City Dark(49)

“Good point,” Zochi said. She was feeling better about it. “Where’s the DNA, anyway?”

“In process. We put a rush on it after Holly Rossi. I should know something early next week. Keep eyes on him until then, okay?”

“Like a hawk,” Zochi said and winked at a dark-skinned little boy peeking at her from behind a desk. He was there with his mother, talking to another detective about a missing person’s case. “Like a hawk.”





CHAPTER 40


Saturday, August 5, 2017

St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center Ogdensburg, New York

Midnight

A thrashing thunderstorm had passed over the hospital, but the night was cool and breezy in its wake. Hathorne was lying in bed, a stack of books next to him and the iPod Touch in his hands. He had opened the messaging program on his end, which he knew opened it up on the other end—Reaper’s end.

A few minutes had passed, though, before he’d gotten a response. His first message to Reaper was just: So close.

Finally, the response:

What is?

Everything. How does he look, now that the walls are closing in?

Cornered. Like a rat. They know he did her, the ex-girlfriend . . .

Don’t say her name, Hathorne punched out. Don’t use names, ever. There is no need. There is only you, and me. And our work is almost done.

Whatever. He looks like he saw a ghost, haha. They’re all over him.

It will get much worse for him, Hathorne wrote. The time to collect is very near. In all respects.

My money?

Yes, your money. You’ll be paid. Handsomely.

Yeah, what about the guy who brought me the computer? Who is he? Is he getting paid?

Hathorne stared at the screen. What a churlish little prick Reaper was being tonight! No matter—it was all but finished. He wouldn’t need Reaper much longer. Hathorne was not a man of honor, but he would arrange to have Reaper paid, just as promised. There was little satisfaction in this, as Reaper was too pathetic to know that Hathorne could disappear at any moment, utterly untraceable, and Reaper would get nothing. Still, sometimes it was best to keep one’s promises and just move on. He would placate the dumb, single-minded Reaper, and he would move on.

None of that is your concern. You’ll likely never see him again.

Why? I know how to contact him. Is he the person who will get the money to me?

The money will arrive in the manner I choose. Do not be troubled. You should know by now, I will do what I say I will do. Hasn’t every single thing I told you come true so far?

Yeah, so? I want my money. Anyway, what’s your name?

Soon.

Then, before some boorish reply could appear, Hathorne shut the program down and turned in bed to sleep.





CHAPTER 41


Monday, August 7, 2017

Tappan, New York

7:45 p.m.

She wasn’t supposed to, but Zochi took Joe’s worn-out box of memorabilia home with her. She was distrustful of working from home; home and work had to be rigidly separate in a job like hers. Still, she could concentrate better in the basement while her daughter, Lupe, sat with her abuelita upstairs, the fat tabby in between them, watching Beat Bobby Flay. Her town house was on a quiet street in a darling town about an hour northwest of the city. The choice of where to live was purposeful. It was the opposite of South Brooklyn.

In the finished basement where Lupe rarely went anymore, her girl toys and art projects mostly forgotten, Zochi could spread things out, be they photos, documents, or objects, and get a feel for each piece. More than that, she got a feel for how they fit together, and not just in some linear, puzzle-like way. Her dark eyes moved between the things laid out, rearranging them from time to time. This went before that—maybe in time, maybe in prominence, maybe in relevance.

In the case of Joe’s memory box, she wasn’t getting much in terms of a coordinated vibe. The photographs were typical, vaguely sad ’70s prints of people forcing smiles during a time that valued a happy pose more than an honest feeling. Beyond them were the faded keepsakes, the graduation cap and tassel, the two baby rattles, a coffee mug with the Monsignor Farrell High School logo on the side. They spoke nothing to her outside of what they were: the keepsakes of an average man, nothing more, nothing less. Then there was that literary journal. She kept coming back to it, and to Joe’s heart-wrenching poem.

The title and year—LIT, 1979—were spelled out in smoke curls from a cigarette burning in an ashtray. Wow, is that not something you’ll see anymore, she thought, just as she had when she first beheld the thing. She chuckled, thumbing through the yellowing pages again. Two staples held them together where the fold was. A group of nerdy kids had hand-pressed them, hot off whatever machine was used to produce them.

A few pages before Joe’s poem, there was a tribute to a teacher who had died the previous school year. There was no photo of her, just one of a tree with the sun behind it. The inscription read, To Mrs. Friedan: the students in Section A missed you this year. On the pages after was a two-dimensional drawing of the city skyline, apparently penned by Spencer Clancy, 8th Grade, Mrs. Mobi’s class.

Zochi flipped over to page twelve and beheld Joe’s poem again. The page opposite, page thirteen, was blank. There was no illustration accompanying the poem. It was just the block type: five lonely stanzas on the white page. The title and attribution—“For Lois,” by Joey DeSantos, 6th Grade, Mrs. Benedetto’s class—were no bigger than the text.