Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“He still hangs around the house. He can probably put you in touch with the dicks who handled my case and the cases involving the other girls.”

“Why the hell would I want to surround myself with cops?”

“Because they think I’m lying.”

“I think you’re lying too.”

“No, you don’t. You think I was wrecked out of my mind and can’t remember, but you don’t think I’m lying.”

I didn’t like being corrected. “Actually, Collie, I do think you’re lying and I think you’re setting me up to take some kind of fall here. I don’t think you want to go out of the game alone.”

My brother didn’t have the capacity to look hurt. It wasn’t in his nature. I wasn’t sure if it was in his nature to even be hurt . But the look that crossed his eyes came as close as I’d ever seen.

I knew every muscle and vein and scar in my brother’s face. I’d seen him with a 106-degree fever and his eyes rolling back and showing only white from the agony of sepsis. I’d walked in on him more than once while he was in flagrante delicto , usually with one of my girls. I knew every twitch and tell he had.

I got in close. “Say it again.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Maybe it was the truth. I jify truth. Iust didn’t understand why he was bothering to tell it now. It earned him nothing. He couldn’t buy his freedom or his life for it. And a mass murderer couldn’t possibly care about justice for a victim that wasn’t even his own.

The exhaustion and miles and edginess caught up to me in that moment. I slumped into the seat and dropped my chin to my chest, and before I knew it I felt tears on my face.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“No.”

“You are. For me?”

“Fuck no. I want to know what set you off.”

“Nothing.”

He’d spent the evening drinking at the Elbow Room. He’d gone on his spree and then returned to the bar, ordered a beer, and casually informed the bartender and patrons that he’d just murdered several people. He’d cracked open the.38 and unloaded the weapon. His knuckles were bruised but not bloodied or torn. It didn’t take much to beat an old woman to death. He waited without incident for the cops to show up. He confessed on the spot to what he had done.

I lifted my shirt and wiped my face. I breathed deep. I tried to calm myself. I could be cool and steady burgling the house of a cop while he slept six feet away from me. But my own brother made me a heaving mess.

“Something had to,” I insisted.

“No.”

“You had no drugs in your system. You’d only had a few beers.”

“Yeah.”

“So you were sitting in the Elbow Room, minding your own business, having a pilsner by yourself-”

“A Corona.”

“-having a Corona by yourself, and you decided, Hey, I need to go out and kill a bunch of people .”

“It wasn’t a decision,” he said. “It just… happened. I’m not lying. I haven’t lied to you yet, Terry.”

“You told me you were making ghosts. Why did you do it?”

“Stop asking.”

“Was it because of a woman?” I asked.

“What woman?”

“How the fuck do I know what woman? Any woman.”

“Why would a woman make me-”

“How the fuck do I know why? For any reason.”

“No, it wasn’t a woman, Terry. Listen to me.”

“Listen to you!” I jumped out of the chair. His voice, or my own, was too loud inside my head, and I couldn’t hear myself anymore. “You listen to me!” I shouted. “Are you…?” The words caught in my throat. I tried to cough them free. I couldn’t catch any air. I tried again, my voice sounding nothing like me, sounding, in fact, more like him. He stood and reached for me. I backed away. “I mean, I know you’re crazy, you had to be, you have to be… but man, Jesus, Collie, really, just… just… are you fucking insane ?”

“No.”

I stumbled toward the door while he continued to plead with me. He said her name agai4; &r name agn. Becky Clarke. It’s all he cared about. Not the other kills on his conscience, not what he was doing to our family. I hammered at the door like a terrified child. It brought the screws running. I was so pale that they checked me for shiv wounds.

My Christ, I thought, I have the same blood running through my veins.

You walk into a department store and there are security cameras and undercover employees everywhere. You try to creep an apartment building and you have to get past a front door, a security door with an automatic lock, closed-circuit television, and a doorman who gets paid by the pound. You want to score a warehouse and you’ve got a couple of twenty-year-old fuckup minimum-wage rent-a-cops patrolling the grounds just waiting to pull their revolvers, dive and roll, snap off six wild shots, and blow somebody’s face away.

But if you want to slip in somewhere that’s full of people, action, money, drugs, weapons, where no one even looks at you much less questions you, then try a police station about six P.M., dinnertime.

Cops are hungry and tired and wanting to get home. They’re sloppy and sign out early. The ones left around figure that if you’re in the squad room you must have a good reason. You’re a victim, you’re waiting to make a complaint, look at mug shots, sign a statement. If they don’t recognize you and you’re not part of their caseloads then they don’t want anything to do with you. They’re already burdened with unsolved crimes and vics and pains in the ass of every stripe. They pretend to be busy and refuse to meet your eye. They don’t check up on you. They hope the next cop down the line will take care of you instead.

First thing I did when I walked into the squad room was scan the on-call board. Gilmore had the late shift and wouldn’t be on until midnight. I went looking for his desk.

I recognized the framed photo of his two daughters, Maggie and Melanie. It was an old picture. No snapshots of his wife. A happily married man always puts a photo of his wife on his desk. He changes the pictures of his kids and keeps them up-to-date, unless they no longer live at home with him. Like my father had said, Phyllis had finally walked out and taken their daughters with her.

I sat in his chair and went through his desk hoping I might find Collie’s jacket or files on the case. It was a long shot and I came up empty. I did find an old rent receipt that gave me Gilmore’s new address. I knew the apartment house. The neighborhood was good, but he wasn’t paying much. Police discount.

Cops walked past me by the boatload. They dragged in suspects who whined and complained and tried to look menacing. They threatened to sue, wanted their lawyers, proclaimed their innocence. The cops ignored them. So did I.

Under Gilmore’s phone was a directory sheet of extension numbers. I called the archives room and asked them to bring up Collie Rand’s file. Some old-timer gave me static about proper channels.

I kept my voice quiet but filled with a self-righteous sharpness. “Move your wrinkled ass, pops. Protocol takes time and we don’t have any to waste.”

The geezer sputtered. I told him to leave the file on my desk in the next ten minutes, even if I wasn’t there. That brought another round of protests. I cut him off. “If you don’t get moving now you fiI kn d’ll work the last of your thirty on the bay this winter. It’ll be the boat for you. You got insulated drawers, old-timer? You ever seen hypothermia of the ball sac? You want to go out of the game with your ex-wives knowing you’ve lost your package?”

I hung up.

The desk next to Gilmore’s was also unoccupied. I went and sat over there and watched the squad room fill and empty. I went to the little kitchenette area and got myself a cup of coffee and a stale bagel. It wasn’t until I took the first bite that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I was starving.