The Carbon Murder(8)

I forced a smile. “She’s getting so big,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a voice-mail recording, which was close to how I felt. I handed the photo back.

“Oh, no. That’s your copy,” he said.

I managed a happy-sounding thank-you and slipped it into a side compartment of my purse. Matt’s partner had come a long way from the days when he resented my work with the RPD. I was sure his conversion had little to do with my competence, but was instead because I’d led him to believe I loved all children, and his daughter in particular. A misleading presentation of myself, but it had worked. He’d come to accept me as a kind of third partner in special cases.

I looked around for MC.

“Mary Catherine’s doing the paperwork,” Berger said, responding to my questioning gaze. “The guy’s in the Orange Room. We’re running his ID through the system.”

“Jake Powers,” I said, with some confidence.

Berger shook his head, flipped some pages in his notebook. “Nope. Name’s Wayne Gallen. Chemist at Houston Poly. Says he’s a colleague of Mary Catherine. Says he came to warn her about something and that’s why he was skulking around the building.”

“A warning?” I’d often worried about MC’s vulnerability among the drill pipes and rotary bits of her oil company job, but not in a research lab or classroom, and not now that she was home. What kind of danger could a chemical engineer be in, once she was out of fieldwork?

“That’s what he claims,” Berger said, scratching his fleshy chin with his notepad.

In the next few minutes—thanks to Frank’s police scanner—the blue hallway became very crowded with Galiganis in various stages of after-midnight attire. MC’s brother John, a reporter for the Revere Journal, in thick maroon sweats. Frank and Robert, father-and-son partners at the mortuary, in business casual, as if they might be picking up a client. Rose and daughter-in-law, Karla, in almost-matching navy pantsuits that they could have worn to a Civic Club luncheon. Fifteen-year-old William in respectable jeans and a clean sweatshirt, probably a condition of his being allowed to come along. I was still in my Tomasso’s outfit, consisting mostly of black fleece.

I doubted the RPD hosted such a hubbub for a prowler call-in in a normal case. The Galiganis were a key family in the city, their mortuary business and John’s newspaper job bringing them in regular contact with Revere’s infrastructure. The family even had a divorce lawyer in its ranks—Robert’s wife, Karla. Though I liked her, I hoped I’d never need her services.

An inordinate number of uniforms milled around us. I wondered if the phones, radios, and keyboards were always this busy in the early morning hours. With the staff thus occupied, it seemed an excellent time for a felony across town.

MC sat against a wall, the center of attention in her extra-large Texas sweatshirt that dwarfed her tiny body. She’d returned from talking to Wayne Gallen, who was still being held in the Orange Room.

Standing in the farthest of three semicircles around her, I caught only snippets of the chatter.

“I heard a car screech away. Wayne thinks it was them, these people who are supposedly after me,” came from MC.

“Did he get into the building? Did he hurt you?” from Rose, distraught, notwithstanding her crisp white blouse.

“Wayne says he didn’t want to lead the others to me, but he thinks he might have done exactly that,” from MC.

“What others?” from John, thankfully not taking notes for the Journal.

“Did you hear a noise or something?” from Robert.

“Why was the guy sneaking around?” from Karla. “Are you going to press charges?”

“Who is he again? I didn’t know you taught at Houston Poly,” from someone I couldn’t see.

Non sequiturs. I couldn’t stand them. I needed a logically laid-out version of the night’s events. I forced my way to the front, aware that Matt wasn’t in the immediate vicinity. I had a fleeting worry that he might be in a corner somewhere, doubled over in pain.

I scrambled closer to MC. When I brushed past William, the only person in the room shorter than I, I heard him say, “Go, Auntie Glo.” At least someone in the group was relaxed.

I leaned over MC, cross-legged on the seat of a wide gray chair. “Mary Catherine …” I said.

She gave me a frown that I read: Is this really so serious that you have to use my full name?

“MC,” I said, with a smile meant to calm us both. “Can you start from the beginning? What led you to make the call to the police in the first place?”

She took a deep breath and wrapped her hands in her sleeves. She shivered, as if she were chilled to the bone, in spite of the stuffiness of the area. “I was doing laundry in the basement and I heard a noise at the window.”