight, even though it all culminated with his job, she was still going to be there. He shook his head in awe. Galloway was wrong, she wasn’t weak.


* * *


Jim settled into a chair in the interview room.

“You remember junior prom?” Karen asked.

“Hard to forget it.”

“You went with Samantha?”

“Prettiest girl I ever met. Not to say I haven’t seen other girls prettier, they just would never give me the time of day. Samantha was different, though.” Michael sounded wistful.

“You knew her?”

“Intimately.”

“Why lie about it?”

“The girl’s dead. I didn’t kill her, but I’m not about to muddle your brains with useless facts.” The smirk was coming back into his voice, meaning he must have been feeling better.

“Gee, thanks,” Karen said.

Jim leaned closer. “Tell us about Samantha.”

Michael squirmed a second, then relaxed and leaned back. “Fertile girl,” he said. “She perpetrated my first visit to an abortion clinic. Then she told her dad… she always told the wrong things to the wrong people. Which is why Josiah shut her up first thing—good kid, but she had to be taught not to say anything of consequence, especially seeing as she was one of his girls. It wasn’t like she couldn’t think, when he was done with her; she just couldn’t really talk.”

“How?”

“How would I know? Like I said, I wouldn’t make a very good messiah.”

“You knew her parents?” Karen asked.

“Of course. They had to take pictures of the happy couple, didn’t they?”

“Were you mad at her father, for not wanting you two to go out?”

“Who wouldn’t be? Is he dead?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

“You want revenge?”

“Revenge? That’s really no such thing. You don’t feel better; an eye for an eye. Because it doesn’t take away what you’ve already lost. Why bother?”

“I bet you could come up with a good reason to bother,” Jim said.

“I doubt it. I’ve never been much for reasoning,” Michael said.

“Samantha told her mom she was going to Paris, did you know that?” Karen asked.

“Just what you told me.”

“Do you know why she would?”

“Her mom always wanted her to travel. Samantha almost died once, she was comatose a week for unregulated blood sugar. Her mom always wanted her to travel before she died, would have made the family happy.”

“So, conceivably, if Samantha knew she was about to die, she might lie to her mom and say she was traveling?” Karen was walking around the room, tapping her notebook against her fingers like she did when she was thinking of a new notion. Jim waited to see what else she’d come up with.

“Maybe,” Michael agreed.

“Do you have any idea why she’d make tapes of messages instead of calling outright?”

“No idea.”

“Like, maybe it was just a joke and she hadn’t planned on the messages getting back to her folks?”

“I don’t pretend to conceive what’s in Samantha’s head.”

“Does Josiah let you just use the phone anytime you want?”

“Josiah doesn’t care about your family. Samantha didn’t care about hers, either. She had a new family. There’s no reason to call home.”

“Your phone calls aren’t restricted or monitored in any way?”

“No.”

“So the tapes…”

“I don’t know about any tapes.”

“Let’s say Samantha made tapes, okay? Why would she leave a nasty message, like she was in trouble? Was there a problem between her and her parents?”

“No idea.” Michael laughed. “She was a funny girl. And Uncle Josiah’s a sick bastard. Put the two together…”

“And?” Karen leaned against the table.

“This is just a theory, mind you, but Samantha didn’t want anything to do with her family, not after her parents divorced. Maybe Josiah was trying to help ease the transition. I’m sure her parents wouldn’t just let her go. Maybe they were bugging her and she said she was leaving the country so they’d leave her alone.”

“And the message where she was screaming bloody murder and yelling at her mom?”

“I’d guess it was her way of telling them to leave her be.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“There’s a lot of ways to cut ties with family and Josiah knows them all. Look at my family. I don’t have to talk to them anymore,” he said smugly.

“She’s dead. You said he killed her. Why would he keep playing the messages?”

“For fun.”

“Messiahs have fun?” Jim asked skeptically.

“They do when they’re Messiah Josiah.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Four


Jim tapped his fingers against the side of the vending machine.

“What now?” Karen asked.

“We get to go through it all again and hope he gives us something new,” Jim said.

Karen sighed. “Should we ask him about Artez?”

Jim grimaced. “Maybe not yet. I’d rather not let him know that we found him and that Artez fingered him as Pipsqueak.”

“But if we let him know that we know he killed Samantha—”

Jim waved her off. “He’ll twist it around somehow. I don’t want to give him any ammunition on what we do or do not know.”

Karen fished out some change and Jim listened to her drop the coins in the machine.

“Anything good in there?”

“I’m not even hungry. I guess I’m just eating out of habit.”

Jim looked down at the machine as it dropped her selection. “I need something.” He tapped the glass. “What’s in here? Cookies? Candy? Chips?”

“A little of everything.”

Jim pulled out his wallet and held out a dollar. “Here. I just want a candy bar or something. If nothing else, it’ll keep me occupied.”

Karen didn’t take the money. “There’s Braille on there. Haven’t you ever used the machine?”

“No. I’d have to guess what’s in there, wouldn’t I?” He waved the money at her, not feeling like attempting to distinguish the letter and number combinations in front of Karen. He was tired and needed practice.

“Okay…”

He could practically feel her rolling her eyes.

“One tuna melt coming right up.”

Jim heard something fall after she pushed a button and he reached down for the tray. The change dropped and he grabbed that, too. “Thanks.”

“What’re we doing?” Fisk asked.

“Thinking,” Jim said as the lieutenant put some money in the machine.

“Let’s let him guide us, see where he takes us.”


* * *


Jim rubbed a hand over his forehead. Despite the entertainment value, he was getting sick of the kid. Three conversations in one day was a bit much.

“Go ahead and ask,” Michael said calmly.

“Ask what?” Karen said.

“Not you.”

“What do you want me to ask?” Jim asked.

“They always do; I can see it on your face.” Michael’s voice wavered.

“What?” Jim leaned back in his chair as calm as ever. He pushed the fatigue away and concentrated.

“Say it. Say, “What the hell’s your problem? You let him kill your parents and now you’re his closest friend? What is your problem?”” Michael’s voice had risen in anger. He took a few deep breaths, then asked more quietly, “When are you going to say it?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Jim kept his voice even, despite his surprise. He hadn’t expected the kid to start cracking up like that. It was almost unsettling to hear him getting upset.

“Why not?”

“I deal with people everyday who come from messed up homes, who commit crimes, who want to commit crimes but don’t have the guts. I deal with all sorts of people who had both parents murdered and turned around to kill—”

“They weren’t murdered,” Michael defended.

Jim shrugged. “So this isn’t about revenge on Uncle Josiah?”

“No!”

He nodded. “In the law, any death that’s not natural or by your own hand, that’s still murder.”

“It wasn’t murder!”

Jim held up a hand. “I won’t call it either way.”

“Call it as you see it. That’s your job,” Michael said coldly.

“I’m not looking into the deaths of your parents. Okay? That’s not even an issue right now.”

“I wanted them dead. That makes me an accessory, right?”

Jim leaned forward, his elbows on the table, looking over at Michael. “Tell me, why haven’t you been able to get over their deaths?”

He heard Karen shift in her chair. Michael’s side of the table was quiet.

Jim almost laughed as his words replayed in his head. He was beginning to sound like Galloway.

“I hadn’t even thought about them in three years. I couldn’t care less.”

“Tell us about them.”

“No.”

“Okay. Tell us about junior high. You said you went to a private school? Catholic? Those Catholics are pretty tough, aren’t they?”

“I learned from a nun,” Michael said, brightening up a little. “She could take anything from anyone without them noticing.”

“Did you ever get caught practicing her trade?”

“All the time.”

Jim nodded. “How’d your mom feel about that?”

Michael shut down again.

“Tell us how they died,” Karen said.

“Easily. Uncle Josiah slipped something in their coffee.”

“At the same time? Wasn’t anyone suspicious?”

“The coroner said Mom must have died first, and when Dad found her, his heart stopped.”

“Any fingerprints?”

“There wasn’t even an investigation. As far as anyone knew, I was still in Michigan. All I had to do was say I called to check up on them and when there wasn’t an answer, I called the neighbor to check on them. All the while, I was back in New York with Uncle Josiah. I didn’t even go to their funerals.”

“They deserved to die?” Jim asked.

“Does anyone deserve anything good or bad? No. They just needed to die. I needed them to die.”

“Why?”

“Emancipation?”

“Were you happier?”

“Of course. And don’t ask me if they were happier because there’s no way I could possibly know that. I’ve never been visited by their ghosts. I haven’t been spited by God for not honoring my mother and father.”

“Was that your first death? The first people you helped kill?”

“Yeah.”

“Were they the first people you’d known who died?” Karen asked.

“No. I told you, death runs in my family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, dogs. My first dog died when I was four. We’d had him about three months. How do you explain that to a kid? You wanna know what they told me? They didn’t say he died, or that he went to Heaven, they said he couldn’t be with us anymore. How the hell do you understand that? He won’t be here, he can’t be here. Yeah, well, Grandma couldn’t be there for Thanksgiving that year. What’s that mean? The dog’s busy? Or maybe Grandma died?” He shifted in his chair. “I never did see Grandma again, either. Hell of a way to find out she died, making the connection with your dog.”

“After your parents died, then what?” Karen asked after a moment.

“I stayed with Uncle Josiah and he taught me things. He said I reminded him of himself when he was younger and he wanted to make sure I could take care of myself.”

“He knew we were investigating Samantha’s death?”

“Yeah. No. Yeah. He knew what you were after, but he had to be careful. He knows a lot of people don’t like what he does for a living. But it’s a necessary evil. Samantha understood that. I understood that. It’s just the way life is, can you see that?”

Jim leaned forward. “What were you supposed to do at the warehouse? Just two of you? Against us?”

“I already told you.”

“Josiah sent you.”

“Yeah.”

“The odds were against you, though.”

“So? And now you’re holding me for that.”

“Initially, yeah, it was just assaulting a cop.”

Michael gave a little snort. “I played right into your hands. I don’t believe a word of it, that that’s why you’re holding me. I know you’re looking into Uncle Josiah. That’s who you want.” The smugness was out of his voice, though, and he just sounded scared.

“Is he a good guy? Even if he is a “necessary evil”?”

Michael pounded his fist on the tabletop. “He’ll kill me if you let me go! That’s why I told you I killed Glenn. If you don’t arrest him for Samantha’s death, you can’t let me go. Okay? He’ll kill us all!”

Jim thought that sounded a lot like Artez’s initial description of Pipsqueak.

Michael started crying.

“Did you kill Glenn Bartlett?”

“He was my best friend,” Michael sobbed.

Jim followed Karen out of the interview room, letting a couple uniformed officers in to escort Michael back to the Tombs when he’d regained his composure.

“He’s a big help, isn’t he?” Marty asked when Jim and Karen came back into the squad.

“If Uncle Josiah’s such a saint, what’s he doing making people think he’s going to kill everyone?” Tom asked. “What sort of a saint is that?”

Jim shrugged. “Ask Marty; he seems to think he’s our resident saint this week.” He walked off toward his desk, leaving silence behind him.


* * *


Jim grunted as he lifted one of the heavy desks to slide it back into place.

“You want a hand?” Marty asked, standing at the mouth of the hall. He watched Jim carefully check on the angle of the desk, walk back to the window and head down the aisle with his outstretched hand running down the length of the desk.

“You can save the applause for later,” Jim said. “But if you really want to help move the desks, yeah, I’d be grateful.” He stretched his arm and worked a kink out of his shoulder.

Marty dropped a file on his desk. “Is that one done?”

“Yeah. And believe it or not, he didn’t touch the desks around mine.” Jim went back to the window, squared himself off with a light touch, then headed down the aisle. “This one needs to go in about four inches.”

“Four inches?” Marty said skeptically.

“Yeah, Marty. Four inches.”

Marty was about to apologize when Tom walked up. “What are we doing?” he asked calmly with the voice of a mediator. Marty turned away.

“I’m just moving the desks back,” Jim said with a shake of the head. He put a hand on the end of the desk. “This one needs to go about four inches left, if one of you could grab the other end.”

“Sure,” Tom said.

“I got it,” Marty said, lifting his end. He matched Jim’s movements, keeping the desk level, moving it so it stayed parallel to the desks on the other side. They set it down.

“Is it straight?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” Tom said. He walked around the other side and pushed the other desk up against it to close the gap.

Jim was concentrating on putting the chair in place, and the waste basket.

“No offense, Jim,” Tom said, “but four inches? Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave it?”

Jim’s gaze focused on Tom, as much a mask as it usually was. Finally he shook his head. “The closer it is to the way it was before, the better.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to let this kid redecorate the squad.”

“Fine by me.”

“You guys don’t have to help. It’s not like it affects you.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Tom said. “I used to move furniture on weekends back in high school. It’s bring back memories.”

“Good ones?”

“Oh yeah, man. Back then, I couldn’t imagine anything finer than a high school girl. But every year, I say the same thing. Nothing better than a girl this age. They ripen.”

Karen snorted, walking up. “We’re not fruit.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


“Let’s get out of here,” Fisk said, shutting the door to his office. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow—that is, unless anyone has any big plans they can’t miss this weekend.” Fisk stopped talking, but no one said anything. “No? Good.” The lieutenant walked off.

Jim heard two other sets of footsteps head toward the locker room.

“I’m really looking forward to what this kid’s gonna lay on us tomorrow,” Marty said sarcastically.

“You should be, Marty,” Jim told him. “Every little bit helps.”

“No… even when he’s shitting us like he has been for the past two days? Maybe you bought the crying act tonight—”

“Let’s go down there right now and call him on it, how’s that sound?”

“Sounds good to me. Another night in jail, I don’t even want to know what he’s going to come up with in all that free time. Some other wild goose chase and long-winded story?”

“You don’t have to come in tomorrow. I’d hate for you to miss your Little Miss Pain-in-the-Ass dance recital—”

“Yeah? And what do you do most Saturday afternoons? Walk down the street with a tin cup?”

“I don’t have to; Hank does parlor tricks.”

“Good for him. But the trick I’d like to see is you pulling Uncle Josiah out of your hat—”

“We’ll see him Monday.”

“Right. And you’ll never pin anything on him, ‘cause if you ask me, this kid’s as crooked as they come. It’s all an act.”

“You didn’t meet Uncle Josiah—”

“Wish I had. I’d have—”

“I doubt it, Marty. You had your chance to come and you passed it, so don’t go trying to tell me how you’d have gotten him in-house and made him crack.”

Jim stopped when he heard footsteps approaching. He pulled out his chair and sat quickly. He heard Marty do the same.

Karen shuffled papers at her desk for a minute. She opened drawers and rifled around.

Jim tried to concentrate on a file on his computer, but mostly he was breathing in, out, trying to relax. He was just tired. That’s the only reason they were sniping again. Marty and him, there was nothing really wrong and the less they said, the less they’d regret later.

A few minutes later he was feeling better. As soon as Karen left, he’d apologize. She didn’t need to know that he and Marty were fighting.

“You’re not going home yet, Jim?” Karen asked.

“Nah, not yet. Christie’s in one of her moods.”

“You make her sound like she’s unstable.”

Jim shook his head and leaned back in his desk chair. “Never marry someone who can’t handle the fact that you’re a cop.”

Karen said goodnight and left.

“I don’t blame her,” Marty shot over.

Jim stared in his direction. He was about to tell him to mind his own business when Marty spoke again.

“You treat her like crap, obviously. Not only that, but you’re on this crusade to prove you’re a tough cop.”

“I’m not—”

“How many cops go home beaten up every night? And how many get shot in a bank robbery playing hero? How many times have you decided to play hero, Jim? You’re blind—you think that was easy for her to accept?”

“How long have you been my therapist?” Jim snapped.

“All you’ve been doing since you’ve been here is put yourself in dangerous situations, trying to prove you’re still the same cop you were before. Do you have a death wish? You’re going to keep at it until you either prove you’re a better cop now or until you end up dead? And you just expect your wife to sit back and watch?”

“You know nothing about me, Marty.” Jim stood up, pushing his chair back.

“Sure I do, Jimmy.”

Jim knit his eyebrows together as he looked up at Marty.

“Does everyone you used to know call you that?” Marty asked.

“The people I was close to did.”

“You’re not going to ask us to call you Jimmy?”

Jim sighed. “You can call me anything you want, Marty.” He pulled on his suit jacket, ready to get out of there.

“How about “asshole”?”

“Marty!” Jim looked over at him, not blinking. “You can call me anything you want,” he said slowly, dragging out the pauses between words. “I don’t care.” He heard Marty grunt. “Look, I’m sorry about giving you shit about the case. I know we don’t see eye to eye on it. I’m tired and I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“What’s eating you?”

“The thing that pisses me off most is you’re almost a nice guy. Sometimes I find myself almost liking you.”

“And that pisses you off?”

“It’s all an act. You just use people to your advantage. Your wife, you don’t deserve her.”

“I know that. And I’m making the most of the second chance I got with her.”

“If you ever end up shot and killed, it won’t surprise me.”

Jim raised his eyebrows.

“It might surprise some people, but I’m not going to let you fake it with me, Dunbar. You have to earn my respect.”

Jim listened as Marty walked away.


* * *


“Jimmy?” Christie called. Her voice was far away, behind a closed door.

“Yeah?” he called back.

“Could you come here?”

Jim headed for the bedroom. The door was open, meaning she had to be in the bathroom. He knocked on the adjoining door.

“Come in,” she called.

He stepped into the room, then blinked quickly. Steam radiated through the air. He shut the door and loosened his tie.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

He pulled off his jacket. “It’s hot in here.”

She splashed water in the bathtub. “I know. Make yourself comfortable.”

“It was pretty good. We have a ways to go, though. It’s not as simple as we’d hoped.”

“You got home pretty early.”

“I need sleep. We’ve been working since a little after four this morning. And we’ll be there all day tomorrow.”

“How’s your body?”

“Not bad,” he lied.

“Join me? I got some herbal bath stuff that’s supposed to help with sore muscles.”

“You did?”

“My way of apologizing. I know this is what you do. It’s who you are. I was just scared.”

“Christie…”

“Join me.”

Jim slowly pulled off his shirt.

“And that doesn’t hurt?” she asked.

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“Come on.” She took his hand and helped him into the tub in front of her. “I got a rub. It’s supposed to help with sore muscles, too. You want a back rub?”

“My shoulder kinda hurts.”

“I’ll be gentle.”

Jim heard his wife open a bottle. “Does it smell like flowers or something?”

Christie laughed. “Don’t worry. I know by now that cops don’t smell like flowers.”

He felt her wave a hand under his nose and sniffed. He caught a whiff of something light, but not overly-fragrant and nodded that she could continue. The lotion felt cold in the steamy room. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. “Are you okay?” he finally asked.

“I think so. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“But if that’s the way you feel—” He started to turn around to face her, but she pushed him back. He sat still, wondering if it helped her, only being able to see the back of his head.

“Tell me what happened yesterday,” she said.

Jim filled her in, then caught her up on that morning, the censored version like he always fell back on with her.

“You like this kid,” Christie said.

Jim frowned. “I don’t dislike him.”

“You’re not usually so… intrigued by a perp.”

“Usually they’re so cold. They did what they did, and they’re sorry they got caught, but Michael’s life really has been… interesting. I wish I could help him.”

“But if it turns out he killed someone?”

“There’s nothing I can do. If we can pin anything on Uncle Josiah, there’s a chance his influence could help Michael get an easier sentence. When you’re under the influence of someone like that…” Jim shrugged. He pushed himself back in the tub and moved Christie in front of him so he could lean back. “I don’t think we’re ever going to figure out the whole truth.”

“You’re optimistic,” Christie said, leaning back against him.

“You know me: always look on the bright side.”

Christie giggled lightly.

“I think I’ll skip dinner tonight,” Jim mumbled, his eyes closed. He let his hand tangle in her wet hair, feeling himself drifting off, visions of Christie playing through his head. He tightened his hold on her momentarily when he caught a glimpse of her in her office. “There’s more to your life than just your job, you know,” her voice echoed in his memory. “I’ll keep in mind what you told me this afternoon.”

“Good.”

“See? I listen sometimes,” he joked quietly.

Christie pulled away and Jim opened his eyes. “Then you should have listened to your mother when she told you not to sleep in the bathtub.” She took his hand and tugged. “Come on. Go to bed.” She stood up. “I probably won’t see you in the morning, will I?”

“I have no idea.” He stood up slowly.

She giggled.

“What?”

“I guess I didn’t think of everything; we’ll have to share a towel.”

Jim gently reached out and grabbed her chin, tipping her head up to make sure she was looking at him. He winked at her. “Sounds good to me.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, detective?” she asked coyly.

“What the hell,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not every day I have a beautiful woman in my room…”

“Yes, it is.”

Jim smiled at her. “Oh, that’s right.” He took her hand, then paused, listening to the water swirl down the drain. He heard Michael telling him wistfully about how Samantha was the prettiest girl he ever met.

“What?” Christie asked, sounding almost annoyed.

He shook his head apologetically. “I was just wondering how Michael could pretend he’d never known Samantha. He… was the father of her children. I thought it sounded like he loved her. But he was apparently there when she died…”

“Jimmy…”

“I know, I know. I’ll stop thinking about them.” She handed him the towel.

As he sank onto the bed a few minutes later, she said, “He didn’t seem at all upset that she died?”

“He didn’t.” Jim stared at the ceiling. “Not even after he admitted they’d known each other for years.” He took Christie’s hand under the comforter. “That’s something I can’t understand.” He turned toward her, knowing she’d already turned off the lights and was lying there in the dark, probably nothing more than a silhouette. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you…”

Christie edged over and kissed him, laying her head on his pillow. He could feel her breath on his cheek, she was so close. “Here’s hoping we never find out.”

If he lost Christie… He couldn’t imagine. And what she’d said about how hard it had been when she almost lost him, even though they’d barely been speaking at the time… She must have re-evaluated what was important. That’s why she’d stuck with him through everything, no matter how difficult he’d been and how frustrated he’d become, how much he’d yelled at her.

She’d suddenly been there for him, every waking moment, and he’d just taken it for granted. All he’d ever bothered to re-evaluate had been his job. But she was right; there was more to his life. Galloway had tried to tell him the same thing, but it meant more, coming from his wife. Hadn’t he learned yet, to never take anything for granted?

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Five


“Jimmy Dunbar, where are you going?” Christie demanded.

