“Why don’t you come home with me?” I said.
Her eyes cleared as she began to regain her composure.
“That car pulling out after me right there where she was murdered? Why didn’t he start following me long before that?” she said. “And an hour, an hour and a half, before the alarm went off. Don’t you find that an amazing coincidence?”
“Sure I do,” Marino said. “But there’ve been a lot of amazing coincidences in my career.”
“I feel foolish,” Rose said, looking down at her hands.
“All of us are tired,” I said. “I’ve got plenty of room . . .”
“We’re gonna nail Chuckle-boy for drugs,” Marino said to her. “Not-a damn thing foolish about that.”
“I’m going to stay here and go on to bed,” Rose said.
I continued to sort through what she’d told us as we went down the stairs and into the parking lot.
“Look,” Marino said, unlocking his car. “You’ve been around Chuck a whole lot more than I have. You know him a lot better, which is too bad for you.”
“And you’re going to ask me if he’s the one in the rental car following us,” I said as he backed out and turned on Randy Travis. “The answer’s no. He’s a sneak. He’s a liar and a thief, but he’s a coward, Marino. It takes a lot of arrogance to boldly tailgate someone with your high beams on. Whoever’s doing it is very sure of himself. He has no fear of being caught because he thinks he’s too smart for that.”
“Sort of the definition of a psychopath,” he said. “And now I feel worse. Shit. I don’t want to think that guy who just did Luong is the one following you and Rose.”
Roads had frozen over again and Richmond drivers, lacking sense, were sliding and spinning all over the place. Marino had his portable police radio on and was monitoring accidents.
“When are you going to turn that thing in?” I asked.
“When they come and try to take it from me,” he replied. “I ain’t turning in shit.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“The hard thing about every case we’ve ever worked,” he said, “is there’s never just one thing going on. Cops try to connect so much crap that by the time we solve the case, we could have written the victim’s biography. Half the time we find a connection, it’s not one that matters. Like the husband who gets mad at his wife. She goes out the door, pissed, and ends up abducted from a mall parking lot, raped and murdered. Her husband pissing her off didn’t make it happen. Maybe she was going shopping anyway.”
He turned into my driveway and put the truck in park. I gave him a long look.
“Marino, what are you going to do about money?”
“I’ll be all right.”
I knew it wasn’t true.
“You could help me out as a field investigator for a while,” I said “Until this suspension nonsense ends.”
He was silent. As long as Bray was there, it would never end Suspending him without pay was her way of forcing Marino to resign. If he did that, he was out of the way like AI Carson.
“I can hire you two ways;” I went on. “A case-by-case basis and you’ll get fifty dollars per . . :’
He snorted. “Fifty dollars my ass!”
“Or I can hire you part-time and eventually I’ll have to advertise the position and you’ll have to apply for it like everybody else:’
“Don’t make me sick.”
“How much are you earning now?”
“About sixty-two plus benefits,” he replied.
“The best I could do is make you a P-fourteen at senior level. Thirty hours a week. No benefits. Thirty-five a year.”
“Now that’s a good one. One of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while.”
“I can also take you on as an instructor and coordinator in death investigation at the Institute. That’s another thirtyfive. So that’s seventy. No benefits. Actually, you’ll probably make out better.”
He thought about it for a moment, sucking smoke.
“I don’t need your help right now,” he said rudely. “And hanging around medical examiners and dead bodies ain’t part of my life’s plan.”