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  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes Jenny, I’m fine.’

  He watched the shadow beneath the door hesitate for a moment, then disappear. He waited until he heard the office door close before he went back to the business at hand.

  This time Andie and he were on vacation somewhere. It was summer, the middle of the night, and they were staying at a two-story motor lodge that wasn’t more than one-quarter full. There were fewer than a dozen cars scattered around the parking-lot.

  Andie had told him to go out to the parking-lot and sit beneath their sliding glass door. She said she wanted him to see something. Matt had grabbed a pair of beers off the dresser and hurried down to the car like a hormonal teenager.

  After fifteen minutes or so, after sitting in their sensible rental car, sipping his Bud Light, and watching Andie walk around the room, teasing him in her working-girl suit and high-heeled pumps, Matt noticed a man sitting in a car to the left and in front of him.

  The man, it seemed, had been watching Andie too.

  Matt thought about getting out of the car and going back to the room, hoping he could get there before his wife started actually stripping, but the idea of this stranger watching Andie excited him. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he just wasn’t sure how far Andie would go.

  Was this fair to Andie? he wondered.

  He didn’t know, but he didn’t move.

  For the next twenty minutes the two men watched Matt Heller’s wife take off her clothes, slowly, piece by piece, drawing out the part where she walked about the room in her pink lace camisole – a present from her husband. Andie then slipped out of the lingerie in front of the mirror and brushed her hair, her breasts rising and falling with the movement. She stood briefly in front of the sliding glass door, totally nude, her hourglass figure silhouetted against the white walls of the motel bedroom, then closed the curtain.

  And although none of this had ever happened – nor had any other of Matt Heller’s bulging Rolodex of voyeur’s fantasies about his wife – the prospect that it might someday never failed to arouse him.

  Even at the office.

  Maybe tonight, he thought as he closed his eyes.

  Maybe tonight.

  4

  SHE WAS BIG and she was small in the doorway to the restaurant. Big because she was getting so tall. She would be a woman before Jack Paris knew it. Small because here she was on her own – no Beth, no Jack, no mom or dad. Just a dressed-up little girl with a purse full of hard-earned money, waiting for her father. Her juicehead father who can’t even keep a date with an eleven-year-old.

  As Paris walked across the lot he made a solemn vow. He would never let her down again.

  Melissa Paris screwed up her mouth, tapped her foot and stared as her father opened the door. She looked like a pintsized Beth. Her hair, a deep mahogany in color, seemed to have grown considerably since Paris had seen her last, even though it had been just a few weeks. It fell to her shoulders now, luminous in the midday sun.

  ‘Hi sweetie,’ Paris said, planting a wet kiss on the top of her head. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Twenty-one minutes late,’ she said, trying to hold onto the mad-look for all it was worth, but rapidly losing ground to a smile. Paris hadn’t been able to get that smile out of Beth in years, but his daughter still loved him, still trusted him. ‘Did you forget?’

  Paris cleared his throat. ‘Forget? Are you kidding? What kind of guy forgets his own birthday?’

  ‘A cop.’

  Paris smiled. ‘You know, you can still be arrested for being a wise guy. Just because you’re a detective’s daughter doesn’t mean you get any special privileges.’

  Melissa gave him a big hug. ‘Sure it does, Daddy.’ she said. ‘Besides, they don’t arrest angels.’

  The hostess approached them. ‘I see your gentleman caller has finally arrived,’ she said, grabbing two menus, saving Paris from any further scrutiny. The woman exchanged a wink with Melissa. ‘Right this way.’

  Paris scanned the Plain Dealer but found nothing on Karen Schallert’s murder. These days murders were relegated to page one of the Metro section and, unless they were spectacular or involved someone of celebrity, warranted no more than a few column inches. Paris had gotten to the scene at around one-thirty, far too late to make even the late-morning edition. He took out his notebook and scribbled a note about calling Mike Cicero, the best of the PD’s crime reporters.

  ‘Daddy!’

  Paris looked up. ‘Yeah, honey?’

  ‘You’re working.’

