Chapter Five

2:45 p.m. Monday 16th

"Please tell us about Detective Dunbar's emotional state."

The turnaround surprised Karen. "What do you mean?"

"Is he generally a happy go lucky kind of man?" Saunders prompted, "or dour, pessimistic?"

"Well, not happy go lucky. Jim's kind of serious and intense. But not pessimistic. No."

"So he's a glass half full guy?" Saunders clarified.

Karen had to shake her head. "No, I'd say he'd get the ruler out and measure it exactly." She looked at Wainright who probably shared a similar trait. "I mean he kind of has to be very organized and orderly."

Wainright lifted an eyebrow, the first facial expression he had admitted.

"Because he's blind, you know, you put something down, you have to know where it is or you waste a lot of time," Karen explained.

Wainright nodded. After a prolonged silence he asked, "Is he generally outgoing, forthcoming, or reserved?"

"Reserved. We joke that I carry a can opener next to my gun." Karen wished they'd ask their questions faster.

Another pause, then, "So, would it be possible for him to hide his emotions from you?"

"I guess, he's not so easy to read as some people, but I've been working with him for a while so eventually I catch on when something's bugging him."

"And has something been bugging him lately?" Her words coming from Wainright's mouth sounded childish.

Karen was about to protest but she remembered Fisk's request. If she was going to answer, she may as well do it properly. She thought about it. Jim held himself to almost impossible standards, and in the last month, they'd had a couple of cases go south. He'd beaten himself up over them, even though the whole squad was involved, and Marty had joined in, trying to blame Jim. Harping, as always on the white elephant in Jim's corner.

"Maybe, but nothing he wouldn't get over. You know, sometimes he and Marty don't get on. He steps all over Marty's toes and Marty rags on his blindness."

"Rags on him? As in workplace harassment?" Wainright asked, as if it were implausible.

Karen almost felt like grinning this guy was unreal if he thought that didn't happen around here. "It's nothing that hasn't been going on since he got here. And you know, if the tables were turned, I bet Jim would be just as hard on Marty…" She looked from Saunders to Wainright, "Why you asking that?"

"Our profiling suggests he might be suicidal." Wainright again, hitting her right between the eyes.

"No. No. Not Jim." Karen began to get angry, "And you are forgetting I found his cell phone, damaged, with blood on it?"

But it sounded like denial to their ears. Saunders' cell rang on his belt.

2:50 p.m. Monday 17th

Within a minute, they were gone.

Selway and Russo were nowhere to be found. The boss was on the phone, by the looks of things he was get reamed out by his boss. He had left a sheet on her desk with some names circled in red. Karen recognized a couple of guys she and Jim had put away who were now on parole. She grabbed her coat and raced out. Someone had to have had both the opportunity and motivation to hurt Jim.

Ten minutes after the heated conversation with Tunney, Fisk fielded a call from a reporter. Dunbar was in the news more than any other cop Gary had ever known. Half the time, it was some perverted hero worship, the other half, it was someone trying to boot him off the force. "Is it true that Detective Dunbar is missing? Is it true that his coat was just dragged from the river?"

"No. It was someone else's coat. Get your facts straight buddy," Fisk covered, cold settling into his own stomach. He slammed the phone down and looked out over his empty homicide squad. He'd lost detectives under his care before, and it wouldn't be the last time. But… maybe it was that Dunbar had worked so hard to just get back on the job and despite everyone's expectations, Fisk included, he'd found ways to adapt and do a great job. Gary didn't kid himself. Finding Jim's coat in the river boded ill. But he knew Jim hadn't committed suicide, and if he was dead, they had three of New York's finest homicide detectives who would stop at nothing to find the perp who did it.

2:50 p.m. Monday 16th

Despite the lack of human presence, the dump was a hive of activity. