I’ll be right back.”
He crossed the street to his car and opened the trunk.
When he returned, he was carrying the usual large brown paper bag police used for evidence. While I held it open, he maneuvered the comb and pencils to drop Danny’s leftovers inside.
“I know I should take this into the property room, but they don’t like food in there.
Besides. there’s no fridge.”
Paper crackled as he folded shut the top of the evidence bag.
Our feet made scuffing noises on pavement as we walked.
“Hell, it’s colder than any refrigerator out here,” he went on. “if we get any prints they’ll probably be his. But I’ll get the labs to check anyway.”
He locked the bag inside his trunk, where I knew he had stored evidence many times before. Marino’s reluctance to follow departmental rules went beyond his dress.
I looked around the dark street lined with cars. “Whatever happened started right here,” I said.
Marino was silent as he looked around, too. Then he asked, “You think it was your Benz? You think that was the motive?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Well, it could be robbery. The car made him look rich even if he wasn’t.”
I was overwhelmed by guilt again.
“But I still think he might have met someone he wanted to pick up.”
“Maybe it would be easier if he had been up to no good I said. “Maybe it would be easier for all of us because then we could blame him for being killed.”
Marino was silent as he looked at me. “Go home and get some sleep. You want me to follow you?”
“Thank you. I’ll be fine.”
But I wasn’t, really. The drive was longer and darker than I remembered, and I felt unusually unskilled at everything I tried to do. Even rolling down the window at the toll booth and finding the right change was hard. Then the token I tossed missed the bin, and when someone behind me honked, I jumped. I was so out of sorts I could think of nothing that might calm me down, not even whiskey. I returned to my neighborhood at nearly one A.m., and the guard who let me through was grim, and I expected he had heard the news, too, and knew where I had been. When I pulled up to my house, I was stunned to see Lucy’s Suburb an parked in the drive.
She was up and seemed recovered, stretched out on the couch in the gathering room.
The fire was on, and she had a blanket over her legs, and on TV, Robin Williams was hilarious at the Met.
“What happened?” I sat in a chair nearby. “How did your car get here’?”
She had glasses on and was reading some sort of manual that had been published by the FBI. “Your answering service called,” she said. “This guy who was driving my car arrived at your office downtown and your assistant never showed up. What’s his name, Danny? So the guy in my car calls, and next thing the phone’s ringing here. I had him drive to the guard booth, and that’s where I met him.”
“But what happened’?” I asked again. “I don’t even know the name of this person. He was supposed to be an acquaintance of Danny’s. Danny was driving my car. They were supposed to park both vehicles behind my office.” I stopped and simply stared.
“Lucy, do you have any idea what’s going on? Do you know why I’m home so late?”
She picked up the remote control and turned the television off. “All I know is you got called out on a case. That’s what you said to me right before you left.”
So I told her. I told her who Danny was and that he was dead, and I explained about my car. I gave her every detail.
“Lucy, do you have any idea who this person was who dropped off your car?” I then said.
“I don’t know.” She was sitting up now. “Some Hispanic guy named Rick. He had an earring, short hair and looked maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. He was very polite, nice.”
“Where is he now?” I said. “You didn’t just take your car from him.”