Chapter Twenty-Six
Half-awake, Jim felt a movement. Something small. He had a notion he shouldn't have been able to feel it, like a cotton ball dropping onto the other side of the bed. He opened his eyes, listening.
He'd just been dreaming… What was it? Fireflies had been drifting around the ceiling of the bedroom and he'd been able to see them and he'd told Christie. She'd laughed and told him they were candles. He couldn't see her, which surprised him, because by then he was sure it was a dream. In his dreams he could always see; they were easy to differentiate from reality. In the dream she'd told him to relax and just enjoy the candles, not to worry about it. But he was worried because he couldn't see her; he was afraid he was losing her.
Now the fireflies were gone and he was awake, staring at the ceiling. Christie could have filled the room with candles and it wouldn't have made any difference.
He couldn't hear her breathing. He wasn't sure if she was beside him, but he didn't want to move until he'd figured out what had awakened him.
"Are you awake?" Christie whispered a minute later.
"My eyes are open, aren't they?" he said, and sat up. He didn't know where she'd been, but now she was over by the window.
"Are you okay?"
Jim smiled instead of getting mad. "You can stop asking me that question all the time," he said. "How long have you been up?"
"About twenty minutes."
Jim reached for his alarm clock and pushed the button to make it talk. 8:15. Jim looked over at Christie, startled. He laughed. "I feel like a kid, sleeping this late."
"Come here," she said.
Jim crawled out of bed, stretching his still-sore muscles. They were getting better, but first thing in the morning he could really feel the after affects of the fight. He joined her at the window and wrapped his arms around her. She was wearing a heavy but soft robe and he pulled the belt to cinch it tighter around her waist. Christie intertwined her fingers with his and leaned back against him.
"I've been watching this kid down on the sidewalk," she said quietly.
Jim looked toward the glass, waiting for her to paint him the picture.
"He's carving a pumpkin."
"How old is he?"
"Eight? Maybe nine. Dark hair. He's squatted down with a big spoon. It looks like someone already cut the top off for him and he's been scooping out all the insides for a while… He has a pile of seeds on some newspaper. It looks like a little pyramid."
Jim pictured it as closely as he could. He was sure the pyramid didn't have corners really, but he couldn't get that image out of his head, almost cartoonishly orange, the seeds looking like little blocks. The image in his head was right there, looking at the kid only feet away, but he tried to modify it so he was looking down from their apartment window like Christie was. In the background he caught a flash of Egypt, sand blowing down the street, then it was back to New York and the scene stabilized without new input.
"He's giving up on the spoon and he's just using his hands and flicking the seeds away." She leaned forward a little, probably to get a better view, then back. "He tossed the spoon over his shoulder and it landed in the doorway."
Jim smiled. "That's something we haven't done in a while. Maybe we should carve a pumpkin this year."
"We haven't done that since the first year we were married." Christie laughed. "You said you'd never do it again."
"I think I have more patience now." He rubbed a hand up and down her arm, then kissed her cheek from behind. "What else have you been watching?"
"I was watching you for a while."
Jim let his hand stray to his face. "How bad is it?" He probed the bruise, but he could tell it was healing because it barely hurt.
"It's the ugliest color I've ever seen. Which means it's probably going to be the next dress color we feature in the magazine." Christie glanced up at him, then back out the window. He could feel her looking around, her hair not yet combed and brushing against his face. "That's an evil-looking knife… He's starting with the eyes."
Jim chuckled and leaned down to kiss her neck, murmuring, "That's not something you want to tell a blind man." He straightened back up. "Triangles?"
"Hard to tell yet. He can't get it through the shell."
"He's doing this all by himself? Should we call the ambulance now?" Jim broke away and headed for the bathroom.
"Jimmy, have faith."
"I do. You don't see me running down there right now and wrestling that knife out of his hands, do you?" He grabbed a towel and turned on the water to let the shower warm up. "If you go out today, buy a pumpkin," he called. "And keep an eye on that kid, okay?"
"Jimmy!" she called.
"Yeah?" he asked as he stepped into the shower.
"Oh, never mind." She sounded dejected or frustrated.
Jim hurried through his shower. He wanted to dawdle and let the hot water work the kinks out of his muscles, but there was something about the tone in Christie's voice that made him rush.
Christie wasn't in the bedroom anymore when he finished. He dressed more casually than normal, khaki pants and a sweater. It was Sunday and they'd all agreed the work day would probably be short. Until they got to talk to Uncle Josiah on Monday, there wasn't a lot that could be done. Go back over all the facts, maybe talk to Michael and Antoine if they needed, but pretty casual overall.
