City Dark(42)

Craig.

As the bureau chief, Craig came down to the city for meetings regularly, but Joe always knew when. Except for now. A few seconds later, Craig rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb.

“Anybody home?” he asked.

Joe gave him a tired shrug. “I’d ask why you’re down here, but I know.”

“It was last minute,” Craig said. “I should have called, but I knew I’d find you here.”

“Let me guess. A meeting with the chief of staff. At least one minute of it on me, and how fast I’m leaving.”

“He mentioned you,” Craig said, as if conceding a point. “But nothing’s been decided.”

“I’ve decided. I just signed it.” He plucked a stiff piece of AG letterhead amid the mess of papers on his desk, hoping his hand wasn’t shaking. He’d been without a drink for four days.

“What the hell?” Craig asked, settling into a chair across from the desk. His face morphed into an exaggerated “confused” expression—his brows furrowed, his lips bunched like he was making a duck face—and then he glanced at the letter.

“I won’t accept this.”

“You have to.”

“Why? I’m five years from retirement. What’s the worst that could happen? They send me to defend the tax department? What the hell do I care?”

“Craig, please. We’ve got to get serious. I can’t work here, and you know it. I have a feeling you came down here today for me. To accept my resignation, ultimately, but also to try to talk me out of it. Because you’re loyal. Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not accepting it.”

“You are. It’s better for everyone. For you, for the bureau. It’s better.”

“The bureau is doing fine. Better with you in it.”

“You’re the best boss I’ve ever had,” Joe said, checking the emotion rising up inside. “When I first got to the Bronx, years ago, I was lucky to end up in your unit.”

“I like to think I was lucky,” Craig said.

“Whatever. I was a kid. I was a really screwed-up, really broken kid.”

“You were,” Craig said, making another exaggerated expression. Joe knew what this was. It wasn’t that Craig wouldn’t go deep, emotionally. It was just that he wouldn’t go there easily. He pointed a finger at Joe. “But you had talent.”

“Craig.” Joe spoke with dead evenness, as if to expiate any further funny faces, regardless of what a balm against the truth they were. “You saved me back then. And again a couple of years ago. You can’t save me now. It’s okay.” There was a pause, and then Craig’s face went blank, like the signal feeding it had died.

“You didn’t kill anyone.”

Joe’s face fell. “I don’t think I did, no.”

“You didn’t.”

“I—I don’t think . . .”

“Hathorne,” Craig said. He said it slowly, accentuating each syllable.

“Hathorne what? He’s locked up.”

“He’s been locked up. Think about how much he’s pulled off from the inside, just with the computers he’s had access to. That was one of your better arguments for confinement, remember? The guy can get through a firewall like it’s a paper bag. He runs circles around the IT guys at the psych hospitals—forget about corrections staff.”

“Well, sure, that was part of it. Hathorne’s family would have left him alone with a laptop and an internet connection.”

“Right,” Craig said. “And you argued that was intolerable. The guy is dangerous, no matter where he is. It’s a cyber issue.”

“Yeah, but he’s not escaping by use of a computer and then killing people.”

“He doesn’t need to escape. How much damage did he do to you while this case was playing out?”

“They didn’t know as much about him then,” Joe said and sighed. “Anyway, whatever he got, he used on me already.” This was true, and if Joe had a family or even a wife still, it would have bothered him much more. Hathorne, hacking the nearly obsolete computers available to him in prison, had gathered quite a bit of information on Joe: his address, his driver’s license history, and a bunch of other stuff, including psychiatric and medical records. He had filed a bar complaint against Joe, citing an untreated drinking problem, which wasn’t entirely untrue. The complaint went nowhere, but Joe had had to go through a “voluntary interview” with a counselor about his drinking habits.

“That stuff about the drinking that he pulled up?” Craig said, as if he’d read Joe’s mind. “That would have kept me up nights. I don’t want anyone knowing how much I put away, least of all my wife.”

“She knows. And, yeah, that hit home. Mostly because it had some truth to it.”

“Whatever. You’re functional.”

I thought I was, Joe thought. Obviously, I overcalled that one. “Okay, he collects information. I’m sure he’s thrilled about what he’s seeing now.”

“Collects information? How do you know he isn’t sending information?” No more funny faces. Craig was dead serious.

“Sending it? You mean communicating with someone?”