Free Shadows Still Remain by Peter de Jonge Page A

the heading FRIED RICE : $119.57.
    â€œHow about if I told you the exact amount and approximate time?”
    â€œThat would help.” Two minutes later, the manager points at the total on his screen: 119.57. Below it is every item on McLain’s list that has a line running through it.
    â€œWhat kind of supermarket,” asks O’Hara, “doesn’t sell ginger?”

17
    When O’Hara returns to the Seven, the air in the room has gone flat and homicide detectives she’s never seen before are sprawled at the desks normally used by Krekorian, Navarro, Loomis and herself. The homi guys look like salesmen stranded overnight in a small airport—Grimes’s expression the sourest of all—and one look into the box at Lowry’s massive sagging shoulders confirms that their prime suspect hasn’t budged.
    â€œGrimes,” says O’Hara, turning away from the window and mimicking the way the detective held his fingers a millimeter apart. “McLain still this close to giving it up? Or were you bragging about your dick again?”
    The homi guys, who don’t seem particularly fond of Grimes either, find this highly amusing. Maybe Lowry hears one of them laugh, because seconds later, he storms out of the box. “O’Hara,” he says, “where do you keep your civilian complaint forms?”
    O’Hara points to the top of a filthy file cabinet. “Why?” Without responding, Lowry takes one and goes back inside, and from the small window, O’Hara watches Lowry slide the paper across the table toward McLain. “I’m tired of your cutebullshit,” says Lowry. “Tell me what happened Wednesday night or fill out one of these.”
    â€œWhat is it?” asks McLain.
    â€œIt’s a civilian complaint form. Here, you can use my pen.”
    Confused and scared, McLain looks at the form and then up at Lowry, who has taken his .45 from his holster and stepped to McLain’s side of the steel table, where McLain’s right wrist is handcuffed to one of the legs.
    â€œWhat happened Wednesday night?” asks Lowry. “I don’t know, “says McLain. “I’ve been trying to tell you th…,” the last part inaudible as Lowry pulls McLain’s head back by his hair and shoves the gun barrel down his throat. “For the last time,” says Lowry, “what happened?” McLain shakes his head and gags.
    O’Hara waits for Lowry to put his gun away. Then she slaps the door and without waiting for a response, steps inside. “I need to show you something important,” she tells Lowry, but doesn’t let herself look at McLain. Furious, Lowry follows her out of the box into the short corridor, two mismatched bodies wedged into a space the approximate size of a phone booth, and stares incredulously as O’Hara hands him a printed receipt from Key Food.
    â€œAt one-thirty on the morning Pena was killed,” says O’Hara, “McLain went to a grocery store on Avenue A and purchased twenty items for a Thanksgiving dinner for himself and Pena. At 1:55 a.m., when he walked out of Key Food, he was carrying $119 worth of groceries, including a ten-pound turkey, potatoes, mushrooms, pecans, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. There is no way on this Earth a guy buys brusselssprouts for someone at 1:55 in the morning, then tortures, rapes and kills that same person three hours later.”
    Lowry looks bad and smells a lot worse, four hundred pounds of fat-man body odor, spiked with rage. When he talks, O’Hara feels the heat of his foul breath on her skin. “O’Hara, I don’t care if you’re a vegan, an idiot or insane. You interrupt one of my interrogations again, I’ll have your shield.”
    Lowry goes back inside and sits down across from McLain, and O’Hara returns to her post outside the door. But something in Lowry has dissipated, and just before six in the morning, he