He headed out of the apartment, determined to find Christie and make sure she was okay, but something hit his shoulder in the doorway, and something else dragged across his face. He flinched and moved back, hands already outstretched to see what it was. His fingers tangled in a string, then trailed down and found a note card floating off the bottom. Jim pulled and the string popped down easily. He ran his hand up and found a piece of tape.
"Christie?" he called, confused.
She didn't answer and he turned back to the card. Braille letters. He sat on the bed to read it, more confused than ever.
"I love you," it read at the top, every letter spelled out, not using contractions like a more advanced Braille student would. The reading was slow, still, as his fingers still had trouble distinguishing the shapes. "I want to help." Jim remembered how someone had once told her it would help him learn Braille if she left him notes to decipher. And she was always wanting to help; maybe this would be one time she could. "Good luck on the case and dinner for two when it's over."
Jim stood back up. "Christie?" He finally laughed.
It was just a note, nothing to worry about, and it didn't say she was angry and leaving… So much had run through his head in the second after he found something floating where nothing should have been, after the odd tone in her voice. He tried not to think about how much it threw him off when things were slightly out of place.
"I'm right here," she said when he got into the kitchen. "I wanted to make sure you read the note first."
He nodded. "I found it. Probably not the best place for a note, though."
"I put it on my pillow first, but you didn't find it," she said quietly.
Jim remembered the soft sound or the feeling that had woken him up. "Oh."
"I wasn't sure where to put it where you couldn't miss it…"
Jim laughed. "That works for emergencies… But it…"
"What?"
"It kinda scared me," he admitted with a laugh.
"Then we'll have to find somewhere else and you'll have to check for notes when you come home," she said matter-of-factly.
He nodded, but he was kind of proud of her for ignoring his little admittance. A few months ago she probably would have made a big deal out of it and worried about doing anything that would mess up his carefully ordered world. "I can do that." He pulled himself up on one of the bar stools, running his fingers over the card again. She set something in front of him that sounded like a coffee cup. "I love you, too," he said without looking up.
"Can I help this time?" she asked, sounding nervous.
"Sure. I'd like that." He reached for the coffee with his left hand, his right scanning the first line of her note. He kept his eyes down as a small wave of guilt washed over him. He knew he'd never be able to share everything that happened today with her. Because he wasn't going straight to work—the detectives had all decided not to show up until noon, and he had another order of business to take care of first.
He hadn't seen Anne since he'd gone blind. Another part of Jim Before, but like Galloway said, it didn't matter what she thought of him. He'd been bad enough before; it wasn't likely he could fall much further in her sights. And knowing Anne like he had, he was sure she wouldn't feel sorry for him. Anne had been his girl without pity. She'd been too logical to feel sorry for anyone. People had fallen into three categories with her: people she liked, people whose lives sucked because it was their own fault, and people who needed to get over the fact that their lives sucked and get on with life. She'd always been honest almost to a fault.
Which is why he couldn't reconcile her knowing he was married. But he'd promised Karen he wouldn't bring that up. He'd just have to chalk it up to women having so many layers he never knew what they were going to do next.
He was sitting in a coffee shop, his coffee long cold. He'd gotten there early, picked the spot because it was usually quiet. He wanted to be able to talk privately, hoped to hear her come in. He preferred getting there first to getting there second and taking the chance that Anne would take one look at him at the door and decide not to say anything, keep her presence from him.
He'd been thinking about what to say, but he didn't have a speech prepared because he didn't know what Anne was going to bring up.
"Jim."
He looked up. "Anne." He started to stand.
"No need." She pulled out a chair to his right. "Karen said you wanted to see me."
He settled back.
A second chair slid out to his left and Jim shifted his gaze, brows furrowed. Someone cleared their throat awkwardly. Female, familiar.
"Uh… Anne wanted me here as a sort of mediator," Karen said. She hadn't sat down yet.
"Karen?" It was out of his mouth, the surprise and shock of her being there, before he could stop it. It made him feel like his blindness was showing, not having known it was her as soon as she walked in the door. Not having paid enough attention to differentiate that there were two sets of footsteps.
"Is that okay?" Anne asked primly.
Jim turned to stare in her direction. He hadn't planned for Karen to be privy to this. He had to work with her everyday, depend on her. He didn't want her so close to his personal life and his past mistakes. "Do we really need a mediator?" he finally asked.