  Paris had gone easy on his daughter’s budget, ordering just a sandwich and coffee, even though she had encouraged him to order whatever he wanted. He took a bite. ‘So how’s school?’ He wiped his lips with his napkin.

  Melissa rolled her eyes. ‘You already asked me that.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. And what did you say?’

  Another glance at the ceiling. ‘I said it was fine and that I was going to be in a play and that we went on a field-trip to Hillside Dairy and we had to watch them make cottage cheese.’ She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘That sounds great.’

  ‘And I told you that I took my third karate class.’

  ‘Karate class?’

  ‘Heee-yah!’ Melissa shouted, then smiled, drawing her hands into a defensive position.

  Paris was dumbfounded. ‘Since when are you taking karate lessons?’

  ‘Since, like, three weeks ago.’

  ‘Man, nobody tells me anything around here.’ Paris shook his head.

  ‘So tell me,’ Melissa asked in her strange, formal tone, now that she seemed to have her father’s undivided attention, ‘how is Manfred?’

  ‘Manny’s fine, honey.’

  ‘Do you take him out for runs?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Daddy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t mean walks. I mean runs.’

  ‘Well, occasionally we break into a trot-like sort of rhythm.’ He could see she wasn’t buying it. ‘Okay, I’ll take him out for a run tomorrow. I promise.’

  ‘Dogs have to run.’

  ‘I promise.’ Paris held up his hand and rested the other one on the place-mat, in lieu of a Bible. ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘Pinkie swear?’

  ‘Pinkie swear,’ Paris said. Observing the solemnity of such an oath, as was their custom, they dutifully locked fingers across the table. Melissa then reached into her book bag and pulled out a long, white envelope.

  ‘Here, Daddy.’

  Paris’s heart fluttered as he took the birthday card from his daughter. She really was remarkable, he thought. Most kids would not have been able to sit all through lunch without giving away the fact that they had a birthday card on them. Most kids would have boiled over. But Missy was cool and methodical. Her cop half.

  Paris opened the envelope. On the front of the card was a cartoon of a man, at least ninety years old, leaning on a pair of crutches. Beneath the cartoon it read: ‘Two, four, six, eight …’ Paris opened the card. The sentiment continued: ‘… boy, did you depreciate!’ Melissa had started giggling the moment Paris lifted the flap on the envelope. By the time he read the card, she was all but collapsed with laughter.

  ‘Oh you think it’s so funny, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa said, full of false composure, ‘I do.’ She then reached into her bag and produced the big surprise of the afternoon. A brightly wrapped package that was the size and shape of – although almost certainly not – a pint bottle of booze.

  ‘Melissa Paris.’

  ‘It’s from both of us,’ Missy said. ‘Maybe you won’t be late for appointments now. Maybe you can make notes for yourself.’

  Paris opened the package and was not all that surprised to find a Panasonic digital recorder inside, secured firmly in a huge blister package. Paris had casually mentioned it to Melissa six months earlier, and his daughter never forgot a good
gift idea.

  ‘Thanks, honey,’ Paris said, leaning over and placing a kiss on his daughter’s forehead. ‘Tell Mommy thanks too.’

  ‘There are batteries in the box. It’s ready to go.’

  ‘I’m not the least bit surprised.’ Paris opened the card once again, this time finding a little more humor in the sentiment. ‘And who taught you what “depreciate” means?’

  Melissa’s slight hesitation answered the question. Because she never lied to him, she just raised her shoulders and stared at the table.

  ‘Did you buy the card with Mommy?’ Paris asked, somehow thinking he was changing the subject.

  ‘You really just want to know about William, don’t you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  He had never been able to fool her. Not with ‘Peekaboo’. Not with ‘Which hand has the gum?’ Not even with ‘Find Daddy in the leaf pile’. Paris avoided her eyes. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Um-hmm.’

  ‘And he never calls himself Bill?’

  ‘Nope, William. Always.’

  ‘Never Billy or Will or Willy?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And he really has a—’

  ‘Jaguar.’

  Paris thought about his own car for a moment. He stopped. ‘And he’s a pharmacist, right?’

