“I’m good. I’m good.”
The walk will do me good. Or so I think. I’m about a half hour from here, and the cool air helps clear out some of the fog. My hand brushes against my side for my piece, which of course I had to surrender. Because I’m no longer a cop.
I’m no longer a cop. It still hasn’t sunk in.
I’m dizzy and unfocused, my emotions careening wildly from utter despair to bitterness to hot rage, grabbing at clues that don’t add up, like I’m trying to put together a puzzle that’s missing half the pieces.
The start of a massive headache is pressing against my forehead, between my eyes.
By the time I approach my street, the inside of my head is screaming at me. But the blood is flowing again, and much of the alcohol’s effect is waning.
All except the emotional part. With the numbness wearing off, all that’s left is my fear of what’s to come, a life without a badge.
And sleep, which will end as it always does, with a breathless nightmare.
I rent the bottom floor of a two-flat, all of four rooms inside—living room with tiny kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. Always planned to buy a place once I “settled in,” but I never really settled in, did I? I never got around to making anything about my apartment feel like a real home, nor did I buy an actual home.
Probably for the best, now.
When I approach the apartment, I see something underneath the porch light. A figure. A man?
I draw closer, feel my hand, by instinct, sweep my side for a gun that isn’t there.
A man, sitting up, resting against the outside wall.
“Noah?” I say.
70
WHEN I TAKE my first step onto the porch, Noah Walker stirs. He was sleeping.
“Oh, yeah.” He pushes himself up, shakes out the cobwebs. Sweatshirt, jeans, sandals.
“Why are you here?”
“Waiting for you,” he says.
“Same question,” I say, “second time.”
“I wanted to tell you something.”
“So tell me.”
He nods. “I remember now,” he says. “Those girls.”
“Dede and Annie.”
“I saw them. I remember them now. They were at the house, 7 Ocean Drive. I think they were squatting there. I was doing some work. I think … patching the lower flat roof. I’m pretty sure it was them. It was five or six years ago, so I’m not positive. They seemed like nice girls. If something happened to them, and I can help …”
So that’s confirmation. I was pretty sure they’d been staying there—hard to imagine the initials AC and DP scratched on the windowsill were a coincidence—but it’s nice to know for sure.
He looks up at me. He didn’t have to tell me any of that. His lawyer, in fact, would have told him to keep his mouth shut.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. “Go home.”
He steps in front of me. “It does matter. You’re asking because you think it’s connected. Whoever it was who killed those girls might have killed Melanie.”
Melanie. Right. He had a relationship with her.
“I loved her. Yeah, she broke up with me and it hurt. And I moved on. But you don’t stop caring about someone.” He takes a long breath, looks out in the distance. “Y’know, after she died—you guys arrested me right away, and all of a sudden I’m on trial for my life. I never had a chance to … I don’t know.”
To grieve. To mourn her loss.
“And then Paige’s suicide …”
I didn’t even know about that. The woman he was with after Melanie.
“That happened after I went to prison,” he says. He slowly nods, gains some steam. “Whoever killed Melanie—in my mind? He’s responsible for Paige, too. And a lot of other people, it sounds like. Like those two girls. And your uncle.”
This is not the time for me to be thinking about that. The fog may have cleared from my head, but my emotions are on the verge of bursting. It’s over for me here in Bridgehampton. Over. I didn’t solve the cases, and I’ll never be a sworn officer again.
“Let me help you,” he says. “Let me help you find him.”
“I’m not a cop anymore,” I say. “I’ve lost my badge. I lost everything,” I add, for some reason—whiskey-induced self-pity.
“You didn’t lose as much as me. And you don’t see me running.”
I look at him. Still standing tall, after what he’s been through. Wrongly accused of a crime—yes, I believe that in my gut—crucified at Sing Sing by white supremacists he refused to join; losing two women he loved; and still being harassed by our police force. And here he is, volunteering for duty. If it were me, I’d have run from this town as soon as I left prison.
No, you wouldn’t have. You’re too stubborn.
Just like Noah.
That shield that has stood between us, suddenly gone.