Karen's chair scraped back into place. "I trust you both. I'll be right over there if you need me."
"Karen—" Anne started.
Karen's footsteps left them without turning back.
"Anne," Jim said, feeling hurt, feeling like she'd hit below the belt, "why'd you bring Karen? She's my partner."
"So?"
Jim closed his eyes, the sounds of the coffee shop overwhelming him momentarily as his brain refused coherent thought. Anne's voice, there, though he couldn't see her, hadn't talked to her since he'd been blind. Pictures of Anne grating on his mind, chasing each other in a cacophony of light and hair and freckles and eyes and smiles he'd forgotten about.
Jim reached up and pulled off his sunglasses. He had to do this right. "Anne." He said her name slowly, testing it on his tongue. "You can't just go around telling everyone about us."
"Why not? It's not like you didn't go around bragging to everyone about your latest conquest with me."
"I didn't. Honest."
"Honest? Jimmy, when were you ever honest?"
"You don't have to believe me," he said. "But what makes you think I went around bragging? I thought I loved you. That's the only reason I had. I wasn't out to—"
"Put another notch on your bedpost?" she asked.
"No!" He shook his head emphatically.
"So you just want me to shut up? Is that all this meeting is about?"
"I'm certainly not asking to get back together."
She made a scoffing noise.
"Why would you even want to go around telling people—"
"I'm not ashamed, Jimmy. It's not like you raped me. I don't have to hide."
"Then what?" he asked, his eyebrows furrowed, his voice low and hurt.
"I want to make sure people know who you really are."
"And who am I?"
"You're the guy who seems like a good guy, but—"
"Anne! I made one mistake." He shook his head. "And it was a big one, yeah. But I don't make a habit out of this. This isn't who I am."
"No?"
"What more do you want?"
"I don't know, Jimmy. You tell me."
"I can't imagine," he said honestly.
"Me, either."
"Then please." He held a hand out beseechingly.
"I can't promise you anything."
"What else did I do that was so wrong? Why do you hate me so much?"
"Jimmy! How can you even ask that? Like nothing happened?"
"Because I was wrong and I did everything in my power to put it right. Just like you taught me."
"Don't throw that at me, Jimmy. Like anything I said or did made any impact on your life."
"It did," he said quietly, leaning forward. "Stop thinking of yourself like a conquest and start thinking of yourself as an incredible woman I couldn't resist."
"Will that make you feel better?"
"It's the truth, Anne. Only the truth." He put his sunglasses back on.
"End of conversation?" she asked. "You throw out one compliment and that's it? Jimmy Dunbar gets the last word in as always?"
"Do you have anything to add?"
"I came here today, didn't I?"
"You did. Thank you." He folded his hands and waited patiently. He could almost feel her looking him over.
"How've you been?" he asked to fill the silence.
"Not bad. You?"
"I've been good."
"Good?"
"And I've been behaving myself." He tossed her a grin.
She sighed. "This isn't a joke. You can't win me over with your little smile."
"That's not what I'm doing." He sat silently and waited again, not going to interrupt her thoughts. She was taking in everything, he knew, but what she would come up with to say, he couldn't tell.
"Karen told me about the fight," she finally said.
Jim ran a finger down the cut on his face and nodded.
"Same as always?"
"Work is, at least."
"I asked Karen to keep an eye on you," she said finally.
"Fine." He pressed his lips together. "That's fine."
"Good-bye, Jimmy."
He stood up and took Hank by the harness. "Bye, Anne. It was good seeing you."
"Don't lie," she said with a laugh.
Jim smiled down at her. "Take care."
Jim ordered Hank to the door, knowing Anne was still watching him and wondering what she was really thinking. But it was after eleven and he had work to do; he headed for the squad. It was over with Anne; he'd have to try to forget her.
"How'd it go?" Jim asked when Karen walked into the squad.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"With Anne. How'd it go?"
"How am I supposed to know?"
"Karen, I just need to know, is it over? I'm not asking you to betray her trust or anything like that."
She sat in her chair, quiet a moment. "I think so."
He nodded and turned away.
"You behaved well."
Jim shook his head. "That's not what this was about."
"Not about you always being able to say the right thing?"
"No. This was about ending something properly."
Karen was quiet a minute and Jim went back to work.
"She sighed a lot," Karen finally said. "She didn't bring you up, but I think…"
"I was too nice?" He chewed on his lip a second.
"She's just not over you. She just needs time."
