the partial remains of four young women, including Amy Strausshiem and Suzy Martin.
The cause of Morrison’s death had been ruled a suicide by cop. His choice. But I was not displeased with the ending. As far as the families of those young women were concerned, their daughters’ killer was just as dead, and perhaps more forgettable without the drawn out process of law.
Billy’s statement about responsibility and who carried it had stuck in my head for days afterward. We had all met a man in Colin O’Shea whose shoulders had been widest.
Colin had kept up his surveillance of Marci for nearly twenty hours until she had gone to work. There he recognized Morrison’s squad car in the parking lot and was trying to move to another position when Morrison suddenly accelerated out toward the park. He tailed him. He was following on foot, crossing the field when he saw the line of cops open fire. From his distance and with Morrison’s back to him, it had looked, he said, like a firing squad.
“Even the brotherhood of blue gotta break at some point, Freeman,” he said later while we both sipped our whiskeys at Kim’s and neither of us, with our histories, was smiling. O’Shea said he had never been a part of the sex games his fellow officers had played with Faith Hamlin. It had in fact disgusted him. “But I didn’t have the guts to turn them in,” he said.
But he knew the girl and her adoptive family. She had told him that her stepfather, an Irishman himself, had labeled her a whore when IAD began snooping around the case. “And I also knew the married redheaded son of a bitch who fathered Jessica,” he said. “Her life would’ve been hell there. So I took her away.”
He had helped support and counsel Faith Hamlin ever since and had never looked back “until you came along and partnered up with me again, Freeman.”
His rescue of the girl had been an act of redemption for him. Of his own volition, he’d stepped over the line more than a few times as a cop; his decision this time was to save her and let the pieces fall where they may. There was a look of resignation in his face when I told him there was no way Richards could keep it a secret. She’d have to report the discovery of a missing person to the Philadelphia department. He’d have to go back and face it.
“Guess your ex-wife ain’t gonna get those captain’s bars after all,” he said, smiling as he thought about it.
“She’ll find a way,” I answered, trying not to.
It would be a media circus when the news broke. Someone would get a photo of the little girl. Someone else’s life was going to crash. We were both quiet for a few drinks.
“It’s a hell of a thing to do, lad,” Colin suddenly said, using his old Irish brogue. “Goin’ home again.” We both drank to that.
Now I was thinking about sleet and spitting snow while the sun traveled higher in front of me and a sheen of sweat began to form on my chest. Beside me I picked up a movement of bright yellow and green in the corner of my eye. The young boy with the blue eyes was standing beside me, his sand bucket and shovel in hand.
“Josh,” a woman’s voice called from behind me. “Go down to the water, honey, and wash your bucket.”
The boy turned and skipped toward the ocean and I looked up as a pair of legs stepped into his place.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
I had to shield my eyes to see her face. She was young and very tanned and her dark hair was tucked through the back of a baseball cap.
“It is,” I said.
“You know,” she said, dropping down to face level, her knees resting in the sand, “you have my son infatuated.”
I raised my eyebrows and pointed out to the boy. While she nodded I glanced at her left hand.
“Yes,” she said, but her dark eyes were smiling. “He has come to me a couple of times with questions about a man, who I assume is you, and he wants something cylindrical and green that he thinks is somehow used to dig in the sand.”
I knitted my brow, thinking of my previous encounters with the kid, and put it together.