Jonathon King - A Killing Night

I was into my second beer and was eyeing the Schnapps when she finally arrived, fashionably fifteen minutes late. She was in a long cashmere coat and scarf and wasn't wearing a hat despite the drizzle. I had never seen her wear anything over her blonde hair unless a uniform demanded it. She opened the coat and put her shoulders back to shrug the coat off into the hands of a mildly surprised hostess. She had on a sweater and a dark skirt underneath. At least two guys at the bar subtly turned to admire the sweater.

She came over and as I started to slide off the stool she said: "Sit, Max. Let's have a drink at the bar first."

She positioned herself on the stool next to me and crossed her legs with that sound of nylon and surveyed the long room-bar running the length of one wall until a step up into a dining space at the very back. Small tables along the other wall. A few booths just to the left of the entrance. Dark wood, ferns and neon liquor signs throughout.

"My God, Max. The place hasn't changed in ten years." She smiled. "I feel like a college girl."

Just two blocks from Jefferson Hospital, Moriarity's was a favorite of the nursing and medical students and was mostly filled with a younger crowd.

"You never went to college, Meagan," I said.

She smiled and her eyes stayed bright.

"I feel like a college girl," she repeated and then ignored me for a few beats. "Get me a Merlot will you, Max?"

She waited until she'd had a taste and then asked: "So, how often do you get back, Max? Keep in touch with any guys from the old days?"

"This is actually the first time I've been back to the city since I left, Meg. With my mom gone, there wasn't much reason."

She gave me a look of sympathy and then realized it was misspent on me.

"So this inquiry about Colin O'Shea is strong enough motivation to get you here?"

I have never been one to answer questions without thinking about my response first. I was even more careful with Meagan, who had always been a verbal chess player.

"It's a favor for a friend," I finally said.

To her credit, she saw the answer as a blocking move and let it pass.

"And what have you come up with so far?" she said, moving right to the business at hand.

"Since both your case and the one in Florida have to do with women, I'm kind of surprised by the opinions women have of O'Shea," I said.

"Ah, you talked to the ex?"

"Yeah."

"Same old Max," she said with that smarter-than-you smile. "You have to see their eyes, right? Tell if the truth is there?" I looked straight into hers.

"She doesn't think the guy that she was married to for what, six years, was capable," I said.

"Right. But she didn't mind filing a domestic abuse charge against the guy to justify divorcing him so she could run off to Cherry Hill with her boyfriend the pharmaceutical salesman."

"According to her, the abuse wasn't physical," I said and caught the flavor of defense in my own voice.

"No shit," Meagan said, flatly.

"What? You don't believe it?"

"Oh, I believe it," she said and then turned to face me again. The look felt like an assessment. I must have passed.

"I dated him a few times, years ago, when he was trying to make SWAT."

Maybe she thought it was a confession that was going to shock me. But even if O'Shea hadn't already told me, I'm not sure I would have reacted. I took a drink, like it had nothing to do with me.

"He never made the team?" I said.

"Too aggressive. Not enough patience. Thought it was all gung ho shit. He was one of those who could never find the balance."

"He ever get aggressive with you?" I said. "I mean in a personal way?"

She gave me one of those "Who, me?" looks.

"You of all people, Max," she said. "He got pissed off once and raised a hand."

"And?"

"I slapped him first when he hesitated."

"And his reaction?"

"He apologized. Said he would never have actually hit me," she said. "Like I would have let him."

"Christ, Meg," I said. "And now you think he's capable of whacking some poor grocery store clerk to cover up a sex scandal out on the beat?"

One of the sweater guys nearby looked over. Meagan smiled at him and raised her eyebrows. I signaled the hostess that we were ready to sit down for dinner and paid the bar bill.

Meagan was true to her word on answering any questions I had about the departments' and internal affairs' investigation into the Faith Hamlin case. While we ate she described how IA isolated the officers on the differing shifts and found discrepancies in the night crews' stories of how often they stopped at the market and who had actually been the last to see Hamlin. Although good cops usually have well tuned bullshit detectors when they're talking to mopes on the street, it doesn't mean they're good liars themselves. Despite the polygraphs that three of the cops had passed, Meagan's investigators had done searches of all the officers' homes and cars, looking for any sign of Hamlin or DNA that could have indicated she'd been transported, dead or alive, by any of them. Nothing. They also crunched the time lines down on each man, making them give details on their whereabouts during every minute that they weren't on duty from the time Hamlin was last seen. Two of the guys were married and took the biggest hit. The media was all over the story. No one escaped being flayed in public. But O'Shea took the brunt. He was the only one who refused to cooperate. He stonewalled. He'd told them to charge him or leave him the fuck alone. He demanded a search warrant be served on his home and vehicles. He knew enough about the law to argue to a judge that the department had no evidence of a crime, that Faith Hamlin could have done anything from simply walking away from the embarrassment of the situation to throwing herself off the Ben Franklin Bridge. There were no indications of a crime and no body. Though she might have had the mind of a thirteen-year-old, Hamlin was legally an adult.

"So what does your gut tell you, Meagan?" I said when I ran out of questions. "Colin killed her and dumped her over in the Jersey Pine Barrens?"

"I don't have the kind of instinct you always seem to think you have, Max. Hell, he could have chopped her up and stuck her in a barrel. It's been done before. And by guys a lot smarter than him. He might have had nothing to do with her. None of the other three ratted on each other. They just came clean," she said, not letting the conversation spoil her appetite for the veggie wrap she worked her way through.

"But you know the old saying: If you got nothing to hide, why not talk?"

"Shit," I said, shaking my head because she knew better and every cop worth a damn knew better. A lot of people went to jail for crimes they didn't commit because they talked when they should have shut up. The only thing that let some cops and prosecutors live with that was the belief that it made up for the crimes the guy did do.

"So, Max. Speaking of talking," Meagan said, folding her napkin and resting her chin on the backs of her hands. "What have you got for me?"

I didn't hold out on her. I gave her the details of my meeting with O'Shea, including his admission that he'd dated a couple of the bartenders that had gone missing. I told her he'd been working private security and even detailed his participation in the alley fight.

She smiled at a thought, but didn't comment.

"Do you have an address for him?" she said.

"I'm sure detective Richards has an address, but I wasn't exactly tailing the guy, Meg."

"They have a trace on his phone or surveillance of some kind?"

"Not that I know of. As far as I know they're in the same bind you were in. No crime, no warrants, no taps or manpower."

"I don't know, Max," she said, folding her napkin on the table. "If that's all you have I'm not sure this was much of a trade."