Jim shrugged. "Good."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
She cleared her throat. "And, Jimmy, I wasn't planning to be there. I'm sorry about that. Anne called me this morning and said she couldn't go through with it and could I just come see her. I didn't know she was going to ask me to come in."
Jim shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I'd bet she just wanted you to see what a jerk I am. But I would have said the same thing to her, whether or not you were there."
"Hey, Karen?" Jim put out a hand before she could open the door to the interview room.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"Could I… Would you let me get the ball rolling on this one?"
She laughed. "I'd love it."
Jim smiled and opened the door. She waited for him to go in and followed slowly. Jim strode purposefully into the room, skirting Michael's chair, making a bee-line for the other side of the table. He pulled the chair out, but didn't sit. He heard Karen close the door quietly. "Morning," he said. "Sleep well?"
"You must have," Michael said.
"Like a baby. You know why?"
"No," Michael said, humoring him, "why?"
"Because I know we have the right guy in custody." Jim smiled down at him, then finally sat.
"How'd you know I didn't move that again?" Michael asked, working for control.
"Again?" Jim shook his head. "I feel like I know you really well, Mike." Jim leaned back. "You wouldn't pull the same thing twice, especially not when it didn't work the first time. Right?"
"Right…" Michael cleared his throat. "What else do you want to know?"
"Nothing much. I just wanted to have a theological discussion with you. Is that okay?"
"Why not? That'll be fun."
"I thought so. After all, it's not every day you get to talk to someone who's worked for a self-proclaimed messiah."
"You want to talk about Josiah?" Michael sounded relieved.
Jim nodded encouragingly. Michael liked to talk about Josiah, probably because then the heat wasn't on him. Jim let both of his hands rest relaxed on top of the table. If they progressed carefully they might get somewhere.
"What do you want to know?" Michael asked.
Jim leaned forward earnestly. "Is Josiah a god?"
Michael scoffed.
"No?"
"No."
"How can you be so sure? Only because you lost the fight at the warehouse?"
"If he was an all-powerful deity, what am I doing here?" Michael asked.
Jim nodded. "Good point." He tapped the table a couple times to emphasize his own point. "Didn't the prophets suffer, though?" The question was met with silence. "They had to prove they had faith, right? And maybe be given the chance to renounce the messiah three times?" Jim waited, staring across the table without blinking. He'd left his sunglasses behind again and hoped he could still produce the desired affects just by looking at a perp. He kept his face open and calm.
"Do you think he's a god?" Michael finally asked.
Jim frowned a second. "I'm asking you. You know him better than anyone, right? Don't you sit on the right hand of the man who killed your father?"
Michael laughed, low. "You're as loony as he is."
Jim smiled. "We have a witness who's going to testify that you killed Samantha."
"Really?"
"You want to get it off your chest? Come clean?"
"I don't do confession; I'm not Catholic anymore," Michael said.
"Let's pretend," Jim said.
"Sins and transgressions, right?" Michael asked. "See, that depends on your definitions of right and wrong."
"You expect us to believe you don't know right from wrong?" Jim gave him a disbelieving look. "Even if you killed your parents yourself, that doesn't mean you didn't know what you were doing."
"If you think I'm ignoring my conscience, that means you think I have one. In which case, what am I doing here?"
Jim smiled. "A couple days ago you told us you were confessing Uncle Josiah's sins because you were having "pangs of conscience" or something like that. You ignoring them now that it's you on the line and not your boss?"
"Stop looking at me like that."
"That's the second time you've yelled at me for smiling, too. Why?"
"Stop toying with me!"
"I don't play games with people in your position, Michael," Jim said calmly. He relaxed back in the chair. "Why'd you kill Samantha?"
"I didn't."
"Sure you did."
"Why would you kill someone?"
Jim scratched his head. "I like to think I'm noble, so I'd want it to be for a good cause. You?"
"I would never pretend to be something I'm not. I'd kill someone because I didn't like them."
Jim nodded. "Understandable." He heard Karen shifting from foot to foot behind Michael, uncomfortable but curious. She seemed to be keeping out of the way so she wouldn't distract Michael, even keeping out of his line of sight. "But you let your parents be killed so they wouldn't suffer, right? Isn't that noble?"
"No. It's sick. They gave birth to me."
"It's wrong?"
"No. It's just sick."
"Didn't it end their suffering?"
"Who am I to say if they are suffering? Who am I to say I didn't just end the only life we have? If there's nothing after this, I didn't do them a favor."
"Then why?"
"Because they were in the way. I was in their way, so they sent me places to get rid of me. They were in my way because I just wanted to be home."
