He got out his cell and pulled up Colin’s number. On the second ring, the familiar voice said, “Hey, Bryce” in his ear. After a beat, Colin went on, “So you heard even back there, huh?”
“’Fraid so,” Bryce answered. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. Everybody’s saying that a lot today. Listen, let me call you back in five minutes, okay? I want to walk out into the parking lot.”
“Sure. ’Bye,” Bryce said. Colin wanted to talk without fifty people listening in on his end, but he didn’t want to say so while they were listening in.
“What’s going on?” Susan asked when he took the phone away from his ear. He explained. He’d just finished when the opening chords of “Came Along Too Late” came from the phone. Hey, how many Hellenistic ring tones could you find?
“I’m here,” he said, raising it again.
“Yeah, and I’m here, which is more than Mike Pitcavage can tell you right now,” Colin replied. “I always knew he cut his rotten kid too much slack. If Mike hadn’t, Darren never would’ve turned into a dealer, and he damn well did. The evidence we’ve got, not even the dumbest jury in the world’ll acquit him, and that’s saying something. But Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, Bryce, I never dreamt Mike would go and do anything like that.”
“I believe you,” Bryce said. Colin sounded plaintive, almost pleading. Those were notes his voice almost never struck. The last time Bryce could remember hearing them was when Louise left him. Colin had never dreamt she would go and do anything like that, either.
Of course, Bryce wasn’t sure how reliable his own memories of that time were. Vanessa had just traded him in on a new—no, actually on an older—model, so he also hadn’t been at his own dynamic best.
“I know you do. It means a lot to me.” Colin hesitated, then went on, “Means a lot to me right now that anybody believes me. Some of the people here, it’s like they think I drove Mike to it on purpose when I set it up so we went after Darren and dropped on him.”
“Oh, Lord!” Bryce hadn’t thought of that. He realized he should have. “Talk about blaming the messenger!”
“Yeah, well, that’s how it looks to me, too.” Colin sighed. “But it sure doesn’t look that way to everybody. Funeral’ll be in three, four days—after the coroner’s office finishes the autopsy and releases the body. All the crap you have to go through to make sure what looks like a suicide isn’t a homicide. This one looks as cut-and-dried as they ever do, but you still have to connect the dots.”
“Sure,” Bryce said. The Hellenistic kingdoms had had their bureaucratic rituals, too.
Colin sighed again. “Not too long before you called, my landline rang, and it was Caroline Pitcavage. She uninvited me—disinvited me? whatever the hell—from the funeral. Said she was sorry and everything, but seeing me there would only remind her of what I’d done to their family.”
“Ouch!” Bryce wished he could have found something more consoling than that, but it was the best he could do.
“Ouch is right.” This time, Bryce judged, Colin’s pause was for a nod. “I’ve known Caroline Pitcavage . . . gotta be twenty years now. Yeah, Mike beat me out for chief. Doesn’t mean I want to see him dead. Doesn’t mean I’d try to make him dead, either. She’s known me twenty years, too. If she doesn’t get that, she’s never known me at all.” Plaintive was the word, sure as the devil.
“She can’t be thinking straight right this minute.” Coming up with that made Bryce feel a little better. He hoped it helped Colin some, too. Whether it did or not, it was bound to be the truth.
“I know she can’t. I understand it. In my head, I understand it,” Colin said heavily. “In my gut . . . She might as well’ve kicked me in the gut when she said that. And she’s not the only one who feels that way, either. I don’t know what I can do about it. I don’t know if I can do anything, this side of quitting the force.”
“Don’t!” Bryce exclaimed. “If you do, they win.”
“I know. But if I don’t, they’re liable to win, anyway. Too damn many of ’em. Happy day, huh? Listen, good to talk to you and everything, but I’ve got to go back in there and make like I’m useful,” Colin said. “Take care.” Bryce started to answer, but found himself talking to a dead line.
* * *
A skeleton crew of uniformed cops patrolled the streets of San Atanasio. Some rode black-and-whites. More pedaled bicycles. There was talk of buying horses. The glut of rain in the L.A. basin had produced a glut of grass. Feeding them would be cheap. It would certainly be cheaper than buying gas for the police cars. But then, what wouldn’t?