Chapter Fourteen #2
“I agree. Obviously, I couldn’t share all the data and evidence with his medicals. But they were able and willing to give me the logs on Redman’s visitor’s list. I only just received them, and will copy you.”
“That’s going to be helpful.”
“His visitors were encouraged to talk to him, read to him, tell him what was going on in their lives, in the world. In seven years, he never responded. He had brain activity, he dreamed, he was able to walk with assistance and guidance, but he never spoke, never showed any sign of awareness.”
Mira paused, sipped again. “This makes him a very determined, very disciplined man.”
“Because at some point he became aware, he could have responded, he could have walked on his own.”
“Yes. Determined, disciplined, focused.”
“He needed time to think, to plan. He had to get through the shock, the grief that held him down. He put it together, and he started to plan. People talked to him, his family would have grieved with him. His work buddy Chu would’ve visited.
Chu, negotiator, a let’s-find-a-solution type.
He’d be top of my list for saying something that triggered Redman into realizing what really happened, and that they got away with it. ”
Frowning, Eve drank coffee. “However, whoever, he figured it out. Then six years, he waits six years to strike back. How long would it take him to get back in shape?”
“Oh, months of physical therapy. Some of it painful and exhausting, at least in the first months.”
“He wouldn’t go there. He did it himself. Determined, disciplined. We have him heading west. Away.”
“Because he needed time, and to avoid the distraction of being near family and friends. And the temptation,” Mira added, “of going to them.”
“Okay, I see that. Go somewhere nobody knows him, get back in shape. But that’s not enough. He’d need to earn a living, enough for food, shelter. Then enough for whatever he needs to cook up what he’s taking.”
“Six years doesn’t seem so long with what he had to do, wanted to do. He’s meticulous, Eve. Even his fury has pinpoint focus. Brilliant, organized, heavy with survivor’s guilt with a grief that doesn’t end.”
That fit, Eve thought, with the man she was coming to know.
“He stayed off the grid for six years. He knows how to hide, more how not to be seen. I think he’s working up the chain, as he sees it, bottom to top. And I don’t know how many more links in that chain.”
“He won’t attack the innocent, those he sees as innocent. The families, a bystander, a colleague or current employee of the company who wasn’t in the mix. But, Eve, he has nothing to live for but this vengeance. He has nothing left to lose.”
“Makes him dangerous. Believe me, I know it.”
“And dangerous to anyone who tries to stop him from finishing what he sees as, not a mission, but as his duty. His duty as a husband and father. He’ll do whatever it takes to fulfill his duty. It’s what keeps him alive.”
“Understood.” Eve rose. “I’ll do what I need to do to fulfill mine. I see him. I feel for him. And I’m going to stop him.”
“I won’t bother to tell you to be careful. I don’t need to tell you to be smart. So I’ll tell you to remember that under this brutality, there’s a deep and abiding love. I don’t think there’s a keener weapon than love when it’s honed in grief and sheathed by guilt.”
“And if I can prove to him whoever’s left on his list will pay?”
“Unless there’s enough of him left of who he was before all this? I don’t know that it will matter.”
No, Eve thought as she left, neither did she. Mira always made her think. And now she thought: Duty.
She’d aimed toward revenge, fury, yes, the determination, but focus. She hadn’t, however, equated the murders with duty.
Now she would.
She turned into Homicide, squinted to protect her corneas from the tie. Flaming red today with jagged explosions of blinding white and screaming yellow.
“It’s a storm,” Jenkinson told her. “On Mars.”
“Whoever designs those ties needs to take their medication.”
“I figure they’re self-medicating already. Must be some good shit. Peabody just took a guy down to the lounge, said to let you know. Came in on his own. One of the friends of your suspect.”
Eve turned on her heel, kept moving fast.
She saw Peabody at a table with a man, mid-forties, mixed race, linebacker’s build. He had his big hands around Vending coffee Peabody had likely warned him about.
He had his head down, talking softly while Peabody wore her sympathetic look.
“Mitch, this is my partner, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Mitchell Rosenthal, linebacker, solid, now assistant coach, New York Giants,” Eve said as she sat. “You had a damn good run on the field. Now the Giants are having a pretty good year.”
He managed a weak smile that didn’t quite meet his pale blue eyes. “We’re doing okay. I got word you were talking to people about Steve.”