  ‘Daddy. You know he’s a doctor. A pediatrician. And Mom doesn’t love him,’ Melissa toyed with her napkin. ‘He stays over sometimes, but mostly they go out to dinner. Or rent movies and kiss on the couch. But Mom doesn’t love him.’

  Paris wiped his lips, ricocheting between ‘stays over’ and ‘doesn’t love him’. Which to hold on to? ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And does he take you places and buy you things?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ Melissa said. ‘You are so jealous.’ She stopped, tilted her head to one side and called for the check. Then she smiled at him – a huge, confident, grown-up, career-girl smile – and Jack Paris’s heart flew into a thousand pieces.

  She would be a woman any minute.

  Then she would leave.

  Before Paris could make it to the office he had a two-thirty appearance before the grand jury, an obligation he surely would have missed had Melissa not called. It was a case involving the mother of a young Hispanic kid who had been killed in a King-Kennedy Estates drug dispute that had nothing to do with him. According to the investigation, about nine months earlier, a few days after the shooting, the dead kid’s mother conned one of the gang members responsible onto the roof of her building and threw him off. Seven stories, on to a jungle gym.

  Witnesses had contacted Paris a few weeks earlier – people who had just remembered that they had seen somebody throw a human being off a roof around that time – and Paris had reluctantly passed the information along to the prosecutor’s office. Reluctantly, because he was not looking forward to building a case against the poor woman. The little fucker she tossed had it coming.

  But he was looking forward to meeting Diana Bennett, the new assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County.

  Tommy Raposo, Paris knew, had hit on Diana Bennett a few times, with no evidence of success. Then again Tommy hit on everybody. Word was that Diana Bennett did her homework, always came prepared, but was no immediate threat to Chief Prosecutor Ardella Patterson-Jones for the top spot. She was not the overly ambitious type, if Paris could believe his ears, and that’s probably what made her even more appealing.

  He couldn’t wait to see what all the fuss was about.

  It was for that reason alone that Paris stopped home, showered, shaved, and did his very best to wrest the wrinkles from the only suit he had that wasn’t at the cleaners.

  The waiting room for the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury was virtually deserted when Paris arrived. He imagined the jurors were already in session and that the couple who had decided to come forward – Lucius and Azalea Quarles – were already on the stand or in the witness room.

  Paris saw Rocky Dobson, one of the oldest bailiffs in the entire American justice system, cut quickly across the reception area. Rocky was seventy-five if he was a day. Paris found him in the small lunchroom reserved for county employees.

  ‘Hey Rocky,’ Paris said, perhaps louder than he needed to.

  ‘Jack Paris,’ Rocky said. ‘How the hell are ya, buddy?’

  Rocky was of an age where words like ‘buddy’, ‘pal’, ‘mac’, ‘chum’, ‘champ’, ‘chief’, ‘jocko’ and the like were automatically attached to the end of every sentence.

  ‘How’s everything?’ Paris asked.

  ‘Oh, let me tell you, bucko,’ Rocky began, lowering his voice. ‘The world’s going to hell in a sidecar faster’n Jack got nimble.’ He smiled and knocked on the worn Formica conference table twice. ‘You can take that to the bank, my friend. And smoke it.’

  Paris laughed and drew a cup of coffee from the urn as Rocky continued his diatribe on societal ills and their proper solutions, a monologue that was years running when Jack Paris became a cop and was bound to continue long after he retired.

  Paris leaned against the doorjamb and blew on the hot coffee. When he looked up, over the rim of his Styrofoam cup, he saw Diana Bennett at the opposite end of the long hallway. Tommy had described her perfectly.

  Paris watched her walk the entire length of the corridor, desperately trying to find a sense of symmetry and balance for her files, folders, attaché case, and oversized purse. As she got closer Paris could see that she was around thirty years old and very fit; five-eight in her sensible heels, she wore a charcoal blazer and white blouse, a dove gray skirt cut just above her knees. Her dark brown hair fell just past her shoulders. She had ice-blue eyes.

  Paris was tongue-tied.

  ‘Diana Bennett, prosecutor’s office,’ she said.

  From somewhere amid her cargo of paper, cardboard and leather, she extended her hand. Paris took it as if it were bone china.

