Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

confidently and stepped out onto the patio and looked across Taylor Creek to the Dupont Sanctuary.
    I walked down the lawn to its edge. I thought of winter coming, of ice. I thought of the body buried there, of the man Jean-Marc Bishop had killed out of perverse jealousy, of year upon year of frozen ground tightening its hold on those forgotten bones.
    After a while I had enough of ghosts and memories, and enough of this silence, so I turned to head back up to the house. But I was stopped short by the sight of someone standing on the patio. I looked at him for a moment, then started back up the lawn. We stood on the slate and faced each other. There was a good ten feet between us.
    He was in civilian clothes, slacks and a sport shirt and jacket. The shirt and jacket looked wrinkled. His face was like mine, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and restless. Looking at him was nearly as difficult as looking at my own reflection. He looked to me precisely like what he was, which was a man who had lost it all.
    “Came to savor the victory, MacManus?” he said.
    “What are you doing here, Long?”
    “I’m here to get a few things.”
    “Isn’t it kind of late in the game to be tying up loose ends? Didn’t the FBI tear this place apart already?”
    “It’s not loose ends I’m after today.” He paused. A breeze came up, carrying the smells of fall. “So I take it you’ve heard,” he said. “News travels fast in your neck of the woods.”
    “Heard what?”
    “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? To savor the victory?”
    “What victory?”
    “Someone cut Bishop in prison this morning. Cut his throat.”
    I said nothing.
    “Apparently,” Long continued, “he pissed off the wrong person. Can’t say I’m all that surprised. Of course, maybe it was something else. Maybe the Chief talked to someone who talked to someone, if you know what I mean.”
    “Jean-Marc’s dead?”
    “They don’t get any deader. Saves the state the cost of a trial, right? From what I heard, he had a shitload of doctors lined up. He was planning on claiming that he was the victim of lifelong abuse at the hands of his father. Scum to the end.”
    “Jesus,” I muttered.
    “You don’t look too happy, MacManus. I thought of all people you’d be thrilled to hear that particular piece of news. Well, you and the Chief, anyway.”
    “Are you sure about this?” I said.
    “Yeah. And your other friend, the one whose eyes you took out, they connected him to the cop that got killed last spring. He planted the gun and badge on that other leg breaker, the one who had been extradited here from Jersey. Automatic death penalty for your friend if he gets convicted, which he I’m pretty sure he will.”
    I glanced across the water toward the refuge. When I looked back at Long, his eyes were on me.
    “I doubt it’s still there,” he said. “The Chief has been doing some pretty elaborate dance moves these last two months. I’m pretty sure digging up and moving that body was one of them. If not first among them.”
    “How’d you know?”
    “About the body?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Bishop.”
    “He trusted you that much?”
    “No, he just wanted me to want the Chief out. He knew how to get to people. He knew how to get a person to do what he wanted them to do. You know that maybe better than anyone. Right? I mean, you knew Bishop the longest.”
    “No, I knew him a long time ago. There’s a difference. Tell me, did you know the gun was a trick, that Searls still had the real one?”
    Long nodded. “It wasn’t personal, MacManus, you know that. Sometimes your only choice is to make a deal with the devil.”
    I said nothing, just looked back toward the refuge and thought about the dead and the wounded, the scarred and the maimed. I thought about my own injuries, the ringing in my ears that started that night it rained nightsticks on me and has yet to go away.
    After a while I looked at Long and said, “So what are you going to do now?”
    “That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Where do disgraced cops go?”
    “Why did you do it? Why did you care that the Chief was doing what he was doing? Why’d you risk everything and take him on?”
    “I’ve got a daughter, MacManus. I’ve got a wife. We live in this town, or will anyway till the bank kicks us out of our house. I was supposed to make this town safe for them, for everyone, not just for a chosen few, not for the Chief’s sociopath son and for