Jim stopped halfway to the coat rack and turned toward the kitchen. “You’re up?”

“Yes, I’m up! I got up while you were in the shower.”

“Oh.” Jim blinked. “I thought you were still asleep…” He hurried to her side and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I didn’t hear you get up.” He turned to go.

“Jimmy!”

“What?”

“What about breakfast?”

He shrugged. “I figured I’d pick something up on the way there.”

“I happen to have breakfast almost made. Sit.”

Jim crossed to the counter. He sniffed the air, trying to figure out what she was making. “All I smell is coffee. Which I made.” He pulled out the bar chair and hauled himself up. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice.”

“That’s why I told you.”

“What is it?”

“Waffles.”

He heard her stirring something, a plastic spoon scraping one of the mixing bowls. He waited patiently and a minute later heard the batter sizzling and smelled the waffle cooking.

“Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’s not even six yet…”

“We went to bed early… And I’m wound up. I want to finish this case.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little overzealous? I doubt anyone else is going to be there this early.”

“I need to make some notes before I talk to this kid again.”

Christie set a plate in front of him. He heard a fork drop into place next to the plate. “Syrup’s on your right,” Christie informed him while starting her own waffle.

“What do you have planned for today?” Jim asked when he was half done.

“Nothing. I’ll probably just stay home.” She flipped the waffle onto her plate. “And hope nothing happens to you.”

“Christie!” Jim pushed the rest of his breakfast away.

She caught the plate quickly and pushed it back. “There’s a glass of orange juice at 11 o’clock.”

Jim shook his head, relieved she’d caught him before he knocked it over. “A well-balanced meal? Trying to make sure my head’s on straight so I don’t do something stupid?”

“I’m sorry.” She sniffled.

“What now?”

“I didn’t sleep much last night. That’s all.” She sat next to him and tapped the back of his hand with his fork until he took it. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.” He ran a hand over his face. “This isn’t even the part of the case where things happen.”

“I know.”

He set his fork back down and reached over, searching for her hand. She reached back to him. “Come on, babe. Do you want to give me a ride today?”

She squeezed his hand.


* * *


Jim wouldn’t let Christie walk him up. He was afraid if he let her in the building that she’d never be able to leave. That was a change, Christie being clingy, but he guessed the case had shaken her up more than she wanted to let on. And making her relive memories of the shooting at the bank wasn’t helping.

The squad room felt empty. Jim didn’t hear anyone moving around, so he just headed to his desk and switched on his computer. He draped his overcoat over the back of his chair and sank down. He had to admit, after that herbal bath, the back rub, and a little sleep, his body felt a lot better. He’d have to remember to thank Christie for that later. It would probably make her feel better, to know she’d been of some help.

Footsteps came from the locker room about ten minutes later. Jim looked up. “Karen?” he asked.

“You are here,” she said. “I thought I heard someone come in.”

“Yeah.”

“Marty brought breakfast,” she informed him.

“There’s pastries in the locker room,” Marty said.

“Christie made breakfast,” he said.

“Why?”

Jim blinked up at the other detective. “I don’t know, Marty.” He held up his cell phone. “You wanna call and ask?”

Marty sat down with a negative grunt. “Just asking.”

Karen pulled her chair out in the silence.

“Tom here yet?” Jim finally asked.

“Not yet,” Karen said.

“I think he had a date last night,” Marty said. “You know, with his girlfriend, not with that chick you introduced him to at the bar.”

Jim turned the volume up on the file his computer was spewing back at him. It wasn’t his fault if he was a bad influence.


* * *


“James Dunbar?”

The voice had an authoritative ring to it and Jim sat up straighter. He pulled his hands back from his keyboard. “That’s me.”

“Lou Banion, Internal Affairs.”

Jim snatched the earpiece out of his ear and pushed his chair back a little. “What can I do for you?”

“Let’s talk in the lieutenant’s office.”

Jim nearly gaped at him, but stood up anyway. “All right,” he said as pleasantly as possible. He took his normal route behind Karen’s desk, glad he’d taken the time to move all the furniture back into place. He could feel the silence as the other detectives stopped working and stared, probably at Banion. He could hear Banion moving toward the office from the other direction and stopped before he reached Fisk’s door. The footsteps also stopped. “After you.” He gestured, then waited for the man to comply.

Banion walked in without needing to open the door. Once inside, Jim kicked out the doorstop and closed the door behind them. He stood at attention, waiting.

“It’s been brought to our attention—a complaint by another officer—that Detective Dunbar has files which no one else has access to,” Banion said after greeting the lieutenant.

Jim couldn’t keep the incredulous look off his face as he stared in Banion’s direction.

“What are you talking about?” Fisk asked.

“The complaint was filed by Brian Mulhaney?” Jim asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you aware the real Brian Mulhaney has been dead over a year?”

There was silence. Jim imagined Banion exchanging a look with Fisk in order to confirm the information.

“This case we’re working on, we had someone pretending he was a cop, he even had Mulhaney’s badge—”

“That’s a serious accusation,” Banion interrupted. “The name Mulhaney’s very respected around here.”

“I know that, sir. Boss—” Jim turned to Fisk. “I lied, the night that guy was here. He asked for my files on the case, and seeing as no one else was around…” He turned back to Banion. “I had my suspicions he wasn’t who he said he was. So I told him he’d have to wait until morning, that they were all in Braille. Then I looked him up in the system and, I was right—he wasn’t Brian Mulhaney.”

“Your files aren’t in Braille?”

Jim shook his head. “I use the same files everyone else does.”

“How?”

“I scan them into my computer and they’re read back to me.”

“I’ll need to look at that.”

Jim just stared.

“Is that really necessary?” Fisk asked. “The kid who filed the complaint, we have proof he wasn’t a cop.”

“I realize that, but this is a serious accusation—”

“Coming from someone impersonating an officer,” Fisk corrected. “Dunbar is a good detective—”

“This isn’t about his ability to do his job. I have a job to do, too, and if he’s not hiding anything—”

“I’m not,” Jim said. He put a hand on the doorknob. “My computer’s at my desk.”

“I’d rather do it in here. Away from prying eyes. If everything checks out, do the other detectives in this squad even need to know there was a question of your integrity?”

Jim sighed. “No, sir.” He opened the door.

“What’s going on?” Karen whispered when he got to his desk.

“Nothing.” Jim turned off the computer and unplugged the scanner and the network cord. He set the earpiece aside and unplugged the power cord from the scanner, then piled the scanner on top of the laptop, wound up all the necessary cords, and carefully hefted them.

“You need help?” Karen asked.

“I got it.” He carefully walked back to the office. The door opened for him and he stepped in. “Where should I put these?”

“I cleared a spot on my desk,” Fisk said.

Jim walked around the desk carefully. He’d never been on that side of the room before. Fisk lifted the scanner and the cords and set them down. Jim set the laptop next to the scanner and plugged it back in. “Where can I plug in this?” he asked, indicating the power cord and the network line.

“I got ‘em,” Fisk said and bent under the desk.

Jim powered up the laptop.

“Scan this,” Banion said.

Jim heard him set a paper on top of the scanner. “Which side?”

“You tell me.”

Jim shrugged. Guessing Banion had set it print side up, as most sighted people would, he flipped it and waited for the scanner to warm up. He hit a few keys to open the right program, then turned the volume up. The software started to regurgitate a few words, then gobbledygook. Jim stopped it. “It doesn’t read handwritten things.” He deleted the file.

“Then how do you get that information?”

“The few handwritten items, the other detectives are kind enough to share information. We work together.”

“And they can use your computer?”

“Any sighted or unsighted person can use my computer. This just happens to be the only computer I can use.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only one that has the software to read things out loud.” Jim squared his shoulders and opened the file on the current case. He scrolled through as the computer read through subfiles until he got to the part about Mulhaney and let it start playing in its stilted voice. He stood back. “You’re welcome to any file in there. They’re all on the network and can be accessed from any computer.”

“…method of suicide is presumed poison. The time of death…” the computer read.

Banion moved over next to him and Fisk moved back a little. “I need to check it out. How do I get to the files?”

Jim gave him a quick tour of the computer, listing keystrokes as he used them to navigate.

Banion finally left, the computer reading through applications on the screen.

“That’s… kind of annoying,” Fisk said.

Jim turned the volume back down and shut it off. “But it’s helpful.” He followed the power cord under the desk until he found the surge protector underneath.

“What else did you tell that kid?” Fisk asked as Jim packed up.

“Nothing. I told him to come back in the morning.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want Internal Affairs up here everyday looking into our business. I don’t like it anymore than you do.”

Jim wound up the cords and stacked the scanner on top of the laptop. “The kid was good. Too bad he wasn’t on our side.”


* * *


“Tell us about Uncle Josiah,” Karen said.

Jim was settled patiently into a chair Karen had pointed him to in an interview room in the Tombs. He folded his hands on top of the table.

“Are you sure you want to know?” Michael asked.

“What are you gonna tell us that’s so shocking? We’re cops, not nuns.”

Jim snickered. “Speak for yourself.”

“You two done?” Michael asked impatiently.

“You have somewhere to be?” Jim asked, still smiling. “She’s right. We’re not nuns. And we have all day. Go ahead.”

“He uses his power just to have sex with women—that way it’s not rape. All the brainwashing—”

Jim rolled his eyes at the sensationalist aspect Michael had affected.

“It’s just for sex?” Karen asked skeptically. “You expect us to believe that’s his only motivation.”

“People kill for less.”

“So if it’s all about sex, why does he kill people? And why does he have male followers and friends like you? And why the drug business? You were doing better yesterday.”

Michael sighed. “It’s a good story I have planned out. Are you sure you don’t want to hear it?”

“Don’t waste our time,” Karen said.

“Once upon a time there was this kid named Josiah. He looked like a nice guy, so he had trouble doing what he wanted to—which was crime. No one ever believed he was capable. So the big crimes, where he’d need help, a whole organization, he was always just the kid. He never got to actively participate. He thought of starting his own gang, but who’s going to listen to a kid?

“Then he found he had this magnetism. He started studying hypnosis and created the next best thing—a cult. All those people who wouldn’t let him play, he either brainwashed them into becoming his little servants, or he turned them over to the cops. He would play snitch because no one believed he’d be involved.

“He stole stuff. He got any girl he wanted. He could break in anywhere because he could disable any security system.

“Still no one believed he could do it. So he got all these poor people to follow him. He would wipe out bank accounts and create new people to worship him. He’d withhold medication until they supplicated.

“And he’s been at it ever since, making miserable people and making those miserable people think he’s a messiah.”

“You have any proof?” Jim asked.

Michael tapped the top of the table a couple times. “You have all the proof you need in that filing cabinet from the warehouse. Contact every one of those people and they’ll testify. They were the ones who got out of his grasp. They know the truth.”

“You can have a thousand witnesses saying someone’s bad, but unless we have a crime to charge him with, that won’t do any good.”

“You have the death of Samantha, don’t you?” Michael asked like a know-it-all. “And I do believe you had someone commit murder just down the street by pushing someone else off a building. That was his doing.”

“We’re looking for proof that he killed Samantha, but with the guy on the roof, with the perpetrator dead, we can’t even charge Josiah as an accomplice.”

“Shit,” Michael said quietly.

“He’s good at covering his tracks.”

“I’ll think of something…”

“The poison was untraceable.”

“What about the bullets?”

“They were matched to the gun your friend had in the warehouse.”

“See?”

Jim leaned forward. “But the gun’s registered to you. Josiah never even touched it. You admitted yourself that you’re the one who shot her.”

“F*ck.”

“You can tell all the fairy tales you want, but you’re the one going down for the murders.” Jim pushed his chair back and stood.

“That’s it?”

“If you think of anything useful, let us know.” He opened the door.

Karen followed him out. “Big help,” she said.

“Yup.” He took her arm and let her lead him down the hall.

“I’m glad we were in the Tombs and not upstairs. Russo never would have let me live that one down, saying we’re not nuns…”

“Who says I’m going to?”

“Jim! It’s been a long week! And this kid… It’s flustering talking to him. You can’t see it in his eyes, but sometimes… I forget what I’m about to say to him.”

Jim was quiet a second. “He is Josiah’s little protégé, isn’t he?”

She shrugged.

“He learned a lot from the guy.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Karen said.

“Let’s see if we can pin anything on Josiah before Monday,” Jim said.


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


Karen caught Jim in the locker room before lunch. “Jim!” Karen reprimanded him. “Lay off Marty.”

Jim and Marty had just exchanged a few terse words in the squad room, but Jim hadn’t realized Karen was within earshot. “Why should I? He’s the one—”

“I don’t care who started it, but you’re my partner. I want you to be the grown-up here, okay?”

He wanted to snap at her, that she should lecture him about being a grown-up. As much as he’d tried to ignore it and just do his job, he had to know. He hadn’t asked before because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. He put both hands up against the end of a row of lockers and leaned down, his head bowed. He listened as she moved away. He struggled to keep his voice even. “Why’d you have to tell Marty about Anne?”

There was silence.

“Karen?”

“I didn’t,” she said from near her locker.

Jim moved closer to her, gesturing for her to continue, but again there was silence. Maybe she wasn’t looking at him. He moved right next to her and lowered his voice. “Then how’d he find out?”

“Anne told him.”

Jim wrinkled his nose. “Why would Anne tell Marty?”

“He ran into us one night.” Karen paused. “Is that his problem?”

“Yeah. Has she been telling everyone?” He could feel a rage and a hurt he hadn’t felt in a long time, like his stomach was being pinched shut.

“No. No, really, she hasn’t.” Her tone was meant to be soothing, but he sure didn’t feel at all calmer.

“Just Marty?” Jim asked skeptically. If it was true, Anne sure knew how to pick them. She’d always known what was best for him, so she could easily figure out how to make him miserable.

“Far as I know.”

“Just Marty what?” Marty asked from the door to the locker room.

Jim turned, ready to explain, but Karen jumped in first. “Let’s go out to lunch,” she said. “All three of us. We need to talk.”

Marty was silent. Jim kept his mouth shut, just listened to Karen walk away. He followed her slowly, waiting for Marty to join them so he could follow them both. He grabbed his coat and Hank’s harness. Marty and Karen were already waiting.

“Where you going?” Tom asked from his desk.

“Lunch,” Marty said, sounding confused.

“Can I come?”

“Not this time,” Karen said, then started to walk away.

“Sorry,” Marty said, and his footsteps followed her.

“Hey! What’s this all about?”

Jim headed for the door.

“Jim?” Tom’s plaintive voice asked, the little kid who was left behind.

Jim turned and shrugged. “Sorry, Tom. Maybe next time.”

“I don’t like surprises!” Tom yelled after him.


* * *


“Marty, you need to hear this, and Jim, you’re not supposed to know this, but… It just wouldn’t be right for me and Marty both to know and you not.”

Jim clasped his hands on top of the table in front of the club sandwich he’d ordered. As far as he knew, none of them had touched their food yet and wouldn’t until Karen got off her chest whatever it was she thought they needed to know.

“You’re as bad as Tom, dragging things out,” Marty said.

“I just don’t want this to get back to Anne. She’s my friend and…”

“And you’re betraying her confidence?”

“Geez, Marty, when you put it that way,” Karen said.

“Karen,” Jim said. “What is it? You two can drive me crazy later.”

“Anne knew you were married.”

Jim just stared at her.

“What?” Marty exclaimed. Jim could hear a note of outrage in his voice. Probably felt he’d been strung along just like Jim had.

“She doesn’t remember I know, she’s always going on and on about how you lied and all… Drives me nuts.”

“She knew I was married?” Jim asked finally.

“You two met at some party and I guess you were pretty drunk and you were flirting with her. Bobby Schwartz’s 59th, I think. I got there late and Anne came running up, told me all about you flirting with her even though your wife was there… She was pretty drunk, too. She told me she wanted to see how long before you told her you were married.”

“It was a game? This was all a game to her?”

“Not all. I think she really liked you…”

“She was playing me? Was she trying to ruin my marriage?” Jim turned away. Hank had sat up at the outraged tone in Jim’s voice, but Jim motioned for him to lie back down. “So she just kept pretending we had all these things in common?” Jim asked quietly.

“I dunno. She was pretty drunk that night…”

“But she remembered I was married.”

“I think so.”

Jim stood up and took Hank’s harness.

“Where’re you going?” Karen asked.

“I need to think.”


* * *


Part of Marty’s problem really was that Jim was a nice guy. Maybe not a good guy, but he was a good detective and Marty sometimes found it hard to hate him. Which was a problem because, of all the people Marty had met, Jim was up there on the list of people who needed to be hated. He didn’t need any more friends. He didn’t need anyone else to just excuse his actions. He’d cheated on his wife. He was a jerk sometimes.

Marty wasn’t about to cut him some slack just based on what Karen had told them. Really, he shouldn’t have known about the affair in the first place.

What kept nagging at him was the bit where Jim’s own wife didn’t think he should be a cop. That wasn’t right. Jim was a detective, and a damn good one.

There was a knock on the open door of the locker room. Marty looked up to see Jim standing there, listening hard to the silence of the room. His eyes were focused somewhere out the window and one hand was on the doorjamb.

“Marty?” Jim finally asked.

“Yeah.”

Jim looked over, his lips pressed together. “Karen told me you were in here.” He tried to smile. “I was beginning to think she was wrong.”

“What do you want, Jim?” Marty asked, not unkindly, just curious. He stood up, but didn’t move away from the window.

“I’m sorry you know any of this.” Jim shrugged. “I… know it wasn’t right, okay?”

“Whatever. I shouldn’t know any of this.”

“So we’ll just work together.”

“Yeah. And it has nothing to do with what Karen told me. I’ve been trying to forget ever since I met Anne.”

“I wish I could forget I ever met Anne,” Jim said quietly, looking down at the floor.

“Yeah. Right.”

Jim’s eyes raised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can stop trying to make me think you’ve reformed. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” Jim ran his hand through his hair, messing it up. Marty saw him wince and rub a spot at the back of his head. “Marty, haven’t you ever regretted doing something that messed up your life?”

“Is that the only reason you regret it?” Marty crossed his arms and watched Jim.

“It was wrong,” Jim said. “I was wrong.”

Marty laughed.

Jim cocked his head to the side, but Marty couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind those sunglasses.

“The great Jim Dunbar admits he’s wrong? What’s the catch?”

“Marty…”

Jim turned away, leaning against the door frame. He took a few deep breaths.

“Look,” Marty finally said, “we worked together before, we can work together again.” Jim didn’t answer, like he knew that wasn’t quite the end of it. “Keep your hands to yourself and watch Karen’s back, that’s all I ask.”

Jim nodded.

“We brought back your sandwich, just in case you got hungry.” Marty crossed to the fridge and turned back to see Jim’s gaze following his movements. He opened the door. “Uh… Top shelf on the right. It’s in a Styrofoam box.”


* * *


Jim turned toward Karen and listened to her typing at her desk. He had things on his mind. Christie, the case, Anne, Marty, DeLana, five dead people, poison, cult members, suicides, Owls. What would make a person give up their individuality? How bad must their lives be for them to relinquish free thought? It wasn’t a constitutional amendment, no one was forced to think for themselves, but—

Jim guessed he thought enough for several people on his own. Without the ability to think, he’d be lost, floundering, truly helpless.

“Jim,” Karen snapped, “stop staring at me.”

“Karen, I want you to help me with something.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Are we alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you could set up a meeting with me and Anne?”

“Jim—”

“Hear me out. Things didn’t end so great between us, and no amount of apologizing is going to help, I know that, but—”

“You can’t go tell her—”

“I won’t even mention that she knew I was married. It sort of evens us up in a way, right? I didn’t admit it, but she already knew?”

“Then what—”

“I need to apologize, I guess. And I’d rather she didn’t go telling everyone what I did.”

“You’re going to buy her silence?” Karen asked incredulously, then laughed.

“No! I know it can’t be a secret, but I’d rather she not go blabbing to everyone. Look what happened with Marty—”

“So that’s what this is about. You don’t want to apologize. You just want her to shut up.”

“I just want to talk to her.”

“You never just talk.”

“Karen, what happened between Anne and me, that should really stay between Anne and me, don’t you think? Could you just ask if she’ll talk to me?”

Karen sighed. “If it’ll make her stop obsessing about you every time I see her…” She picked up the phone.

“Thanks,” Jim said.


* * *


Jim laid his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his clasped hands. Around him he could hear the other detectives searching files on their computers. Karen made a couple phone calls. Tom tapped a pen on his desk. Jim tuned them all out. There didn’t seem to be much else they could learn and going through the files again wasn’t going to do any good. Now they just needed to regurgitate the information, sift out the truth, then go from there.

Michael was the big variable. The most unreliable type of witness, one who changed stories and facts every time they talked to him.

The thing Karen had told him after their interview that morning, about how she’d forget what she was going to say when she looked over at Michael, that kept running through his mind.

“Let’s say Marty’s right for once,” Jim said. The room fell silent. “Let’s just say Uncle Josiah’s not the bad guy here,” Jim said.

“Excuse me?” Karen said. “I thought you thought he was an incarnation of Satan or something.”

“I never said he’s not a bad guy, I just said, what if he didn’t kill Samantha and her cousin?”

“Okay…”

“Someone else did.”

“Yeah, if he didn’t, obviously someone else did.”

“Someone who’s a protégé of the creepy uncle.”

“Okay…”

“Then they would try to do things just like him.”

“To frame him?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“But they wouldn’t be as good at it.”

“Right.”

“So? They seem pretty good at it to me.”

Jim shook his head. “That’s not the point. The point is, maybe they don’t have as many ways to deal with people.”

“So they repeat?”

Jim nodded.

“That’s why Samantha and Glenn were both shot and poisoned?”

“So say Glenn was hypnotized not to talk unless he was staring at fire.”

“Then maybe Samantha was, too,” Karen said. “But that doesn’t do us any good. They’re both dead.”

“Yeah, but it sounds like Glenn was good friends with Michael. And we have two living guys in custody right now. What if Samantha, being Josiah’s little friend, was hypnotized first?”

“And Michael copied it with everyone he knew?” Karen asked.

“I’m thinking, maybe. He’s not the most original thinker, as you pointed out.”

“You think it’ll work?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“You really think Michael might be trying Uncle Josiah’s tricks on other people?”

