What Have You Done(85)
“Vanessa,” he called. He could hear his voice shaking just a bit. “I’m home.”
There was movement somewhere in the house. Sniffling. Vanessa was there, and she was crying.
“Where are you?”
“Right here.”
The living room was empty. The kitchen. She was in the kitchen.
Liam made his way through the house and stopped when he saw his wife sitting at the head of the dining room table. Her eyes were swollen and full of tears. Her skin was pale. Mascara had run down her face, making her look hauntingly ghoulish. A gun was sitting on the table in front of her.
“I didn’t see your car out front.”
“I parked it in the garage. Turns out there’s room enough in there for one car.”
“I thought you weren’t getting discharged until morning.”
“I discharged myself,” she said. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“Where’d you get that?” Liam asked, pointing to the gun. From where he was standing, it looked to be a Glock, like the one he’d taken from Phillips, only this one was silver.
“Can’t use the same gun twice,” she replied. “They took Phillips’s after I shot Sean with it. This is the one I had in my purse, but it turned out I didn’t need it. Sean got me this from a runner he arrested a few months ago. Untraceable.” Vanessa slowly wrapped her fingers around the grip, lifted it off the table, and aimed it at her husband. “I need you to sit down.”
66
Lieutenant Phillips walked into his office and shut the door. The rest of the night and early morning had been agonizingly long. He tossed his keys on the desk and collapsed into his chair, too exhausted to even remove his coat.
Joyce had been exceptional, given the circumstances. His sister was so brave. The line to get in to see her had grown as the hours passed, and by dawn it had stretched outside the house, down to the sidewalk, and around the corner. He’d been by her side the entire time, thanking each person who came, ushering the people on so the next well-wisher could step up. Tray after tray of food had been delivered. Phillips had had to assign two uniforms to stack everything in the kitchen to keep the flow of people moving. The other wives had come by and made sure coffee was always on. They’d helped put out a buffet of food and fruit in the dining room. The house was quiet. Hardly anyone spoke, yet they all thought about how fragile life was on the job. This time, it was Don and Joyce. Next time, it could be one of them.
By the end of the first round of visitors, Joyce had directed the two uniforms to take the bulk of the food to Father Brennan to use for his mission. No sense wasting it all. It would take an army to eat what had been delivered before it went bad. The officers had loaded up a squad car and had taken off, leaving Phillips alone with his sister. He’d offered to stay, but she’d pushed him out. She was going to take a couple more pills and try, again, to get some sleep. In the afternoon, they would meet up and take a ride to the funeral home to make arrangements. On the way, he promised he would drop Don’s dress blues at the dry cleaners for one last cleaning. He would be buried in the uniform he was most proud of.
His desk was full of papers, files, and several envelopes he hadn’t opened yet. Phillips started grabbing things randomly, trying to prioritize what should be taken care of in the proper order. As he flipped through a small stack of internal briefings, he noticed the corner of a square black envelope protruding from beneath a PBA newsletter. He took it and slid his finger across the seam.
It was a DVD. On it, someone had written in marker “Francis Guzio Street Surveillance” along with the date of his murder.
“Traffic cam footage,” Phillips said to himself. “Now it comes.”
The footage had been taken from a camera mounted on the signal box on Guzio’s street, installed, like the rest of them throughout the city, after 9/11 with funds from Homeland Security. All the major cities had them. Phillips flipped it around in his hand several times, then opened the disc drive in his computer, popped in the DVD, and sat back in his seat.
The footage was from the entire day. He wondered if anyone had already gone through it and how long it had been sitting on his desk.
It started in the morning. Sidewalks filled with people setting off to work as the general hustle and bustle of a new day began. He fast-forwarded and at midday saw a couple walk down the street with their dog and a homeless man begging for change as people strolled past. A car stopped to talk to the man for a moment and then sped away. Again, he pushed the tape forward to a little before the coroner’s estimated time of death and watched.
It was dark now. A vehicle pulled around the corner and parked at the far end of the block, away from the streetlights. Phillips recognized the car instantly, and his stomach turned. He held his breath as he watched the driver climb out of the car and walk down the sidewalk toward Guzio’s house. As the figure got closer, Phillips paused the footage and zoomed in. The driver filled the screen. Phillips could feel his heart beating in his chest.
It was Vanessa.
Sean had never been there because he had been with Don at the Hard Rock the night of Guzio’s murder. He had the perfect alibi and the perfect accomplice. Vanessa Dwyer.
Phillips let the video roll, and he watched as she climbed the steps, picked the lock on Guzio’s front door, and disappeared into his house. He forwarded until she came out again and scurried back down the sidewalk, the front door left open on purpose so Guzio’s body would be discovered.