Puppets

  "My gun? You want my gun."

  St. Pierre toughed it out: "Hey, Mo, regs. Apprehension of suspect, death resulting." He couldn't really look at Mo.

  "I didn'tshoot the guy! I strangled the—"

  "Mo, come on,regs. 'When a firearm is involved.' It was 'involved,' okay?" St. Pierre tried to look reasonable, standing there outside the second-floor doorway, hand outstretched, trying for an Ym your buddy grin, not really making it.

  "You have got to be shitting me! Right? You're putting me on?" Flannery and Marsden and the troop K and White Plains brass were down at street level, but a couple of patrolmen were watching and they seemed to be trying to suppress grins.

  "Marsden's orders," St. Pierre said regretfully. The hand still out.

  Mo handed it over, immediately missing the weight of it under his arm and thinking again, This is the shits.

  He got back to the house at half past midnight. Coming home to the big house was no great relief. Carla and he weren't lovers anymore, just uneasy roommates in the house they rented from her mother, one of several she owned on the west side. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, moving into one of Mom's extra houses with the understanding that they'd do some painting and wallpapering in exchange for cheap rent. Nice yard overhung by big oaks, a neighborhood on the outskirts of town, good for walks and jogs. The place was in good shape and would be great if you were happily married and had kids and dogs and Volvos, but as things stood, it was far too much space. Moving from a three-room apartment, they hadn't had enough furniture to inhabit more than the back end of the ground floor, leaving the front of the house and the whole upstairs empty. Lots of big rooms with glistening, bare oak floors, tall, curtain less windows that let in stark sun during the day and too much blue streetlight glow at night. They'd solved the problem by setting up the kitchen, converting a small rear study to a bedroom, and calling the former dining room their living room. Kind of like a three-room apartment.

  Mo unlocked the front door, stepped into the echoing front hall, aching and thinking that the mostly empty house, the temporary and unfinished feel of it, was a pretty close metaphor for their relationship.

  The lights were still on in the back rooms, meaning Carla was still awake, and she had Chopin playing quietly on the stereo. He heard water running in the bathroom sink, no doubt Carla taking her lenses out and brushing her teeth and putting on some specialized fruit-based facial cream before bed, and he called out, "It's me," before heading into the kitchen to get a beer He yanked the top and dropped hard onto one of the chairs in the former dining room and then slugged back some beer. It tasted metallic, and he wondered why he always bought cans instead of bottles. Easier to recycle, he answered himself. Still, it was nice. He took another swallow. The bathroom pipes squeaked as Carla turned off the water.

  "How was yourday?" she called, only marginally interested. "Anything newand exciting?"

  "Not really," he called back. He rearranged himself on the chair with difficulty, trying to find a position that didn't cause somebody part to hurt and then giving up. He held the cold can against one of the bruises on his forehead. "Just the usual," he said.

  2

  BUT WHEN SHE CAME in and saw him, her eyebrows jumped. Carla was small and dark, and the colorful silk shirts and scarves she often wore made her look a little like a gypsy. It helped in her client relations and public image, she said, meaning that as a fortuneteller and astrologist a somewhat exotic appearance didn't hurt. The observation was typical, a combination of the esoteric and the pragmatic, from a woman who had almost gotten a master's degree in psychology before her largely accidental career had taken off. Now she had a daily astrology bit that was aired on three radio stations, a daily column in the Journal News, a growing private clientele. She had started writing a book about"contemporary predictive consultation" and was researching everything from psychic hotlines to voodoo ceremonies, but Mo could never tell just how seriously she took herself. Certainly she put a lot of work into her sessions and believed she did some good for people, but she'd never claimed to have real supernatural talents. Instead she talked about beneficial transference, the placebo effect, neurolinguistic suggestion, constructive catharsis. She was pretty insightful, and he figured she saw herself more as a kind of psychotherapist for those who needed a sense of a link to"the beyond," to universal truths. "So tell me about you and me," Mo had asked her a couple of months ago. They'd had another fight, things had already been difficult for a while. "Read our future. Are we going to make it?" She had looked at him deadpan, seeing it for what it was, more of a provocation than a question. "That's not how it works," she'd answered. Meaning how her predictive processes operated or how Mo should probe her intentions, he wasn't sure.