“I don’t know what his reasoning would be, maybe just to see if he could, but yeah, I think he’d enjoy trying to hypnotize people and see if he could get them to do what he wanted.”

“Yeah… He would enjoy it. But why’d he kill people?”

“Maybe he did that for Josiah, but he’s branching out on his own.”

“I’ll go get a candle,” Karen said.


* * *


“What’s that?” the second guy asked. The man who called himself Santa Claus and who Michael had called Antoine.

“It’s a candle,” Marty said.

“What’s your name?” Tom asked.

“Fred Flintstone.”

Jim heard a match being lit.

“What’s your name?” Marty asked.

“Antoine Bellini.”

“Good… You know someone named Uncle Josiah?”

“Yeah. What about him?”

“He a good friend?”

“He’s a sick bastard.”

“How?”

“You know what he does? He makes people think he’s so great, like he’s a philanthropist, but all he’s doing is slowly killing them.”

“How?”

“He takes their lives. He reassigns them. He keeps them alive until he has what he wants from them.”

“He wanted you to be at the warehouse?”

“What?”

“The warehouse, remember? Where you shot at me and attacked another cop,” Tom said.

“No. I haven’t talked to that bastard in months. I got away, you know? I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“Then what were you doing at the warehouse?”

“My friend Michael asked me to go with him. He said he had a little business to take care of.”

“Such as?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“How do you know Michael?” Marty asked.

“He was one of Uncle Josiah’s “friends,” too. He’s the one who helped me get away.” Antoine’s tone was affectionate.

“What do you two do together?”

“Just hang out.”

“Did he asked you to shoot me?” Tom asked.

Antoine laughed, like it was truly funny. “The fight was two against one. I didn’t know you were cops. I was just trying to help him; he’s my friend. It was a warning shot, man. I’m not that bad of a shot.”

“And you have no idea what you were doing at the warehouse?” Marty asked.

“No…”

“Do you know what that place used to be?”

“Uncle Josiah ran shop out of there for a while. He moves around a lot, empty buildings before they get sold or torn down.”

“Shop?”

“He invents stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“He called it medicine.”

“Why’s he make it?” Tom asked.

“He says it’s to help people, but let’s just say, I’m not so sure about that.”

“What do you think it’s for?” Marty asked.

Antoine shrugged. “I’d guess it’s for making people subject to him. But I didn’t know him that long.”

“No?”

“I was lucky.”

“Tell us about Michael.”

Antoine laughed. “He’s a good kid. A fucking orphan. He takes care of his friends to make sure nothing happens to them.”

“He used to work for Uncle Josiah?”

“No. He was just another prisoner.”

“Any special skills?” Tom asked.

“He says he could disarm a cat burglar without them even noticing. He could be a pickpocket, but he’s too damn nice. He suffers a lot from guilt.”

“Did you know a girl named Samantha?” Marty asked.

“Michael’s girlfriend?” Antoine asked with a smile. “She was hot.”

“What happened to her?” Tom asked.

“I think she died. She was diabetic, but didn’t take good care of herself. She was a chocolate addict.”

“Do you know anything about a poison Uncle Josiah invented? Perhaps one that looked like chocolate?” Marty asked.

“No, but it wouldn’t surprise me. He was twisted. Sick.”

“Did you know a kid named Glenn Bartlett?”

“Yeah! Glenn. He was cool. He used to come over drinking with us.”

“What happened to him?”

“He stopped showing up. I dunno.”

“What would you say if I told you Michael killed both Samantha and Glenn?” Tom asked.

“What?” Antoine scoffed. “You’re joking. He wouldn’t. He loved Sammy.”


* * *


“This kid I believe,” Marty said.

Tom laughed. “Were you even there?”

“I’m serious. He may not have a clue, but he’s not lying.”

“He might as well have been stoned for all he knows. And as a witness? I don’t think our candle theory would hold up in a court of law. “Your Honor, hold up while I get the candelabra. My witness is junk without it. Anyone got a match?””

“Tom,” Marty said in a low voice, “fight me all you want, but it sounds to me like Michael’s a messiah wannabe.”


* * *


Karen set a candle in the middle of the table, already lit. It smelled like blueberry pie, and Jim could still detect a faint whiff of the match that had wafted in from the squad room.

“What’s that?” Michael asked. He started laughing hard, almost hysterically.

“Just checking,” Jim said.

“You’re funny, really. This is the most fun I’ve ever had in jail.”

“You wanna talk about the candle?”

“It’s blue. Smells nice, too, but you’d know that.”

“No. Why’d you do it?”

Michael kept laughing. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to do something I’ll regret. That’s all I want.”

“Have you succeeded?” Karen asked, blowing out the candle.

“Not yet. But I’m certainly trying. You looked lovely by candlelight, by the way. Anyone have another match?”


* * *


“How was your day?” Christie asked. She walked up from the kitchen.

“Can you ask me tomorrow? When I’m not being investigated by Internal Affairs?” Jim was half-serious, half-joking, but mostly numb. The day just seemed long, not having learned much of use. They’d be back at it tomorrow. He bent down to take off Hank’s harness.

“What?” she asked incredulously, then she was there beside him, running her fingers through his hair.

“I’ll be glad when this case is over. It’s really starting to get to me.” Jim sat on the floor next to the dog, playing his hands over the harness with his wife standing behind him trying to offer comfort. He was suddenly exhausted. If Reg Schmidt had managed to get any other dirt on him, he could very well not have a job right now, even if the kid wasn’t a cop. Jim couldn’t help but think, if it had been about Marty or Tom, the accusation would have been pushed aside. But for him, they had to follow up. He’d never be allowed to slide. Even now, if they found out he’d lost his gun for that one day, even so long after the fact, he’d still take a rip, or worse.

“Are you okay?” Christie asked, concerned.

“Yeah. I’m just tired.”

“What were they investigating?”

“Nothing.” He hauled himself back to his feet and gave her a short kiss.

“Jim—”

“It’s over.” He took off his coat.

“You want some wine?”

“I want a beer.” He headed for the kitchen.

“I’ll get it,” she offered.

Jim changed his course and plucked his Braille workbook from the shelf. “It was all because of this,” he said quietly when he heard her walk up behind him.

“Because you can’t read Braille?”

Jim smiled. He sat on the floor by the coffee table. He took the beer from her and spread out. “Because, since I’m blind, I’m obviously fluent in Braille.” He sighed. “It’s hard to explain to them that I’m not; it doesn’t work that way.” He turned back to explain. “They thought I would have separate files no one else could read.”

“You want me to tell them I’ve been harping on you for a year about learning to read it?”

Jim leaned back against her legs as she sat on the couch and let his head lean back, eyes closed.

“You don’t have to practice if you’re too tired,” she said. She brushed his hair back from his forehead.

“The weird thing is, what happened today, it made me want to practice.”

“So you can keep secret files in Braille?”

“So at least I’d have the option. It wasn’t even possible for me to do what they were accusing me of.”

“If you’re taking a rap for the crime, you should at least be capable, huh?”

“It’s a “rip,” darling,” Jim said with a laugh.

“Whatever it is.”

“Or the rap…”

“Okay.”

“You’re cute,” he said, tossing her a smile. Jim flipped through the workbook.

“At least I’m good for something,” she said, almost sounding disgruntled, or maybe just frustrated.

“Exactly.” He leaned back toward her again. “One more kiss, then work.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Six


Half-awake, Jim felt a movement. Something small. He had a notion he shouldn’t have been able to feel it, like a cotton ball dropping onto the other side of the bed. He opened his eyes, listening.

He’d just been dreaming… What was it? Fireflies had been drifting around the ceiling of the bedroom and he’d been able to see them and he’d told Christie. She’d laughed and told him they were candles. He couldn’t see her, which surprised him, because by then he was sure it was a dream. In his dreams he could always see; they were easy to differentiate from reality. In the dream she’d told him to relax and just enjoy the candles, not to worry about it. But he was worried because he couldn’t see her; he was afraid he was losing her.

Now the fireflies were gone and he was awake, staring at the ceiling. Christie could have filled the room with candles and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

He couldn’t hear her breathing. He wasn’t sure if she was beside him, but he didn’t want to move until he’d figured out what had awakened him.

“Are you awake?” Christie whispered a minute later.

“My eyes are open, aren’t they?” he said, and sat up. He didn’t know where she’d been, but now she was over by the window.

“Are you okay?”

Jim smiled instead of getting mad. “You can stop asking me that question all the time,” he said. “How long have you been up?”

“About twenty minutes.”

Jim reached for his alarm clock and pushed the button to make it talk. 8:15. Jim looked over at Christie, startled. He laughed. “I feel like a kid, sleeping this late.”

“Come here,” she said.

Jim crawled out of bed, stretching his still-sore muscles. They were getting better, but first thing in the morning he could really feel the after affects of the fight. He joined her at the window and wrapped his arms around her. She was wearing a heavy but soft robe and he pulled the belt to cinch it tighter around her waist. Christie intertwined her fingers with his and leaned back against him.

“I’ve been watching this kid down on the sidewalk,” she said quietly.

Jim looked toward the glass, waiting for her to paint him the picture.

“He’s carving a pumpkin.”

“How old is he?”

“Eight? Maybe nine. Dark hair. He’s squatted down with a big spoon. It looks like someone already cut the top off for him and he’s been scooping out all the insides for a while… He has a pile of seeds on some newspaper. It looks like a little pyramid.”

Jim pictured it as closely as he could. He was sure the pyramid didn’t have corners really, but he couldn’t get that image out of his head, almost cartoonishly orange, the seeds looking like little blocks. The image in his head was right there, looking at the kid only feet away, but he tried to modify it so he was looking down from their apartment window like Christie was. In the background he caught a flash of Egypt, sand blowing down the street, then it was back to New York and the scene stabilized without new input.

“He’s giving up on the spoon and he’s just using his hands and flicking the seeds away.” She leaned forward a little, probably to get a better view, then back. “He tossed the spoon over his shoulder and it landed in the doorway.”

Jim smiled. “That’s something we haven’t done in a while. Maybe we should carve a pumpkin this year.”

“We haven’t done that since the first year we were married.” Christie laughed. “You said you’d never do it again.”

“I think I have more patience now.” He rubbed a hand up and down her arm, then kissed her cheek from behind. “What else have you been watching?”

“I was watching you for a while.”

Jim let his hand stray to his face. “How bad is it?” He probed the bruise, but he could tell it was healing because it barely hurt.

“It’s the ugliest color I’ve ever seen. Which means it’s probably going to be the next dress color we feature in the magazine.” Christie glanced up at him, then back out the window. He could feel her looking around, her hair not yet combed and brushing against his face. “That’s an evil-looking knife… He’s starting with the eyes.”

Jim chuckled and leaned down to kiss her neck, murmuring, “That’s not something you want to tell a blind man.” He straightened back up. “Triangles?”

“Hard to tell yet. He can’t get it through the shell.”

“He’s doing this all by himself? Should we call the ambulance now?” Jim broke away and headed for the bathroom.

“Jimmy, have faith.”

“I do. You don’t see me running down there right now and wrestling that knife out of his hands, do you?” He grabbed a towel and turned on the water to let the shower warm up. “If you go out today, buy a pumpkin,” he called. “And keep an eye on that kid, okay?”

“Jimmy!” she called.

“Yeah?” he asked as he stepped into the shower.

“Oh, never mind.” She sounded dejected or frustrated.

Jim hurried through his shower. He wanted to dawdle and let the hot water work the kinks out of his muscles, but there was something about the tone in Christie’s voice that made him rush.

Christie wasn’t in the bedroom anymore when he finished. He dressed more casually than normal, khaki pants and a sweater. It was Sunday and they’d all agreed the work day would probably be short. Until they got to talk to Uncle Josiah on Monday, there wasn’t a lot that could be done. Go back over all the facts, maybe talk to Michael and Antoine if they needed, but pretty casual overall.

He headed out of the apartment, determined to find Christie and make sure she was okay, but something hit his shoulder in the doorway, and something else dragged across his face. He flinched and moved back, hands already outstretched to see what it was. His fingers tangled in a string, then trailed down and found a note card floating off the bottom. Jim pulled and the string popped down easily. He ran his hand up and found a piece of tape.

“Christie?” he called, confused.

She didn’t answer and he turned back to the card. Braille letters. He sat on the bed to read it, more confused than ever.

“I love you,” it read at the top, every letter spelled out, not using contractions like a more advanced Braille student would. The reading was slow, still, as his fingers still had trouble distinguishing the shapes. “I want to help.” Jim remembered how someone had once told her it would help him learn Braille if she left him notes to decipher. And she was always wanting to help; maybe this would be one time she could. “Good luck on the case and dinner for two when it’s over.”

Jim stood back up. “Christie?” He finally laughed.

It was just a note, nothing to worry about, and it didn’t say she was angry and leaving… So much had run through his head in the second after he found something floating where nothing should have been, after the odd tone in her voice. He tried not to think about how much it threw him off when things were slightly out of place.

“I’m right here,” she said when he got into the kitchen. “I wanted to make sure you read the note first.”

He nodded. “I found it. Probably not the best place for a note, though.”

“I put it on my pillow first, but you didn’t find it,” she said quietly.

Jim remembered the soft sound or the feeling that had woken him up. “Oh.”

“I wasn’t sure where to put it where you couldn’t miss it…”

Jim laughed. “That works for emergencies… But it…”

“What?”

“It kinda scared me,” he admitted with a laugh.

“Then we’ll have to find somewhere else and you’ll have to check for notes when you come home,” she said matter-of-factly.

He nodded, but he was kind of proud of her for ignoring his little admittance. A few months ago she probably would have made a big deal out of it and worried about doing anything that would mess up his carefully ordered world. “I can do that.” He pulled himself up on one of the bar stools, running his fingers over the card again. She set something in front of him that sounded like a coffee cup. “I love you, too,” he said without looking up.

“Can I help this time?” she asked, sounding nervous.

“Sure. I’d like that.” He reached for the coffee with his left hand, his right scanning the first line of her note. He kept his eyes down as a small wave of guilt washed over him. He knew he’d never be able to share everything that happened today with her. Because he wasn’t going straight to work—the detectives had all decided not to show up until noon, and he had another order of business to take care of first.


* * *


He hadn’t seen Anne since he’d gone blind. Another part of Jim Before, but like Galloway said, it didn’t matter what she thought of him. He’d been bad enough before; it wasn’t likely he could fall much further in her sights. And knowing Anne like he had, he was sure she wouldn’t feel sorry for him. Anne had been his girl without pity. She’d been too logical to feel sorry for anyone. People had fallen into three categories with her: people she liked, people whose lives sucked because it was their own fault, and people who needed to get over the fact that their lives sucked and get on with life. She’d always been honest almost to a fault.

Which is why he couldn’t reconcile her knowing he was married. But he’d promised Karen he wouldn’t bring that up. He’d just have to chalk it up to women having so many layers he never knew what they were going to do next.

He was sitting in a coffee shop, his coffee long cold. He’d gotten there early, picked the spot because it was usually quiet. He wanted to be able to talk privately, hoped to hear her come in. He preferred getting there first to getting there second and taking the chance that Anne would take one look at him at the door and decide not to say anything, keep her presence from him.

He’d been thinking about what to say, but he didn’t have a speech prepared because he didn’t know what Anne was going to bring up.

“Jim.”

He looked up. “Anne.” He started to stand.

“No need.” She pulled out a chair to his right. “Karen said you wanted to see me.”

He settled back.

A second chair slid out to his left and Jim shifted his gaze, brows furrowed. Someone cleared their throat awkwardly. Female, familiar.

“Uh… Anne wanted me here as a sort of mediator,” Karen said. She hadn’t sat down yet.

“Karen?” It was out of his mouth, the surprise and shock of her being there, before he could stop it. It made him feel like his blindness was showing, not having known it was her as soon as she walked in the door. Not having paid enough attention to differentiate that there were two sets of footsteps.

“Is that okay?” Anne asked primly.

Jim turned to stare in her direction. He hadn’t planned for Karen to be privy to this. He had to work with her everyday, depend on her. He didn’t want her so close to his personal life and his past mistakes. “Do we really need a mediator?” he finally asked.

Karen’s chair scraped back into place. “I trust you both. I’ll be right over there if you need me.”

“Karen—” Anne started.

Karen’s footsteps left them without turning back.

“Anne,” Jim said, feeling hurt, feeling like she’d hit below the belt, “why’d you bring Karen? She’s my partner.”

“So?”

Jim closed his eyes, the sounds of the coffee shop overwhelming him momentarily as his brain refused coherent thought. Anne’s voice, there, though he couldn’t see her, hadn’t talked to her since he’d been blind. Pictures of Anne grating on his mind, chasing each other in a cacophony of light and hair and freckles and eyes and smiles he’d forgotten about.

Jim reached up and pulled off his sunglasses. He had to do this right. “Anne.” He said her name slowly, testing it on his tongue. “You can’t just go around telling everyone about us.”

“Why not? It’s not like you didn’t go around bragging to everyone about your latest conquest with me.”

“I didn’t. Honest.”

“Honest? Jimmy, when were you ever honest?”

“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “But what makes you think I went around bragging? I thought I loved you. That’s the only reason I had. I wasn’t out to—”

“Put another notch on your bedpost?” she asked.

“No!” He shook his head emphatically.

“So you just want me to shut up? Is that all this meeting is about?”

“I’m certainly not asking to get back together.”

She made a scoffing noise.

“Why would you even want to go around telling people—”

“I’m not ashamed, Jimmy. It’s not like you raped me. I don’t have to hide.”

“Then what?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed, his voice low and hurt.

“I want to make sure people know who you really are.”

“And who am I?”

“You’re the guy who seems like a good guy, but—”

“Anne! I made one mistake.” He shook his head. “And it was a big one, yeah. But I don’t make a habit out of this. This isn’t who I am.”

“No?”

“What more do you want?”

“I don’t know, Jimmy. You tell me.”

“I can’t imagine,” he said honestly.

“Me, either.”

“Then please.” He held a hand out beseechingly.

“I can’t promise you anything.”

“What else did I do that was so wrong? Why do you hate me so much?”

“Jimmy! How can you even ask that? Like nothing happened?”

“Because I was wrong and I did everything in my power to put it right. Just like you taught me.”

“Don’t throw that at me, Jimmy. Like anything I said or did made any impact on your life.”

“It did,” he said quietly, leaning forward. “Stop thinking of yourself like a conquest and start thinking of yourself as an incredible woman I couldn’t resist.”

“Will that make you feel better?”

“It’s the truth, Anne. Only the truth.” He put his sunglasses back on.

“End of conversation?” she asked. “You throw out one compliment and that’s it? Jimmy Dunbar gets the last word in as always?”

“Do you have anything to add?”

“I came here today, didn’t I?”

“You did. Thank you.” He folded his hands and waited patiently. He could almost feel her looking him over.

“How’ve you been?” he asked to fill the silence.

“Not bad. You?”

“I’ve been good.”

“Good?”

“And I’ve been behaving myself.” He tossed her a grin.

She sighed. “This isn’t a joke. You can’t win me over with your little smile.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” He sat silently and waited again, not going to interrupt her thoughts. She was taking in everything, he knew, but what she would come up with to say, he couldn’t tell.

“Karen told me about the fight,” she finally said.

Jim ran a finger down the cut on his face and nodded.

“Same as always?”

“Work is, at least.”

“I asked Karen to keep an eye on you,” she said finally.

“Fine.” He pressed his lips together. “That’s fine.”

“Good-bye, Jimmy.”

He stood up and took Hank by the harness. “Bye, Anne. It was good seeing you.”

“Don’t lie,” she said with a laugh.

Jim smiled down at her. “Take care.”

Jim ordered Hank to the door, knowing Anne was still watching him and wondering what she was really thinking. But it was after eleven and he had work to do; he headed for the squad. It was over with Anne; he’d have to try to forget her.


* * *


“How’d it go?” Jim asked when Karen walked into the squad.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“With Anne. How’d it go?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“Karen, I just need to know, is it over? I’m not asking you to betray her trust or anything like that.”

She sat in her chair, quiet a moment. “I think so.”

He nodded and turned away.

“You behaved well.”

Jim shook his head. “That’s not what this was about.”

“Not about you always being able to say the right thing?”

“No. This was about ending something properly.”

Karen was quiet a minute and Jim went back to work.

“She sighed a lot,” Karen finally said. “She didn’t bring you up, but I think…”

“I was too nice?” He chewed on his lip a second.

“She’s just not over you. She just needs time.”

Jim shrugged. “Good.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She cleared her throat. “And, Jimmy, I wasn’t planning to be there. I’m sorry about that. Anne called me this morning and said she couldn’t go through with it and could I just come see her. I didn’t know she was going to ask me to come in.”

Jim shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’d bet she just wanted you to see what a jerk I am. But I would have said the same thing to her, whether or not you were there.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


“Hey, Karen?” Jim put out a hand before she could open the door to the interview room.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Could I… Would you let me get the ball rolling on this one?”

She laughed. “I’d love it.”

Jim smiled and opened the door. She waited for him to go in and followed slowly. Jim strode purposefully into the room, skirting Michael’s chair, making a bee-line for the other side of the table. He pulled the chair out, but didn’t sit. He heard Karen close the door quietly. “Morning,” he said. “Sleep well?”

“You must have,” Michael said.

“Like a baby. You know why?”

“No,” Michael said, humoring him, “why?”

“Because I know we have the right guy in custody.” Jim smiled down at him, then finally sat.

“How’d you know I didn’t move that again?” Michael asked, working for control.

“Again?” Jim shook his head. “I feel like I know you really well, Mike.” Jim leaned back. “You wouldn’t pull the same thing twice, especially not when it didn’t work the first time. Right?”

“Right…” Michael cleared his throat. “What else do you want to know?”

“Nothing much. I just wanted to have a theological discussion with you. Is that okay?”

“Why not? That’ll be fun.”

“I thought so. After all, it’s not every day you get to talk to someone who’s worked for a self-proclaimed messiah.”

“You want to talk about Josiah?” Michael sounded relieved.

Jim nodded encouragingly. Michael liked to talk about Josiah, probably because then the heat wasn’t on him. Jim let both of his hands rest relaxed on top of the table. If they progressed carefully they might get somewhere.

“What do you want to know?” Michael asked.

Jim leaned forward earnestly. “Is Josiah a god?”

Michael scoffed.

