Fall Guy

closed, like a fortune-teller minus the crystal ball and the weird outfit, I dowsed for keys. Nothing. I looked over at the bookshelf nearest the closet door, scanning the shelves for something that might hold keys, though, Lord knows, a cop should know better. It was on the highest shelf I could reach, a little tan honey pot with a lid. I took it down, feeling the heft of it, and put it on the desk. Then I took off the lid and found it was filled to the top with sets of keys. The key to the cabinets, one key fits all, were on a ring with the rest of O'Fallon's keys, one of which was no longer viable now that the locks had been changed. I had two sets of the new keys. I thought I'd give one to Brody, if he had any use for it. If Maggie wanted a set, I'd have mine copied for her. I could ask her at lunch.
    There were papers in some of the cabinets, notebooks with notes from old cases. I checked the dates. There were ten years' worth of notebooks, stopping a year earlier. I would have loved to read every word, but couldn't do that now. I thought I'd keep those, if Maggie didn't want them. The next cabinet had records and CDs. O'-Fallon had a couple of movies, too, ones he'd taped from the TV, Red River and Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather and Star Wars, a small, odd collection. There wasn't any porn, nor any porn magazines. Not so far.
    The next cabinet held the liquor. Again I thought about how easy these locks would be to pick. Unless Parker had found the honey pot with the keys as readily as I had. There was some of everything, but none of the bottles had much in them and some were drained and wrung out, not a drop left to drink, but put back anyway. Which one of them had been that thirsty? Or was this something they did together? I thought about all the empties that had been in the kitchen when Brody first brought me in here, the bottles he himself had bagged and thrown away. Mostly beer, but some booze as well. That mess was most likely left over from Parker's last party. But that didn't tell me whether or not Tim and Parker had enabled each other, talking about AA between drinks.
    I thought about where the bullet had destroyed the tiles, the place too high on the wall for the shooter to have been seated, the place that had been repaired. Perhaps all the empties were O'-Fallon's doing; maybe drinking with or without company was something he did in an attempt to numb his feelings, to wash away his sadness,
    gliding that, over time, the drinking only made things worse or that it took more and more of it to do the job.
    I needed some fresh air, even if the fresh air was hound to be as thick as soup. I took Dashiell around a couple of blocks, stopping to pick up an iced tea at Florent, heading back to O'Fallon's thinking I'd get more of the cleanup done before I called it quits. But when we got back and opened the doors, when I found myself in that depressing hallway. I kept going straight. No harm sitting in the garden while I sipped my cold drink. No harm postponing the kind of job no one liked to do. As I passed the first door on the other side of the hall, I heard a baby crying. I headed for the garden, finding the door unlocked even with no one there. I sat at the round table and watched Dashiell explore the garden, seeing with his nose in a way I couldn't even imagine. I wondered often if he saw the scents in color or if he pictured waves of gray, wishing that, for just a moment, I could live in his skin and know the world as a dog.
    The door we'd just come out of opened and there was the squalling baby in the arms of her nanny, a Caucasian child, a nut-brown caretaker, cooing to the unhappy little girl as she walked outside.
    „She's teething,“ she said, rocking the baby in her arms, a short, squat woman with a round, flat face and black hair that caught the light. The baby, who was blond and fair-skinned and looked as if the world were about to end, had her fist in her mouth.
    „I'm taking care of Detective O'Fallon's affairs,“ I volunteered, apropos of nothing, I suspected. This woman did not seem the least bit concerned about who I was or why I was there.
    „I know,“ she said. Then, „Shh, Emma, it'll be okay.“
    „Jin Mei mentioned me?“
    She nodded, looking suspiciously at Dashiell, her shoulder toward him, shielding Emma as if Dash were about to leap at her and end her teething problems forever.
    „Do you have a moment to talk?“ I asked.
    „About?“
    „Detective O'Fallon.“
    „I