Free Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner Page B

Detective Loughlin asked him to stop by the station house. The envelope he’d been holding on to. The mementos from the life he’d thought he’d have. The years. They’d been stolen from him, stripped away like a mugger taking his wallet, rifling it for cash, and tossing it in the gutter. That was what made it keep hurting. That no one gave a damn. No one was keeping score. No one was trying to be fair. They’d ground his face into the dirt and had themselves a good time going. He’d try to move on and live with it, smiling and shrugging, go-along-to-get-along Hoolian, but it would be incubating inside him like the creature from Alien. Until one day it came bursting out with gnashing jaws and dripping teeth, leaving just a useless husk behind.
     
“Ms. Aaron, those people lied,” he said coldly. “They lied and took everything I had and everything I was ever going to have. I spent the day of my father’s funeral in solitary confinement. And now you’re trying to tell me no one has to pay for that? Uh-uh. I can’t live with it. If you don’t want to take it to the next level and keep fighting for me, I’ll find some other lawyer who will.”
     
He saw her face fall and her hand close around her pearls. Oh, yeah, he had her pegged. From being in prison, he’d learned to see to the bottom of people quickly, to judge the level of their need and hunger in a glance. He’d already noticed the finger painting beside the law degree, and now he saw she had pictures of two kids on the credenza, a boy and a girl but no husband in sight. So she was a single mother who needed to get something out of this case almost as much as he did.
     
“You know we run a shoestring operation in this office,” she cautioned him. “I don’t have a lot of resources at my disposal, to hire private investigators or anything like that. If you want me to keep going with this case, you’re going to have to pitch in and do some real work yourself from time to time.”
     
“That’s all right,” he told her. “I did twenty years in the state system. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
     
“Well, all right then.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll get my papers ready and let the DA know we’re not taking any plea here.”
     
     
    7
     
     
     
FRANCIS HEARD THE crunch of dead leaves under his shoes as he walked down West 89th Street toward the Wallis family’s brownstone. This was what the change of seasons was going to amount to in a few years. The air cooling for a couple of weeks, some snowflakes melting on his face, and then— boom— a patch of ice on the sidewalk for him to slip on. What about seeing a sugar maple burst to life in front of a Pathmark in Rego Park, as gaudy and flamboyant as a Moulin Rouge cancan dancer tossing her petticoats? What about the sycamores in Riverside Park changing color, like a sun god was dripping fire on their leaves? He should drive out to the country with Patti tonight, just to look at the stars before they melted away.
     
He spotted Tom Wallis from halfway down the block, rusty hair and fair skin, sweeping up in front of the house, in pressed slacks and a white shirt with the collar buttoned, as if he’d just come home from work in the middle of the day.
     
“There he is.”
     
“What’s doing, Francis?” Tom put the broom aside and offered his hand.
     
“Good to see you, man.” Francis skipped the handshake and gave him a hearty hug. “You’re looking well.”
     
It was true. Most families of crime victims got old before their time. You could see ten years pass on their faces as soon as you did the initial notification, the eyes receding into the skull right as you said the words “I’m sorry for your loss.” And watching them at trial was even worse: the skin tone graying, the hair going lank, the posture slumping as they realized this wasn’t about justice, but the integrity of the process. That these muted lawyerly compromises and confused halfhearted witnesses were all they had to address their pain.
     
But Tom, born