Mystic River

"She ask about Katie?"

Annabeth nodded.

"What'd you tell her?"

"I just told her we'd be home soon," Annabeth said, and Sean heard a small crack in her voice on "soon."

She and Jimmy looked back at Whitey and he gave them another small, calming smile.

"I want to assure you? and this comes down all the way from the big office in City Hall? that this case is top priority. And we won't make mistakes. Trooper Devine here was assigned because he's a friend of the family and our boss knows that that'll make him work it that much harder. He's going to be with me every step of the way, and we will find the man responsible for harming your daughter."

Annabeth gave Sean a quizzical look. "Friend of the family? I don't know you."

Whitey scowled, thrown off his game.

Sean said, "Your husband and I were friends, Mrs. Marcus."

"Long time ago," Jimmy said.

"Our fathers worked together."

Annabeth nodded, still a bit confused.

Whitey said, "Mr. Marcus, you spent a good part of Saturday with your daughter at the store. Correct?"

"I did and I didn't," Jimmy said. "I was mostly in back. Katie worked the registers up front."

"But do you remember anything out of the ordinary? Was she acting odd? Tense? Fearful? Did she have a confrontation with a customer maybe?"

"Not while I was there. I'll give you the number of the guy who worked with her in the morning. Maybe something happened before I got in that he remembers."

"Appreciate that, sir. But while you were there?"

"She was herself. She was happy. Maybe a little?"

"What?"

"No, nothing."

"Sir, the littlest thing is something right now."

Annabeth leaned forward. "Jimmy?"

Jimmy gave them all an embarrassed grimace. "It's nothing. It was?I look up from my desk at one point and she's standing in the doorway. Just standing there, sipping a Coke through a straw, and looking at me."

"Looking at you."

"Yeah. And for a second, she looked like she did this one time when she was five and I was going to leave her in the car for just a sec while I ran into the drugstore. That time, right, she burst out crying because I'd just gotten back from prison and her mother had just died and I think, back then, she thought that every time you left her, even for a second, you weren't going to come back. So she'd get this look, right? I mean, whether she ended up crying or not, she'd get this look on her face like she was preparing herself to never see you again." Jimmy cleared his throat and let out a long sigh that widened his eyes. "Anyway, I hadn't seen that look in a few years, maybe seven or eight, but for a few seconds on Saturday, that's how she was looking at me."

"Like she was preparing herself to never see you again."

"Yeah." Jimmy watched Whitey write that in his report pad. "Hey, don't make too much of it. It was just a look."

"I'm not making anything out of it, Mr. Marcus, I promise. It's just info. That's what I do? I collect pieces of info until two or three pieces fit together. You say you were in prison?"

Annabeth said, "Jesus," very softly, and shook her head.

Jimmy leaned back in his chair. "Here we go."

"I'm just asking," Whitey said.

"You'd do the same if I'd said I worked at Sears fifteen years ago, right?" Jimmy chuckled. "I did time for a robbery. Two years at Deer Island. You write that in your notebook. That piece of information going to help you catch the guy who killed my daughter, Sergeant? I mean, I'm just asking."

Whitey shot a glance Sean's way.

Sean said, "Jim, no one means to offend anyone here. Let's just let it pass, get back to the point."

"The point," Jimmy said.

"Outside of that look Katie gave you," Sean said, "was there anything else out of the ordinary you can remember?"

Jimmy took his convict-in-the-yard stare off Whitey and drank some coffee. "No. Nothing. Wait? this kid, Brendan Harris? But, no, that was this morning."

"What about him?"

"He's just a kid from the neighborhood. He came in today and asked if Katie was around like he'd been expecting to see her. But they barely knew each other. It was just a little strange. It doesn't mean anything."

Whitey wrote the kid's name down anyway.

"Could she have been dating him maybe?" Sean said.

"No."

Annabeth said, "You never know, Jim?"

"I know," Jimmy said. "She wouldn't date that kid."

"No?" Sean said.

"No."

"Why you so sure?"

"Hey, Sean, what the fuck? You're going to grill me?"

"I'm not grilling you, Jim. I'm just asking how you could be so sure your daughter wasn't seeing this Brendan Harris kid."

Jimmy blew air out of his mouth and up at the ceiling. "A father knows. Okay?"

Sean decided to let it ride for now. He tossed it back to Whitey with a nod.

Whitey said, "Well, what about that? Who was she seeing?"

"No one at the moment," Annabeth said. "Far as we knew."

"How about ex-boyfriends? Anyone who might be holding a grudge? Guy she dumped or something?"

Annabeth and Jimmy looked at each other and Sean could feel it between them? a suspect.

"Bobby O'Donnell," Annabeth said eventually.

Whitey placed his pen on his report pad, stared across the table at them. "We talking about the same Bobby O'Donnell?"

Jimmy said, "I dunno. Coke dealer and pimp? About twenty-seven?"

"That's the guy," Whitey said. "We got him pegged for a lot of shit went down in your neighborhood the past two years."

"And yet you haven't charged him with anything."

"Well, first off, Mr. Marcus, I'm State Police. If this crime hadn't happened in Pen Park, I wouldn't even be here. East Bucky is, for the most part, under City jurisdiction, and I can't speak for the City cops."

Annabeth said, "I'll tell that to my friend Connie. Bobby and his friends blew up her flower shop."

"Why?" Sean asked.

"Because she wouldn't pay him," Annabeth said.

"Pay him to do what?"

"Not blow up her fucking flower shop," Annabeth said, and took another sip of coffee, Sean thinking it again? this woman was hard-core. Fuck with her at your peril.

"So your daughter," Whitey said, "was dating him."