*
In the observation room, Richie asked, “Was that all right, me getting us out of there? I just thought . . . I mean, we’d hit a wall, like. And I figured it was easier for me to pull the plug without losing face, yeah?”
He was rubbing one foot off the opposite ankle and looking apprehensive. I pulled an evidence bag out of the cabinet and tossed it to him. “You did fine. You’re right: time to regroup. Any thoughts?”
He dropped the cup into the evidence bag and looked around for a pen; I passed him mine. “Yeah. Know something? He’s ringing a bell. The face.”
“You’ve been looking at him for a long time, it’s late, you’re shattered. Sure your mind’s not playing tricks?”
Richie squatted beside the table to label the bag. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve seen him before. I’m wondering was it back when I was in Vice, maybe.”
The observation room is on the same thermostat as the interview room. I tugged my tie looser. “He’s not in the system.”
“I know. I’d remember if I’d arrested him. But you know yourself: some guy catches your eye and you can tell he’s up to something, but there’s nothing you can pin on him, so you just hang on to that face and wait till it shows up again. I’m wondering . . .” He shook his head, dissatisfied.
“Put it on the back burner. It’ll come to you. When it does, let me know; we need to ID this guy, and soon. Anything else?”
Richie initialed the bag, ready to hand in to the evidence room, and gave my pen back. “Yeah. Winding him up won’t get us anywhere, not with this fella. We had him pissed off there, all right, but the angrier he gets, the quieter he gets. We need another angle.”
I said, “We do. The distraction stuff was good—nicely done there—but it’s taken us as far as it can. And intimidation won’t work, either. I was wrong about one thing: he’s not afraid of us.”
Richie shook his head. “Nah. He’s on guard, all right, big time, but scared . . . Nah. And the thing is, he should be. I’d still say he’s a virgin; he’s not acting like he knows the drill. This whole thing should have him crapping his kacks by now. Why doesn’t it?”
In the interview room Conor was still and taut, hands spread flat on the table. There was no way he could have heard us, but I lowered my voice all the same. “Overconfidence. He thinks he covered his tracks, figures we’ve got nothing on him unless he talks.”
“Maybe, yeah. But he has to know we’ve got a full team going over that house with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything he left behind. That should be worrying him.”
“They’re arrogant bastards, a lot of them. Think they’re smarter than we are. Don’t let that bother you; it’ll work for us, in the long run. Those are the ones that go to pieces when you whip out something they can’t ignore.”
“What if . . .” Richie said diffidently, and stopped. He was twirling the bag back and forth, looking at it, not at me. “Never mind.”
“What if what?”
“I was only going to say. If he’s got a solid alibi, something like that, and he knows sooner or later we’ll run up against it . . .”
I said, “You mean, what if he’s feeling safe because he’s innocent.”
“Yeah. Basically.”
“Not a chance, chum. If he had an alibi, why not just tell us and go home? You think he’s pulling our chains for kicks?”
“Could be. He’s not mad about us.”
“Even if he were innocent as a baby—and he’s not—he shouldn’t be this cool. The innocent ones get just as frightened as the guilty ones—more, a lot of the time, because they’re not arrogant pricks. They shouldn’t, obviously, but there’s no telling them that.”
Richie glanced up and lifted a noncommittal eyebrow. I said, “If they’ve done nothing wrong, then the fact is, they’ve got nothing to be afraid of. But the facts aren’t always the point.”
“I guess. Yeah.” He was rubbing at the side of his jaw, where stubble should have been by this stage. “Another thing, but. Why isn’t he pointing us at Pat? We’ve given him a dozen openings. It’d be easy as pie: ‘Yeah, Detective, now that you mention it, your man Pat went loopy after he lost his job, used to smack his wife around, beat the shite out of his kids, saw him threaten them with a knife just last week . . .’ He’s not thick; he must’ve seen his chance. Why didn’t he grab it?”
I said, “Why do you think I’ve been giving him those openings?”
Richie shrugged, a complicated, embarrassed squirm. “I dunno.”
“You thought I was being sloppy, and I just got lucky that this guy didn’t take advantage. Wrong, old son. I told you before we went in there: our man Conor thinks he has some connection to the Spains. We needed to know what kind of connection. Did Pat Spain cut him off on the motorway and now he thinks all his troubles are Pat’s fault and his luck won’t turn till Pat’s dead and gone, or did he chat to Jenny at some party and decide the stars wanted them to be together?”
Conor hadn’t moved. The white strip-lighting caught the sheen of sweat on his face; it turned him waxy and alien, something shipwrecked from another planet, light-years more lost than we could imagine.
I said, “And we got our answer: in his own fucked way, Conor Whatever cares about the Spains. All four of them. He didn’t point us at Pat because, even to save himself, he wouldn’t drop Pat in the shit. He believes he loved them. And that’s how we’re going to take him down.”
*
We left him there for an hour. Richie took the cup down to the evidence room and picked up faded coffee on his way back—the canteen coffee works mainly by the power of suggestion, but it’s better than nothing. I checked in with the patrol floaters: they were working their way out from the estate, they had spotted about a dozen parked cars, all of which came back with legit reasons for being in the area, and they were starting to sound tired. I told them to keep looking. Then Richie and I stayed in the observation room, with our sleeves pushed up and the door wide open, and we watched our man.
It was almost five o’clock. Down the corridor the two lads on night duty were tossing a basketball back and forth and slagging each other’s aim, to keep themselves awake. Conor sat still in his chair, hands cupping his knees. For a while his lips moved, like he was reciting something under his breath, in a regular, steadying rhythm. “Praying?” Richie asked softly, beside me.
“We’ll hope not. If God’s telling him to keep his mouth shut, we’re in for a rough ride.”
In the squad room the ball knocked something off a desk with a crash, one of the lads said something creative and the other one started to laugh. Conor sighed, a deep wave of breath that lifted and dropped his whole body. He had stopped whispering; he looked like he was slipping into some kind of trance. I said, “Let’s go.”
We went in loud and cheerful, fanning ourselves with statement sheets and bitching about the heat, handing him a cup of lukewarm coffee and warning him that it tasted like piss: bygones are bygones, all friends again now. We rewound to the safe ground before we’d lost him, spent a while poking around the edges of stuff we’d already covered—did you ever see Pat and Jenny arguing, ever see either of them shouting, ever see either of them smack the kids . . . The chance to talk about the Spains lured Conor out of his silent zone, but as far as he was concerned, they had made the Brady Bunch look like something off Jerry Springer. When we moved on to his schedule—what time do you usually get to Brianstown, what time do you fall asleep—his memory went glitchy again. He was starting to feel safe, starting to think he knew how this worked. It was time to move things forward.
I said, “When was the last time you can confirm that you were in Ocean View?”
“Don’t remember. Could be last—”
“Whoa,” I said, sitting up fast and raising a hand to cut Conor off. “Hang on.”
I went for my BlackBerry, hit a button to make the screen light up, pulled it out of my pocket and whistled. “Hospital,” I said to Richie in a quick undertone, and saw in the corner of my eye Conor’s head snapping up like he had been kicked in the back. “This could be what we’ve been waiting for. Suspend the interview till I get back.” And, on my way out the door: “Hello, Doctor?”