Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(62)

His ex-wife thought the same, Eve remembered. “What more?”

“I went over a few times. He’d lost a lot of weight, looked sick. He had hand tremors, and his eyes . . . Even in the early stages, even when it’s just a little use, you can start to see it in the eyes.”

“You think he went on the funk,” Eve said.

“Goddamn it, Patroni, why didn’t you tell me?”

“He was retired,” Patroni said to Lowenbaum. “You weren’t his lieutenant anymore. And I couldn’t prove it. I knew it in my gut, but I couldn’t prove it. When I tried to talk to him about it, he denied it. I went back a couple times after that, but Will was there, said he was sleeping, said he was doing better, was pulling out, how she’d talked him into taking some time away with her, out west.”

“She talked him into it.”

“Camping, she said, fresh air, change of scene. She had it all worked out. The fact is, he’d taken her out to Montana, maybe up to Canada a couple of times before, and Alaska maybe more than a couple.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“A while now, maybe three or four months. He made it pretty damn clear he didn’t like me dropping by, and I couldn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s go have a brew.’ I tagged him a couple times about catching a game, or hitting the range, but he put me off, always had something going with Will. Or she’d answer his ’link, tell me he was busy, he’d get back to me, but he wouldn’t.”

“Did he ever talk about payback, for Susann?”

“Not in the I’m-going-to-kill-a-bunch-of-people sort of way. He’s my friend, Lieutenant Dallas, but I’m a police officer, and I know my duty. If he’d made serious threats or if I’d suspected—”

“I get that, Patroni.”

“Right.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “When he was still talking to me, drinking heavy, he’d talk about how somebody had to pay. I think he hired a lawyer.”

“What lawyer?”

“He never said. But he talked about hiring one. He’d say stuff like his wife and baby had been murdered, and where was the justice? How he’d served his country, served this city, but nobody gave a shit about his wife and baby being murdered. I could talk him down. Hell, I combed over the accident report, the reconstruction. I even talked to Russo and the wits myself. It was an accident—a goddamn tragedy, but an accident. When he was sober, I talked to him straight about it. He didn’t much want to talk to me after that.”

“Do you know when he moved?”

“I didn’t know he had, but I thought, the way he put me off, the way Will blocked me, he’d just moved on. He didn’t want the contact with me, with things or people who reminded him of what he’d lost.”

“Did he ever talk about moving?”

“Sure, he did. He had this thing about Alaska, talked about heading there when Will was eighteen—this was before Susann. After Susann, it was a farm somewhere. Always some dream about getting out of the city, living off the land.”

“But nothing about moving within the city? He had a wife and a baby on the way.”

“Right, right.” Patroni closed his eyes as he thought back. “Yeah, yeah, they were saving up. Yeah, yeah, I remember about this. Susann was going the professional mother’s route. In fact, she really wanted to quit her job and start nesting or whatever. But he said they needed her income over the next few months so they could get a bigger place. They’d looked at some townhouses, low-end, places that needed work. East Side—I remember that because it would keep Will in the same school, keep them sort of in the same neighborhood. And Mac was making noises about pushing for full custody of her. Around on Third, maybe. Or Lex. I think that’s the area, in the Twenties or south of there—one of those old post-Urban places that got tossed up. Crap mostly, but you can get them pretty cheap. Ah, they wanted something where they could walk the baby to a park or playground. That was where they were looking.”

“Buy or rent?”

“They wanted to buy, or try one of those rent with option deals. You can do that with those post-Urbans, or he said you could. I figured yeah, because they’re prefab boxes, mostly falling apart unless somebody’s gone in and put a lot of money and time into it. I lived in one myself—Lower West—when I was in my twenties. I swear the place swayed in a strong wind. But yeah, that’s what they wanted. An investment until they fixed it up, until he could put in his papers, and they moved to that farm. Pipe dreams, I figured, but a guy’s got to have them.”

“Anything else, something he said, someone else he blamed? These initials JR and MJ, do they mean anything to you? JR, MJ,” she repeated. “These two names are on his list, and as yet unidentified.”

“He stopped talking to me about the accident after I looked into it and talked to him, he didn’t want to talk to me about it. There’s nobody I can—wait, ‘MJ’? I don’t see how it could, he could . . .”

“Who?”

“Maybe Marian. Marian Jacoby. She has a son who goes to Will’s school. Divorced. Susann fixed us up once, we dated a couple times, just didn’t click that way. She works at the lab. She’s an evidence tech at the lab.”

“Hold on.” She yanked out her ’link. “Peabody, Marian Jacoby, evidence tech. Find her, get her covered and brought in. She’s a potential.”