“The number written on it,” I quietly tell Marino and Berger. “Two-thirty-three. That’s my burglar alarm code.”
“What?” Berger, for once, is almost speechless.
The three of us go into my great room. This time I perch on the cold hearth, like Cinderella. Berger and Marino avoid sitting on the ruined couch, but situate themselves near me,
T H E L A S T F R E C I N C T looking at me, waiting for any possible explanation. There is but one. and I think it is rather obvious. “Police and God knows who else have been in and out of my house since Saturday,” 1 begin. “A drawer in the kitchen. In it are keys to everything. My house, my car, my office, file cabinets, whatever. So it’s not like someone didn’t have easy access to a spare key to my house, and you guys had my burglar alarm code, right?” I look at Marino. “I mean, you weren’t leaving my house unarmed after you left it. And the alarm was on when we came in a little while ago.”
“We need a list of everybody who’s been inside this house,” Berger grimly decides.
“I can tell you everybody I know about,” Marino answers. “‘But I haven’t been here every time somebody else has. So I canl say I know who everybody is.”
I sigh and lean my back against the fireplace. I start naming cops I saw with my own eyes, including Jay Talley. Including Marino. “And Righter’s been in here,” I add.
“As have I,” Berger replies. “But I certainly didn’t let myself in. I had no idea what your code is.”
“Who let you in?” I ask.
Her answer is to look at Marino. It bothers me that Marino never told me he was Berger’s tour guide. It is irrational for me to feel stung. After all, who better than Marino? Who do I trust more than him? Marino is visibly agitated. He gets up and strolls through the doorway leading into my kitchen. I hear him open the drawer where I keep the keys, then he opens the refrigerator.
“Well, I was with you when you found that key in Mitch Barbosa’s pocket,” Berger starts to think out loud. “You couldn’t have put it there, couldn’t have planted it.” She is working this out. “Because you weren’t at the scene. And you didn’t touch the body unwitnessed. I mean, Marino and I were right there when you unzipped the pouch.” She blows out in frustration. “And Marino?”
“He wouldn’t,” I cut her off with a weary wave of my hand. “No way. Sure, he had access, but no way. And based on his account of the crime scene, he never saw Barbosa’s body. It was already being loaded into the ambulance when he pulled up on Mosby Court.”
“So either one of the cops at the scene did it…”
“Or more likely,” I finish her thought, “the key was placed in Barbosa’s pocket when he was killed. At the crime scene. Not where he was dumped.”
Marino walks in drinking a bottle of Spaten beer that Lucy must have bought. I don’t remember buying it. Nothing about my house seems to belong to me anymore, and Anna’s story comes to mind. I am beginning to understand the way she must have felt when Nazis occupied her family home. 1 realize, suddenly, that people can be pushed beyond anger, beyond tears, beyond protest, beyond even grief. Fipally, you just sink into a dark mire of acceptance. What is, is. And what was, is past. “I can’t live here anymore,” I tell Berger and Marino.
“You got that right,” Marino fires back in the aggressive, angry tone he seems to wear like his own skin these days.
“Look,” I say to him, “don’t bark at me anymore, Marino. We’re all angry, frustrated, worn out. I don’t understand what’s happening, but it’s clear someone connected to us is also involved in the murder of these two recent victims, these men who were tortured, and I guess whoever planted my key on Barbosa’s body wants to either implicate me in those crimes, as well, or more likely, is sending me a warning.”