“No?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure? Only because you lost the fight at the warehouse?”

“If he was an all-powerful deity, what am I doing here?” Michael asked.

Jim nodded. “Good point.” He tapped the table a couple times to emphasize his own point. “Didn’t the prophets suffer, though?” The question was met with silence. “They had to prove they had faith, right? And maybe be given the chance to renounce the messiah three times?” Jim waited, staring across the table without blinking. He’d left his sunglasses behind again and hoped he could still produce the desired affects just by looking at a perp. He kept his face open and calm.

“Do you think he’s a god?” Michael finally asked.

Jim frowned a second. “I’m asking you. You know him better than anyone, right? Don’t you sit on the right hand of the man who killed your father?”

Michael laughed, low. “You’re as loony as he is.”

Jim smiled. “We have a witness who’s going to testify that you killed Samantha.”

“Really?”

“You want to get it off your chest? Come clean?”

“I don’t do confession; I’m not Catholic anymore,” Michael said.

“Let’s pretend,” Jim said.

“Sins and transgressions, right?” Michael asked. “See, that depends on your definitions of right and wrong.”

“You expect us to believe you don’t know right from wrong?” Jim gave him a disbelieving look. “Even if you killed your parents yourself, that doesn’t mean you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“If you think I’m ignoring my conscience, that means you think I have one. In which case, what am I doing here?”

Jim smiled. “A couple days ago you told us you were confessing Uncle Josiah’s sins because you were having “pangs of conscience” or something like that. You ignoring them now that it’s you on the line and not your boss?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“That’s the second time you’ve yelled at me for smiling, too. Why?”

“Stop toying with me!”

“I don’t play games with people in your position, Michael,” Jim said calmly. He relaxed back in the chair. “Why’d you kill Samantha?”

“I didn’t.”

“Sure you did.”

“Why would you kill someone?”

Jim scratched his head. “I like to think I’m noble, so I’d want it to be for a good cause. You?”

“I would never pretend to be something I’m not. I’d kill someone because I didn’t like them.”

Jim nodded. “Understandable.” He heard Karen shifting from foot to foot behind Michael, uncomfortable but curious. She seemed to be keeping out of the way so she wouldn’t distract Michael, even keeping out of his line of sight. “But you let your parents be killed so they wouldn’t suffer, right? Isn’t that noble?”

“No. It’s sick. They gave birth to me.”

“It’s wrong?”

“No. It’s just sick.”

“Didn’t it end their suffering?”

“Who am I to say if they are suffering? Who am I to say I didn’t just end the only life we have? If there’s nothing after this, I didn’t do them a favor.”

“Then why?”

“Because they were in the way. I was in their way, so they sent me places to get rid of me. They were in my way because I just wanted to be home.”

“You made a new home with Josiah.”

“I learned a lot.”

Jim leaned forward. “So you wouldn’t subscribe to his philosophy of ending a life for a good cause?”

“He wouldn’t kill anyone, good cause or not.”

“No?”

“He doesn’t believe in killing. That’s why he experiments with medicines. He wants to cure people because he doesn’t believe there’s anything after this life. He’s the Messiah of the Now, so to speak. Get it while the getting’s good.”

“Then the poison?”

“Was an accident—whoops, that one kills people. If people ask for it for themselves, he gives it. Otherwise it’s off-limits.”

“Then what’s it doing getting around? And why’d some of his followers die from it, like Samantha?”

“One of the other guys, he works with me sometimes, he distributes the stuff without Josiah knowing.”

“But he doesn’t charge for it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He thinks he’s doing humanity a favor. And money doesn’t mean much. He’d rather have the contacts he makes than the cash.”

“So you would kill someone you didn’t like?” Jim asked. “How?”

“As painfully as possible. You?”

“I wouldn’t want them to suffer. That wouldn’t be noble, to torture them.”

Michael tried to laugh, but it fell short. “You’re the knight in shining armor, I’m your adversary. Come get me, detective.”

Jim smiled. “Yeah, but I like you. You don’t deserve to die.”

“No?”

“Why’d you kill Samantha?”

Michael pushed his chair back suddenly and walked away. Jim tensed, ready. “Why would I kill someone I didn’t hate?” he finally asked from over by the window.

“And in the least painful way possible? And then shoot her after she was dead so it looked like the same death as Glenn Bartlett’s?”

“I didn’t like Glenn. He suffered from that gunshot. He couldn’t move hardly. But he felt it. He’d been working for me, Josiah didn’t even know I had my own following. I played with him, tested everything Josiah taught me on him. He was going to betray me. And when Josiah found out Samantha had a baby boy, he thought Glenn was the father. I didn’t know he was her cousin, but I sure didn’t mind killing him. Even if he was a friend.”

“And you were in love with Samantha, weren’t you?”

“I would have died for her.”

“That’s saying a lot, coming from you.”

“Yeah…”

“So why?”

“I got scared. Of dying myself. I thought I would have died for her, but when it came down to her or me… At least she was happy. She came willingly and she agreed to save me.” Jim waited in the silence that followed. “Samantha was Uncle Josiah’s favorite little girl. But she didn’t like him that much, not as a man. As a messiah, she worshipped him.”

“She loved you?”

“No. She slept with a lot of guys. But I kept getting her pregnant!” Michael kicked something. “I knew something no one else knew. No matter how much Uncle Josiah tried, he always ended up with female babies, if he got a girl pregnant. He couldn’t have boys. Then Samantha gets pregnant, and it keeps coming up male. And since she was diabetic, she had to have all this prenatal care, ultrasounds all the time.

“I made her miscarry the first one. I studied chemistry enough, and Josiah taught me enough, I knew how to do it. It almost killed her anyway.

“The second time she got scared. She swore she’d just disappear for a while and give the baby up. But she never came back. She couldn’t give up the baby, but she knew she couldn’t come back with a boy.

“The third time…” Michael trailed off.

Jim waited a whole minute, but Michael didn’t pick back up. “The third time?”

“I loved her. I did. I promised to take her away, just the two of us. But she said she was a prophet and she couldn’t leave when the message had to be spread. I said that was crazy, but she insisted!

“That’s when I found out she was sick. She was recruiting people to the cause. Josiah had only wanted to help people who were already in trouble, but Samantha was causing trouble. She hooked up with Brian—Reg—and they were wiping out bank accounts. Josiah thought all the money was coming from her trust fund. He didn’t know she was creating lost souls.”

“Isn’t that noble?” Jim asked after a moment. “Your intentions when you killed her, you were saving people.”

“I loved her! And I don’t like people! I should have let her keep doing—I don’t know why I didn’t. I should have encouraged her. The world would have been a better place. Everyone would have been the same, eventually. All poor and miserable.”


* * *


“Insanity plea?” Tom asked.

“Insanity plea,” Marty agreed.

“Guys,” Jim said, wrinkling his nose distastefully. “Don’t.”

“How’d you get him to talk?” Tom asked.

Jim shrugged. “Everything with him’s always been so carefully controlled… I thought if I just relaxed and let go, maybe…” He shrugged again. It had helped that Michael seemed to become annoyed every time Jim had smiled at him on previous interviews.

“And you, our resident control freak?” Tom said with a laugh. “Whatever works.”

“How’d it feel, letting go?” Marty asked.

“Good, actually.” Jim carefully measured his steps and walked back to his desk slowly. Some things, he had to have control, but others, he could let them get out of hand. The world wouldn’t end.

“You’d only kill someone for a good cause?” Marty asked.

Jim sank into his chair. “If I had to.”

“But that doesn’t extend to anything with eight legs?”

“What?”

“Spiders, Jim.”

“Oh!” He’d forgotten about that.

The interview room door opened and Karen stepped out.

“I still feel bad about that,” he said, then raised his voice to call over to Karen. “Karen, I’m sorry for making you kill that spider.”

Her footsteps paused. After a moment she said, “It’s okay. It’s not like I’ve never killed a spider before that.”

“Is he done with his statement?” Tom asked.

“Not yet. It’s pretty long and poetic from what I saw,” Karen said.

“Does that mean the case is almost over?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Jim said.

Tom laughed. “If that’s the case, we’ll be working this until we die.”

Jim let out a deep breath, puffing his cheeks out. “We should celebrate.” That suggestion was met with groans all around. Jim laughed. “Not tonight,” he clarified.

“Good,” Karen said. “Then I’m game.”

“Me, too,” Tom said.

Jim looked over at Marty.

“Yeah,” Marty said.

There as a knock on the interview room door.

“He’s done,” Karen said.


* * *


“Well?” Fisk asked. “Any loose ends we need to tie up?”

“Rob Mulhaney’s still looking into the death of his son,” Jim said. “He’s taking over looking into Uncle Josiah. He’ll pick up the contents of the filing cabinet in the morning.”

“We have a statement on the deaths of Glenn Bartlett and Samantha Whittleton. We found Artez. Laine Campbell’s on her way home to stay with her mom a while. Mrs. Whittleton has a new grandson. And our cop friend was a suicide,” Tom listed.

“It looks like Michael’s really 23,” Karen said. “I’m guessing Uncle Josiah changed it, either so he’d seem less of a threat, or just in case anyone started looking into the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Hershach.”

“Do we know what really happened when they died?” Fisk settled onto the desk next to Jim’s.

“We’d have to talk to Josiah Wilkins about that, but Michael was pretty adamant about it not being natural,” Karen said.

“Artez and DeLana will testify?”

“Against Michael, yeah. They didn’t know much about Josiah.”

“What about Samantha and those phone calls?”

“Near as we can tell, she and Michael made the tapes as a joke, but as for who called while he was in jail, he’s not talking.” Karen sighed. “It looks like he has as many friends as Josiah does and he’s not giving them up.”

“I don’t know who’s more crazy,” Fisk said, “Michael Hershach or this Uncle Josiah character. What’s our feel on Uncle Josiah?”

Jim leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t put it past the guy to make Michael think he’s taking one for the team,” Jim said. Even though they had a confession, he still had his doubts as to the finality of the case. He doubted Michael was solely at fault, but he also doubted they’d get much real evidence on Josiah.

“You think maybe he’s just the fall guy?”

“Maybe.”

“But can we prove it?” Karen asked. She started tapping something on her desk.

“If Michael’s just taking the rap, why’d he try to frame Uncle Josiah in the first place?” Marty asked. “We know he’s capable of murder, so who’s to say Uncle J isn’t completely innocent? If this guy is just some warped pastor, why frame him? And then why come back and admit he’s the one who did the crime?”

“To throw us off? Sometimes the best way to mislead someone is to take them straight to the truth, then prove the opposite. Josiah’s good at that,” Jim said. “He could easily be more guilty than Michael.”

“We still can’t prove any of it.”

“No. We can’t,” Jim said sadly.

“To top it off, we have a confession. That’s a bit of a problem if you want to pin the crime on someone else.”

“The gun was registered to Michael,” Karen said.

“All the fingerprints went back to Michael and his buddy Antoine,” Marty said.

“Even the chemicals from the dumpster, they don’t point to Uncle J,” Tom said.

“Same thing happened when Walter was investigating him as a kid,” Jim said. “They could never pin anything on him.”

“Maybe Mulhaney will get something,” Karen said hopefully.

“Yeah… You know, I really want to talk to Josiah again, though.”

“What for?”

“I have to, Karen. You weren’t there.” Jim shook his head. “Even if it has nothing to do with this case, I need to see him again. We know where he’s going to be tomorrow; how can we pass up that opportunity?” He smiled over at her.

“All right…” she slowly agreed.

“And if he pulls something again?” Tom asked.

“Let’s just hope I won’t fall into his trap.”

“You better not,” Fisk warned. He stood up. “Get to a stopping point, then go home, get some rest. We’ll tie everything up tomorrow.”


* * *

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Seven


Jim was apprehensive as he walked home. It was almost Halloween, but the scariest thing he could think of was about confronting Uncle Josiah tomorrow. He would just have to keep his wits about him and think of what Dr. Galloway had told him. He had a better idea of who he was as a person, and he hoped that would be enough. Having Karen there would help. He trusted her, amazingly enough. He actually trusted her more than a lot of people he’d met over the years, more than people he’d known eons longer.

He felt a little jealous, thinking of Karen going to some party in a few days. He missed his party days a little. All he had to look forward to this year was maybe a pumpkin, if Christie remembered. And even then, he wouldn’t be able to look deep into its eyes and see the candle glowing within. He was almost tempted, for a moment, to take Karen up on that offer to chaperone her and her blind date. He’d like to spend the evening with friends, like he used to. Karen didn’t quite fit into the category yet, but maybe someday. For now, he had a wife waiting for him at home.

It was late, almost eleven, what with waiting around for the confession and trying to tie up any loose ends on the case. A long day and all the detectives had admitted to feeling drained, glad the case was pretty much over. Karen said she had a date with a gallon of ice cream. Marty was going late-night candy shopping for trick-or-treaters because that was his job, to buy candy, and he’d procrastinated too long this year. Tom said he was going out to watch one of the games at a bar, and Marty was going to join him later. They invited Jim and Karen, but Jim begged off to spend time with his wife and Karen informed them she’d had enough of bars to last a lifetime.

“Christie?” He shut the door behind him and let Hank off the harness. The dog shook himself, then ran off to relax, maybe to find a toy or a bone to play with. “Christie?” he called a little louder.

“Shh,” she said, running up. She put a hand on his arm to make sure he didn’t worry about where she was. “We have a project tonight,” she said quietly, conspiratorially.

Jim pulled off his coat and hung it from the coat rack. He smiled. “No kiss?”

She leaned up to kiss him. “Remember watching the kid this morning?”

He nodded. “I’ve been looking forward to carving a pumpkin the whole way home.”

“Good. Keep that enthusiasm. I got five.”

“Five?” Jim laughed. “Isn’t that overkill?”

“Just in case. See, his pumpkin didn’t turn out so well. It sort of went to pumpkin hell.”

Jim grimaced. “Are all his fingers still intact?”

“Yeah. I just thought it might be nice to send a pumpkin over. And we’ll keep one for ourselves.”

“And three to practice on?”

“If they turn out okay, I thought we could put them in the lobby.” She took his hand and pulled him across the apartment to the kitchen.

Jim felt the floor change under his feet. “Newspaper?”

“Tons. There’s no way anything’s getting on the floor.” She pulled him further, toward the bedroom. “You change, I have the pumpkins sitting on the counter, waiting.”

Jim pulled off his tie as he walked into the bedroom. “I just love a good lobotomy,” he said. Christie had already pulled out an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt for him. He pulled off his work clothes and handed them to her while he changed. Barefoot, he headed back to the kitchen. Hank was sniffing at the counter. “He’s gonna love this,” Jim called to Christie. He ran a hand over the counter until it encountered the first pumpkin, then grabbed it and hefted it to the floor. “How’d you get these all home?”

He heard her walk up. “Conspiracy with the neighbor lady. She and I both walked out of the building at the same time to see the disaster the kid had made of the pumpkin, so we went shopping together.”

“Is she making any jack-o’-lanterns, too?”

“Just one.”

“This thing’s ten pounds, at least.”

“That’s the small one,” Christie told him. “It took us three trips to get them up here.”

Jim knelt on the floor next to the small pumpkin, suddenly at a loss. When he was younger he would take a marker and draw on the face before cutting. He hadn’t thought of the practical aspects, just the fact that he’d be able to feel the incisions. “Now what?”

“Now we be careful,” Christie said. She was rifling around one of the drawers.

Jim ran his hands over the pumpkin. It felt cold, the shell hard over the soft flesh inside. At the top the stem was rougher than he remembered. He guessed he’d never paid much attention to the way it actually felt. He counted the ridges in the smooth shell and felt a lopsidedness on the right. He turned the pumpkin, trying to figure out the best place for the face.

“Here,” Christie said.

Jim reached up carefully, knowing she would have a large, sharp knife in hand. He gently touched the blade to get a feel for it. He looked back up at his wife. “Honestly, now what?”

She was sliding another pumpkin around the countertop, but stopped and was quiet. “Good luck?” She bent down and kissed the top of his head. “Don’t cut off any fingers?”

Jim held the knife in his right hand and ran his left around the pumpkin again. He shook his head. “What if you draw it on there for me?”

“Then what?”

Jim stared at the pumpkin in his mind, trying to picture it. “Score it. If I can feel it, I can follow the cut and carve off the top.”

Christie knelt down next to him. She took the knife and he heard her scratch a line around the pumpkin with the tip. “Can you feel that?”

Jim ran his hand over the top and smiled. “Perfect.” She handed the knife back.

“I’ll draw out the others for you, too.”

Jim bit his tongue as he concentrated on sliding the knife through the skin, then pulling in around. He turned the pumpkin and slowly followed the ridge Christie had scratched for him, careful to keep his guide hand out of the way. “I should apply to medical school,” he joked when he pulled the new lid off the pumpkin. He set the top aside and held up the rest. “You wanna scoop out the innards while I lop the tops off?”

“Jim,” she said distastefully, “don’t use words like innards.”

He laughed. “What do you want me to say? It’s gonna look like a head. You want me to call this the brains?” He stuck his hand into the seedy goop and pulled out a handful, letting it run between his fingers and onto the newspaper beside him.

Hank had been lying right behind Jim, keeping an eye on the whole operation, but he backed away in a crouched position when he saw what hit the newspaper. He whined.

Christie handed Jim a towel. “How can you stick your hand in there?” It sounded like she was wrinkling up her nose.

“Roll your sleeves up, darling, and I’ll show you.” He pulled her down beside him, taking one of her hands even as she struggled.

“Men,” she said, then gasped as her fingers submerged in the innards.

“Here’s to teamwork,” Jim said as he let go of her hand and moved over. He got up and lined the other pumpkins up on the floor. “This isn’t so bad,” he said as he moved between pumpkins.

“Just wait until you see what I have marked out for the faces,” Christie said wickedly.

He heard her flicking seeds onto the floor.

“Revenge is sweet,” she told him.

Jim sniffed, the scent of pumpkin almost overwhelming. “I wouldn’t call it sweet. More of an earthy smell.” He rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his t-shirt to wipe off a bit of juice that Christie flicked at him. He ran his hand along the line she had cut. “Last one. Did you already do the faces?”

“Sure did.” She grunted.

Jim pulled off the last top by the stem and set it aside. He sat back and turned. She seemed to be a few pumpkins behind, from her position in the line-up. “Tell me what you’re doing?”

“You know what I’m doing,” she said shortly.

He tried to picture her, probably wearing jeans, her sleeves pushed up. She’d be wearing a long-sleeve shirt of some sort because it was cold out. Her hair was probably straggling into her face, the wisps covered in slime from where she kept sweeping at them to get them out of her face. The way she was breathing, she wasn’t having that good of a time. That was probably why she’d hung up on him when he suggested they take a pottery class together. She wasn’t much for getting things under her fingernails.

Jim slid over slowly, careful to avoid a pile of seeds. He moved behind her and knelt, one arm to either side of her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I know this isn’t your favorite part.”

She sighed. “It’s just the easy part. That’s why I get stuck with it.”

He shrugged, close enough he knew she could feel it from where he was behind her. He leaned forward and worked alongside her, scooping as many seeds as he could.

They scooted over to the next pumpkin. Jim nuzzled her neck as he scooped seeds.

She giggled. “You’re good at multi-tasking.”

Jim tipped the pumpkin to the side and let juice drip into a bowl she had set out. This pumpkin was massive, almost two feet in diameter.

“Shouldn’t you be doing your own part?” she asked.

“I might need a bit of a guide on the faces, so I thought I’d better help you.”

“You just felt sorry for me, admit it.” She reached back and touched his arm with a cold and slimy hand.

Jim grimaced.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. I’ve been covered in worse things.”

She laughed.

“Done,” Jim said a half hour later. He grabbed for the towel, but found it already saturated. He stood up carefully among the mess and walked over to the sink to rinse off. “Now comes the hard part.”

“We get five chances,” Christie said, joining him at the sink.

Jim flicked water at her.

“Let me get the seeds out of the way.” He listened as she rolled up newspaper, stepping out of her way as she tugged pages out from under his feet. He grabbed the garbage can and brought it over, helping her stuff the trash inside. “There,” she said. “Ready.”

Jim put the garbage can back and knelt beside the biggest pumpkin. “Let’s start big, that’ll be easier, right?” He felt along the floor for the knife. Christie sat beside him, out of the way, but ready to help if needed. Jim felt the small incisions Christie had made for the face, tipping the pumpkin so he had a better angle to look it over. He frowned. “I don’t think you should have made teeth.”

“Too frightening?”

“Too hard.” There were gaps between teeth, seven teeth in a gaping mouth. “He had periodontal disease?”

Christie giggled nervously as Jim took up the knife.

Jim swallowed hard as he started on one triangular eye. The triangle was pretty big. He held the pumpkin tilted between his knees, his tongue held between his teeth. He concentrated on the shape and keeping his hand out of the way. The triangle dropped inside the pumpkin. Jim grinned and reached in, handing the piece to Christie. “Easy.” He held the pumpkin up for inspection. “How’s it look?”

She laughed. “That’s just the first eye. You have nine more eyes, five mouths, and three noses. Oh, and I made hair on one, so you’ll have to cut around the top a little.”

Jim laughed at her. “I better get busy. Get me a beer?”

“Alcohol and a carving knife?” But Christie opened the fridge and carefully stepped around pumpkins to set the beer on the floor.

The eyes and nose were easy enough, but the mouth and seven teeth were much more difficult. “If I break off a tooth, we can just glue it back on, right?”

“I don’t think you can glue a wet pumpkin.”

Jim shrugged. He slowly moved the knife through Christie’s rough sketch, breaking off bits to make it easier to cut. When the last piece broke off he smoothed out the cuts with the knife, then set it aside and brailled the face. Starting at the top with both hands he ran his fingers down the front, checking the evenness of the eyes, which weren’t quite symmetrical, but he hoped that with the ridges of the pumpkin skin it wouldn’t be noticeable. The nose was in place beneath the eyes, then the mouth with the lumpy teeth.

“It looks okay,” Christie said from where she was sitting nearby.

Jim looked up while still exploring the face. “Just okay?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“It looks like an ugly face, just like it’s supposed to. Who do you think you are, Picasso?”

“It looks like something one of the Impressionists would have done. Hideous and grotesque, but almost recognizable as human.” Jim let a couple fingers stray into the mouth, then pulled back quickly with a pained yelp and put them in his mouth. “He bit me!” he mumbled around his fingers.