  But it was nice that she was sympathetic now. Mo's whole body called out for some kind of comfort. She came to him and touched his bruised face with her fingertips, eyes full of concern. "Wow. You want to tell me about it? You've been to the hospital, right?" She scanned him up and down. "Oh, God—and your new suit!"

  It was nice that she understood about the suit, too. So he told her about the run-in with Big Willie. Then about how pissed Marsden had been at him for killing another suspect, and in such a creative way, and about the likelihood of problems with the DA's office. He told her he was okay, though: At the hospital, they'd x-rayed his legs and elbows and found no breaks, and the shoulder wound was truly just a scrape, not even requiring stitches.

  Carla knelt beside him, arms on his thigh, listening. When he was done and had sucked the last of his beer, she said, "You're feeling bad aboutthis. You're kind of in shock, aren't you?"

  "Well, it's not so unusual—"

  "You don't have to be defensive. Of course you're upset. You should be."

  "I mean, the guy, what he did to those women, maybe he deserved it. But it's another thing when you're right there? When you take somebody's Hfe with your own hands? I was right there, I didn't even know he was dying right in front of my eyes. Didn't even know it."

  Sitting there, Mo could still feel the bucking of Big Willie's massive torso against his own chest and knees, a body-memory replaying itself, what Carla called" kinesthesic perseveration." When he'd been down on the floor, he'd felt it as Big Willie's fightinghim, resisting arrest or something. But now his body knew it as Big Willie's fighting for something much more basic, some rudimentary animal prerogative: life itself. How easily you could take that away from somebody. How it could go out of a living person and from two feet away you couldn't even tell. How unmomentous a change. Made everything seem pathetic and sad. He wondered how long he'd have dreams of Big Willie's final moments.

  He couldn't express it, but Carla seemed to understand, maybe this was what her clients needed, what they got from her. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah." She rubbed his thigh sympathetically, looking up at his face. Carla had dark brown eyes with flecks of gold around the iris, the whites so clear they were almost blue, alert eyes that still fascinated him. He loved being this close to her, having her undivided attention, basking in the warmth of her sympathy. Like when they made love, their bodies joined and their faces this close, and it seemed he could see every movement, every sensation, mirrored instantly in her eyes—

  But now she was up again, tossing her hair over her shoulders as she headed toward the kitchen in her blue silk robe. "I'm going to get you another beer. Then I'm going to run you a hot bath. It'll help loosen up your muscles. Anyway, you should always have a ritual cleansing after something like that. You know what I'm saying?" She was still being solicitous, but he couldn't help but think she'd seen him falling toward her and had deliberately interposed some distance.

  Oh well, he thought. He was too tired and sore to worry about it. And yes, another beer would be nice.

  Friday he had a meeting with Marsden in the senior investigator's office. TheJournal News had put the story just below the fold on page one, and News3 and Cable Ten had both played footage of the scene on the ten-o'clock and the m
orning news. Serial rapist suspect killed in parking garage. District attorney to investigate rapist's death, killer cop. Unusual circumstances in apprehension of rape suspect. Cop in parking garage incident has prior history of violent arrests.

  The last was untrue, the plural part anyway. Mo had only killed one other suspect, one other person, in his life, and that was in a shoot-out where he'd had no choice, a situation where Inspection had raked him over the coals but had ultimately deemed his actions entirely reasonable. Flannery had grudgingly accepted the determination, but had publicly stated that the DA's office intended to closely monitor State Police arrest procedures. At his press conference back then, Flannery had pointedly mentioned Mo's name, a little warning that Mo had come up on his personal radar. DAs, Mo learned, hate issues where they're caught between supporting the police and pandering to the constituencies that elected them.

