“Yes, ma’am.”
“‘Ms. Campbell’ will do fine.”
“Yes, Ms. Campbell.”
She slid her glasses back up on her nose, looked through the thin ovals at me. “And you took that to mean what exactly?”
“I took that to mean that someone besides Detective Pasquale and Officer Broussard had given the order to assassinate Lionel McCready and possibly the rest of us in the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
She flipped through her notes, which—in the six hours I’d been in Interrogation Room 6A of the BPO’s District 6 station—had grown to take up half the notepad. The sound of her turning sheets of paper made brittle and curled inward by her furious scribbling with a sharp ballpoint reminded me of the late-autumn rustle of dead leaves against curbstone.
Besides myself and ADA Campbell, the room was occupied by two homicide detectives, Janet Harris and Joseph Centauro, neither of whom seemed to like me even a little bit, and my attorney, Cheswick Hartman.
Cheswick watched ADA Campbell turn the pages of her notes for a while, and then he said, “Ms. Campbell.”
She looked up. “Hmm?”
“I understand this is a high-pressure case with what I’m sure will be extensive press coverage. To that end, my client and I have been cooperative. But it’s been a long night, wouldn’t you say?”
She turned another crisp page. “The Commonwealth is not interested in your client’s lack of sleep, Mr. Hartman.”
“Well, that’s the Commonwealth’s problem, because I am.”
She dropped a hand to her notes, looked up at him. “What do you expect me to do here, Mr. Hartman?”
“I expect you to go outside that door and speak to District Attorney Prescott. I expect you to tell him that it’s patently obvious what occurred in the Edmund Fitzgerald, that my client acted as any reasonable person would, is not a suspect in either the death of Detective Pasquale or of Officer Broussard, and that it is time for him to be released. Note, too, Ms. Campbell, that our cooperation has been total up to this point and will continue to be so as long as you show us some common courtesy.”
“Fucking guy shot a cop,” Detective Centauro said. “We’re going to let him walk, counselor? I don’t think so.”
Cheswick crossed his hands on the table, ignored Centauro, and smiled at ADA Campbell. “We’re waiting, Ms. Campbell.”
She turned a few more pages of her notes, hoping to find something, anything, on which to hold me.
Cheswick was inside another five minutes checking on Angie as I waited on the front steps, getting enough glares from the cops coming in and out of the building to know I’d better not get pulled over for speeding for a while. Maybe for the rest of my life.
When Cheswick joined me, I said, “What’s the deal?”
He shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere for a while.”
“Why not?”
He looked at me like I needed a shot of Ritalin. “She killed a cop, Patrick. Self-defense or not, she killed a cop.”
“Well, shouldn’t you be—”
He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “You know who the best criminal lawyer in this city is?”
“You.”
He shook his head. “My junior partner, Floris Mansfield. And that’s who’s in there with Angie. Okay? So chill out. Floris rocks, Patrick. Understand? Angie’s going to be fine. But she’s still got a lot of hours ahead of her. And if we press too hard, the DA will say, ‘Fuck it,’ and push it to a grand jury just to show the cops he’s on their side. If we all play ball and make nice, everyone will begin to cool down and get tired and realize that the sooner this goes away the better.”
We walked up West Broadway at four in the morning, the icy fingers of dark April winds finding our collars.
“Where’s your car?” Cheswick said.
“G Street.”
He nodded. “Don’t go home. Half the press corps is there. And I don’t want you talking to them.”
“Why aren’t they here?” I looked back at the precinct house.
“Misinformation. The duty-desk sergeant purposefully let it leak that you were all being held at headquarters. The ruse’ll hold until sunup; then they’ll come back.”
“So where do I go?”
“That’s a really good question. You and Angie, intentionally or unintentionally, just gave the Boston Police Department its blackest eye since Charles Stuart and Willie Bennett. Personally, I’d move out of state.”
“I meant now, Cheswick.”
He shrugged and pressed the slim remote attached to his car keys, and his Lexus beeped once and the door locks slid open.
“The hell with it,” I said. “I’ll go to Devin’s.”
His head whipped around in my direction. “Amronklin? Are you crazy? You want to go to a cop’s house?”
“Into the belly of the beast.” I nodded.
At four in the morning, most people are asleep, but not Devin. He rarely sleeps more than three or four hours a day, and then it’s usually in the late hours of the morning. The rest of the time, he’s either working or drinking.
He opened the door to his apartment in Lower Mills, and the stench of bourbon that preceded him told me he hadn’t been working.
“Mr. Popularity,” he said, and turned his back to me.
I followed him into his living room, where a book of crossword puzzles sat open on the coffee table in between a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a half-full tumbler, and an ashtray. The TV was on, but muted, and Bobby Darin sang “The Good Life” from speakers set to whisper volume.
Devin wore a flannel robe over sweatpants and a Police Academy sweatshirt. He pulled the robe closed as he sat on the couch and lifted his glass, took a sip, and stared up at me with eyes that, while glassy, were as hard as the rest of him.
“Grab a glass from the kitchen.”
“I don’t feel much like drinking,” I said.
“I only drink alone when I’m alone, Patrick. Got it?”
I got the glass, brought it back, and he poured an overly generous drink into it. He raised his.
“To killing cops,” he said, and drank.
“I didn’t kill a cop.”
“Your partner did.”
“Devin,” I said, “you’re going to treat me like shit, I’ll leave.”
He raised his glass toward the hallway. “Door’s open.”
I tossed the glass on the coffee table, and some bourbon spilled out of it as I got out of the chair and headed for the door.