Jonathon King - A Killing Night

When I'd told him I was going to Philadelphia the thought had silenced him in a way I'd never seen before. Billy is never stunned, by calamity or foolishness or the myriad whims of humans. He stared into my eyes as if he were looking for some truth in them and then quickly gathered himself.

"I w-will stay in closer contact with Mr. Colon," he said. "You will do, my friend, what you need to do."

He then helped me find a series of electronic clippings from the Philadelphia Daily News and the Inquirer databases on the disappearance of Faith Hamlin and the subsequent investigation of five police officers. Colin's name and suspicion were prominent, especially after the others confessed and supposedly came clean. I thought I recognized two of the other names but couldn't be sure.

Billy also found the present name and address of O'Shea's ex- wife, through the divorce records he got from an attorney contact in Philly. With a name and date of birth, we found her address in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, across the river from the city. Then I called my uncle Keith. He was still a sergeant in the Eighteenth District and he was understandably shocked to hear from me.

"Jesus Christ, Maxey. Is that you? Where the hell are you, boy? You in trouble? Christ, we thought you fell off the fuckin' edge of the world. You coming to town? You're coming over to the house then, right? No. No. Better you come over to McLaughlin's first. You know your aunt. We'll have a couple before that whole scene. You know she still goes to visit that church your mother turned to in those last years and she says feels her sister there. Damn, Maxey, it's good to hear your voice, boy."

I hadn't managed ten words. When he finally took a breath I told him I was coming in on business. I was working for a lawyer in Florida and did he know anyone in internal affairs that might help me out?

"IAD and lawyers, Maxey?" I could see him shaking his old Scottish head. "The devil and his henchmen. But for you, son, we can find someone maybe we can trust."

I had planned to go straight to my uncle's but on South Street I stopped at Krass Brothers. When I stepped out into a puddle of slush in my Docksides, I made a mental note to hit the Army/Navy on Tasker for some boots. In the store the terse, clipped speech-"Whattaya, forty-two long?"-caught me off guard at first. South Florida isn't exactly Southern, but I hadn't realized how much of my own whipcrack city-speak I'd lost. When I told the guy, "Something warm but I'm not going skiing," he tried to get me into a knee- length cashmere. When I told him I wasn't working for the stock exchange he pushed a three-quarter leather on me.

"Hey, I'm takin' my pops to the Flyers' game here!" I said, trying to regain a bit of Philly speak.

He found me a tan, goose down waist-length with cloth elastic cuffs. I thanked him very much.

"Yo, I thought you was just offen' your yacht or somethin'," he said, looking without shame at my shoes.

I got a pair of lace-up work boots on Tasker and then drove through the neighborhood.

The streets seemed too narrow, the stoplights too frequent. People on the sidewalks had their heads down in the sleet, not that I would recognize anyone. On Tenth I got caught behind some joker double-parked but I just sat there five doors down from the house I grew up in the next block past Snyder. I waited, looking at the old stoops and the front window of the house where a kid I knew named Fran Leary used to live. It was still ringed in Christmas lights. A young guy wearing the same leather coat I'd just turned down came out of a doorway and waved at me before he got in to the double- parked car and pulled away.

I moved up until I could see the cut-stone steps and the wrought iron rail that led up to the house I grew up in. The second-floor window that looked out on the street was to my room, where I had spent nights reading books and fantasizing about Annette the cheerleader and listening to the Allman Brothers Band on a tinny old record player. It was also the place where I cowered and tried to ignore the sound of my father's heavy, drunken steps and the sharp snap of a backhand and the muffled protests of my mother. I was one hundred feet away but did not want to see my front door and feel the ugly memories that I'd closed behind it. I had seen both of my parents die in that house. My father, a broken and shamed former cop, fell to a slow and deserved poisoning. My mother, who came home from the hospital to die, convinced that God had filled the hole left by her treachery with cancer.

I turned east instead and then up Fifth and past South Street to the Gaskill House, a bed and breakfast where I'd reserved a room. The place was a redone coach house built in 1828 just a block from Headhouse Square. The manager of the Gaskill had befriended me when I was walking a beat there by showing up with hot coffee at eleven o'clock each night at the corner of Third. His name was Guy and now, years later, he met me at the door with a handshake and what may have been the same huge ceramic-and-steel coffee cup.

He was envious of my winter tan and Florida address. I was, as always, envious of his collections of antiques and the stone and wood eat-in kitchen down on the basement level of the house.

"Your friend Mr. Manchester called and faxed three pages for you, Max," Guy said. "I put them in an envelope on your bed upstairs. We got a cancellation so I've given you the blue room at the top.

"Remember, breakfast eight to ten," he said as I climbed the stairs.

The room was done in Colonial-era furniture, poster bed, writing table, a small fireplace on the west wall. The thick comforter and window treatments were blue and muted yellows and dark burgundy, colors you rarely saw in Florida. I pulled out some paperwork and sat at the desk and called Colin O'Shea's ex-wife. I'd put off contacting her until I got here, not wanting to give her an easy excuse to dismiss me. She was now listed as Janice Mott. It was past five when I called and introduced myself as a private investigator from Florida, which at least keeps people on the line if only for the sake of curiosity.

"I was a Philadelphia officer with your ex-husband, Colin. We actually grew up close to each other in South Philly," I said, a dose of familiarity.

"If Colin has debts, Mr. Freeman, I have no idea where he is. I haven't seen him in years," she said.

I could hear kids in the background. I thought I was going to lose her.

"No, ma'am. I know where he is. I just saw him two days ago," I said quickly, taking a chance, a gamble, that she would care.

She lowered her voice.

"He's not dead, is he?"

"No, Mrs. Mott. He's all right. He kind of got jammed up down in Florida and I'm, uh, trying to find out more about his, uh, domestic background."

Once again, I knew I'd used the wrong wording.

"He never hit me, Mr. Freeman," she said, the words now almost a whisper.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Mott, he…"

"Colin never physically abused me when we were married," she said.

The statement held both a sense of strength and apology.

"I know they called it domestic abuse, but it wasn't physical." She hesitated. "It was a way out."

A way out, I thought. She'd already left him by the time O'Shea got caught up in the disappearance of Faith Hamlin.

"I, uh, really don't know anything about the details of your past relationship, Mrs. Mott," I said. "But honestly, that is the area I'm trying to explore," I said.

"To help him or hurt him, Mr. Freeman?"

She was smart and blunt. And she would see right through any bullshit answer I might toss her.

"Honestly, I don't know, Mrs. Mott," I said, and waited.

"Colin does have that effect, doesn't he?" she said.

"Confusion," she answered her own question. "It's his stock-in-trade."