Chương 11
“His tax box.”
Marco frowned.
“What?”
“David kept old receipts in a plastic file box.”
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
“Peter has your keys.”
“I know.”
Marco was already standing.
I grabbed his arm.
“No.”
He looked down at my hand.
“We call Hall.”
“Catherine.”
“No private armies.”
“He may already be there.”
“Then police go first.”
He stared at me.
“You really trust them?”
“No.”
The answer surprised him.
“I trust procedures more than I trust men deciding they’re exceptions.”
Marco’s face changed.
Slowly, he nodded.
Sergeant Hall met us outside my building just after sunrise.
The street looked painfully normal.
A delivery truck blocked half the lane.
Mr. Sal stood outside his deli smoking despite the NO SMOKING sign taped behind his head.
When he saw Marco, he dropped the cigarette.
I pointed at him.
“You and I are going to discuss pickles later.”
Mr. Sal looked ashamed.
Hall’s officers cleared the apartment.
Nobody was inside.
Nothing seemed disturbed.
Then I opened the hall closet.
The plastic tax box was gone.
Marco swore.
I stood there staring at the empty shelf.
Hall said, “Anything else missing?”
“No.”
Then Logan, who had insisted on coming upstairs with Renee after waking, wandered into the bedroom.
“Mommy.”
“Stay with Renee.”
He held up Captain Bear.
“His belly is hard.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
He squeezed the stuffed bear.
Something clicked inside.
Marco and I stared at each other.
I took the bear from Logan.
The stitching along the back seam was uneven.
Not factory stitching.
New thread.
My hands began shaking.
“Scissors.”
Renee found a pair in the kitchen.
I cut three stitches.
Inside Captain Bear, beneath polyester stuffing, was a black flash drive wrapped in plastic.
Marco exhaled.
“David.”
I almost laughed.
“That idiot.”
Hall took the drive into evidence.
Nobody opened it in my apartment.
That mattered.
For once, somebody did not solve the problem in front of me by breaking another rule.
Peter called thirty-seven minutes later.
He wanted the drive.
Hall wanted time.
Marco wanted Peter dead.
I wanted David.
So I chose the one thing everybody hated.
I agreed to meet Peter.
Not alone.
Not secretly.
Not according to his terms.
Hall arranged surveillance at an empty municipal parking structure near the harbor.
Marco hated every detail.
Vance hated that he was excluded.
Alessandro, still in intensive care, sent one message through Marco.
LET HER CHOOSE.
Peter arrived with David in the passenger seat of a gray SUV.
When I saw my husband through the windshield, the world stopped pretending it had rules.
He was thinner.
His beard was streaked with gray.
There was blood dried along his temple.
But he was alive.
Peter stepped out holding a gun low against his thigh.
David remained inside.
I held up a duplicate drive Hall had prepared.
Peter smiled.
“You look like him when you’re angry.”
“Let David out.”
“Drive first.”
“No.”
“You think police make you safe?”
“No.”
“Romano?”
“No.”
His smile faded.
“Then what exactly do you trust?”
“Myself.”
It sounded corny the instant I said it.
Peter seemed to think so too.
“Admirable.”
“Let him out.”
He looked around the garage.
He knew police were there.
That was the point.
No illusions.
No clever trap.
Just consequences waiting in concrete stairwells.
Peter opened the passenger door.
David stepped out.
His hands were tied.
I had imagined this moment for two years.
Sometimes I slapped him.
Sometimes I ran into his arms.
Sometimes I said something devastating and perfect.
Instead, I looked at him and said, “You look terrible.”
David laughed once.
Then he started crying.
That nearly ruined me.
Peter shoved him forward.
“Drive.”
I tossed it onto the pavement halfway between us.
Peter moved.
David moved faster.
He drove his shoulder into Peter’s chest.
The gun fired.
For one horrible second, nobody knew who had been hit.
Then police flooded the garage.
Peter went down beneath three officers.
David collapsed to his knees.
I ran to him.
There was blood on his shirt.
“Where?”
“Not mine.”
I grabbed his face.
He looked at me.
Really looked.
Two years vanished and did not vanish.
“Cat.”
I slapped him.
Hard.
A police officer flinched.
David closed his eyes.
“I deserved that.”
“Do not say that.”
He laughed through tears.
I hit his shoulder.
Then I pulled him against me.
I hated him.
I loved him.
I wanted to keep hitting him.
I buried my face against his neck and smelled sweat, blood, and the same stupid soap he had always bought.
Three weeks later, Peter Romano was indicted on charges that did not fit neatly into any headline.
More followed.
Federal investigators reopened the old asset cases.
Vance hired a lawyer.
Marlene was arrested in Delaware after trying to cross into New Jersey under another name.
Maya came to my apartment once.
We sat at the kitchen table for forty minutes.
Neither of us knew how to repair what she had done.
So we did not pretend.
She apologized.
I told her I believed she was sorry.
I also told her she could not babysit Logan anymore.
She cried.
So did I.
Then she left.
Alessandro survived.
He sent Captain Bear back from the hospital in a gift bag that cost more than my weekly groceries.
Inside was a note.
HE HAS BAD TASTE IN PATIENTS.
I kept the note.
I threw away the bag.
David did not come home.
Not at first.
That was my decision.
He stayed in a furnished apartment arranged through federal protection while investigations continued.
He saw Logan twice a week.
The first meeting lasted eleven minutes.
Logan stared at him and then asked why he had my eyes.
David laughed so hard he had to sit down.
The second meeting lasted an hour.
By the fifth, Logan let him read bedtime stories.
Forgiveness did not arrive.
Neither did hatred in a clean enough form to keep.
We went to counseling.
We fought in parking lots afterward.
I learned about the fear, the money, the blackmail, the choices he had made before Logan was born.
He learned about shutoff notices, fevers, preschool forms, and the thousand humiliations of being abandoned by a man everyone told me was dead.
Sometimes he apologized.
Sometimes I told him apologies were cheap.
Sometimes we drank coffee and talked about nothing.
Six months later, I left Johns Hopkins housekeeping for a medical records job at a smaller clinic.
The pay was slightly better.
The chairs were worse.
On a Tuesday morning in October, David came over to fix a kitchen drawer that had been sticking for years.
He worked on it too long.
The drawer was still crooked when he finished.
Logan sat on the floor beside him, feeding plastic dinosaurs into Captain Bear’s lap.
I stood at the sink rinsing coffee cups.
There was a blue one in the drying rack.
I had bought it without thinking.
David noticed.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
Neither of us said anything.
Then Logan held up the cup.
“Daddy, this yours?”
David glanced at me once.
A question.
Not permission.
Something smaller.
Something honest.
He took the cup from our son.
“Yeah.”
May you like
He wrapped both hands around it.
“This one’s mine.”
