Dead Mann Walking

14

Misty was already packing, but I couldn’t let go just yet. I was too involved. See, if Booth really loved Lenore, this could be his way of working things out. Wish he’d tried talk therapy or medication. But that made the loose ends my responsibility in more ways than one. Not only was I the one who figured it out; I was his motive.

I couldn’t see getting any justice for Boyle and Wilson. As for Turgeon, my best guess was that he was alive, but the hired goons had put the fear of Booth into him. Sure, a fancy lawyer could tackle a chief detective in the courts, but not without the leads I’d gathered. Unless I somehow stumbled on my client as he was walking down the street, trying to find Turgeon was a dead end. Mostly I was thinking that if there were others on the hit list, I had to find and warn them. And since the only way to figure out who else was at risk meant using a police database, that meant one more trip into the lion’s den.

I thought it best not to mention that to Misty, so while she and Ashby were busy sorting what to bring and what to leave behind, I stepped into the hall and made a call to my old partner, Jimmy Hazen. He was with Booth when they followed me back home that day. Last time I saw him, I was covered in my wife’s blood. He didn’t appear in court, but he signed a deposition describing in detail what an asshole I was.

I had to talk fast, real fast.

“Haze? It’s Mann. Don’t hang up.”

He hung up. I dialed again.

“Look, we both know what you think of me, so before you hang up again, just think for a second that it must be something pretty important. I’d need a damn good reason, right?”

The silence that followed was achingly long, a void in the air like the gaps in my memory. Finally he answered, voice deader than any chak’s. Two words: “Go on.”

I told him some of what I knew, leaving out any mention of Booth. I tried to make it sound like a psycho was involved, that maybe Turgeon, a liveblood, was in danger. When he didn’t cut me off immediately, I slowed down, let him fill in the blanks, but in the end he just said, “So what?”

“Haze, let me have a terminal for an hour, anytime, day or night. One hour. I swear if it doesn’t pan out I’ll lie down and let you kick the shit out of me all day long.”

“I wouldn’t want to get my shoes dirty, you son of a bitch.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Another pause, then: “Sign a confession. Gimme a statement saying you killed her.”

I clamped my mouth so tightly I nearly crushed a molar. One wrong word and I’d lose him. I wanted to tell him I didn’t do it, but between the two of us, how many times had we heard that from a perp? And I didn’t even really remember. I took a different tack.

“A statement from a chak isn’t admissible in court.”

“I know. Call it a souvenir.”

“What about the liveblood? What about Turgeon?”

“That’s why I’m making the offer, on the off chance you didn’t imagine the whole thing. Find something real on him, you can let me know. Right now I’ve gotta take a piss, then have a drink so I can forget we had this conversation. Do we have a deal?”

“Fine.”

“Back entrance, midnight. You get half an hour.” He hung up.

Never has any idiot, alive or dead, been happier to have successfully invited himself into hell.