“You’re friends.”
“Yeah. Didn’t start off that way. We’re from the same neighborhood, didn’t always get along.
Then, um, my father died. He walked into a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine.
My parents’ anniversary, and he walked into a robbery.
He tried to help, and he died trying. Messed me up, and I got in some trouble.
Or would have. Steve got me out of it. He never said a word about it to anyone. After that, we got to be friends.”
Loyalty, Eve thought. A debt for a debt.
“He came to you when he left the health center six years ago.”
“I couldn’t believe it when he showed up at my door. I’d been to see him, plenty, and he’d just lie there, or sit if they had him sitting. Then here he is. I grabbed him, like holy shit, you know? He said he needed my help, and I had to swear not to tell anyone.”
Mitch drank some coffee, took a moment.
“I was like, ‘Come on, man. Your parents, your sister, they’re going to be crazy happy.’ But he said I had to swear, right then, right there, or he’d leave and that would be that.”
“So you swore.”
“I gave him my word. Look, I knew what he’d been through, and he’d been there for me when I needed. I knew Ari, and that little boy? God, that kid was just terrific. I’ve got one of my own now, and if anything happened to her . . . I guess I’d lose my mind, like Steve did. So I gave him my word.”
“What else did you give him?”
“A place to stay for a couple of nights. I got him some clothes. Bought them. Anything I had wouldn’t fit.
He said he needed to go away. He couldn’t stay in New York, he couldn’t be with his family and didn’t want them to know.
I was afraid he meant to go somewhere, kill himself.
But he said he wouldn’t, and since he wanted the clothes, I believed him.
And he asked me for a loan. I’d’ve given him money, but he insisted it had to be a loan for him to take it. ”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand. I couldn’t talk him out of leaving, couldn’t talk him out of not telling his family, his friends, anybody. He said he’d be back one day, when he was ready.”
“And you told no one?”
“No one. I gave him my word. A couple of months ago, long after I figured he wasn’t coming back, and it was better, after all, not to tell anyone anyway, and I go out to get in my car, drive into work.
And there on the seat—right on the seat, door’s locked—is an envelope.
Ten thousand in it, with a note thanking me for the loan, and asking me to keep my word awhile longer. ”
“Do you have the note?”
“Yeah. I kept it. I brought it.” He hitched up, pulled out his wallet, took out the folded note. “It’s Steve. He’d sometimes draw something out, calculate whatever, trying to explain how something worked, so I recognized his writing. It’s from Steve.”
“Okay. We’re going to need to keep this.”
“I broke my word.” Mitch stared into his coffee again. “And I don’t feel good about that. I broke it because you’re looking for him, and I know those two men who were killed worked with him.”
“When he came to you, when he stayed with you those nights, did he say anything about them, about the company, about his work?”
“He said he hadn’t protected Ari or his son, the daughter they should have had.
He said there were people, if they knew he’d come to me, who would hurt me or mine.
That they could and would hurt his parents, his sister.
I asked what he was talking about, but he wouldn’t say.
He said he’d be back when he was ready, then everyone would know.
Honest to God, I didn’t think he was all the way right yet.
“Maybe whoever he was talking about killed those two men. Maybe they’re after Steve. So I broke my word. You’ve got to help him. If they’re looking for him, you’ve got to find him first.”
“Where would he go?”
“I swear I don’t know. He hasn’t come to me, except to leave the envelope.
Look, Lieutenant, Detective, if he hadn’t helped me out all those years ago, I wouldn’t be what I am, wouldn’t have what I have.
I’d tell you if I knew because I want to help him.
I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him, but he must have. ”
“You kept your word all these years because he asked you to. You’ve broken it now because you want to help him. And you have.”
“Should I tell his family?”
“We’ll do that when it’s appropriate. You did the right thing today, and we appreciate the trust.”
“I don’t want him to get hurt.”
“Neither do we.”
They walked him to the elevators.
“My office,” Eve said.
“You were right, right about Redman going to someone who’d keep his secret.”
“Asked for help, told Rosenthal enough, but not the whole story. Not what had been done to him and why, or what he planned to do about it. Print out Rosenthal’s ID shot. Let’s get it on the board.”
Peabody used Eve’s comp to do so.
“He paid back the loan,” Peabody commented. “He didn’t have to do that. Ten thousand’s a good chunk.”