Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

‘You hurt, Corbin?’

In fact, despite my inner calm, I’d somehow bitten deep enough into my lower lip to draw blood. ‘Outside of a self-inflicted bite wound, I seem to have escaped without harm.’ My weapon extended, I began to approach the RAV-4. ‘And you?’

‘Never better.’

I came up on the driver’s side first. The RAV-4 was nosed almost vertically into the side of the mini-van and both its air bags had deployed upon impact. Though I couldn’t know it at the time, the driver, foolish enough to pilot the vehicle without fastening his seat belt, had been killed by his air bag and not by any of the four bullets that passed through the windshield. I only knew that when I put my fingers to his throat, he had no pulse to take.

As for the second man, the shooter, he’d been hit twice in the face, once near his mouth, the other almost dead center in his forehead. I didn’t bother to take his pulse, nor did I worry about making an identification. These were the same two men who’d trailed us in their boss’s Jaguar on the previous night.

What a party we had. Internal Affairs, a shooting team, homicide and squad detectives, the Crime Scene Unit, the morgue wagon, a gaggle of overly caffeinated bosses, a pack of media jackals — everybody showed up. At one point, the job brought in a Winnebago outfitted as a command center. Since there was nothing to command, I assumed its function was to give the big dogs a private space in which to consume the coffee and donuts fetched for them by a series of fawning lieutenants.

Adele and I were separated, then subjected to thorough interrogations. But the shooting was justified and there was no getting past it. At one point, when we were alone, Inspector Clark whispered, ‘You’re a hero now, you hump, but trust me on this: unless you walk away from the job, there’s gonna be a later on.’

I thanked him for his kind words, but held onto my shield nonetheless.

Adele had another problem, this one more immediate, but she managed to work her way past it. Somehow, she’d failed to register her AMT with the job, an oversight that could have resulted in departmental charges being filed against her. But Adele cleverly pointed out that she wasn’t on duty, she was on vacation, plus as a police officer, she was legally entitled to possess the weapon in New York State. The bosses, she later told me, were grateful for the technicality. If we were to be presented as heroes, however briefly, tainting Adele would obviously be counter-productive.

It was approaching nine o’clock when a uniformed officer summoned me to the command center where I found Adele waiting alone. I wanted to put my arms around her, but settled for a wink. A moment later, Bill Sarney stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘you won.’

‘It’s not a game,’ Adele replied.

‘Don’t go there.’

But Adele was on a roll and she simply continued. ‘It’s not a football game, lieutenant, one side wins, the other side loses, next week we get to do it all over again. It’s real people really getting killed and the NYPD acquiescing to an innocent man being framed for another man’s crime.’

Far from losing his temper, Sarney folded his arms across his chest and completed his mission. It was over now, for better or for worse.

‘You’re being put on paid administrative leave until you’re cleared to work by a department shrink,’ he told us without addressing Adele’s accusation. ‘Make the appointment whenever you’re ready. You wanna take a month, fine. You wanna take a year, that’s also fine.’

But Adele wasn’t about to be bribed. She reached into her purse, withdrew the wallet holding her badge and ID, then tossed the wallet to Sarney. ‘You’re never going to get the message,’ she declared. ‘Never.’

Sarney looked down at the wallet in his hands, then slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. ‘What about you, Harry? You wanna give up your shield?’

‘Not me, boss. And I’m gonna make that appointment right away. I can’t wait to get all this horrible killing off my chest so I can come back to work.’

It was eleven o’clock before CSU cleared my vehicle, and another twenty minutes before Adele and I were able to clear the snow around it. I remained patient throughout the process. Not so Adele, who strode back and forth, her hands folded across her chest, watching the crime scene cops as if she believed they were aware of our plans and willfully delaying us.

I discovered the reason for her agitation only as we pulled away from the curb. ‘We have another stop to make,’ she told me. ‘At Sparkle’s.’

‘Are you talking about Linus Potter?’

‘Yes.’

Though I steered the Nissan toward the requested destination, I didn’t reply for a moment. I’d been speculating on the identity of our anonymous informant from the beginning. Certainly, I’d suspected Linus Potter. I’d even called him by name in the course of our phone conversations, casting a bait to which he hadn’t risen. But my suspicions were no more than a hunch based on our face-to-face talks. There was no evidence to connect him to any of the known co-conspirators.

I looked at Adele. She was staring out through the windshield, her expression set, a woman who knew exactly what she had to do and why she had to do it. There could be only one reason for her determination.

‘It was Potter who attacked you,’ I finally said, my tone more final than accusing.

‘His face was covered, Corbin. But the tiny head, the shoulders, the gorilla chest — there’s no doubt in my mind.’

‘So, why didn’t you tell me? Better yet, why did you say that you had no memory of what happened to you?’

Adele drew a breath, then turned far enough to look into my face. ‘That night, when you came into my room in the hospital, I didn’t know exactly where you stood. Later, after we made love, I was afraid that you’d go after him if I told you what really happened. There was other work to do first.’

The explanation only provoked another burst of resentment, even though I knew she was right. Our methodical, step-by-step investigation had sealed the fate of all the conspirators, including Linus Potter. There was no escape for any of them. If I’d started with Linus, on the other hand, we might have lost everyone.

‘That night,’ Adele continued, ‘I saw Potter as he came out from behind a parked SUV. He was carrying an aluminum baseball bat, holding it above his right shoulder with both hands. Somehow, I managed to raise an arm as I tried to duck into his body. I didn’t get clear, of course, that’s obvious. But I was able to move close enough to avoid the heavy part of the bat. Potter hit me with the thin part, the handle, which is the only reason I’m talking to you right now.’

I watched her eyes fill as she re-lived her attack, as the fear returned, and I had to wonder how many times the memories had swarmed, like bats from a cave, to invade her consciousness. In many ways, my own life had been an attempt to avoid the various terrors that propelled me through early adolescence, an attempt never entirely successful. Sure, I can hold them at bay, vampires before a cross, while I’m awake. But at night, in my dreams, they often come out to play.

‘I know I’m not an easy person to live with,’ Adele continued. ‘I think that’s why I stayed with Mel, even after I knew we were finished. A warm body on the other side of the bed? Better than nothing, right?’

‘Are you saying that I’m just another warm body?’

‘I’m saying that I love you, and I’m not used to that, either.’

Again, as when she asked me to bandage her wounds, I had the sense that Adele was opening herself up for my inspection. She was offering me a secret and the cost was obvious, in the tilt of her head, in the resigned tone. She held my gaze for a moment, then seemed to flinch as she fell back in the seat.