Christie seized his hand.

Jim laughed. “Never insult a jack-o’-lantern.”

She threw his hand back. “Oh, you’re fine,” she complained.

Jim hefted the jack-o’-lantern over to her. “Here you go, ma’am. If it’s good enough, you want to deliver it?”

“You want to give the kid the big one?”

“Why not?” Jim shrugged. “The bigger, the better, right? Do we have any little candles? You could put one in and take it over.”

“Sure.” She stood up, setting the pumpkin next to him. “Keep an eye on him,” she instructed.

“He’s not going anywhere.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” She made a noise like she was sticking her tongue out at him.

Jim grinned as he picked up the knife and scooted over to the next victim. He felt like a kid, younger than even when he met Christie.

“I’ll be back,” she said, walking into the room, now with shoes on. He heard her stop and pick up the gift. “It looks good,” she said, “really.” She kissed the top of his head and walked off.

Jim ran his hand over the next pumpkin, feeling her cuts. “Christie!” He wrinkled his nose as she opened the door to the apartment to leave. “Hearts? This is supposed to be scary!”

“This was revenge, remember?” she asked sweetly.

He heard the door click shut.

Jim was half-done with the third pumpkin by the time Christie came back. “Success,” she said.

“Good.” He glanced up. “Did it really look okay?”

“Yes, it really did look okay.” She slipped her shoes off. “How’re you doing?”

“Couldn’t be better.” He grinned, waiting.

“Jim!”

He laughed. He’d gotten his own revenge for the heart-shaped eyes. Instead of changing the shape, he’d done exactly as she’d drawn, though he wasn’t sure just how pretty they looked. Then he’d gone through the kitchen utensils and pulled out the butcher knife, jamming it into the side of the jack-o’-lantern’s head. He’d even gone through the closet and found a velvet Christmas bow to wrap around the stem like a pretty hair ribbon.

Christie ruffled his hair. “She was supposed to be pretty.”

“I would have done a little red paint for blood, but I wasn’t sure which tube was the red. You should label them.”

“You know where I keep my craft paint?” she asked, surprised.

“I know where everything in this apartment is.” It had been a long year, learning his way around New York. While Christie’d been at work, Jim had been alone at home a lot with nothing to do but familiarize himself with the place or listen to the radio. After battling the city, it was a relief to be able to search through boxes and closets in the apartment. Christie was less precise with how the cupboards and closets were organized, anything out of sight she might have figured Jim wouldn’t need access to, and so she didn’t bother to keep them precisely ordered like she kept the rest of the apartment, but she was close enough he still felt confident he could find anything if he needed.

Christie made a little wondering noise as she squatted beside him to get a good look at what he’d done to her pretty pumpkin.

Jim ran his hand over the half-moon eyes he’d just carved. “This one doesn’t have a nose?” he asked.

“I couldn’t think of a good shape, so I figured he wouldn’t need one.”

“Who needs a nose?” Jim mumbled as he carved out the mouth, a grimace with two fangs hanging down. That was the easy mouth and he set the knife down to braille the finished face. “You’re right, he’s gruesome enough without a nose.” He held the pumpkin up for inspection.

“Yup,” Christie said from near the sink where she was fitting the girly pumpkin with a tea candle. Jim heard her light a match. “Do you think it’ll be okay with the knife?”

“We definitely won’t put her down in the lobby, that’s for sure.”

Christie laughed, but it was the laugh she used when she thought she’d figured out an ulterior motive of her husband’s, or if she was just starting to get angry with him. “You didn’t want her in the lobby, did you?”

Jim shrugged. “I don’t think hearts are exactly a good Halloween shape.”

“And you’re embarrassed—”

“Christie, it’s a pumpkin.” He turned to her, abandoning the project, but staying seated on the floor. “There’s absolutely nothing embarrassing about a pumpkin. Unless I do a really bad job carving it. But I’d hope you’d tell me if I did poorly.”

“I promise I would,” she said.

“I thought it would be funny. I’m sorry. A carving knife in the head at Halloween…” He tried to smile at her.

“Don’t worry. It’s not like I was serious. I was just trying something different.”

Jim turned back, knife in hand, to the pumpkin. Holidays were always stressful, and Halloween was no different. He didn’t even want to think about their first Christmas after he’d been shot. He bit his lip and forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing. He’d been truthful when he asked for a mulligan—there was a lot about the whole year he would like to forget, or wished had never even happened. And she’d put up with him through the whole thing.

His cell phone rang. “Can you get that?” Jim felt the goop and grit from the pumpkin on his fingers, but just kept carving.

Christie sighed. “You know it’s work,” she said as she crossed over to the table by the door.

“You don’t have to tell me no one else calls, just answer it.” Jim rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d been concentrating too hard on the shapes and trying to make them presentable to sighted people, and he was giving himself a headache. One pumpkin had been fun, but five? He almost hoped there’d been another homicide and they were getting a new case already.

“Hello?” Christie said into the phone.

Jim tilted his head, one ear toward her. She listened a moment, making agreeable little grunts like someone was asking her questions.

Christie crossed over and held the phone next to his ear. Jim pinned it to his ear with his shoulder and kept working on the pumpkins slowly. “Dunbar,” he said.

“Jim, I hate to do this to you,” Fisk said, “but I think you need to be here. Michael Hershach’s down in the Tombs. It sounds like he’s screaming bloody murder. I’m on my way in right now. I thought, since you’re the only one who’s really gotten him to talk…”

“No problem. I’ll have Christie bring me in.”

“I already asked Russo to pick you up. He’s right by you.”

“Oh.” The buzzer rang from the street and Jim flinched as Christie answered and Russo’s voice filled the intercom.

Fisk filled him in on what was going on, everything the officers had told him so far. Jim tried to ignore the knock on the door and Christie playing hostess and Marty standing near the coat rack, sounding uncomfortable.

“One of the officers said Michael keeps yelling, “I want to confess,”” Fisk was telling him.


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


Marty yawned as he checked the address of the building. He sighed. If Karen had answered her phone, he wouldn’t be there, but with her gone, the boss had immediately called him and asked him to pick up Dunbar and bring him down.

He couldn’t imagine anything important that kid could have to tell them, not in the middle of the night like this. They already had a confession, however much of it might be bogus. It had better be good, dragging them down there now when they’d just left, but Marty had a suspicion that maybe Michael’d planned it as revenge of some sort, just a joke to get them down there. He really didn’t trust the kid. He also didn’t understand why the boss didn’t just let Dunbar’s wife take him down there.

Marty rang the buzzer of the building next to Dunbar’s name. His wife answered and buzzed him up. He wanted to just let her know he was there and have her send her husband down, but there was a chance Fisk hadn’t gotten a hold of them yet and they wouldn’t know why he was there, so he trudged to the elevator and rode it up to the sixth floor, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped.

He was wondering how he was supposed to look Christie in the eye, knowing how Jim had cheated on her. He’d said it didn’t matter and he wasn’t supposed to know about it. And he could work with Jim, he knew, like normal. But he hadn’t seen Christie since Walter Clark’s retirement party when he met her, back when he was just starting to respect Jim. Then he’d thought she was great, beautiful, a perfect wife for Dunbar. But now Marty couldn’t understand how she could just ignore what her husband had done, not when she could have any number of guys who would worship the ground she walked on and never look away.

All he could keep thinking was maybe she’d stayed because Jim had gotten shot and gone blind. But that was pity, and Marty knew that was one thing Jim couldn’t stand. He wouldn’t be the kind of guy to let her stay with him just because she felt bad for him. He would never allow it.

And maybe Christie wasn’t the kind of girl to feel sorry for anyone. So why had she stayed with a jerk like Dunbar?

Marty rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels. He knocked and waited nervously.

Christie Dunbar answered the door, looking concerned and mildly confused. She smiled a little and let him in, no questions asked. She must be used to this sort of thing, in the middle of the night, getting calls about cases. Marty’s wife sometimes still couldn’t quite accept it.

Marty looked down at his shoes and stayed by the door. He let his eyes roam around, though he kept his head down. The place was nice, like it was professionally decorated. His own place was homey and lived-in, but he had to admit it didn’t have a lot of character, unless you called kids’ toys strewn on the floor “décor.” His apartment was practical, this one was more stylish. He wondered if Jim had helped, or if it had just been Christie’s doing.

Jim was on the phone, sitting on the floor in the kitchen in front of a line of pumpkins. One jack-o’-lantern with a carving knife stuck in the head was sitting next to the sink on the counter, glowing brightly, a red bow almost blood-like adorning the stem. Jim was listening intently, probably talking to Fisk right then.

“Uh, something else came up in the case,” Marty said to Christie, in case she didn’t yet know anything.

She raised her eyebrows. “Business as usual.” She walked into the kitchen behind Jim and blew out the candle. She bent down and took the knife from her husband’s hand, even as he was absently smoothing out a cut in a triangular eye, but mostly listening to the phone.

Jim relinquished the knife and stood, following Christie to the sink, leaning over her to rinse his hands, then reaching for the kitchen towel to dry them, every movement easy, even more precise than he was at work. Marty could tell the difference as he moved about the kitchen and into the rest of the apartment, that this was his home and he was comfortable there, even multi-tasking.

He wondered, after what Jim had once admitted to him about moving around freely only at home and the squad, if Michael moving the furniture at the squad really had shaken Jim up, even more than he let on. Thinking about it, he’d only been blind, what, a year and a half? That didn’t seem all that long, not considering he was already back on the streets, working, just like he must have before.

Marty didn’t want to think about it. As far as he was concerned, Jim had always been blind and that’s just the way things were. He wasn’t about to start thinking of Jim before he’d been shot, before he’d been assigned to make their lives hell at the 8th. Jim was Jim and that’s all he needed to know. He didn’t need to know anything about his infidelity and problems with his wife, especially if all that was over now.

Marty took a few more steps in so he could see the jack-o’-lanterns better. He screwed up his mouth appreciatively. “Not bad,” he said. Christie looked up from where she’d been cleaning the counter. “My kid and I usually carve a pumpkin, but I’ve been working so late the past couple weeks, we haven’t gotten a chance yet.”

“You want one?” Christie asked sweetly.

Marty shook his head. “Nah. I’m sure we’ll get around to it.”

“Take one. I got five sort of as a joke.”

“I couldn’t—”

“What am I going to do with four pumpkins? We gave one to the kid downstairs already. Take one, Marty.” She lifted the one Jim had just been working on and evened up a bit of the mouth he hadn’t quite finished. “She’s mine,” she said with a small grin, gesturing behind her at the one with the heart-shaped eyes. “But this one has absolutely no sentimental value.”

“Um… thanks. Really.” Marty looked over as Jim came out of the bedroom wearing socks and carrying a pair of tennis shoes. Jim settled onto the couch, the phone still to his ear, nodding occasionally, and slipping into the shoes.

“We’ll be there shortly,” he said, then flipped the phone closed.

Marty cleared his throat as Jim looked up, looking like he was searching the apartment for Marty. Jim’s gaze settled on him. “I’ll go get the car, if you’re ready. I had to park a block away.”

Jim nodded, tying his shoes. “Yeah, I’ll be down in just a second.” He whistled for Hank and the dog came bounding out of the bedroom. The dog wagged its tail when it looked up and saw Marty.

“Here’s the pumpkin,” Christie said, settling the lid on top.

The dog looked up, almost looking concerned when it saw the pumpkin. Hank’s head cocked to the side, muscles tense.

Marty took the gift and hurried out, breathing deeper once he was in the hall.


* * *


Jim put one hand in the pocket of his leather jacket as he waited for Marty’s car to pull up in front of the building. His hand was clenched and he was chewing on his lip. Fisk had run through the original confession a little with him, speculating what Michael could mean. He wanted them all to be prepared for whatever might jump up. Jim had to admit, he couldn’t fathom what else there could be. He’d been sure they were done with the case and all he’d have to worry about would be crossing paths with Uncle Josiah on some other case because he was pretty sure they weren’t done with him.

A car drove by, not stopping, but Jim’s heart raced anyway and his whole body leaned forward. Hank shifted position, thinking Jim might be ready to go.

Another one. This one stopped and Jim headed in that direction, hoping it wasn’t just a taxi thinking he needed a lift. He heard an automatic window slide down.

“You got it?” Marty asked.

“Yeah.” Jim headed for the open window, feeling around for the handle. It was difficult to find handles sometimes on unfamiliar cars. He could tell it was a lower, sportier car, so he ran his hand down the door near the crease and grasped the handle finally, pulling it open. Then he moved back, wondering where the handle would be for the back door.

“You’ll have to, uh, just flip the seat up,” Marty said. “There’s only two doors.”

Jim stopped his search, letting go of Hank’s harness and just keeping the leash on his wrist as he reached in and pushed the seat back up. He ordered Hank in, pushed the seat back, then hurried in, still tense.

Marty shifted and pulled away from the curb. Jim stared out the window, feeling the movements of the car and knowing when Marty was ready to shift gears. He’d had a manual transmission years ago himself, before he married Christie, and he got rid of it because she wanted an automatic. He’d tried to teach her to drive a stick shift, but she never did get the hang of it. She complained she had more important things to think about while driving.

“You can relax, Dunbar. Or do you want to drive?”

Jim turned away from the window, not having realized both of his hands were again clenched on his knees as he sat there. “It’s your car; I’ll let you drive.”

“Then relax. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

Jim shook his head and faced straight ahead. “You know, standing on the sidewalk back there, waiting what, thirty seconds for you? A whole thirty seconds or less, when I could have been on my way to the station… I just want to be there already. I don’t like waiting any more than I like not having control over every little thing.” Jim drummed his fingers on the arm of the door. “I’d probably feel better just walking there, even if it took longer, because I’d feel like I was getting somewhere.”

“Would it make you feel better if I weave in and out of traffic?”

Jim smiled. “Is Tom coming?”

“I dunno. Fisk couldn’t get a hold of him or Karen. I’m sure he’s going to keep trying, though. I stopped by the bar I was supposed to meet Tom at, but he wasn’t there.”

“Are we there yet?” Jim asked a minute later to fill the silence.

“That’s not funny,” Marty said without any humor in his voice.

Jim laughed.

“I have a kid, Dunbar. It’s not funny.” Marty pulled over. “But yeah, we’re here.”

Jim opened the door as soon as the car was in park, before Marty had even turned it off. He pushed up the seat and let Hank out. “Which way?” he asked when Marty joined him.

“This way.” Marty snickered.

Jim looked over at him as he followed Marty toward the station. “What?”

“Nice shirt.”

Jim cocked his head to the side. He didn’t want to ask Marty of all people, but he had a lot of old shirts, given to him over the years with different slogans. “Which one is it?”

“”NYPD Mascot,”” Marty said, laughing. “We should get you one that says, K-9 Unit, or something.”

Jim grinned. “Hank would love that. He’s a police dog at heart.”

“You, uh, like having the dog?”

“I like him better than my cane,” Jim said. “He’s a great dog.”

Marty was quiet a second and Jim didn’t want to think what was going through Marty’s mind. But he didn’t want Marty to think he enjoyed needing to rely on Hank or anything. It was better just to be honest.

“My kid keeps bugging me to get a dog.” Marty opened the door to the building.

Jim entered in front of Marty. “All you have to do is get shot; you can get one just like him.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Jim led the way, hurrying Hank down the hall, almost leading him. His cell rang and he flipped it out. “Dunbar.”

“Where the hell are you?” Fisk barked.

Jim didn’t slacken his pace at all. “We’re here. We’re upstairs. Give us ten seconds.” He flipped the phone closed. “Ready?” he asked Marty in the elevator.

“Yeah. You?”

Jim shook his head. “No idea.”

“You know, we’ve never interviewed together before…”

Jim bit his lip. “And we definitely have different styles.” The doors dinged open.

“Ready?” Fisk asked.


* * *


Jim took the back as always. Fisk was in the lead. Jim listened in the corridor. Quiet, mostly. It was late, after midnight, after lights-out, and he was pretty sure the lights in the area had been dimmed.

He could hear Michael whispering. Fisk stopped walking, then Marty stopped. Jim and Hank joined them.

“There you are! It’s about time!” Michael exclaimed when he looked up from his cell to see the detectives and the lieutenant there. He sounded exasperated and impatient.

Jim kept his hold on Hank’s harness. If Michael was calm enough, they’d move him into an interview room.

“They want me to shut up,” Michael continued. “Tell them I can’t, if I value my life. If they leave me alone… If I’m alone… The bigger the scene, the more witnesses.” He was tense, pacing.

“He’s just been loud,” an officer said. “He hasn’t tried to hurt himself.”

“I don’t need to hurt myself! My life is in danger!”

The officer snorted, a little laugh of disbelief. “We haven’t laid a hand on him.”

“Don’t laugh,” Michael said, his voice getting low, but far from calm.

“You want to talk?” Jim asked him.

“Oh, f*ck me,” Michael said, sounding like he’d noticed Jim for the first time. “Do I think a cop with a f*cking guide dog’s going to be able to keep me safe? You’re completely blind, aren’t you?” He really sounded shocked. “I thought at least you could see something. F*ck, I’m completely dead.” He kicked something, probably the bed. “Where’s the lady?”

“She’s not coming,” Jim said evenly, ignoring his tirade. “You’re dealing with us tonight.”

“Good.”

Jim raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses, but didn’t say anything.

“There’s no reason for her to be involved.” Michael came over, close to the bars. “Chances are, if you go much further with this investigation, you’re gonna be on the list, too.”

Jim looked over at him, the first time they’d been face to face since the fight. He sounded smaller, more vulnerable. Like he was just a kid who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. Jim felt his shoulder start to ache again. This kid could hold his own, he knew that first-hand, right? Or was Jim just overestimating his own abilities?

“They gave me a message,” Michael whispered. “I’m next.”

“Who gave you a message?” Jim asked. “If you talk to us, maybe we can help.”

Michael laughed.

“You said you wanted to confess.”

“To a priest, dim shit. I already confessed to you, didn’t I? I was asking for my last rites.”

“How’d you get a message?”

“From heaven.”

Michael started to move away. Jim reached out and touched a bar to orient himself to the cell. “If we can’t help you, who can?”

“Not God, that’s for sure.” It sounded like he stopped in the far corner of the cell, facing away from the officers.

“Michael!” Jim reprimanded. “Talk to us!”

“Get me a f*cking priest,” Michael whispered, sounding near tears.

Jim turned to where he thought Fisk and Russo were standing. He nodded his head toward the cell. “Can we move him?”

“Yeah,” Fisk said quietly. “Let’s get him in a room and get a priest.”

Jim followed them toward an interview room. Fisk broke away to get a priest.

Jim stopped Marty when they got inside, a hand on his arm. “Can you read him? When he’s talking, his facial expressions and… the way he moves?”

“You want to know if you’re missing anything?” Marty hesitated and moved away, pacing a little in the small room.

Jim walked Hank over to the far side of the table and pulled out a chair. He sat, leaning forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped at his mouth. He blew on his hands, puffing his cheeks out, thinking desperately of anything Michael had ever said that could help, of any clue they might have.

“He looked… really bad,” Marty said. “Like he was on something. Pale, shaking. He looked skinny. I mean, he was skinny before, but now he looks sick.”

“You think someone slipped him something?”

“Normally I’d say, how could they get down here, but after the fiasco with the Mulhaney kid… I don’t know, Dunbar.”

Jim rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Damn.”

“You want to help him?”

“I don’t want him to die, Marty, if that’s what you mean. Something’s going on here, and if anything’s true… What are we supposed to do about it? There’s no way we can protect him if Uncle Josiah has someone on the inside.” Jim leaned back in the chair, looking somewhere above Marty’s head, thinking.

“I’ll keep an eye on him and see what I think,” Marty offered.

Jim nodded.

“You want me to keep my mouth shut? I mean, it’s your case.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, right, Marty. If you think of anything you want to ask, just say it.”

“You sure? I’m not Karen…”

“Yeah. I know. And I value your opinion, skewed as it may be. We’re on the same team, and any insight, I appreciate it.”

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Eight


Marty leaned against the wall, waiting. He thought he must feel the same way Jim had, those thirty seconds waiting on the curb for him to show with the car. Thirty seconds when nothing was happening, before all hell was going to break loose. The calm before the storm—some people might relish it, but to people like Marty and Jim, this was the hell. What was to come, maybe they could control it, figure it out, solve the case, save some lives. But until something happened, they were helpless.

Jim was sitting at the table, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip, obviously thinking. Marty envied him for a second, knowing Jim would have something to say by the time Michael got in there. He’d get the ball rolling and he’d take it as far as he could.

And Marty, though he often couldn’t control his mouth and what came out of it, he didn’t have the faintest idea what to say to the kid. If Michael’d really just been threatened, that was tough; he’d killed people himself and confessed to the crimes. Did he deserve mercy? Marty wanted to ask him that, but he knew that wasn’t the best way to go about questioning him, not if they wanted answers.

Then again, Jim had already tried the relax-and-let-go method. They’d thought it had worked, but if it had, why were they back already talking to this kid?

“Hey, Dunbar, think out loud for once. What do you think, is he telling the truth about anything?”

Jim turned toward the dog, who jumped up to get his ears scratched. Jim was quiet a minute, petting the dog. “I was thinking over what Artez told us when he pin pointed Michael as the one who killed Samantha.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I thought so. I mean, he seemed sincere about Michael being Pipsqueak. Like it never occurred to him that Josiah could be a bad guy.”

“The only reason we were looking at Josiah in the first place was because Michael was leaving all sorts of clues to point us in that direction, right?”

“I’d bet the guy who jumped off the roof, I bet he was working with Michael.”

“Yeah…” Marty leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling since Jim wasn’t even attempting eye contact. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Marty.”

“You met this Uncle Josiah guy. Would he kill someone?” He looked down at Jim for a reaction to the question, watching carefully as Jim’s facial features remained immobile and he blinked a couple times behind the sunglasses.

The door opened and an officer led Michael in.

“What are you doing here? I told you I didn’t have anything to say to you,” Michael said, looking over at Jim.

Jim looked closely at Michael as if he could see the kid. “Have a seat. We’re getting that priest for you.” Jim waited for Michael to comply, sitting across from Jim. The officer left and Jim kept his gaze trained on the boy. “Obviously we can’t do anything to help you and you’re screwed, so what’s it going to hurt to tell us what this is about?”

