He could have said something, he supposed, could have come to his own defense, though he wasn’t being attacked, he knew.
And he had no need to excuse or defend himself to anyone. The inquest had cleared him—as far as that night went, anyway. The general and even logical consensus had been that Nancy, feeling desperate over the disintegration of her marriage and the pressures of her job, had just gone wild for a night. She’d met someone, done some drinking, popped a few pills…and found her way into the canal. But there was one factor he and Brian had in common—they’d both known Nancy well. The year after her death, even with the breakup of Bordon’s cult, had been a bitch for Jake. He’d been like a dog with a bone, determined to connect the two. He’d come close to crossing the line between investigation and harassment, and he’d been called on it. He’d resented his time with the police psychiatrist, though it was common practice for cops to receive such counseling after the death of a partner. He’d realized after a while that he would have to take a step back. Outwardly, he’d become a practical and methodical cop again, following the rules as closely as he could.
But he’d never changed his mind about the truth of the situation. Or his determination to see it come out one day.
“I’d like to live on the water,” Gannet said. “Maybe one day.”
“You should come by on a Sunday sometime. I keep a little motorboat, as well. Fishing is good for the soul.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” Gannet grimaced. “Maybe my wife will let me come.”
“Bring her.”
“She’s not big on beer.”
“We’ll get her a bottle of wine.”
“I’ll take you up on it, one way or the other, soon enough,” Gannet assured him.
“Dr. Gannet, Detective Dilessio?”
Jake turned. Mandy Nightingale was back. “Are you ready to move the body and let me get the rest of the scene?”
“I’m good to go, Mandy,” Gannet said.
“Jake?” she inquired.
He nodded. “If Gannet’s ready, so am I.”
“Good. You should know then, Jake,” she said softly, “that they’re holding back a slew of reporters over there.”
“Want me to handle them?” Marty asked Jake.
Jake shook his head. “No, it’s all right. Get some of our men started on a door-to-door. I know the doors are pretty far apart around here, but someone might have seen something. I’ll take care of the press.”
“Are you sure? I saw your eyes. It’s all coming back, and you took the entire thing way too personally before—”
“Martin, I’m all right. We’re talking about something that happened five years ago. I’m a cop, this is my job. Just keep an eye on things here, Marty. We can’t let anything, not the most minute clue, slip away.”
Martin nodded. Jake walked from the scene and across the road, where the uniformed officers were holding the onslaught of reporters at bay.
“A murder, right? A young woman?” Jayne Gray, from one of the local stations, called to him.
“Jayne, I’m afraid there’s not too much we can say right now. We’ve got the body of a woman who has apparently been dead several weeks, even a few months. We’ve yet to determine anything else as fact, but as soon as the M.E.’s office has further information, I know they’ll share it. And when that happens, you know that a police spokesperson will be telling you all that they can. There’s nothing else you can learn here right now, folks.”
“But, Detective Dilessio, there must be more you can give us.” Bryan Jay, an obnoxious, heavy-set man from the local paper, called out. “It’s a murder, right? You’ve found the victim of a murder, in the mud, off the side of the road.”
He was tempted to give Jay a real wise-ass reply. Hell, no. She decided to drop herself off there, lie down and die.
“Mr. Jay, give the medical examiner time to do his work,” Jake said firmly.
“Right,” Jay replied dryly. “Come on, Jake, give us something.”
“I’ve already explained that we have the body of a woman, Mr. Jay.”
“Think we have a single crime here, or do we have a serial killer on the loose? Isn’t this the way the first victim was found in those serial killings years ago? Are there any mutilations?”
Leave it to Jay to home in on an uncomfortable suspicion of his own, Jake thought.
“Unfortunately, this is a big city. We have a lot of murders every year.”
“Still, this seems awfully similar to me. The kid who supposedly did the killing back then is dead though, right?”
“A man who claimed to have committed the murders committed suicide, yes.”
“But the case was never officially closed, right?”
“No, Mr. Jay, it was not.”
“The police cracked down on the local cults back then. Papa Pierre, alias Peter Bordon, was a suspect, right? But he’s been locked up for years now, right?”
Jake heard the blood rushing in his ears. He gritted his teeth, desperately fighting the temptation to step forward and bash Bryan Jay in his smug, jowly face.