“And I want to feel them all. I don’t want to be guarded with you.”
We both get this connection and openness, don’t we? Neither one of us is a kid anymore, and I understand how this potent cocktail of lust and want and danger and nostalgia can warp your perspective. But that’s not what is happening to us. I know it. She knows.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I say, which may rank as the biggest understatement of my life.
Maura kisses me again, harder this time, so that I feel it everywhere. Then she pushes me away, like that old song about the honesty being too much.
“I’ll wait for you by that office in Newark,” she says.
I get out of the car. Maura drives off. My car is where I left it. Hunk-A-Hunk-A is, of course, closed. There are two other cars in the lot, and I wonder whether they too were claimed to be the result of too much drinking. I need to fill in Augie about Maura’s return and Reeves’s demise.
As I drive home, I call him on my mobile. When Augie answers, I say, “Muse wants to meet me at nine A.M.”
“What about?” Augie asks.
“She wouldn’t say. But there are some things I need to tell you first.”
“I’m listening.”
“Can you meet me at Mike’s at quarter to nine?”
Mike’s is a coffee shop not far from the county prosecutor’s office.
“I’ll be there.”
Augie hangs up as I pull into my driveway and park. I manage to stumble out of my car when I hear a laugh. I turn and see my neighbor Tammy Walsh.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she says.
I wave to her. “Hey, Tammy.”
“Long night?”
“Just some work.”
But Tammy smiles as if it’s written all over my face. “Yeah, okay, Nap.”
I can’t help but smile too. “Not buying that?”
“Not in the least,” she says. “But good for you.”
“Thanks.”
Some twenty-four hours, am I right?
I shower and try to get my head back in the game. I pretty much have the truth now, don’t I? But I’m still missing something, Leo. What? Or am I overthinking it? The base was hiding a terrible secret—that it was a black site for high-value potential terrorists. Would the government kill to keep that a secret? The answer is so obvious the question is by definition rhetorical. Of course they would. So that night, something set them off. Maybe it was Maura running toward the fence. Maybe they spotted you and Diana first. Either way, they panicked.
Shots were fired.
You and Diana were killed. So what could Reeves and his cohorts do? They couldn’t just call the cops and admit what happened. No way. That would expose the entire illegal operation. They also couldn’t just make you both disappear. That would lead to too many questions. The cops—and especially Augie—wouldn’t rest. No, they needed a good ol’-fashioned cover-up. Everyone knew the legend of those train tracks. I obviously don’t know all the details, but my guess is they pulled the bullets from your bodies and then transported you to the tracks. The impact of the train would leave the corpses in a state where no medical examiner would find any clues.
That makes total sense. I have all my answers now, don’t I?
Except.
Except fifteen years later, Rex and Hank are murdered.
How does that fit in?
Only two members of the Conspiracy Club are left alive now. Beth, who is hiding. And Maura.
So what does that mean? Don’t know, but maybe Augie will have a thought.
Mike’s Coffee Shop & Pizzeria somehow manages to look like neither a coffee shop nor a pizzeria. It’s in the heart of Newark, on the corner of Broad and William, with a big red awning. Augie sits by the window. He’s staring at a guy who is eating pizza before nine in the morning. The slice is so obscenely enormous it makes his full-sized paper plate look like a cocktail napkin. Augie is about to crack wise about that when he sees my face and stops.
“What happened?”
There is no reason to sugarcoat any of this. “Leo and Diana weren’t killed by a train,” I say. “They were shot.”
To his credit, Augie doesn’t start with the “What?” “How can you say that?” “There were no bullets found” standard-issue denials. He knows I wouldn’t just say something like that.
“Tell me.”
I do just that. I tell him about Andy Reeves first. I can see he wants to stop me, wants to argue that none of this means Reeves or his men killed Diana and Leo, that he was waterboarding me because he still wanted to protect the secrecy around that black site. But he doesn’t interrupt. Again, he knows me well enough.
Then I get to Maura rescuing me. I skip how Reeves dies for now. I trust Augie with my life, but there is no reason to put him in a spot where he may have to testify to what I’m saying here. Simply put, if I don’t say Maura shot Reeves, then Augie can’t testify to that if he’s under oath.
I keep going. I can see my words are landing on my old mentor like body blows. I want to pause, give him time to breathe and recover, but I know that it will only make it worse and that it would not be what he wants. So I just keep the onslaught going.
I tell Augie about the scream Maura heard.
I tell Augie about the gunfire and then the silence.
Augie sits back when I’m done. He looks out the window and blinks twice.
“So now we know,” he says.
I don’t say anything. We both sit there. Now that we know the truth, we are waiting for something to feel different. But that guy is still eating his enormous slice of pizza. Cars are still cruising down Broad Street. People are still going to work. Nothing has changed.
You and Diana are both still dead.
“Is it over?” Augie asks.
“Is what over?”
He spreads his arms wide as if to indicate everything.
“It doesn’t feel over,” I say.
“Meaning?”
“There has to be justice for Leo and Diana.”
“I thought you said he was dead.”
He. Augie doesn’t use Andy Reeves’s name. Just in case.
“There were other people at the base that night.”
“And you want to catch them all.”
“Don’t you?”
Augie turns away.
“Someone pulled the trigger,” I say. “Probably not Reeves. Someone picked them up and put them in, I don’t know, a car or a truck. Someone pulled the bullets out of their bodies. Someone tossed your daughter’s body onto a railroad track and . . .”
Augie is wincing, his eyes closed.
“You were indeed a great mentor, Augie. Which is why I can’t move on. You were the one who railed against injustice. You, more than anyone I ever knew, insisted on making sure the bad guys paid a price for what they did. You taught me that if we don’t get justice—if no one is punished—we never have balance.”
“You punished Andy Reeves,” he says.
“That’s not enough.”
I lean forward now. I had seen Augie knock heads too many times to count. He was the one who helped me take care of my first “Trey,” a subhuman slither of scrotum whom I had arrested for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl, his girlfriend’s daughter. It got kicked on a technicality, and he was heading back home—back to that little girl. So Augie and I, we stopped him.
“What aren’t you telling me, Augie?”
He drops his head into both hands.
“Augie?”
He rubs his face. When he faces me again, his eyes are red. “You said Maura blames herself for running toward that fence.”
“In part, yes.”
“She even said maybe it was her fault.”
“But it’s not.”
“But she feels that way, right? Because maybe if she didn’t get stoned and run like that . . . that’s what she said, right?”
“What’s your point?” I ask.
“Do you want to punish Maura?”
I meet his eyes. “What the hell is going on, Augie?”
“Do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Even though she might in part be responsible?”
“She isn’t.”
He leans back. “Maura told you about the big bright lights. All that noise. Made you wonder why no one called it in, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean, you know that area. The Meyers lived close by that base. On that cul-de-sac. So did the Carlinos and the Brannums.”