False Mermaid

Perhaps because of Natalie Russo. Because the killer needed to draw attention away from the river, and the other body—or bodies—buried there. Still, a parking garage meant people walking by, security cameras, a level of scrutiny even the most dim-witted criminal couldn’t possibly overlook. But as they’d soon discovered, the cameras in this garage weren’t functioning at the time of Tríona’s death—the whole security network was down for several days while a new system was being installed—there was no video of anyone coming or going from this ramp from two days before the murder to two days after. What were the chances that the killer had just been lucky? It seemed far more likely that the person who had chosen this place had done so deliberately, to avoid being caught on tape, despite leaving the car in such a public place. It was almost as if he wanted to make sure the body was discovered quickly. Looking at it that way, the location came across as a provocation, a deliberate catch-me-if-you-can. Not only did that fit Peter Hallett’s personality, it also suggested a chilling degree of premeditation.

But Nora had spent weeks digging for a connection between Peter and this parking garage—whether it was owned by any of his friends or acquaintances, located near any restaurant or business or gallery he frequented. There was no proof that he’d ever been here. Nothing. So how could he have known about the security system?

The flashlight beam bouncing off the walls caught his attention on the monitor. Truman Stark pulled his chair closer to the bank of screens to study the picture. He watched the female subject crouch down to examine the floor and felt an irresistible flicker of interest, the pulse-quickening of the first sighting. All sorts of possibilities. His work might be boring most of the time, sitting in this tiny security office and staring at monitors for hours on end, but he liked watching how people behaved when they thought no one could see them. He reached for the joystick that let him maneuver the camera and zoomed in on the subject. Not bad-looking. Looked like she could handle herself. What the hell was she doing down there?

Pushing back from the monitors, he felt for the reassuring weight of the holstered gun on his hip and left the booth, making sure to pull the door shut behind him. It wasn’t exactly standard procedure, leaving the office for something like this, but he had seniority and figured he was entitled to bend the rules once in a while. His shift was nearly over anyway. The cashiers could get him on the walkie-talkie if they ran into any trouble.

He enjoyed ranging around the building, checking the stairwells, making sure all the doors that were supposed to be locked actually were. The starched shirt and heavy shoes, they were all part of it too. He liked the noise his brogans made on the concrete floors, especially in the echoing stairwells. It felt almost like walking a beat. Sometimes he almost forgot it wasn’t real.

His whole life, all he ever wanted was to be a cop. The desire had lived inside him every single day since he was a kid, a dream that kept him safe, protected from real life. He’d practiced swearing the oath, imagined himself answering calls on the radio, in uniform. The physical stuff wasn’t a problem. He’d practiced with nightstick and cuffs and genuine police-issue sidearm until he knew how to use them blindfolded. It was the other stuff that tripped him up, all the reading and writing. That was the part he hadn’t expected. He’d tried cracking a few books that summer before community college. But the words got turned around like they always did, and trying to decipher them made his head hurt. He thought being a cop would be different, but it was all just more of the same bullshit. Books and studying and sitting in classes—it was all so flat, so foreign to him. And what good was any of that when you were out on the street?

He felt the elevator vibrate, imagined the cables and the hydraulics through the walls, riding in a box to the basement. The worst thing hadn’t been washing out of school, but going back home again. His mother was okay, but the old man couldn’t resist rubbing it in. Truman had been told so many times that he’d never make anything of himself, that he must be some kind of moron. He knew his father would make him wallow in his failure, force him to eat it every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But it must be true that meanness could give you cancer, because it was right about that time that the old man got sick. Just shriveled up, got smaller and smaller and smaller until he died. Nobody felt sorry for him, not then and not now. Not even close. What they all felt was more like relief.