But outside of Celeste and Michael being gone, he felt strong. He felt none of the indecision he'd felt over the last few days. Hell, he'd even managed to sleep six hours last night. He woke feeling stale and woolen-mouthed, his skull weighted down by granite, yet somehow clear.
He knew who he was. And he knew he'd done right. And killing someone (and Dave couldn't blame it on the Boy anymore; it was him, Dave? he'd done the killing) had empowered him now that he'd gotten his head around it. He'd heard somewhere of ancient cultures that used to eat the hearts of the people they murdered. They ate the hearts, and the dead were subsumed into them. It gave them power, the power of two, the spirit of two. Dave felt that way. No, he hadn't eaten anyone's heart. He wasn't that fucked in the head. But he had felt the glory of the predator. He had murdered. And he had done right. And he had stilled the monster inside of him, the freak who longed to touch a young boy's hand and melt into his embrace.
That freak was fucking gone now, man. Gone down to hell with Dave's victim. In killing someone, he'd killed that weak part of himself, that freak who had lain in him since he was eleven years old, standing in his window, looking down at the party they were throwing on Rester Street in honor of his return. He'd felt so weak, so exposed at that party. He'd felt people were secretly laughing at him, parents smiling at him with the fakest smiles, and he could see behind their public faces that they privately pitied him and feared him and hated him, and he'd had to leave the party just to escape that hate because it made him feel like a puddle of piss.
But now another's hate would make him strong, because now he had another secret that was better than his old, sorry secret, the one that most people seemed to guess anyway. Now, he had a secret that made him tall, not small.
Come close, he'd feel like saying to people now, I've got a secret. Closer, and I'll whisper it in your ear:
I've killed someone.
Dave locked his eyes on the fat cop behind the mirror:
I've killed someone. And you can't prove it.
Who's weak now?
* * *
SEAN FOUND WHITEY in the office on the other side of the two-way mirror overlooking Interview Room C. Whitey stood there, one foot planted on the seat of a torn leather chair, looking in at Dave and sipping coffee.
"You do the lineup?"
"Not yet," Whitey said.
Sean came up beside him. Dave was looking directly back at them, seemed almost to be locking eyes with Whitey as if he could see him. And, even weirder, Dave was smiling. It was a small smile, but it was there.
Sean said, "Feeling bad, huh?"
Whitey looked over at him. "I've felt better."
Sean nodded.
Whitey pointed his coffee cup at him. "You've got something. I can tell, prick. Give it up."
Sean wanted to draw it out a little longer, drive Whitey a little nuts with the waiting, but in the end he didn't have the heart.
"I got someone interesting who used to work at Looney Liquors."
Whitey placed his coffee cup on the table behind him and took his foot off the chair. "Who?"
"Ray Harris."
"Ray??"
Sean felt his grin break wide across his face. "Brendan Harris's father, Sarge. And he's got a rap sheet."
23
LITTLE VINCE
WHITEY SAT UP on the empty desk across from Sean's own with the probation report open in his hand. "Raymond Matthew Harris? born September the sixth, 1955. Grew up on Twelve Mayhew Street in the East Bucky Flats. Mother, Delores, a housewife. Father, Seamus, a laborer who left the family in 1967. Predictable shit follows as the father is arrested on petty larceny in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1973. Bunch of DUIs and D and D's follow. Father dies of a coronary in Bridgeport, 1979. Same year, Raymond marries Esther Scannell? that lucky bastard? and takes a job working for the MBTA as a subway car operator. First child, Brendan Seamus, born 1981. Late the same year, Raymond indicted in a scam to embezzle twenty thousand dollars in subway tokens. Charges ultimately dismissed, but Raymond is fired for cause from the MBTA. Works odd jobs after that? day laborer on a home improvement crew, stock clerk at Looney Liquors, bartender, forklift operator. Lost the forklift operator job over the disappearance of some petty cash. Again, charges filed, then dropped, Raymond gets fired. Questioned in the 1982 robbery of Looney Liquors, released on lack of evidence. Questioned in the robbery, same year, of Blanchard Liquors in Middlesex County; once again, released on lack of evidence."
"Beginning to become known, though," Sean said.
"He's getting popular," Whitey agreed. "A known associate, one Edmund Reese, fingers Raymond in the 1983 heist of a rare comic book collection from a dealer in? "
"Fucking comic books?" Sean laughed. "You go, Raymond."
"A hundred fifty thousand dollars' worth of comic books," Whitey said.
"Oh, excuse me."
"Raymond returns said literature unharmed and is given four months, a year suspended, two months time served. Comes out of prison apparently with a wee bit of a chemical dependency problem."
"My, my."
"Cocaine, of course, this being the eighties, and that's where the rap sheet grows. Somehow Raymond's smart enough to keep whatever it is he's doing to pay for the cocaine under the radar, but not so smart he doesn't get picked up in his attempts to procure said narcotic. Violates his parole, does a year solid inside."
"Where he learns the error of his ways."
"Apparently not. Picked up by a joint Major Crime Unit/FBI sting for trafficking stolen goods across state lines. You're going to love this. Guess what Raymond stole. Think 1984 now."
"No hints?"
"Go with your first instinct."
"Cameras."
Whitey shot him a look. "Fucking cameras. Go get me some coffee, you're not a cop anymore."
"What then?"
"Trivial Pursuit," Whitey said. "Never saw that one coming, did you?"
"Comic books and Trivial Pursuit. Our boy's got style."
"He's got a shitload of grief, too. He stole the truck in Rhode Island, drove it into Massachusetts."
"Hence the federal interstate rap."
"Hence," Whitey said, shooting Sean another look. "They've got his balls, basically, but he does no time."
Sean sat up a bit, took his feet off his desk. "He rolled on someone?"
"Looks that way," Whitey said. "After that, nothing else on the rap sheet. Raymond's probie notes that Raymond is dutiful in appearing for his appointments until he's released from probation in late eighty-six. His employment records?" Whitey looked over the file at Sean.