  He waited a few beats, composing himself. ‘Jack Paris. Pleasure.’

  She certainly was as striking as he had heard, and he knew she was unmarried, but he had reached a point in his life where he was certain there was absolutely no point in chasing after women as pretty as Diana Bennett. He was getting old and the last thing he wanted to hear was: ‘No thanks, pop. I’m busy Friday.’

  Paris watched her, feet leaden, as she deposited her parcels on the table and exchanged a quick pleasantry with Rocky Dobson.

  ‘We’ll try not to keep you too long this afternoon,’ she said to Paris as she drew a half-cup of coffee from the huge urn. ‘You’ll be first, in fact.’

  ‘No hurry.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. She extended her hand once more. ‘Nice to have met you, Detective Paris.’ They shook. ‘See you inside.’

  Paris exchanged a quick look with Rocky, who gave him a wink as if to say ‘hubba hubba’ or whatever guys Rocky’s age say when they meet a bona fide babe. Rocky, it seemed, was still looking.

  ‘You got that right,’ Paris said as he clapped the old-timer gently on the back and walked around the corner to the witness room.

  ‘And how long have you been a police officer?’

  Paris told her. It sounded like forever.

  ‘And how long have you been a homicide detective?’

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘And how many homicides would you say you’ve investigated in that time?’ she continued. ‘Approximately.’

  He knew that she was merely trying to establish his competence, validate his instincts, because all the evidence against Marcella Lorca-Vasquez was purely circumstantial. ‘Maybe a hundred.’

  ‘And what percentage of those were closed? Once again, approximately.’

  Paris knew exactly. He was at 81 per cent. He wasn’t sure how to say it out loud without sounding like some pompous asshole who would actually get that specific about it. ‘About 80 per cent, I believe.’

  Diana Bennett walked forward, stopping a few feet from Paris’s chair. ‘That’s a rather remarkable record, Det
ective Paris.’

  Paris knew it was courtroom histrionics, but he was still flattered. ‘Not for me to say,’ he said, trying to sound humble. Diana Bennett walked over to her table, reached into her briefcase.

  ‘But thank you for saying so,’ Paris added. ‘Counselor.’

  At that moment Paris noticed the slightest smile forming at the corners of Diana’s mouth. She continued. ‘Please tell us what occurred after you arrived at the King-Kennedy Estates on the evening of June eighth of last year.’

  After taking a moment to organize the chronology in his mind, Paris related how, when he arrived at the scene, the body of Dennell ‘Too Bad’ Breland, sixteen, was enmeshed in the jungle gym directly below the fire escapes at number 1728. He told how witnesses said that someone definitely threw Too Bad off the roof, but nobody could say just who it was. The fact that Too Bad was a Crip, Paris was assured at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with the mass amnesia that seemed to have descended over King-Kennedy that night.

  When Paris made it to the top floor of 1728, the door to Marcella Lorca-Vasquez’s stifling apartment was wide open. Lorca-Vasquez was sitting at the table, handkerchief in hand, weeping. Paris knew that she was the mother of eight-year-old Rodolfo Insana, a boy who had been killed in a recent gang related shoot-out, a homicide for which Too Bad Breland had been a person of interest. These circumstances led investigators to suspect that Lorca-Vasquez may have been the one who gave Breland the ride of his life.

  The fact that she stood five nine and weighed in at about two-sixty told Paris that she was, indeed, capable.

  ‘Detective Paris,’ Diana Bennett said from just a few feet away, her perfume taunting him, ‘we thank you for your time.’

  * * *

  The Homicide Unit occupied the sixth floor of the Justice Center on Ontario Street, six floors below the grand jury room. It was well after four o’clock that afternoon before Paris walked through its doors. The pile of pink and yellow while-you-were-out notes nearly obliterated the blotter.

  ‘You ever going to clean this desk, Jack?’ Tommy Raposo asked, setting down one of the two Styrofoam cups of coffee, along with a fat bear claw, wrapped in a single sheet of bakery wax paper from Casa Dolce. ‘I think this might be a little stale, though. I got it, like, this morning.’ Tommy knew how to grind it in. ‘You look like shit too.’