"You made a new home with Josiah."
"I learned a lot."
Jim leaned forward. "So you wouldn't subscribe to his philosophy of ending a life for a good cause?"
"He wouldn't kill anyone, good cause or not."
"No?"
"He doesn't believe in killing. That's why he experiments with medicines. He wants to cure people because he doesn't believe there's anything after this life. He's the Messiah of the Now, so to speak. Get it while the getting's good."
"Then the poison?"
"Was an accident—whoops, that one kills people. If people ask for it for themselves, he gives it. Otherwise it's off-limits."
"Then what's it doing getting around? And why'd some of his followers die from it, like Samantha?"
"One of the other guys, he works with me sometimes, he distributes the stuff without Josiah knowing."
"But he doesn't charge for it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"He thinks he's doing humanity a favor. And money doesn't mean much. He'd rather have the contacts he makes than the cash."
"So you would kill someone you didn't like?" Jim asked. "How?"
"As painfully as possible. You?"
"I wouldn't want them to suffer. That wouldn't be noble, to torture them."
Michael tried to laugh, but it fell short. "You're the knight in shining armor, I'm your adversary. Come get me, detective."
Jim smiled. "Yeah, but I like you. You don't deserve to die."
"No?"
"Why'd you kill Samantha?"
Michael pushed his chair back suddenly and walked away. Jim tensed, ready. "Why would I kill someone I didn't hate?" he finally asked from over by the window.
"And in the least painful way possible? And then shoot her after she was dead so it looked like the same death as Glenn Bartlett's?"
"I didn't like Glenn. He suffered from that gunshot. He couldn't move hardly. But he felt it. He'd been working for me, Josiah didn't even know I had my own following. I played with him, tested everything Josiah taught me on him. He was going to betray me. And when Josiah found out Samantha had a baby boy, he thought Glenn was the father. I didn't know he was her cousin, but I sure didn't mind killing him. Even if he was a friend."
"And you were in love with Samantha, weren't you?"
"I would have died for her."
"That's saying a lot, coming from you."
"Yeah…"
"So why?"
"I got scared. Of dying myself. I thought I would have died for her, but when it came down to her or me… At least she was happy. She came willingly and she agreed to save me." Jim waited in the silence that followed. "Samantha was Uncle Josiah's favorite little girl. But she didn't like him that much, not as a man. As a messiah, she worshipped him."
"She loved you?"
"No. She slept with a lot of guys. But I kept getting her pregnant!" Michael kicked something. "I knew something no one else knew. No matter how much Uncle Josiah tried, he always ended up with female babies, if he got a girl pregnant. He couldn't have boys. Then Samantha gets pregnant, and it keeps coming up male. And since she was diabetic, she had to have all this prenatal care, ultrasounds all the time.
"I made her miscarry the first one. I studied chemistry enough, and Josiah taught me enough, I knew how to do it. It almost killed her anyway.
"The second time she got scared. She swore she'd just disappear for a while and give the baby up. But she never came back. She couldn't give up the baby, but she knew she couldn't come back with a boy.
"The third time…" Michael trailed off.
Jim waited a whole minute, but Michael didn't pick back up. "The third time?"
"I loved her. I did. I promised to take her away, just the two of us. But she said she was a prophet and she couldn't leave when the message had to be spread. I said that was crazy, but she insisted!
"That's when I found out she was sick. She was recruiting people to the cause. Josiah had only wanted to help people who were already in trouble, but Samantha was causing trouble. She hooked up with Brian—Reg—and they were wiping out bank accounts. Josiah thought all the money was coming from her trust fund. He didn't know she was creating lost souls."
"Isn't that noble?" Jim asked after a moment. "Your intentions when you killed her, you were saving people."
"I loved her! And I don't like people! I should have let her keep doing—I don't know why I didn't. I should have encouraged her. The world would have been a better place. Everyone would have been the same, eventually. All poor and miserable."
"Insanity plea?" Tom asked.
"Insanity plea," Marty agreed.
"Guys," Jim said, wrinkling his nose distastefully. "Don't."
"How'd you get him to talk?" Tom asked.
Jim shrugged. "Everything with him's always been so carefully controlled… I thought if I just relaxed and let go, maybe…" He shrugged again. It had helped that Michael seemed to become annoyed every time Jim had smiled at him on previous interviews.
"And you, our resident control freak?" Tom said with a laugh. "Whatever works."
"How'd it feel, letting go?" Marty asked.