“It won’t do anything for me,” Michael said, “but I’d hate to get you involved. If you know too much…”

Jim nodded. “Tell me anyway.”

“Won’t your wife have something to say about it if you get killed by Uncle Josiah? Or worse, if he takes a liking to you and decides to adopt you?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“But will she?”

“If she doesn’t like it, she’s free to leave,” Jim said blandly.

“You wouldn’t care?”

“Not if I was already dead or brainwashed, right?”

“You really live on the edge, don’t you?”

Jim laughed. “See, Michael, you have a sense of humor. I like that.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I like that even more.”

“Can you find something to hate about me?”

“Tons.”

“I’d rather you dwell on the negative.”

“Why? Because of what you told us about trying your hardest to do something you’ll eventually regret in life?”

“Everyone’s always liked me. They shelter me, they’re nice to me. It makes me sick.”

“Have you managed yet to regret something?”

“If your lady friend gets killed because of me, I think I’d regret that. She’s really pretty. I think Uncle Josiah would really like her.”

Marty pulled out the chair next to Michael and sat down. He wanted a better view of the kid, up close, in his space. Michael turned, blue eyes rimmed with red, veins standing out. Marty narrowed his eyes as he looked him up and down.

“What do you want?” Michael asked.

“Nothing,” Marty said.

“Then you won’t be disappointed.”

“Ha, ha.” Marty set his lips and stared at the kid. “What makes you think Detectives Bettancourt and Dunbar are in danger?”

“Everyone’s expendable when they get too close. Me, I thought I was safe, ‘cause Josiah likes me, and he doesn’t know I’ve been staging a coup, but here I am. He just sent me a message that I’m next. Which means nothing I did went unnoticed. He knows where I am and what I’m doing and he can get to me.” Michael’s eyes were wide, his face drawn, paler than before. His eyes darted one way, then the other, up to the ceiling, as if someone was all around, ready to strike, but unseen as of yet.

Marty nodded. “Who’s he got in here? Can you tell us that?”

“No one I’ve recognized. But for all I know, you’re his and you’re just playing along.”

“What was the message?”

“I was sleeping in the cell, my cell, and I heard a voice. It told me to start praying.” Michael faked a yawn. His hand went to his mouth, but it was shaking. Marty wondered what the gesture was meant to cover.

Marty was quiet. He glanced up at Dunbar to get his reaction. Jim was chewing on his lip again, rubbing one hand over his chin.

“What sort of voice?” Jim asked after a moment. “Earthly? Human?”

“Duh.”

Jim smiled. “That’s right, you don’t believe in an afterlife.”

“Then why ask for a priest?” Marty asked.

“You can never be too careful,” Michael said.

“Cover all the bases.”

“Precisely. I was raised Catholic. I was baptized. I took communion. I asked for forgiveness of my sins. I’m about to die. So yeah, I’m falling back on old habits, all that stuff that was drummed into me. Just in case there is a god, and just in case his name’s not Josiah.”


* * *


“You want your last rites?” Father Baker asked. The big man eased himself down into the chair Jim had vacated, across the table from Michael. “Are you ill?”

“Would that I were, Father,” Michael said. “Or would that I were insane.”

“You could always plead insanity,” Marty put in.

“Marty,” Jim said quietly, “we’re not here, remember?” They were just there to make sure Michael didn’t try anything stupid. Other than that, they were supposed to pretend they didn’t hear anything Michael said.

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Marty said unhelpfully.

Jim shushed him and turned his back on the kid and the priest.

“Would you like to do confession?” Father Baker asked.

“Not really. I don’t think I have that much time.”

“Take all the time you need. Perhaps the threat will pass?”

Marty sighed and Jim shot him a look, but he wasn’t sure how Marty took it, or if he even saw it, since he couldn’t get any feedback if Marty and him weren’t allowed to say anything.

Jim knew he wasn’t supposed to listen to Michael, and definitely wasn’t supposed to take anything into account in terms of the case, but he knew that if Michael said anything of importance, he’d listen.

“My parents liked me,” Michael said quietly. “They wouldn’t have said anything even if they knew I was helping poison them. That makes me a bad person.”

“Are you going to repent?” the priest asked.

“No. Samantha, my girlfriend, she was more than happy to die for me. She even asked me to kill her. So I did.” He took a deep breath that Jim could hear from across the room. “Is there a Heaven?”

“You want reassurance?”

“No. I just want to know. Yes or no. Is there a Heaven? Because I know I’m not going there, no matter what. I want to know if it exists.”

“Do you admit that what you’ve done is wrong?”

“No.”

“Then how can I help?”

“I want a priest here at the end; is that so wrong? Even for a sinner?”

“If you don’t repent—”

“Repenting means I’ve sinned. And I still don’t believe I’ve done anything really wrong.”

“Then why do you say you aren’t going to Heaven?”

“Because,” Michael said. “Just because. That’s something you learn as you go through life. Like when you find out there is no Santa Claus.”

“God isn’t like Santa Claus.”

Michael pushed his chair back and threw himself on his knees. “Oh, dear Lord, I’ve sinned! How can you forgive me?” he wailed.

The priest snorted disapprovingly.

“Michael, if you’re just going to play with us, we’re going home and you’re going back to your cell, threats or no,” Marty said.

Michael stood up. “What makes you think I’m playing? This is the way it works, right? I prostrate myself. I get on my knees. I lower myself before God and his men and I admit I’ve sinned?”

“It doesn’t work if it’s just words,” Baker said. “You can say the Our Father over and over and have it mean nothing. Or you can say it once and really feel it and live it.”

Michael laughed loudly. “Priests. I’d like to see you go up against Josiah.”

“Michael, do you have something to say or not?” Jim asked, turning back to them.

“You’re not on your death bed, and if someone does come to kill you in the night, I’m sure you deserve it,” Father Baker said coldly and pushed his chair back. “Have a good night.”

“Hey!” Michael said. “You can’t talk to me that way.”

“I can’t tell a sinner he’s doing something wrong? If you want help, I can help. But if all you want is to make a mockery of my religion, you’re on your own.”

“The Lord isn’t going to carry me in my time of need?”

“You? No, not you.”


* * *


“You’re not even going to talk to Josiah, are you?” Michael asked when Jim stood up to leave.

“What makes you say that?” Jim turned back toward the kid.

“Because you have me. You’re done. It’s over.”

“Actually, I was still going to talk to Josiah.”

“Why?”

Jim laughed. “Michael, what are we going to do with you? Why’d you call us back? Why’d you want the priest? You’re just playing with us, right?”

“If you leave me alone, that’s the end. If there are no witnesses…”

Jim sat back down. “How about this. Detective Russo leaves and it’s just me and you. And I’m not much of a witness. So whoever’s out to get you won’t hesitate to try to take you out, right? Because I can’t ID them. But you can let me know who it is and maybe, just maybe, I’ll save your life. How’s that sound?”

Michael laughed. “I think you’re crazy. Because if you did know who it was, they’d just kill you, too.”

“Why? Who’s out to kill you and why?”

“Because I have all the information to bring down Uncle Josiah. And I almost did. And if they find out that I gave you all the files, they’ll definitely be after you anyway. As for who it is, all I know is that they’re here. And that’s enough to make me scared.”

“So you’re saying we’re all in danger?” Jim leaned forward. “What’s he going to do, take out the whole New York police department?”

Marty snickered and plopped down on the table next to Jim. “I like that. I’d definitely like to see him try.”

“Don’t laugh,” Michael said.

“What’s his goal? World domination?”

“Basically. Power doesn’t end with just a city. He likes to travel.”

Marty laughed.

“Marty,” Jim reprimanded. “Let the kid talk. Come on, Michael. What’s Josiah gonna do? Really?”

“No, he’s not going to take out the police department. But those files are important. And incriminating. In order to get them back? I doubt he’d hesitate if someone got in his way.”

“You told us earlier he wouldn’t kill someone.”

“Not himself. But that doesn’t mean the people he hires won’t have the same qualms, you know? When Josiah wants something done, it gets done.”

“He’s a pacifist,” Marty said.

“Look, I don’t know,” Michael said. He stood up and pushed his chair into the table hard. “What I know is, he’s bad. Bad things happen around him. He makes bad things happen. People die, people become homeless and sick—”

“You said Samantha was the one in charge of finances,” Jim said.

“Josiah’s not naïve. I know he knew about it. He probably taught her how, so if it came right down to it, she’d be the only one incriminated.”

“Okay, so Josiah creates people to take the fall, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you taking the fall for something? So it won’t go back to Josiah?”

“I’m in here for killing Samantha and Glenn. I did it. You have my statement.”

“So there’s nothing in there that’s covering for Josiah?”

“No. I killed them to cover for myself. So I could take his place as the next messiah. But if they’d gotten loose, I would have been in way more trouble than I am now.”

“So you’re grateful,” Marty said. “For us arresting you.”

“Yeah.” Michael moved around the small room. “The only problem is that you can’t keep me safe and I don’t want you to leave me alone.”

There was a knock on the door.

“It’s the lieutenant,” Marty said.

Jim followed Marty to the door and into the hallway.

“What’s up, boss?” Marty said.

“We did a sweep of the people working tonight to see who might have threatened him,” Fisk said.

“Anyone?” Jim asked.

Fisk laughed. “It wasn’t one of us. It was the prisoner in the cell next to him.”

Jim shook his head. “Come on, seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Wouldn’t Michael have noticed?”

“He seems pretty scared, Jim,” Marty said. “I don’t think he’s thinking straight.”

There was a pounding on the door to the interview room. “Come back!” Michael yelled. “I’ll be nice!”

“How long are we going to baby-sit?” Marty said.

“I have a couple guys taking care of the guy in the cell next to Michael’s. As soon as we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll leave,” Fisk told them.

“Do we know who it was?” Jim asked. “In the cell?”

“It doesn’t seem he’s related to this case. The guy’s claiming he found this note in his cell telling him what to say and he said it. Chances are it was just meant to scare our guy.”

“But… the other guy has a record? He was honestly arrested for something by a cop we know?”

“Yeah. Really. He didn’t just appear out of nowhere.”

“That’s a relief.”


* * *


“Well, that was fun,” Marty said as he slammed the car door.

“Loads,” Jim agreed, pulling on the seatbelt. He leaned back and checked his watch.

“What time is it?” Marty asked as he pulled into traffic.

“About three.”

“Nice. And we didn’t even need to be there. We didn’t learn anything new.”

“But maybe we saved a life.”

“Come on, the guy was in the other cell. What could he have done?”

“I’m not going to underestimate anyone who makes threats in this case.”

“He was just trying to scare the kid. It worked. Good for him.”

“Marty! Don’t you ever do anything just to make someone feel better? Michael feels a lot safer now. He trusts us. If we need him to testify—”

“You think we’ll actually be able to pin anything on Josiah Wilkins?”

Jim was quiet. He turned his face toward the side window.

“That’s what I thought,” Marty said.

Jim sighed and checked his phone for messages.

“Tom called,” Marty said. “I told him not to come. He didn’t miss anything.”

“Karen didn’t call…”

“Still? That’s not like her.”

“I know…” Jim screwed up his face. For some reason he couldn’t think of anything but Michael saying he hoped nothing happened to Karen. “You think she’s okay?”

“It’s Karen. Of course she’s okay.”

“Yeah…”

“Why?”

“It’s just, she didn’t call,” Jim said. He dialed her number and let it ring until her voice mail came on. “Still nothing.”

Marty was quiet a second. “Look, we’re only a few miles from her place…”

“Okay,” Jim agreed decisively.

“You want to stop?”

“Yeah, I do. She’s my partner.”

Marty laughed. “I’ll sleep better knowing she’s okay, too.”

Jim nodded.


* * *



Jim laughed as he got out of Marty’s car. “Karen’s going to kill us if she’s sleeping.” The air was quiet and almost unnatural. Jim was reminded of the last time he was up this way, checking out the church down the street and meeting Josiah for the first time. Yet he still laughed. The only spook he felt in the air was the coming of Halloween. Other than that, he felt safe. Even if he was alone with Marty. He smiled to himself.

“You wanna leave?”

“No. I just think maybe I should have brought her a pumpkin or something to make up for it.”

“I have the one your wife gave me.”

“Nah, that’s yours.” Jim waved off the offer. He turned away from the car, but stopped. “Well, we do have several more at home…”

“I don’t even need one.”

“We have plenty.”

“Just make sure you keep the one with the knife in the head.”

“Why?”

“Your wife said it had sentimental value.” Marty opened the car door and reached into the back seat.

Jim stared up at the sky, thinking. Christie… Had she changed her mind about the pumpkin? He’d thought she was mad, what he’d done.

“Ready?”

Jim picked up Hank’s harness. “Let’s go.” He followed Marty and waited for Marty to find the right button to call up.

“What?” a female voice asked a moment later.

“We’re looking for Karen Bettancourt,” Marty said.

“Is there a problem?” the voice asked.

“No problem. My name’s Marty Russo. I’m on the squad with her.”

Jim heard the buzz of the door as the girl let them up.

“I’m Amy, Karen’s roommate,” the girl introduced herself. “Karen’s sleeping.”

“But she’s home?” Jim asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Here,” Marty said, and handed over the jack-o’-lantern. “Happy Halloween.”

“Is this a joke?” Amy asked.

“We were just checking in,” Jim said.

“Amy?” Karen asked, sounding still half-asleep. “What’s going on? Who’s buzzing at this hour?”

Amy laughed. “You should ask.”

“Jim? Marty?” Karen squeaked. “What are you doing here? I can’t—” And she rushed back out of the room.

Jim turned to Marty. “What?”

“Pajamas with little monkeys on them. And really bad hair. Take your pick.” Marty laughed. “She didn’t look overly thrilled to see us.”

“What’s going on?” Karen asked a moment later. It sounded like she was pulling on a robe or something.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Jim said.

“I—It’s around here somewhere… I came home and fell asleep. Is everything okay?”

“We just got back from the precinct. Michael was freaking out.”

“Not him, too.”

“He seems okay now.”

“Everything’s okay? Oh, come on in. The living room’s this way. Sorry. You want something to drink?”

“You don’t have to play hostess, Karen,” Marty said.

“They came bearing gifts,” Amy said. “But I’m going to bed. ‘Night.” She walked off.

“Couch is on your right, Jim,” Karen said.

Jim reached forward a little and to his right and felt the back of a couch. He followed it around and carefully sat, pulling a soft fleece blanket out from under him. He heard Karen sit to his right and Marty somewhere across the room. They filled her in.

“So what are you doing here?” Karen asked when they were done.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Jim said.

“And you got worried?” She laughed. “That’s kinda sweet, Jim.”

“Karen,” he complained.

“It’s okay. I know how this case can make you feel.” She pulled the blanket over toward her. “Nice pumpkin,” she said to change the subject.

“Jim did it,” Marty jumped in.

“Really?” She sounded surprised. Karen was quiet a second and Jim could only imagine her scrutinizing the pumpkin even harder than she would have if Marty said he’d done it, or Tom, or some kid. “I didn’t know you were artistic,” she finally said.

Jim felt himself blushing a little. “I’m not. Christie and I were just messing around.”

“You should have seen the one I tried to make a couple years ago. When I moved out I thought I should do up all the holidays, but wow, it was a big mess. I don’t even put up a tree anymore. Amy and I just decorate a wreath.”

Jim smiled a little.

“You thought I was going to give you a hard time?” Karen asked and pushed him a little playfully in the shoulder. She laughed.

“No—No.” Jim shook his head emphatically. “Of course not.”

“You should have seen the lovely one he made for his wife. You can just see the love oozing out of it,” Marty teased.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Twenty-Nine


Jim turned away from the coffee pots to reach for the sugar. He usually didn’t use it in coffee, but today he not only needed the extra kick, but the coffee was bad. Whoever had made it didn’t know what they were doing, obviously.

He turned back to find himself inches from a body. He almost stumbled as he stepped back. A hand settled on his arm to steady him.

“Sorry,” Marty mumbled. He picked up the coffee pot and poured a cup.

“Marty, you have to say something when you walk up.” Jim grabbed the counter tightly.

“I’m tired, wasn’t thinking. Anyway, I thought you’d hear me.”

Jim shook his head. “I didn’t. I’m tired, too.” He started laughing.

Marty joined in. After a minute he said, “Why are we laughing?”

“Because we need a lot of coffee.” Jim took a sip of the doctored beverage and grimaced.

Marty choked on his own drink. “You make this?”

Jim shook his head. “I do know how to make a decent pot of coffee.”

“I’m dumping it out.”

Jim heard him slide the pot out of the maker and reached out to stop him. “Here.” He carefully felt for the opening at the top and lifted the lid to pour his cup out. “You bring the water, I’ll make a fresh pot,” Jim offered.

“Sounds good,” Marty said, halfway out the door.

Jim sifted through the contents of the cupboard and pulled out a coffee can. He found the filters and was searching for the measuring scoop when he heard footsteps coming back. “Where’s the scoop?” he asked.

“In the can,” Fisk said. “But I already made coffee.”

Jim’s fingers fumbled over the filters. He heard another set of footsteps pause in the doorway. “Oh, you made the coffee?”

“Yeah. Where is it?”

“Marty and I drank it,” he said.

“Yeah,” Marty piped up. “We really need the caffeine. What with the late night and all.”

“Let me know when you get a new pot brewed,” Fisk said and left.

Jim kept his back to Marty until he was sure the boss was out of earshot. Then he turned and gave Marty a horrified look.

Marty burst out laughing. He patted Jim on the arm. “Here’s the—” Marty cut himself off and Jim heard something thunk on the counter. “There’s the water.”

“Boss said you two drank all the coffee he made,” Karen said, walking in. “You drank it?”

Jim shook his head. “That’s not possible, Karen.” He measured out the coffee.

She laughed. “I know. I guess that’s the second thing you need to know—bad handwriting, bad coffee.”

“Third thing’s the charm, what is it?” Jim poured in the water Marty had brought.

“Really bad at karaoke.”

Jim grinned. “He sings?”

“He had a few too many at the Christmas party last year. We had to threaten to lock him up as a public disturbance if he didn’t stop.” Karen turned away. “Bring me a cup when it’s ready, okay?”

Jim hoisted himself up on the counter to wait. “Looks like I’m coffee boy today.”

“How’s your shoulder?” Marty asked.

“Better.” Jim tested it to make sure and found it was still only a little sore. “You want me to bring you a cup when it’s done?” Jim offered.

“Nah. Maybe I’ll hang out a few minutes.”

“You and me okay now?”

He pictured Marty shrugging before he said, “You’re a tough guy to hate, Jim.”

Jim forced a little smile. “Sounds like that’s a bad thing.”

“I guess I figure, we work together, your personal life is your business, and we can be cordial, even if we’re not friends.”

“I can handle that.”

“But I meant what I said about earning my respect.”

Jim nodded. “I can handle that, too. Thanks.”

“We’ll see,” Marty said, but his tone was friendly. “Good luck today.”


* * *


“Hey, Jim.”

Jim looked up slowly. He wanted to continue to feel good about the case, but with Rob Mulhaney in the room… He felt a sudden depression in the air. The case hit too close to home. He bit his lip. “Rob.”

“I just stopped by to get those files…”

Jim nodded. “They’re in the lieutenant’s office.”

“I hear you have a confession.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t exactly the one I wanted to hear, but we do have one.”

“Is Gary in?”

“He ran down to the DA’s office.” Jim started to get up. “You want me to get you the files?”

“Nah. Nah, I’ll just stay around here for a while. Fill me in?”

Jim settled back at his desk and nodded. “Grab a chair.” He waited for Rob to pull up a chair from the desk facing his.

“Hey,” Tom said, walking up. He stood behind Jim, leaning against the window. “You’re going to keep looking into Josiah?”

“It’s the only real lead we have,” Rob said sadly.

Marty cleared his throat. “Jim’s going down there later to talk to him.”

Jim nodded. “And I know where he’s supposed to be for the next few days.”

“What’s he like?” Rob asked. “You met him before, right? Gary told me…”

Jim grimaced. “Just how much did he tell you?”

“Not much.”

“You won’t like him.” He shook his head. He didn’t want to think of Brian, the young, happy kid he’d met years before, under the influence of Uncle Josiah. He didn’t want to think about Rob Mulhaney meeting Josiah and seeing exactly what may have happened to his son.

“Jim?”

Jim pulled his hand away from his mouth and looked back up. He’d have to remember not to think so much.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you,” Tom said. “I was there, too.”

“Tom.” Jim held up his hand to stop him.

“Jimmy,” Rob said, “you don’t need to protect me. I know Brian was involved with some pretty serious stuff that I can’t be proud of. I just want a better impression of what we’re up against.”

Jim nodded, and together the three detectives laid it out for him, what all they’d learned from Josiah, Michael, and Antoine.


* * *


“I know we have a confession,” Jim said as he slowly unclipped his seatbelt, “but when we go in there…”

“Act like he’s the guilty party?”

“Yeah. I don’t trust him.”

“I know.”

“I want your best impression.”

“Okay.”

“I trust you. I want to know what you think. Exactly.”

“Okay,” Karen said, grinning. “All right already, you can stop flattering me. This is my job.”

Jim took her arm and stepped up onto the sidewalk. “I don’t trust a lot of people.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, Jim.” She laughed. “You’re not all that hard to read.”

“Really?”

“We’re gonna go in there, and you’re going to take the lead, as usual. But you’ll let me introduce us. The whole time you’re going to be thinking of whatever the hell happened at the church the last time you were here.”

Jim nodded. He could feel the building looming before him, giving him a touch of vertigo.

“And the first thing you’re planning to ask is why he killed Samantha, am I right?”

“That’s the plan.”


* * *


“Have a seat,” Uncle Josiah said.

“No thanks,” Jim replied. Karen had told him the room was the old church library, but all the shelves were empty. Just a table and chairs, not even a picture. Jim shifted his feet on the old carpet. It felt thick, like old shag.

Josiah laughed almost gleefully. “I guess I wasn’t so nice last time we met, was I?”

“This isn’t about that.”

“No? So tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“I’m surprised you, of all people, would take pleasure in anything.”

“But I do. I’m a very happy man.”

“I’m sure you are,” Karen broke in.

