Walking Shadow

"Child-care supervisor, the one she said stalked her, he threatened to sue her for defamation, so I went up and knocked him around a little, you know, to discourage him, and the bastard got a lawyer and went right to the C.O."

"The bastard," I said.

"Yeah, well C.O. got him calmed down. Made some sort of settlement that didn't get all over the papers, and I had to go. C.O. liked me, but he had no choice."

In the darkened room DeSpain's voice sounded as if he were talking through a rusty pipe.

"But you still had jocelyn I said.

"Yeah. Except as soon as I moved in with her…" he shrugged.

"She lost interest. Told me I was just an animal, just after sex like some kind of dirty animal. Came home one day and she was gone.

No note, no thanks-for-the-memories."

"You weren't forbidden fruit anymore," I said.

"Sure," DeSpain said.

"But I still knew how to be a cop. I found her easy enough. So I come up here too. C.O. knew some people here. They needed a chief. C.O. gave me a plug."

"To be near her."

DeSpain didn't say anything. In the lamplight his hands were now still. Behind him through the window I saw small lightning shimmer across the sky. It was so far away that I never did hear the thunder.

"And Lo

"When did you hook up with Lo

"I never bothered her," DeSpain said.

He leaned forward now, his face back in the lamplight, his thick hands, still pressed together, resting on the desk top.

"I'd go see her sometimes in one of those asshole fucking plays she was in," he said.

"She couldn't act for shit. But I never went near her. Just liked knowing where she was, being around, maybe, if she needed help or anything."

"Lo

"Fucking gook," DeSpain said.

"Was smuggling in Chinamen.

Been going on a long time. People on the hill that owned the mills, when the mills folded, moved into fish processing, and needed cheap labor."

"So most of the smuggled Chinese stayed here?"

"At first, then the fish plant jobs filled up. So Lo

"Kwan Chang," I said.

DeSpain nodded.

"Lo

"I knew he was wired," DeSpain said.

"And he paid you not to see the smuggling."

"Yeah."

"You know who killed Sampson?" I said.

"Yeah."

"You know why?"

"He was fooling around with Rikki Wu."

"You know how he found out?" I said.

"Jocelyn told him," DeSpain said.

"You know why she told him?"

"Probably after Sampson," DeSpain said.

"I never cared."

"She was after Christopholous," I said.

"She thought Rikki was in the way."

DeSpain was silent for a time.

"So, right broad, wrong guy," he said finally.

"Why'd she fake the kidnapping?"

"To get my attention," I said.

"She was after you?" DeSpain said.

"It was my turn."

DeSpain rocked back in his chair and sat, his body slack, his arms limp, his hands inert in his lap. He didn't speak. I didn't either.

Behind him the lightning nickered again, and, distantly after it, some thunder, not very loud.

"You thought Lo

DeSpain didn't say anything.

"You figured since she'd told him about Sampson, then she'd know Lo

DeSpain still sat looking at nothing at the edge of the lamplight.

"I figured she was squeezing him," DeSpain said.

"Be her style."

"And he wouldn't just kill her?"

"He knew about me and her. He knew he couldn't get away with killing her. I figured he took her and was going to negotiate something with me."

"So you went and got him and dragged him out to Brant Island and tried to make him tell you where she was," I said.

DeSpain was motionless and silent.

"Except, of course, he didn't know," I said.

The lightning flashed outside, shining for a strobic moment on the black-and-whites parked in the lot, and the thunder came, much closer behind it now, and rain began to rattle on the glass in DeSpain's window.

"So you beat him to death," I said.

DeSpain thought about that for a long time, his hands perfectly still in the circle of light on the desk top in front of him.

"Yeah," DeSpain said finally, "I did."

CHAPTER 51

It was raining hard now, and the water was washing down DeSpain's window in thick, silvery sheets when the lightning flashed.

"You got her with you?" DeSpain said.

"She's with Hawk," I said, "and Vi

"I'd like to see her."

"Use your phone?" I said to DeSpain.

He nodded toward it. I stood and picked it up and called Healy.

"I think you better come down here," I said to Healy.

"Port City Police Chief has confessed to murder. I'm in his office."

"I want to see her," DeSpain said.

I nodded as Healy was talking.

"Healy wants to speak with you," I said.

DeSpain shook his head.

"Won't talk to you," I said into the phone.

"We'll be in a place called The Puffin' Muffin, in the arcade at the Port City Theater."

DeSpain was on his feet when I hung up, and starting for the door. I followed along. Which was pretty much what I'd been doing since I came to Port City, just following along, about ten steps back of whatever was really going on. DeSpain went through the station without a word for anyone, and out the front door and down the steps. The rain was hard, and resentful when we walked into it. We turned left on Ocean Street and headed for the theater.

I had on my leather jacket and White Sox baseball hat. DeSpain was bare-headed, without a coat. The rain glistened on the handle of his service pistol, stuck on his belt, back of his right hipbone. His hair was plastered to his skull before we had gone five steps. He didn't seem to mind. My jacket was open and my shirt was getting wet, but I didn't want to zip up over my gun.

Jocelyn was facing the door as we walked in. Hawk was beside her and Vi

DeSpain walked directly to Jocelyn and stopped. She looked at him the way you'd look at a dirty sexual animal. He looked at her face a moment as if he were seeing someone he thought he knew but wasn't sure about. Hawk glanced at me. I made a little let-it-go hand gesture. Hawk looked back at DeSpain.

"You murderous little cunt," DeSpain said and slapped her hard across the face. The slap knocked her sprawling out of her chair and onto the floor. Hawk stood and stepped between them.