Page 32 of Kill For Me Kill For You
‘You used to work here, right?’ said David.
‘Sure did, a long time ago. Thanks for taking this meeting. I’m glad we could set it up.’
‘Is Ruth with you?’ asked David.
‘No,’ said Scott, closing the office door behind him. ‘She couldn’t make it. She can’t leave . . . I mean, she wasn’t feeling up to it.’
David nodded, explained how sorry he was then offered Scott a seat at the other side of the desk while he returned to his green leather office chair.
‘So, what can I do for you? I understand Detective Farrow spoke to you and your wife three days ago.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Scott, before clearing his throat. ‘I wasn’t happy about the way Farrow left it. Look, I get it. Overworked cop. And getting a conviction in a case like this isn’t easy on ID evidence alone. I understand that, but it just felt like Farrow and Hernandez never even tried, you know?’
David pulled his face into something that was supposed to look sympathetic. Scott couldn’t help notice that when he said Farrow and Hernandez hadn’t put in any effort David rested an ankle on his other knee. Then he began to swivel his chair, side to side.
‘I’ve known Farrow for almost ten years. He’s a dedicated officer – married to the job. There’s blue in his veins. His father was a cop twenty plus years. Farrow is one of those pricks who calls me at four in the morning because the lab is taking too long to get him some results. Not that he’s on shift at that time either – he just doesn’t sleep. If I’d done something wrong, the one man I wouldn’t want coming after me is Farrow.’
‘So he’s dedicated, but maybe he thought he couldn’t get anything from Ruth’s case and moved on too fast, without properly looking into suspects.’
‘He talked to me about Ruth’s case. I reviewed the file. The description probably matches ten thousand people in this district alone. Even if she pointed him out in a line-up, the defense counsel would rip her apart because she only saw the attacker for what . . . half a second? And, even then, she only saw a reflection in a pane of glass. A mirror image. It’s not a good ID case.’
‘She saw his eyes. She saw his face. But the important thing is she told Farrow she would recognize the man if she saw him again.’
‘Scott, come on. You used to work here. We don’t have a suspect. And, even if we find the guy, without some other piece of corroborating evidence it’s going nowhere. I’m sorry. I’d really love to nail this son of a bitch – believe me.’
‘So even if you catch this guy, and Ruth identifies him, that’s not good enough? Unless he flat out confesses, there’s no way Ruth is going to get justice, is that what you’re telling me?’
Rush stood up, signaling the meeting was over, and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry for what happened to your wife, but I have to look at the evidence, dispassionately. You know what it’s like. There’s just no case here.’
At first Scott didn’t move. He stayed in his seat, leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor.
‘I’m sorry, Scott.’
‘So am I. I never should’ve left her alone that ni . . .’ Scott didn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t. He balled his hands into tight fists, then shook his head, breathed in and out in short staccato bursts, and then, once he’d calmed – one long exhale. He was winding himself down, before he really blew.
He got up, shook Rush’s hand. He was worried he might lose it in front of him. He wanted out of that office, right now.
‘Look, Scott, I want to help. We’ll put out the sketch on the local news, a few of the newspapers and the website. See if it shakes anything loose?’
‘Thank you.’
In five minutes, Scott was in Foley Square, headed for the subway. He stopped at a hot-food stand and bought coffee. He needed to get back to work. His firm would only tolerate so much time off, then it would become a problem. Yet he couldn’t face the office. Not yet. He sipped his coffee and wandered for a while, letting his feet take him away from the courthouses in case another lawyer from his firm caught him loitering.
There was a tightness in his chest he couldn’t shake. For the first time since the twelfth grade, he felt completely powerless. Scott had grown up in Hartford, Connecticut. An upper middle-class neighborhood and a good school. But a school filled with some bad kids all the same. Scott was small in those years. He was a late bloomer, according to his mother. His height had made him stand out, and his skinny arms were the talk of his class. He’d had to put up with insult after insult and he’d never done anything about it – until one day. His senior year, he cracked at the group of jocks who were giving him their usual treatment in the locker room. He stood up to them, said they were a bunch of pussies.
The beating he got that day, naked, in the shower, left him quivering. He didn’t know if it was the cold, or the beating, but he couldn’t stop shaking for days. That’s when he ditched his set of dumbbells and joined a gym, used some of his savings for a personal training session. All through college in New York, if Scott wasn’t studying, or in class, or out partying, he was in the gym putting in the hours.
The work had paid off. He looked like an athlete now. And he’d shot up in height his last teenage years. His shoulders widened, his arms had grown thick with muscle. What drove him was that feeling he’d had while lying on cold white tiles in his high-school shower block. He’d felt powerless. Utterly weak. Sending bad people to prison had given him a sense of fulfilment, even of revenge. But, somehow, the part of Scott that had been beaten down on that shower room floor never got back up again – no matter what he did.
That feeling of helplessness was always part of him.
And that feeling had returned in force now. This time he knew he couldn’t shake it by torturing himself in the gym, and he was no longer a prosecutor so he couldn’t heal vicariously by punishing other bad men. He would have to deal with it some other way. And hide it as best he could from Ruth.
Scott tossed the coffee and headed back to Foley Square and the subway. He wandered the streets, head down, not really looking where he was going. His mind elsewhere. As he passed the people in the street, he couldn’t help but study some of the men. The killer who’d attacked Ruth was loose.
The man who had almost murdered his wife.
Scott wanted a family, a perfect family. He was never so far away from achieving that dream, and a man had taken it from him. The killer could be any man in this city. And he was free to walk around while Ruth stayed in a hotel room like a prisoner.
