Part 12 (1/2)

'Have you been back there since, you know ...?'

'Just to collect some things. I didn't linger.'

'These crime-scene cleaning companies, they can make it like it never happened.'

'Really? Can they get rid of the holes in me as well?' Parker couldn't quite manage to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

'You know what I mean.'

'I guess I do.'

'Maybe it's not what you want to hear I'm not even sure it's what I want to hear, and I can guarantee you it's not what some folk in law enforcement want to hear but if you're tiring of being a hired gun, we have room for a good investigator.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'State police not good enough for you?'

'That's not it, as well you know. I've been out for too long, that's all. And n.o.body in this state will give me a s.h.i.+eld anyway, not even with you playing cheerleader.'

'You're wrong about that. You've been protected for a long time, and don't even try to f.u.c.king pretend that you haven't. You should have lost your license ten times over, and not just once like you did. h.e.l.l, you should be in jail. How do you think you're still on the streets? You think a fairy G.o.dmother waved a wand and made the bodies go away? You have a lot of people here on your side.'

Walsh's voice had risen in anger, and heads were turning in their direction. Parker raised a hand to placate him.

'Even if you're right,' he said softly, 'and you may be, I don't think I could work within those constraints again, and that a.s.sumes I could even nail the medical. You see my hand?' He raised his left hand. 'Take it.'

'What? Are we dating now?'

'You know, you're a h.o.m.ophobe. If you want me to sign something before you touch me, I will.'

'If anyone I know sees me, I'll tell them it was a.s.sault,' said Walsh, but he reached over and took Parker's hand loosely in his.

'You feel that?' asked Parker.

'This gets weirder.'

'Just answer the question.'

'Yeah, I feel it, but barely. You're squeezing.'

'That's all the strength I have in that hand, but compared to what it was, it's like being able to bench two-fifty with it. Without pills, I get maybe two or three hours of interrupted sleep a night. I have pains in my gut, my back, and my head, and I can't tell which of them are real and which are phantoms, but all I know for sure is that they hurt the same.'

He released his grip on Walsh, who seemed relieved to get his hand back.

'The offer still stands,' said Walsh.

'And it's appreciated,' said Parker. And it was, even if he felt, rightly or wrongly, that there was an undertow of charity, maybe pity, to it. He forced the feeling away. He had no intention of taking up Walsh's offer, but deep inside him, at the edge of his awareness, the first of a series of connections had been made that would ultimately lead him to New York, and a conversation with the FBI.

An abandoned copy of the Bangor Daily News lay on the next table. The search for Oran Wilde still dominated the front page, just as it did the news cycles on TV.

'What do you think?' asked Walsh.

'I only know what I've read in the papers.'

Walsh gave him chapter and verse, but it wasn't much more than Parker had already gleaned from the news reports, apart from one recent development: Oran's friend Clyde Marshal had received another message from Oran's phone, letting him know that he was okay and everything was not the way it was being painted in the news. Oran also claimed in the message that Richie Benoit had tried to a.s.sault him, which was why he'd been forced to hurt him, but he hadn't meant to kill him. Other than that, Oran had remained under the radar, avoiding a ma.s.sive police search operation.

'Oran Wilde appears to be smarter than any sixteen-year-old boy has a right to be,' said Parker.

'That's what we're starting to think, too.'

'An accomplice? Someone who's protecting him?'

'Maybe, but I don't see how it fits with Wilde stabbing Richie Benoit. Well, I can, but it involves this other party standing back and watching him do it. And if someone is helping him, then why has Wilde been reduced to rolling and killing homeless junkies? That kind of help is kin to no help at all.'

'It's odd that he stayed in the state,' said Parker. 'Accomplice or no accomplice, it would make sense to put some serious miles between him and Maine.'

'Could be a question of resources. He is still a kid, smarter than average or not.'

Walsh scratched himself again, and gazed out the window, seemingly lost to the world. The detective watched him.

'You don't think Oran Wilde did it,' said Parker.

Walsh barely reacted. He didn't even turn his gaze back to Parker.

'Why would you say that?'

'I can see it in your face.'

'You're wrong, or just half-right,' he said. 'I'll buy the accomplice: if Oran Wilde did it, then he didn't act alone. And all of this bulls.h.i.+t about him being a disturbed child? It's just smoke. He's no more disturbed than I was at his age, and the thought of shooting my family never crossed my mind, even though my old man was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But I'm starting to wonder if Oran didn't fall under someone's influence, if he wasn't groomed to do what he did, like that shooter down in D.C., curled up in the trunk of a car with an older man. The more I find out about Oran Wilde, the less I see him having it in him to kill anyone, and yet here we are, tearing up the Northeast looking for him.'

'Anything on Facebook or social media?'

'Nothing so far. If he met someone, it wasn't online.'

They knocked it back and forth for a while longer, but Parker couldn't help. He was outside looking in, and even allowing for what Walsh had shared with him, he was still removed from all of the fragments of the investigation. A conversation in a coffee shop wasn't worth a murder book.

'I have a favor to ask,' he said, as Walsh looked set to leave.

'And there I was thinking that it was just because you wanted to hold my hand over coffee.'

'You hear about the body that washed up in Boreas?'

'I saw the bulletin. What of it?'

'The weight is toward suicide or accidental drowning.'