“Your partner wasn’t here for my whole sermon, Miss Bettancourt,” Josiah said calmly. “He missed a lot.”

Jim shook his head. “Like I said before, we’re not here about that. We’re here about the murder of several of your followers.”

“Parishioners, if you please.”

“Whatever you call them, why’d you kill them?”

Josiah stood suddenly and Jim braced himself. “Me? I wouldn’t kill my parishioners!”

“Then maybe it was at your suggestion?”

“Where is a preacher without someone to listen? Every single one of those people is my lifeblood!”

“So the fact that they’re being poisoned by you—”

“Ask them! I would never harm—”

“Right, ask them. After you’ve turned them into sheep? I’m sure David Koresh’s followers thought he was a swell guy, too.”

“I did not form a cult, detective,” Josiah said, struggling for control in his voice.

“No?”

“No!” He took a few deep breaths. “People come to me in pain—”

“And you make it worse.”

“I give them medication to help ease their suffering. Insulin, anti-psychotics—”

“How do you explain the poison? We know you developed one.”

There was a short silence. “That,” Josiah said, “is not for mass market. I developed it to… help ease them out of this world when their bodies couldn’t sustain them any longer.” Neither Jim nor Karen said anything, so he clarified. “Euthanasia a term you’re familiar with? But trust me, that’s a last resort. Comatose patients, ones in pain that will never heal…”

“And it’s turning up in your parishioners because…?” Karen prompted.

“It shouldn’t be!” He turned and moved away, talking half to himself. “I keep a tight reign on all my medications.” He spun back. “I’m here to help people, not kill them.”

Jim shook his head. “I’m just not inclined to believe you.”

“Why’d you make it untraceable?” Karen asked.

“Euthanasia’s not held in high regard in this country. If it came back to me, how would I continue to supply the sick and homeless with medications they desperately need to survive?”

“Tell me, how do you finance this venture?” Jim asked.

“Donations.”

“Donations by people who later find themselves homeless? Donations by people who go to their banks and find they never had accounts there?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is this how you get new parishioners, too?”

“I spend most of my time in my lab, detectives, not recruiting more lost souls. I wouldn’t create a lost soul by taking all their finances and leaving them destitute.”

“Or by stealing their identities and assigning them to other people?”

“No.”

“You have people in charge of all that for you? So you have more time to develop drugs that don’t work and poisons that kill people you say you’re fond of?”

“Doesn’t everyone need to delegate some responsibilities? I have people in charge of my finances, but my drugs work fine! I don’t have people recruiting—”

Karen stepped forward and flung down her notebook onto the table. “We’ll need the names of all your delegates. Because if you’re telling the truth, which I doubt, then one of your people has gone on a poisoning spree.”

“And we’ll need you to come back to the station with us,” Jim added.

“What for?”

“We need a statement on what it is you do, exactly,” Karen said.

“I help people. You’d see that if you gave me a chance.”


* * *


“Jim?” Fisk asked.

Jim looked up and took his hand away from his mouth. He twisted his chair so he was facing the boss.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You gonna be ready for the interview when this guy comes in?”

Jim was quiet a second, chewing on his lip. “As much as I want to talk to this guy again… I’d almost rather just watch.”

“Let Tom and Marty take over?”

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“With me it is. You’ll have to ask them.”

Jim nodded. “I just feel like when I’m talking to him, sometimes I miss an opportunity to ask him something important.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else on your mind?”

Jim shook his head. “I wish I believed him. I think the city could use a philanthropist like him. Someone who really could help people where they need it most.”

“But you don’t believe him?”

“I tried. But no, I don’t trust him.”

Jim unfolded himself from the chair when the boss left and headed for the snack machines, where he could hear Tom and Marty goofing around.

“Give me the peanut butter ones and you take the breath mints,” Tom was saying.

“It’s not my fault you hit the wrong button,” Marty said.

“You know you can use these, man.”

Jim walked around the corner. “What’s going on?” he asked with a smile.

“Come on, Jim, tell him he needs these mints. You would know.”

Jim shook his head. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.” Jim heard a little scuffle that sounded like Tom had lightly pushed Marty backwards.

“You shouldn’t have had the garlic for lunch, man,” Tom said.

“Let me breathe on you,” Marty answered. Jim heard a package of candy being opened.

“Guys…” Jim started.

“Yeah?”

“What is it?” Tom asked, sounding a little concerned.

There was silence and Jim knew he had their undivided attention. “Would you two interview Uncle Josiah when he gets here?”

“What?” Marty asked incredulously.

“Yeah, I thought you wanted his punk ass,” Tom said.

“I do.”

“Cold feet?” Tom asked.

“No. I just… I have trouble really listening to him when I’m in the same room. The same way Karen felt with Michael, like you forget what you really want to ask and go off on some tangent. We talked to him for thirty minutes this morning and never did get to any specifics.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Tom said.

Jim nodded and shrugged. He turned to leave.

“Just joking. I mean, I don’t, but I will.”

Jim smiled. “Thanks.”

“But you better run in and save our sorry butts if he pulls any of his mumbo jumbo. I don’t want to end up thinking I’m a French fry and wander aimlessly up and down Broadway looking for a vat of boiling oil to throw myself into, got it?”

[greenbeing]

* * *


“Well, gosh, I hope I haven’t offended anyone,” Josiah said insincerely. Jim could hear the smile in his voice as he asked where Detective Dunbar was off to.

“He’s busy,” Tom said.

“He just waved at the mirror,” Karen whispered next to Jim in the observation room.

Jim set his lips. He just wanted to take the cocky bastard down, but he also knew you couldn’t put a guy away based on a bad vibe and a couple parlor tricks.

“Let’s talk about Samantha Whittleton,” Marty said.

“Samantha?” Josiah asked, sounding sad. “What about her? I heard she was shot, but I never did get my hands on the final coroner’s report.” He sighed. “She was a good kid.”

“You want us to arrest you for insurance fraud?” Tom asked.

“Excuse me?”

“On her medical records, you were listed as her husband. The insurance came through you,” Marty explained.

“Because I married her. She was my wife.”

“A little young for you, wasn’t she?”

“She was so sweet. And she was of legal age. I asked her to marry me, she accepted. We were never very close and she left me after a while, about six months ago. As we weren’t legally separated, she was still entitled to my insurance, which I happily obliged as she needed the medical care.”

“Tell us about your relationship. How you met her, what she did for you. How you found out she died.”

“We kept in touch. We were still friends. I met her at church, or after church, to be exact. She was sitting around after the service crying, curled up in the corner on the floor outside the sanctuary. I tried to comfort her. And as you are probably aware, I have my own unique take on the story of God and on our journey here on Earth. It made sense to her, too. After that, it was history. We were inseparable. She wanted to help spread my word.” Josiah laughed. “It was really important to her, my new brand of truth.”

“She thought she was a prophet?”

“That’s putting it a little strongly.”

“But she did.”

“She would joke about it. About feeling like one of the prophets. And she would chastise me about not taking my message seriously.” He stood up and walked a little. “I had other things that I thought were more pressing.”

“Don’t touch me,” Marty said suddenly. “Sit back down.”

Josiah laughed. “Relax.”

“No. Sit.”

A chair was pulled back out and Josiah sat. “Where was I? Oh yes, my other business, which I’m sure you know about. I dabble in medications for my parishioners. I find that I can make my own medications much more cheaply than any pharmacist and they work just as well. It’s my own blessing.”

“What about this poison?” Tom asked.

“What poison?” Josiah asked.

“The untraceable one.”

Josiah laughed. “That’s not even possible. Untraceable? There’s always a trace of something left in the bloodstream, don’t you know that?”

“What we know is that you have been making this substance that’s almost untraceable, but yeah, it leaves a little something behind.”

“I wouldn’t kill anyone. What would I have to gain from that?”

“You tell us.”

Jim kept his back to the mirror and didn’t bother turning to Karen. “We should have taken a statement back at the church on that stuff.”

“He never would have admitted to anything on paper,” Karen said. “We don’t have enough to go on.”

“Did he admit to making the substance?” Fisk asked.

“Sort of.”

Jim leaned his head back against the wall. “Sort of isn’t good enough. This is why Walter could never pin anything on him.”

“We’ll find something,” Karen said.

Jim shook his head, staring straight ahead, feeling defeated. Josiah was the ultimate proof that evil men didn’t always get punished on earth. The police couldn’t touch him, and no god was going to come down and smite him.


* * *


“Do you know someone named Rico Artez?”

“Samantha’s little friend? She was staying with him. He had a couple kids, didn’t he? Or were they his sister’s kids?”

“What do you know about the kids?” Marty asked stiffly.

“Kids are nice to talk to. I get some of my best ideas from them, they’re so innocent.”

“You don’t… experiment on them?”

“No! Of course not! Kids are healthy, why change that?”

“So you don’t know anything about why Artez and his sister might have been in danger?” Tom asked.

“In danger of what?”

“Of ending up like Glenn Bartlett and Samantha Whittleton?”

“Glenn?”

“You don’t know anyone named Glenn?”

“No… Not everyone comes to me using their given names, but no, I don’t think I know anyone named Glenn.”

“You wouldn’t, would you, if he was just Michael Hershach’s pal,” Marty said.

“Oh,” Josiah said, like he finally understood. “This is about Michael!”

“Your little friend told us all about you,” Tom said. “And don’t go telling us he’s delusional.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Tell us about Michael.”

“He hasn’t been the same since his parents died. I was a friend and mentor to him, but you know, you can only do so much.”

“When you killed his parents, I’d guess he’d have nowhere else to turn?”

“He told you this is revenge for killing his parents? Did you know they died naturally? They were both very sick and it’s sad when something like that happens, when they died so close together, but there’s no way I could have had anything to do with that. I didn’t know he was blaming me for their deaths, though.”

“You had nothing to do with it?” Tom asked.

“How do you give a man a heart attack?”

“You would know. They can be medically induced.”

“And cancer? Can I cause cancer?”

Tom and Marty were both quiet.

“Look, I would be glad to testify, if you need me to. About Michael.”

“On his behalf or against him?”

“I would only tell the truth. It’s up to the jury to decide how to take it, isn’t it?”

“As far as you know,” Marty said, “what’s Michael been up to?”

“As far as I know, he’s been selling my medications on the street.”

“Has he killed anyone?”

“Michael? He’s not the type.”

“No?”

“No.”

Karen lightly touched Jim’s arm. “He’s lying.”

“You sure?”

“From back here, I’m pretty sure I can read him.”

Jim nodded. It would complicate Josiah’s life if he told the truth about Michael. He could be booked as an accessory to murder if he said the wrong thing, if he admitted to knowing how Samantha died. The less he admitted about Michael, the better, the less he’d implicate himself.

“That’s odd,” Marty said, “because he told us he killed Samantha.”

“Michael? I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Why? Do you know something we don’t know?” Tom asked.

“Well, I haven’t talked to him. If he confessed, I’d guess he did it.”

“How do you think Samantha died? If Michael didn’t kill her?”

“I thought it was… one of Michael’s friends.”

“Did you know she was seeing Michael? Romantically?”

“Samantha wasn’t the romantic type. But yes, I knew they were involved.”

“And you think one of Michael’s friends killed her?”

“Yes, I thought it was the one with brown hair, always walked around barefoot.” Josiah went on to describe Glenn’s physique.

Marty left the room momentarily. “Don’t say anything important while I’m gone.”

“He has a Polaroid,” Karen said quietly when Marty returned.

“Is this the kid you’re thinking of?” Marty asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s Glenn Bartlett. What did you know about him?”

“I only ever saw him. I never talked to him.”

“He died before Samantha did. Now who do you think killed Samantha, if not Michael or Glenn?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why are you so calm? If she was your wife? And knowing we have a confession from a friend of yours?” Tom asked.

“She’s been dead a while. I don’t need to break down and sob hysterically, do I? Wouldn’t that be false grief? I don’t know who killed her, but like I said before, Samantha and I weren’t really connected on that emotional level. She wasn’t built that way.”

“If Michael’s your friend, think really hard about who might have killed Samantha. Otherwise he’s going to jail for her murder.”

“I feel bad for him,” Josiah said blandly.


* * *


“Damn,” Fisk said. They’d talked to Josiah for over an hour with no results. Josiah was too smart to implicate himself, even if he had given orders to Michael to do certain things.

“Well, good-bye Josiah,” Tom said to no one in particular. “I almost feel sorry for Michael.”

“Are you sure you didn’t want a crack at him?” Marty asked Jim.

Jim shook his head and settled back into his seat.

“I feel kinda let down,” Karen said. “He was so… normal. I didn’t get the same creepy vibe here as I did at the church.”

“He’s a showman,” Jim said. “And he’s very good at what he does. All we can do is keep an eye out and hope he slips up.”

“How’s Michael?” Karen asked.

“Still alive,” Fisk said. “We’re being extra careful about who sees him and why. We’re tightening security all around and making sure there’s no way any of this business with that Schmidt guy could happen again.”

“Let’s go talk to Michael,” Karen said.


* * *


“Guess who we just talked to,” Karen said.

“I don’t know,” Michael said with mock excitement. “Who?”

“Uncle Josiah.”

“Oh goody!” he said sarcastically.

Jim pulled out a chair and sat across the table. “You know what he told us?”

“That he’s taking over for Saint Nick?”

“That he doesn’t believe you killed Samantha.”

The room was silent. Jim couldn’t even hear Michael shrug or shake his head. He waited, knowing Karen would clue him into any non-verbal communication he’d be missing.

“What reason did he give?”

“He thought it was your friend, Glenn Bartlett,” Karen said.

“I told you, I shot her. Josiah was there. He gave her the poison.”

“Then why’d he say he thought Glenn killed her?”

Michael sniffled. “Because he can’t get to me in here. He tried and he failed and he doesn’t have anyone else in here. I’m safe and he wants me dead.”

“And you wouldn’t confess to a murder you didn’t commit just to get away from Josiah?” Karen asked.

“If Josiah suddenly finds an alibi for me and sends it over, don’t believe him. I’m sure he’d love to get me off the hook for her murder so he can take care of me himself. But remember, I killed Glenn, too.”


* * *


Fisk sent them home early. Jim walked down with Karen.

“Well,” she said.

“I wanted Uncle Josiah,” Jim said.

“I know. I did, too.”

They’d already looked into his alibi for the day Samantha was murdered. Of course he had an alibi. He probably had an appointment calendar full of them.

“It’s early,” she said. “You going home? You want a lift?”

“I think I’ll walk a while, clear my head. Thanks, though.” He waved and headed off down the sidewalk.

“Jim,” Karen called.

He turned back.

“If you need to talk to anyone…”

“Thanks,” he said and shook his head. “I was just sort of disappointed. After all I went through…” He heard Karen walk back toward him. “It pisses me off that one minute he can make me feel like that, then the next he can pretend he never did anything wrong.”

“I wish I’d been there,” she said.

Jim smiled and she squeezed his arm.

“Good-night,” she said.

Jim felt a little better as he walked off. Karen would have been there for him, if she could. That’s exactly what a partner was for.

[greenbeing]

Chapter Thirty—Respite


Jim followed Gray’s directions until he heard his name.

“Hey, Jim!” Fos said.

“Hey, guys,” he replied.

“Bobby joined us today,” Cal said.

“Oh yeah? Hey, Bobby, good to see you.”

“There’s a chair just to your right,” Fos said.

Jim pulled out the chair. Cal was directly to his right, Fos across the table, facing the rest of the bar, which was why he saw Jim first. He heard a small laugh to his left.

“Yeah. Right. You making bad blind jokes?” Bobby asked from his left.

Jim barely recognized the voice. Bobby was the one they always talked about because he usually couldn’t show up for some reason or other. “Someone has to,” Jim said, throwing a grin in that direction. He left his sunglasses on around the guys for the first time, hoping it would cut down on the likelihood any of them would notice the light remnant of his black eye.

“Let me,” Bobby offered. Jim heard him set down a glass and slide his chair back a little, cracking his knuckles like he always did when getting ready for a marathon of jokes. “Blind guy walks into a bar. His guide dog laughs and says, “Look out.””

Jim chuckled. “You’re right, that was bad.” He heard a couple others chuckle with him. It sounded like Steve was there, too, maybe just past Cal.

“I got one,” Fos said. “How many blind guys does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“What’s a blind guy doing with a light bulb?” Bobby replied.

“It was just a hypothetical question,” Fos defended.

“How did Stevie Wonder meet his wife?”

Fos asked, “How?”

“On a blind date.”

Fos said, “Hey, Jim, you know, you shouldn’t go sky diving.”

“Why not?” Jim obliged.

“It’ll scare the hell out of your dog.”

“What would you call your dog if he was blind?” Bobby asked. “A non-seeing eye dog.”

“I got one,” Fos said. “This lady comes home to find the place ransacked. She calls the cops and they send over a K-9 unit. The cop runs up to the door with the dog and the lady runs out, waving her hands and bemoaning her lot in life. She says, “Not only did I lose everything I own, not only is my house completely trashed, but they send a blind cop to help me!””

Jim smiled. “They say that to me every day.”

Steve ordered a round of shots for everyone while Fos and Bobby kept tossing jokes back and forth. When the two of them were together, they’d often pick a subject and go all night making jokes.

“So this blind guy gets arrested for stumbling out of a bar,” Bobby said after he took the shot. “The police officer drags him back into the bar and he’s going to cite the bartender for not cutting him off. “This guy’s blind drunk!” he said. “Nah,” the bartender replies, “he only had one beer; he’s just blind.” “Yeah,” the blind guy says, “I’ll be able to see a lot better if you buy me another beer.””

Fos cleared his throat. “Blind guy walks into a brothel. A police officer follows him and tries to arrest him, but the blind guy protests, “But officer, I live here!” “You can’t live here, it’s a brothel,” the cop says. “Really? If only I’d known sooner,” the blind guy says sadly.”

“Hey, Jim, you know when you walk into a brothel?” Cal asked.

“Yeah, I think I’d notice.”

“Fos knows he’s walked into a brothel when the girls are actually being nice to him.”

“Ha, ha, guys,” Fos said. “The cop looks around at all the gorgeous ladies. “You really live here?” he asks. “Yeah.” “Introduce me.” The officer starts making out with every available prostitute—”

“That’s against regulations,” Jim informed him.

“The blind guy says, “This is my Uncle Frank, and this is my brother Winston…” The officer pulls back, horrified to think he’s been making out with a drag queen. “These are men?” he asks. “Yeah. This is guy’s poker night.” “These aren’t women?” the officer asks, hardly able to believe it. “No. Trust me. I’m blind, not stupid.” The officer makes a hasty exit, leaving the blind guy alone with seven voluptuous, female prostitutes.”

“I should try that one,” Bobby said loudly.

“When’s the last time you walked into a brothel?” Jim asked. “And when’s the last time a police officer cared that you did?”

“I’m just sayin’…” He trailed off.

“This girl’s waiting for her blind date,” Fos said. “The guy shows up early and she’s not dressed yet, but she figures, he’s blind, what the hell, he’ll never notice she’s completely nude, right?”

Bobby groaned. “Nah, we already did a blind date joke.”

While the guys argued, Jim found himself facing down a new picture in his head. He’d never thought of it before, walking up to someone’s house to interview them, if Karen wasn’t with him, would he notice if they were less than clothed? Or if it was a drag queen with a very effeminate voice? He knew these were very bizarre circumstances he wasn’t likely to run into, but on a smaller scale, would he notice? He knew he missed a lot, even now, sitting across from these guys, he knew he was missing a lot of non-verbal communication. And like the other day in the squad, when he’d made faces at Marty about the coffee, he didn’t know how Marty reacted.

“But the guy’s not blind,” Fos protested and kept going. “The girl screams and hits him in the face with a fireplace poker, gouging out both his eyes. “I thought this was a blind date!” she screams. “I am now,” the guy says.”

Jim shook off the feeling. He’d known before he went back to work that he was going to need to rely on his partner for certain things, like describing the layout of a place, and for catching those non-verbal cues, such as when Karen was sure Uncle Josiah was lying to them. She seemed to be paying more attention to the visual now than she had when they were first partnered up. And as for missing facial expressions, Jim had to admit he thought he picked up a lot more subtle nuances in peoples’ voices nowadays. He’d just have to go with it, trust his instincts.

“No,” Bobby said, “that one doesn’t count, ‘cause we already did a blind date one.”

“But it wasn’t the same punch line!”

Jim chuckled at the guys. It was an old fight, one they would never get over.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Jim turned to Cal with a small grin and said, “Just how many rounds did I miss?”

Fos and Bobby were laughing as they argued. Foster leaned over and said, “Come on, Jim, there’s not a lot of blind people jokes.”

“Blind guy goes into a store,” Bobby said, “takes his dog at the end of the leash and swings him in circles overhead. The manager comes running out, yelling, “What are you doing?” The blind guy says, “Just looking around.””

“Blind guy’s telling his friends how he goes parachuting—”

“You already did a sky diving one,” Bobby said.

“Bobby, this is a hard subject,” Fos argued. “Let it slide.”

“We can’t change the rules.”

“Sure we can. Blind guy tells them—”

“Foster, I’m not buying you a beer if you get the last joke.”

“Why not? That’ll just mean I’m up two jokes that didn’t count. Plus leaving you at a loss, how’s that wrong?”

“Blind guy gets into a car. He’s backing up and runs down an old lady. He gets out and says, “Oops, didn’t see you there.””

“Guys,” Fos asked, “don’t you want to hear the punch line?”

“No,” Steve said.

“He’s gonna pout all night if he doesn’t get to say it,” Cal told him. “Go for it, Foster.”

“Blind guy tells his friends how he straps on the parachute, takes his dog by the leash, and jumps. He can smell the trees three hundred feet up—”

“You do that, Jim? Can you smell trees three hundred feet away?” Bobby interrupted.

“I’ve never gone skydiving, Bobby. But no, I don’t have any super senses.”

“And his friends say, “But, dude, how do you know right before you hit the ground?” And he says, “The leash goes slack.””

Jim groaned. “I don’t think Hank needs to hear any of this.”

“Feel free to join in, guys. We don’t have to be tasteless on our own, you know,” Bobby said.

Jim grinned and turned to Cal. “We need to get these guys a new hobby.”