  Mo had felt pretty bad after that one, too, even though in retrospect it was emotionally much easier to kill a guy from fifty feet away than lying against him with a belt around his neck. But any time a death resulted during police work it had to be looked at closely: Most cops went through a whole career without killing anyone, many without even taking their gun out in the line of duty. Mo had been an investigator for eight years and had already killed two people. It didn't look good, went against the law of averages. Plus the belt and the no shoes thing.

  Mo didn't look forward to his meeting with Marsden. On the bright side, this would probably mean a thirty-day suspension. Even if it was without pay, that didn't sound too bad.

  Marsden had been a highway patrolman, moved up to investigator, showed talent, moved up to senior investigator of Major Crimes through grit and endurance. He was in his mid-fifties now, a tired-looking guy with jowls and suspicious slit eyes and thinning dark brown hair combed against his head. A chronic skin condition, eczema or something, flared red on one side of his nose and itched and made him irritable. He could make you hurt if your mistakes impaired the effectiveness of the unit. At the same time, he knew what you were up against and had some sympathy for the vicissitudes of the job.

  Mo knocked on the door frame of Marsden's office at the far end of the MCU's "back room" at the State Police White Plains barracks building. Marsden beckoned him in, gestured for him to sit, tossed aside a folder he'd been studying. Mo took the chair in front of the desk.

  For a full minute, Marsden just stared at him through his slit eyes, pouting, chin on his clasped hands. Finally he said, "You know, I gotta say, I admire you. I admire the hell out of you."

  Mo didn't answer. It wasn't an auspicious beginning.

  "I admire you because you can pull the craziest shit, so help me, where even a guy like me, thirty years as a cop and police administrator, has to go back to the procedural manual and try to figure if what you did was right or not. Consult with counsel, the whole nine yards. You'd think by now I'd have seen everything. But no. Not with Mo Ford. So, I hand it to you. Really." Marsden tugged at his lower lip, exposing the purple-veined inner surface.

  "Doesn't sound like I'm supposed to say 'thank you' for the compliment," Mohazarded.

  "I also admire that every time you get yourself in hot water, you get lucky, you get the right guy. We sent photos of your dead buddy around to the victims. Positive ID. Fibers from the van carpet are a match with the ones we've picked up from victims. So it looks like you killed the actual perpetrator."

  That was some relief.

  "And, one more thing, this is what's really slick—I admire that every time you get us in trouble with some constituency, you manage to give everybody conflicted emotions that take wind out of their sails. On this one, here in the State Police, you got half the guys pissed at you for loose procedure and half practically starting up a fan club for your ingenuity and balls. The White Plains guys, half of them are steamed because you acted in their jurisdiction, but half are jumping up and clicking their heels because you got Big Willie out of their hair. in the community, you've got the suspects'-rights, police-brutality types mad that you killed a guy without knowing for sure he was the perpetrator. But he was white, with maybe a skinhead connection, so you shook off criticism from the African-American community! Plus you've got the feminists, who're usually part of that same police-brutality constituency, secretly feeling, hey, this guy really deserved it. Bottom line, nobody wants to raise too big of a stink for us. We don't have to publicly self-cannibalize or even make a ritual sacrifice out of you. So I admire you—I really do." Marsden tossed his hand at the file, which Mo could see was the beginning of the File 3, the internal report on Mo's dance with Big Willie.

  Marsden's buildup of his deep admiration was scary, but so far the news was not bad.

  "So—"

  "So we're not gonna suspend you pending the outcome of the internal investigation. I can't make promises about what Flannery might do, but for now you get to go back to work."

  Mo found he was leaning to the right and rolling his pelvis forward, a way of keeping weight off the groin pull. "I got kind of banged up. I was thinking maybe I could have a couple days of sick leave—"

  "I'd recommend it," Marsden snarled.

  "You going to tell me what the problem is?" Mo was stiff and still tired. Another reason for a couple of days off would be to spend time with Carla, maybe sort something out. At this point, it all added up to he didn't much care what it cost to be out front with Marsden.

