Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

Surprisingly, he settled on simply answering my original question. “A nylon cord, the kind used to tie dock cushions and bumpers to the sides of boats.”

“Does her father own a boat?” I asked.

“Yes. A twenty-four-foot Wellcraft cuddy. Keeps it docked at a marina but apparently hasn’t taken it out in years.”

“Cord in the garage?”

“We’re not discussing this further.”

I thought of Sharon, the youngest sister, who would now be coddled obsessively by her parents. They were going to hold her close but not close enough, because the ghosts of her sisters were always going to get more attention.

“Did you find the.45?” I asked. “Or any gun? She was tough. She knew how to fire a gun. Check her hands for gunpowder residue.”

“I don’t need a career thief to teach me how to do the job of a police officer. She didn’t pull the trigger on you. You managed to talk your way out of it.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to talk her into showing up here. Was she done on the spot or strangled elsewhere and left here?”

Gilmore snapped his fingers under my nose. His expression had hardened. His eyes weren’t full of sadness anymore, they were like shale. “Focus now, Terrier. You don’t ask the questions. You answer them. You assure me of your sincerity and maybe I won’t throw you in jail tonight. Or maybe I will. Did you have anything at all to do with this?”

“No. How long’s she been dead?”

“Get out and go home.”

“Tell me, all right?”

He turned away for a moment, and when he turned back he stared deeply into my face, trying to read whether I was someone he could trust. I wasn’t, of course, but he was still giving me leeway. I knew why. On some level he was acting like I was his younger brother, the punk always getting his nose dirty but who was forgiven for it. He looked away again, and when he faced me I could see that he’d come to a decision.

“Early this morning,” he said. “And just so I know, Terrier, where were you this morning?”

I didn’t want to drag Eve Drayton into this but there was no choice. I told him about Eve and even my father’s figurine. Hcollecting, but I left out the bit about Higgins. Gilmore nodded.

“Your old man, he likes his Toby mugs.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“He’s showed them to me before. Now, give me the names of all the antidepressants again and exactly where I can find them in her room.”

I told him about the false outlet and the five-inch-deep cubbyhole.

Gilmore nodded. “She only had legal prescriptions for the Zoloft and Valium. All of those others, in combination-self-medicating on stolen pills, maybe expired-who the hell knows how someone will react with all of that in their system.”

“So you think she really offed herself?” I asked.

“That’s what it looks like so far,” he said.

“I don’t think she would do it.”

He frowned at me, his face mottled with emotion. “How do you know?”

“I just feel it.”

“You met her for what? All of fifteen minutes?”

“It was enough,” I said.

He scoffed. He seemed to take a dim kind of pleasure in schooling me on the realities of the world. “No, it’s not. Twenty years isn’t enough for you to really know someone, or do I need to remind you of that?”

I held my hands up in a gesture that might have been anger or helplessness. “No, you don’t.”

“She was a screwed-up kid taking powerful meds in dangerous amounts. With all the renewed coverage on the case of her sister’s murder, she was probably hurting worse than ever. And you showing up in the middle of her bedroom couldn’t have helped any.”

“Listen to me, she was sharp, she was on the ball, she-”

“You don’t know a thing, Terrier. Now go home. Don’t mention any of this to your journalist girlfriend or I’ll-”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“-pull you in on obstruction. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then go.”

I got out. I walked toward the crime-scene tape. I glanced back at Cara. Figures in blue uniforms and white gloves worked over her excitedly. Who had iced her? Why now? I thought, My Christ, has he been watching me? Is he following me? Is he that close even now? Her dead eyes were aimed in my direction.

I headed back to my car. I sat heavily behind the wheel. I scanned the faces in the crowd. The only one I recognized in the area was Gilmore’s.

Is he that close even now?

The dead girl continued to watch me. My body was a little ahead of my mind. I glanced in the rearview and saw that my face was pale.

I imagined Gilmore sitting with my father, playing cards with my uncles, being friendly with my brother. I saw the two of them out at the Elbow Re? &nd eve tQoom together, sharing stories, frustrations, fears. I thought of him opening up to Collie about his marital troubles. Gilmore had told me, Anytime you get too curious about what was going on in his head, remember where that kind of thinking leads . Maybe he’d gotten close enough that the underneath had swallowed him too.

My father had said, He’s got too much time on his hands. I don’t know what he does with it all .

I gripped the steering wheel, my thoughts burning. I tried to turn myself away from what I was thinking, but I couldn’t.

He’d tracked me to the Elbow Room. He hadn’t worked the cases, he’d told me, but he’d looked into them. But what if he was already familiar with them? The whores, the drug addicts, the women presumably murdered by their boyfriends. Gilmore would know exactly what to do to make those cases look like accidents or suicides. He’d know how to plant evidence to point at a husband or a pimp.

I shook my head to shake the questions off or to line the pieces up in place. Was that why his wife had left him? After he’d killed Rebecca Clarke in the park, did she know her husband had gone off the big ledge?

I thought about Gilmore wanting to become a part of my family and what that might actually mean. What if he’d been following Collie? He was always around, always in our business. He’d spent so much time projecting that big-brother vibe that I was starting to pick up on it.

Except my big brother was insane.

Gilmore could’ve been shadowing Collie around that night. He could’ve sensed what was going to happen. He was going to lose his wife and kids. He was already heading out onto the edge.

I said the name once out loud. “Gilmore.”

Christ, it was crazy. I shook my head again. Collie had me so twisted up I didn’t know what to think anymore. Gilmore. Was it possible? Why was I wasting time even considering it?

My cell phone rang. I’d never heard it ring before and it took me a second to figure out which button to push to answer.

“Hello?”

“You heard about Cara Clarke?” Lin asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you really believe that I’m killing those girls in an effort to somehow help your brother?”

“No,” I said.

She let out a deep breath. “Then you accept there’s a murderer out there?”

“No,” I said. “I’m still not sure about that.”

“What? Why not?”

I wondered if I should mention Gilmore. But I wasn’t sure of a damn thing. “It looks like Cara Clarke committed suicide.”

“That’s just the killer covering his tracks and obscuring the facts!”

“Maybe,” I said. And again, “Maybe. But you don’t know for sure.”

I could hear the tremor in her voice. “But it’s-it’s so-”

“Don’t say ‘obvious,’ Lin. Nothing about this is conclusive.”

“Will you go to the police anyway?” she asked.