“This blind guy’s standing next to a vending machine at Niagara Falls,” Bobby said. “He puts in a quarter and pushes a button and out pops a soda. He keeps doing it over and over until a small crowd forms. He cheers every time a can drops. “What are you doing?” one of the people in the crowd asks. The blind guy replies, “I’m winning! Isn’t Vegas great?””

Jim groaned. “Isn’t that a blond joke?” He grinned at Cal. “They’re trying too hard.”

“You must have some great blind jokes, Jim,” Bobby said. “Come on.”

Jim rolled his eyes.

“D’you walk into a door?” Cal asked.

Foster snickered. Jim felt his smile faltering a little. Everyone at the table was quiet, waiting.

“What’s the punch line?” Bobby asked after a second.

“There’s no punch line,” Cal said. “Did you? Look at him. You got a big cut on your face…”

Jim could feel the guys leaning forward to get a closer look. He shook his head and pulled off his sunglasses, setting them next to his beer. “No door.”

“Fall down the stairs?”

“I got into it a little at work, that’s all.”

“Everyone stand back—it’s time for a big Jim Dunbar story!” Bobby announced.

Jim forced a smile. “I’m not here to monopolize the conversation. You guys go ahead and talk.”

They were quiet a second. Steve finally said, “No, it’s okay, go ahead.”

Jim leaned over his beer. “I’m not much of a storyteller anymore.”

“You lost your tongue, too?” Fos asked.

“So you did always lie to us,” Cal said.

Jim glanced his way. “No, I told you I didn’t.”

“Then what? I get it,” he said suddenly. “The perp got the better of you. You’re embarrassed.”

Jim laughed. “That’s not it, either.” He couldn’t explain it, but sometimes he just had trouble talking to people. Before, he’d loved to tell a story, the longer the better, because he could watch as the guys reacted. He’d liked being the center of attention then. “I roughed him up, too.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. We went to check out a warehouse and this guy ambushed me.”

“From behind?”

He shook his head. “Walked right up.”

“Caught you off-guard?”

He shook his head again. “I knew he was there. He got in the first punch.”

“You expect us to believe he punched you once and this is the result?”

“Okay. Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll try.” He took a long drink. “We’re investigating this murder—”

“Business as usual,” Fos said.

“Right. One murder turns into two. We lose a witness, everything’s going wrong. The dead bodies, they were shot, but they were poisoned first, so they didn’t actually die from the gunshots.”

“Just to be thorough?” Bobby asked.

“Just to screw with us, I think.” Jim felt his eyes narrowing as he thought that statement through. No, it couldn’t just be to screw with them. If Michael had wanted the police to do a really thorough job investigating, maybe he’d done it to show how effective the poison was. It was just part of the set-up, to make sure the deaths were investigated. The ME had even said, if the gunshots hadn’t been there, with the poison pretty much digested, it would have been dismissed. The autopsies never would have revealed anything.

“Jim?”

Jim shook his head. “Sorry, we’re pretty much done with the case, but there’s a few things still bugging us.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We don’t know why they were shot and poisoned. Just, we’re in the middle of a huge mess.”

“Okay.”

“We get a call to go check out this warehouse and we all go our separate ways to case the place, right? But we didn’t know there were these two guys lurking around waiting for us.”

“What’d they look like?” Bobby asked.

Jim paused and blinked, frowned, trying to recall Marty’s descriptions.

“You can’t ask him that,” Fos said quietly.

Jim shrugged. “First guy looked like Ron Howard.”

“You’re joking, right?” Bobby asked. “The kid from Lassie?”

A groan swept around the table. “He wasn’t on Lassie, dope,” Fos said. “Try The Andy Griffith Show.”

“You beat up Opie?”

Jim laughed pretty loudly, not just at the image of the kid as Opie, but at the scandalized way Bobby asked. “He’s like 23, but yeah. Think Happy Days.”

“Never saw it.”

“Opie?” Cal said, laughing. “Who’s next, Jim? The Beave?”

Jim smiled at the table while he shook his head.

“Did you ever see the episode when Beaver got into that fight?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, when he got that black eye?” Steve said.

“Yeah, that one,” Bobby said.

“But he got hit by a girl. That doesn’t apply.”

“You didn’t get hit by a girl, right, Jim?” Bobby asked.

Jim shook his head.

“See? He didn’t get hit by a girl,” Steve said.

“But it was funny,” Bobby replied. “Okay, so you got beaten up by Opie,” Bobby prompted.

Jim grinned. “Yeah. That’s it.”

There was a loud groan coming from both sides of him.

Jim shrugged helplessly. “What can I say?”

“That’s never “it,”” Cal said.

“How would you know?”

“Because we know you and that’s not the end of the story.”

“You guys don’t want to talk about Beaver anymore?” Jim said hopefully.

“No!” Bobby said. “Come on.”

Jim grinned suddenly and turned to Fos. “You’ll like this part.”

“Me?” Fos asked.

Jim corrected his gaze so he was looking closer at his old friend and nodded. “Yeah, you. This is a good blind joke, not like the ones you were coming up with.”

“So shoot.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “I can’t.”

“Right, right, no gun.”

Jim nodded, glad Fos had fallen back to their old joke. Fos had always had a habit of telling Jim to shoot with his stories, and Jim would always pull his coat back to reveal his holster, or make a gun with his finger, or do some other cop thing. Now he grinned at Fos and leaned over the table a little, lowering his voice for affect. “He tried to disarm me.” Jim leaned back.

It was silent for a second, then Fos started laughing. Steve and Cal quickly joined in.

Jim turned to Bobby when he never started laughing. “I don’t have a gun anymore,” he explained.

“That’s… good,” Bobby said awkwardly.

Jim nodded. “Yeah, it is good.” He turned back to the group. “This guy spent most of the fight searching me for a gun, which of course, I don’t have. And he got all pissy and whiny. “What kind of a cop doesn’t carry a gun?”” Jim imitated in a whiny voice.

The guys were laughing. Jim took another drink and laughed with them.

“Great story,” Cal said and clapped Jim on the shoulder, using him as a lever to hoist himself out of his chair. “Gotta head home.”

Jim grimaced and stretched his shoulder out when Cal let go.

“You okay?” Cal asked.

Jim looked up. “Yeah, no problem.”

“So… Jim,” Bobby said when Cal had gone. “Nice to have you back.”

“Yeah,” Jim said.

“This is the most pathetic night of jokes we’ve ever had, but still…”

Jim laughed. “You need to stick to subjects you know.”

“Yeah, right… Like changing diapers is a good subject.”

“You have kids, Bobby?”

“I have four of them, Jim, where you been?”

Jim blinked. “Four kids?” He let out a deep breath.

“Yeah, what’d you think I was doing? Hanging out at Club Med when I wasn’t around?”

Jim shrugged. “I had no idea. I never thought to ask.” He shook his head. “Four kids?”

“You want one?”

Jim laughed. “Definitely not.”

“You know, sorry about the blind jokes.”

Fos guffawed. “I’m not. He deserves them. He’s always giving us heck, it’s about time we give it back.”

“Jim?” Bobby asked.

He shook his head. “I can take a little teasing, Bobby. Go ahead.”

“Who had the last joke?”

“I think Cal did. He was the one with the “Did you walk into a door” line,” Foster said.

“Nah, then Jim had the disarming story,” Bobby said.

“True life, does that count?”

“Of course it does!”

“Then Jim, you’re way behind. One joke, and we both got like what, ten? You gotta catch up.”

“Actually, I started off with “it’s good to see you, Bobby,” which, according to the rules, negates any jokes where the blind guy makes reference to seeing. Such as your joke about the blind guy running over the old lady in his car,” Jim said sweetly.

“Oh, sh*t,” Bobby said. “I forgot that one.”

“Ha!” Fos celebrated smugly.

Bobby drummed the table with his fingers. “I hate the way your mind works, Jim.”

“I’ll buy you a beer anyway,” Jim said. He pulled out his wallet. “But I’ll let one of you guys go get them.”

“I’ll go,” Fos said and took Jim’s money. “Whoo hoo, I’m rich!” He let out a maniacal laugh and jumped in the air.

“We’re cutting him off after the next round,” Steve said.

“Hey, you’re still here—I was beginning to wonder,” Jim said, looking over at Steve. “He been like that all night?”

“Yeah. New girlfriend.”

Jim smiled and shook his head. “It serious?”

“You know Fos…”

“I’m beginning to wonder.” He glanced over at Bobby and tossed a nod of the head that way. “I didn’t know you had four kids.”

Fos leaned up close behind Jim and said, “It’s very serious,” in a low voice. “She’s great. She’s a make-up artist. I never come home to the same girl two days in a row.” He rested a bottle on Jim’s shoulder. “Where do you want this?”

Jim reached up and took it. “Thanks.”

“If this one doesn’t work out, I think I’ll try an actress next. I always stayed away from them, ‘cause I thought they’d be moody, but really, she’d be a different person every day. Can’t be all bad.”

“You should try a schizophrenic,” Bobby offered.

“Done that. No thanks.”

“When?”

“Last summer. That girl from Barcelona. Two dates, the girl was certifiable. I thought she was her own twin sister at first.”

Jim laughed. “I’m sorry I missed that story.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Steve said. “Really, it makes a better snippet a year later, but living through it…”

“Jim,” Fos asked, “is your lady still certifiable?”

Jim grimaced, regretting how much he used to complain about Christie.

“Sorry,” Fos apologized before Jim could say anything. “You were just always fighting before.”

“Things are better between us.”

“’Cause you’re home more now? That was her biggest complaint, wasn’t it?”

Jim shook his head. Before the affair, he wasn’t sure what Christie’s biggest complaint with him was. He just remembered it was a little of everything, with both of them, and it started adding up, so they were both miserable. “That’s all in the past.”

“That’s good.”

He nodded. “It is.”

“’Cause you probably need her now, right?”

Jim was so taken aback by the comment he couldn’t react, his mouth half-open to deny it, to set Foster straight. But on the other hand, he did need his wife. Probably just not in the way the guys were thinking. And it surprised him to hear that now, and not his first drink with them on some previous visit. “What do you think she does, point out all the chairs to me? Dress me? Tell me the time?” Jim blinked in the silence. “She’s my wife, that’s why it’s good.” He took a breath. “Maybe she should have left me, I dunno. But we’re there for each other.” Since the shooting, they were definitely on more equal footing, but Jim didn’t want to analyze that fact.

“This is why I’m divorced,” Fos said by way of apology.

“Besides,” Steve said, “lots of blind people live on their own, right? So it’s not like the only reason his wife stayed was to take care of him.”

Jim smiled a little at Steve for getting to the heart of the matter. Even if that was why Christie had initially stayed, that wasn’t enough. She was no Florence Nightingale. She wouldn’t stay anywhere if it didn’t suit her needs. “I can take care of myself,” Jim affirmed.

“Yeah,” Bobby said, slugging Jim lightly in the arm, “that’s why the perp got in the first shot, right?”

Jim grinned. “He didn’t get in the last.”

“See? That makes me feel better.”

“About what?” Steve asked.

“I’ll sleep better at night, knowing that if I’m murdered, Jim’ll find the guy. And beat the living crap out of him.”

“It’ll be your wife killing you if you make her pop out any more babies,” Fos said.

“Case solved,” Jim agreed.

“They’d acquit her,” Bobby said.

“You know the best way to get back on her good side?” Fos said.

“No, what?”

“Go home tonight with flowers and a bottle of champagne. Pour her a glass, sit her down, and say, “Honey, I’m pregnant.””


* * *

[greenbeing]

* * *


“You worked this long?” Christie asked.

“Nah. I went out with the guys.” Jim hung up his coat, a smile still on his face. Even after spending a couple hours at the bar with the guys, it was still not quite seven. The night was young and he felt free, without the case hanging over his head.

“Tom and Marty?”

“Nope. The old guys. Cal, Foster, Steve… Bobby was there, too. Did you know, he has four kids or something like that.”

“I can’t say I knew that…”

“I didn’t, either.” Jim shook his head, still surprised at his ignorance. “I think I need to listen more.”

Christie laughed. “I’ve been telling you that for years.”

Jim wrapped his arm around his wife, feeling a soft sweater under his fingers, but it was small and clung to her, not one of those bulky winter sweaters that made him think of polar bears.

“Cashmere,” she said seductively.

“Case is over,” he said. “Next case goes straight to Marty, so I’m free all night.”

“I’d love to stay, but I have a meeting in Times Square.”

Jim let her slip from his arms, his mouth open as he followed her dumbly.

“You wanna come?”

“What sort of meeting?” Jim sat on the bed.

Christie handed Jim a shirt and he heard her rifling through the dresser. “I was going to walk up and down the streets with my husband, look at the moon, look at all the kids dressed up… Maybe head down to Central Park for a stroll. Does any of that interest you?”

Jim pulled the sweater over his head, mumbling into the fabric. “It’s Halloween.”

“Yes, darling. You grown-ups just forget all about the fun holidays, don’t you?”

He pulled the shirt down. He’d been so busy thinking about Josiah Wilkins all day that, if anyone had said something about the holiday, he’d totally missed it. “I forgot.”

“Well?”

“Sounds good.” He slipped out of his work shoes. “Uh, can Hank come, or is this just the two of us?”

“Hank can come… He’s almost one of the family.”


* * *


Jim felt relaxed the next day when he got to work. There wasn’t a lot on the plate, Halloween candy was being passed around, and everyone’s spirits were up. As good as he felt, he still had a niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach. The case hadn’t ended right and it was probably going to bug him, just like the case with Warren Doyle still bugged him. If they’d nailed him the first time…

“If you could arrest one person, who’d it be?” Tom asked, passing the time.

“Josiah Wilkins,” Jim said without missing a beat.

“Why? He didn’t do nothin’.”

Jim stayed quiet. It was nothing they could pin on him, but the way the man had sucked out all the hope from that room, the way he’d had power over people. Jim had to admit, having that guy on the street worried him. He wasn’t glad the murders had been perpetrated by someone else. If Samantha and Glenn Bartlett hadn’t been mixed up with Josiah, they’d still be alive. Artez and DeLana would have homes and insurance, happy children. “The world would be a better place without people like Uncle Josiah.”

“The world would be a better place without blind people bumping into me,” Karen grumbled.

“When did I—”

“It wasn’t you, Jim. Some guy at the bar last night. Bumped into me, felt me up, said, “Oh, forgive me, I’m blind, could you help me find a chair?””

Jim snickered. “Are you sure he was blind?”

“Yeah,” Marty concurred. “Picking out the hottest chick in the bar to run into like that?”

“Trust me, Karen, blind people aren’t that lucky. When I run into people, it’s usually a guy, and usually he has terrible breath. And something sticky coating his skin.”

“He was kinda smarmy…”

Tom laughed.

“Definitely sighted,” Jim said. “You’ll never meet a smarmy blind guy.”

“The world would be a better place without men in general,” Karen said.

“Date didn’t go so hot, huh, Karen?” Tom asked.

“Remember when I said women shoot guys all the time?” Karen flopped into her chair. “Women shoot guys like that all the time.”


* * *


The day went easily, just filling out last-minute paperwork and tying up a few loose ends. Jim took a phone call from Tamika, thanking him. She said she was having a great time with her grandma and maybe they were going to get a dog just like Hank for Cindy to play with and DeWanda had a boyfriend in pre-school and he put sand in her hair the other day and Tamika had her first pair of brand new shoes in forever and was going to start school herself next week.

“Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, huh?” Marty said when Jim hung up.

Jim just laughed at the snarky comment. “Yeah, Marty,” he said with a goofy grin, “it does.”

The air in the office was more relaxed than it had been in a long time. “I’m starving,” Karen said later, “you all still wanna go out and celebrate?”

“I think we deserve it,” Jim said.

“Then let’s take lunch and get out of here.”

“The walls are closing in you, huh, Karen?” Marty asked. “You’d never survive in prison.”

Hank sat up and Jim scratched his ears.

Fisk opened his door. “What are you all doing here?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Tom answered. “And loving every minute of it.”

“Get out of here. If anything jumps, I’ll let you know.” He closed the door again.

Jim stood. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

They all hurried around, cleaning up, closing down, getting coats. Jim took Hank by the leash and led him to the elevator for once.

“Where are we going?” Marty asked.

“Food. Hot food,” Karen said.

“Pizza?” Jim suggested. He just wanted to relax, not to worry about forks and menus and separate meals.

“Actually,” Karen said, “I really wanted to try that new Mongolian restaurant where they cook your food at the table and flip pieces straight into your mouth.”

Jim thought it over briefly—he thought it sounded unnerving, but maybe they’d all be so enthralled with the performance they wouldn’t pay attention to him—unless the chef didn’t notice he was blind and tried flipping food at him. That would be a mess. But he shrugged nonchalantly. “Okay.”

Karen laughed. “I was joking.”

“Even I knew that,” Tom said.

“Only because I winked at you.”

“Oh, that was a wink?” Tom asked, trying to play dumb.

“Pizza’s fine,” Karen said.

“What happened to the Jim Dunbar resolution to relax?” Tom asked.

“It’s not New Year’s yet.” Jim took Hank’s harness and followed the dog off the elevator.

“Jim!” Tom followed him closely.

“I’m joking,” Jim tossed back at him.

“I can’t trust any of you,” Tom mumbled.

“It’s about time you learned that,” Marty said.


* * *


Jim settled onto the vinyl chair. The place was filled with smoke, but the guys all assured him it was some of the best pizza around.

“What do you think of our ‘hood, Jim?” Tom asked. “Now that you’ve been here a while?”

“Nice and quiet,” Jim said. “I’m beginning to think if I want an interesting case, I’ll have to go out and kill someone myself.”

“Ha, ha. I know you’re joking this time.”

Jim pulled his sunglasses off and set them next to his glass of water. He looked at Tom straight across the table without blinking, completely serious. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, Jim. I know you’re not moonlighting as some serial killer.”

“Great occupation for a homicide detective, though. Especially now that I’m connected with Uncle Josiah. We could hook up and you’d never figure it out.”

“Yeah, Jim, you’d be a scary mother if you turned to the dark side,” Tom said sarcastically. “You and your infinite knowledge of creepy ways to kill people. I still don’t know how you figure some of this stuff out.”

Jim tapped the side of his head. “Logic.”

“There’s nothing logical about killing someone,” Karen said. She was sitting on his right and it sounded like she was playing with a paper napkin full of silverware. Jim had curbed his natural instinct to scope out his side of the table, but he guessed each of them would have one.

Jim glanced at her with a smile. “Tell us all about your date last night, Karen.”

“No thanks.”

“But you know how frustrated you felt last night. You know how angry these guys made you. Couldn’t you reason it out and kill one of them?”

“You’re not getting me to go for that.”

“I’ll bite,” Marty said. “101 ways to kill someone.”

“No way, that one gets creepy,” Tom said.

“Chicken?” Marty asked.

“I prefer the Who Would You Kill? game.”

“Honestly? I’m curious to know how Dunbar would kill someone.”

“Honestly, I don’t want to know.”

Karen snorted. “Honestly, you guys need a new hobby.”

Jim grinned and leaned back.

“Every cop’s a bit of a criminal, just like every fireman’s a little bit of a pyromaniac—” Marty said.

“Marty, you need to get over the fireman thing,” Karen said.

“If we weren’t, how would we know what the criminals are going to do?” Marty asked, ignoring Karen. “I think, if we gotta work with the guy, we’d better know how his little mind works. When he snaps, what’s going to happen?” Marty said.

Jim looked over at Marty on his left. “When my little mind snaps, you’ll be the first to know,” he said, then grinned.

“Likewise, Dunbar,” Marty shot over.

“Aww,” Tom gushed, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” There was a second of silence and Jim could only imagine some dirty look being exchanged that made Tom say, “What? Nikki’s had me watching all sorts of ancient movies.”

“The ancients didn’t have movies,” Karen corrected. “They’re called classics.”

“Yeah, Tom, I thought you were well-rounded,” Jim said.

“Careful, this is hot,” the waitress said.

Jim felt her lean up against the table, brushing past his shoulder. He heard Marty move a couple things, and Karen help, too. Then something heavy landed on the table, the smell of melted cheese and sausage and tomato wafting up. Jim inhaled deeply.

“Enjoy,” she said, sounding bored.

“Here’s a plate,” Karen said, setting something in front of Jim.

Jim reached out for it, but she snatched it back. “I don’t get to eat?”

“I figure I’ll get the first couple pieces out. I know how big of a baby guys are when they burn themselves on pizza.”

Jim didn’t argue. He heard her slicing pizza with the spatula, then the plate hit the table in front of him again.

“Blow on it before you take a bite, okay?” she said.

Jim smiled.

She served another piece. “Here you go, Marty, don’t hurt yourself, it’s only pizza.”

“Black guy’s always last,” Tom grumbled.

“I haven’t served myself, Tom, but if you want, I’ll keep this next piece all to myself and let you serve yourself.” She pulled up another piece of pizza. “Here.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Tom said.

Jim gingerly picked up the piece in front of him and took a bite. He dropped it back on the plate, trying to breathe evenly. “Hot,” he mumbled, feeling tears in his eyes.

“What’d I tell you?” Karen laughed.

Jim reached for his water, but found his hand hovering in midair.

“Here,” Marty said, lifting something and tapping it back onto the table. “I had to move it.”

“Thanks.” Jim grabbed the glass and took a long drink.

“I guess that’s the sort of thing we need to tell you, right?” It sounded like Marty was talking to his plate, refusing to look at Jim.

Jim swallowed. “Yeah, it helps.”

“How’d you get used to—” Tom cut himself off and cleared his throat.

Jim looked up at Tom. He knew what Tom didn’t think he could ask, and he wasn’t about to force him to finish. “You can get used to a lot of things. Even working with someone like Marty.” He jerked his head in Marty’s direction.

Tom snickered.

Jim picked the pizza back up and blew on it. He wasn’t going to let one little slip like not noticing Marty move his glass get to him, not today. He was just going to relax and go with it, like he’d decided a while ago. They’d really get along better as a squad if he gave up the “bull in a china shop” attitude Karen had one accused him of having, and if he let them know he wasn’t infallible. He glanced over at Karen. “See, Karen, I’m taking your advice this time.” He blew on the pizza again.

“Good boy,” she gushed.

Hank put his head up, Jim could tell because his dog collar jingled, then he could feel the head at his knee. Jim motioned for him to lie back down. “Better watch what you say, Karen.”

They chewed in silence for a few minutes before falling back into easy chatter.