Brad Parks - The Good Cop

“In other words, the Newarkers made this mess, so let them clean it up.”

“Well, that’s another way to look at it. But yeah. And, remember, Newark makes the mess, but it’s really Essex County that ought to be cleaning it up. That’s how the food chain goes. Sure, it leads up to my guy eventually. But it hits the Essex County prosecutor first.”

“Right, right,” I said.

The hijab woman had rounded the corner, out of sight. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask the attorney general’s spokesman, so I didn’t object when Hilfiker said: “Anyhow, I gotta run. Good luck with it.”

“Thanks. For both conversations,” I said, ending the call and putting my car into Drive at the same time. I pulled a quick U-turn and pointed myself back in the direction of Mimi’s house.

I didn’t know if she’d believe me-what with me being an agent of Satan and all-but she needed to know that her beloved Pastor Al, the man she trusted so implicitly, had simply been exploiting her to get free advertising on the evening news. And now, having used her, he was dropping her and going back to whatever it was he really preferred to be doing.

Like drop-kicking orphans.

* * *

Arriving back at the Kipps household, I got out of the car with my umbrella open this time. I didn’t need any more of that tough guy stuff.

I was about to walk across the street when I happened to glance up at those naked second-story windows. I saw Mimi Kipps-or at least the top half of her-wearing one towel on her body and another on her head, having an animated conversation with someone. And being the naturally curious reporter that I am, I stopped to see who.

She wasn’t looking at the person very often. She was mostly puttering around the room. Making a bed, maybe? On occasion, she would bend over, pick something up, and put it somewhere else, like she was cleaning up toys in a child’s bedroom. She moved with the practiced efficiency of a mom who had done this before, but she also maintained her half of the dialogue the entire time. Her body language suggested she was angry, tense.

I kept watching-yeah, so I’m a voyeur, what’s your point? — but still couldn’t tell who was carrying the other side of the exchange. I moved up the street a little bit, to give myself a different angle. And there, standing with his arms crossed, was Mike Fusco. He was leaning against the wall with his head tilted to one side, giving no hint as to his emotional state.

And it struck me as, well, a little strange that Mimi would be talking with him while she wasn’t dressed. I realize that as a starchy WASP, I tend to be a smidge prudish about such matters. But still. There are a scant number of women in my life who would feel comfortable talking to me while wearing a towel. Half of them I’m related to and the other half I’ve …

Slept with? Could Mimi and Fusco be …

No. I chased the thought from my mind. Or at least I was trying to. And then Mimi made a large, frustrated motion-an “I’ve had it” kind of gesture-and Fusco walked up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders.

She didn’t fight it, just immediately let her body slump, giving in to the massage. Fusco worked on her for about a minute or so while Mimi stood there, giving me the chance to think that, well, maybe they were just really, really good friends. There was still some possibility this could be platonic, right? Mimi needed a human touch. Fusco wanted to give her some comfort, and he was probably the kind of guy who’d be better communicating with his actions than his words.

Besides, no woman who had given birth five months earlier-to say nothing of a woman who had just lost her husband-would be trolling for some kind of random hook-up. A guy might. Guys can pretty much turn off their brains and shut out those kinds of petty distractions when it comes to sex. But women are too practical about human relations for that sort of thing. So this was probably just …

I was still trying to work out that line of reasoning when Mimi Kipps blew it right away. She turned into Fusco, wrapped an arm around the back of his head, and pulled him close for a kiss. And it didn’t look like it was their first. Their heads fell into a familiar rhythm. His hands went for her back and butt, and I wondered how much longer the towel was going to stay in place.

Before things shifted to something more suited for late-night cable, Mimi pushed Fusco out of sight-into a back bedroom, perhaps-leaving me to sort out the ramifications of it all.

Fusco and Mimi. Ramifying, as it were.

Yikes.

I’m sure Mimi wasn’t the first widow to take up with her husband’s best friend, but wasn’t this a bit … soon? Don’t they usually wait a month or two-or, heck, at least until the deceased is in the ground-before they …

And then, finally, the lightbulb went on above my head: there was no need to wait because it had already been going on. This wasn’t a new romance. This was an affair. I thought about the first time I saw Mimi with Fusco, how they had been sharing a cup of coffee with such intimacy, how she had draped her hand so casually on his shoulder.

Then I thought about that conversation they had earlier, where Fusco had essentially berated her for giving money to the pastor. I had dismissed it as Fusco taking up his buddy’s battle, never thinking it was possibly his own battle. I had been watching a lover’s spat.

Yeah, Mimi and Fusco had probably been doing this for a while, which meant …

I felt like I needed one of those feathers to knock me over again. Here I was, slamming my brain around, trying to imagine these big, complicated scenarios that led to the death of Darius Kipps. And all along, it had been one of the oldest and simplest of sins. Lust.

Mimi Kipps was just another adulterous wife. Mike Fusco was just another swinging dick. And they both wanted the third wheel out of the way.

I began imagining a new scenario, one that made the pieces fit: Darius learned his quasi-partner was having an affair with his wife, got blisteringly drunk for the first time in a decade, and, while still smashed, angrily confronted Fusco. And sure, Kipps was a big guy. But he was also borderline blacking out, so Fusco was able to subdue him easily.

Maybe that’s when the chair tying came in. I could imagine Fusco tying up Kipps, just so they could talk without Kipps trying to throw punches. Maybe Fusco argued that he and Mimi were in love and that Kipps might as well face the fact that his marriage was over.

But Kipps refused, raved that he was going to get Mimi back no matter what, maybe even threatened to harm her. Whatever it was, it made Fusco realize he had to get rid of Kipps. So Fusco grabbed Kipps’s gun, untied him, pushed him in the shower in the locker room, and, blam , game over.

The ballistics would match. And Fusco would have known the water from the shower would destroy or alter key evidence, like gunshot residue or blood spatter. And when other cops heard the gunshot and came to investigate, there’s Fusco, just another cop in the bedlam. No one would have realized he was there all along.

Or heck, maybe it was even more sinister than that. Maybe this was a premeditated act, and Mimi and Fusco had come up with some kind of plan to get rid of Kipps and make it look like suicide. They tied him down, forced him to drink a bunch of booze, then went for the kill.

Either way, it worked. Sure, Mimi had been hell-bent on clearing her husband’s name, trying to convince me and others he never would have committed suicide, even going so far as to have Fusco tell me about the inconsistency with the bourbon (which may have been invented). But all that-as Ben Hilfiker had so cynically pointed out-was just for insurance purposes.