"Good, actually." Jim carefully measured his steps and walked back to his desk slowly. Some things, he had to have control, but others, he could let them get out of hand. The world wouldn't end.
"You'd only kill someone for a good cause?" Marty asked.
Jim sank into his chair. "If I had to."
"But that doesn't extend to anything with eight legs?"
"What?"
"Spiders, Jim."
"Oh!" He'd forgotten about that.
The interview room door opened and Karen stepped out.
"I still feel bad about that," he said, then raised his voice to call over to Karen. "Karen, I'm sorry for making you kill that spider."
Her footsteps paused. After a moment she said, "It's okay. It's not like I've never killed a spider before that."
"Is he done with his statement?" Tom asked.
"Not yet. It's pretty long and poetic from what I saw," Karen said.
"Does that mean the case is almost over?"
"I'll believe it when I see it," Jim said.
Tom laughed. "If that's the case, we'll be working this until we die."
Jim let out a deep breath, puffing his cheeks out. "We should celebrate." That suggestion was met with groans all around. Jim laughed. "Not tonight," he clarified.
"Good," Karen said. "Then I'm game."
"Me, too," Tom said.
Jim looked over at Marty.
"Yeah," Marty said.
There as a knock on the interview room door.
"He's done," Karen said.
"Well?" Fisk asked. "Any loose ends we need to tie up?"
"Rob Mulhaney's still looking into the death of his son," Jim said. "He's taking over looking into Uncle Josiah. He'll pick up the contents of the filing cabinet in the morning."
"We have a statement on the deaths of Glenn Bartlett and Samantha Whittleton. We found Artez. Laine Campbell's on her way home to stay with her mom a while. Mrs. Whittleton has a new grandson. And our cop friend was a suicide," Tom listed.
"It looks like Michael's really 23," Karen said. "I'm guessing Uncle Josiah changed it, either so he'd seem less of a threat, or just in case anyone started looking into the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Hershach."
"Do we know what really happened when they died?" Fisk settled onto the desk next to Jim's.
"We'd have to talk to Josiah Wilkins about that, but Michael was pretty adamant about it not being natural," Karen said.
"Artez and DeLana will testify?"
"Against Michael, yeah. They didn't know much about Josiah."
"What about Samantha and those phone calls?"
"Near as we can tell, she and Michael made the tapes as a joke, but as for who called while he was in jail, he's not talking." Karen sighed. "It looks like he has as many friends as Josiah does and he's not giving them up."
"I don't know who's more crazy," Fisk said, "Michael Hershach or this Uncle Josiah character. What's our feel on Uncle Josiah?"
Jim leaned back in his chair. "I wouldn't put it past the guy to make Michael think he's taking one for the team," Jim said. Even though they had a confession, he still had his doubts as to the finality of the case. He doubted Michael was solely at fault, but he also doubted they'd get much real evidence on Josiah.
"You think maybe he's just the fall guy?"
"Maybe."
"But can we prove it?" Karen asked. She started tapping something on her desk.
"If Michael's just taking the rap, why'd he try to frame Uncle Josiah in the first place?" Marty asked. "We know he's capable of murder, so who's to say Uncle J isn't completely innocent? If this guy is just some warped pastor, why frame him? And then why come back and admit he's the one who did the crime?"
"To throw us off? Sometimes the best way to mislead someone is to take them straight to the truth, then prove the opposite. Josiah's good at that," Jim said. "He could easily be more guilty than Michael."
"We still can't prove any of it."
"No. We can't," Jim said sadly.
"To top it off, we have a confession. That's a bit of a problem if you want to pin the crime on someone else."
"The gun was registered to Michael," Karen said.
"All the fingerprints went back to Michael and his buddy Antoine," Marty said.
"Even the chemicals from the dumpster, they don't point to Uncle J," Tom said.
"Same thing happened when Walter was investigating him as a kid," Jim said. "They could never pin anything on him."
"Maybe Mulhaney will get something," Karen said hopefully.
"Yeah… You know, I really want to talk to Josiah again, though."
"What for?"
"I have to, Karen. You weren't there." Jim shook his head. "Even if it has nothing to do with this case, I need to see him again. We know where he's going to be tomorrow; how can we pass up that opportunity?" He smiled over at her.
"All right…" she slowly agreed.
"And if he pulls something again?" Tom asked.
"Let's just hope I won't fall into his trap."
"You better not," Fisk warned. He stood up. "Get to a stopping point, then go home, get some rest. We'll tie everything up tomorrow."