  "The problem? What problem? You mean Flannery? You mean the DA on my ass about I can't control my people? That Flannery wants to stick his nose in this to show what a take-charge guy he is, and that I need you on the job so badly that I gotta be your umbrella here? You mean between our caseload and red tape I got a rock and a hard place? Hey—forget about it. Nah. It's nothin', really. But Ford"—and here his so-what act slipped, a dark glint flashed in his slit eyes—"not again. No problems for me. Nothing that gets press attention. Or I make problems for you. I hear they're shorthanded on highway patrol out in Oswego." Marsden commanded him out of his chair with his fingers. "Now get outta here, I got work to do."

  Mo went out to the floor and back to his desk. He felt a mix of relief and disappointment. Part of him really didn't care if he stayed on this job. He was tired and sore and depressed, and half of his problems with Carla were related to the job, his coming home from work with ugly pictures in his head, the risks he had to take, the jocks and ex-service types who were his colleagues. There were other things besides being a homicide detective. Any glamour it had had—when was that?—had long since worn off. Maybe this was one of those times when you really retrenched. Maybe he should go back to school, take psychology or history or something. Carla would like that, maybe it would make the difference for them.

  Or maybe not. With relationships, maybe the external stuff people blamed for their problems was just camouflage for a deeper disconnect, the absence of fire or magic or chemistry, or the lack of real common ground, or the fear of real intimacy. The mostly empty house, the bare, unused rooms—harder stuff to face up to. Maybe that's where he and Carla were at. Maybe she saw that better than he did, and that's why she seemed more willing to let go.

  He was still thinking about it when he got back to his desk and found Mike St. Pierre waiting.

  "I've been looking for you," St. Pierre said. "We're up. Gota call, there's a body down on Maple Brook Road."

  "Why do they want us in there?" White Plains had a good detective bureau, didn't usually ask for help from the State Police.

  St. Pierre shrugged. "Didn't say."

  Mo thought about telling him about his plan to take a few days' sick leave, about his acute desire to go home and fall into bed and let it all slip for a day or two. Maybe this one could go to Valsangiacomo, or Estey. But St. Pierre looked so eager, a big puppy, he couldn't bear to disappoint him. Mike was still new enough to be caught up in the mystique, to want to do battle with evil. A big, sandy-haired young guy, good-humored, should have been a pro baseball player or some
thing else more wholesome and sunny. St. Pierre hadn't yet noticed how far it was from White Plains to Hollywood, or from the BCI Major Crimes offices to his house in the burbs, his wife and kids.

  "Oh—here's this," St. Pierre added, handing him hisgun. "Marsden says you can have it back."

  "Big of him," Mo said.

  3

  THE MURDER HOUSE WAS the left half of a two-story duplex in a middle-income residential neighborhood of aluminum-sided singles and duplexes built in the sixties and seventies. It was another area where the old elm trees that had once given the street some grace had died and the city had planted little lollipop maples in their place, leaving the sidewalks and houses looking naked. On the other hand, the car sparked along the curbs were new, the lawns well-kept and set off with flower gardens. In front of 1431 were a couple of ambulances, three squad cars, several unmarked White Plains cars. They'd already strung tape around the house and yard. Even though it was a nice May afternoon, sunny, robins popping on the lawns, nobody seemed to be outside. People hovered in doorways and windows, looking on from a distance, parents keeping their hands on their kids. Word had already gone around the neighborhood, and it was the kind of word that scared people.

  Mo and St. Pierre greeted the cops at the door and went in to meet the White Plains investigator in charge. They found Jim Melrose in the living room, standing in front of a big home-entertainment center. Melrose had a long, gray face at the best of times, and now he looked particularly not good. Mo recognized the look: a man with bad pictures in his head.

  "Hey," Mo said. They shook hands and Mo felt a pang of sympathy. Sometimes you could joke about it, act tough and jaded, and sometimes you couldn't. "How are you doing?"

  "I was supposed to be on vacation this week," Melrose said. "Then we changed the schedule around so we could go to mysister's wedding? So I ended up being here for this."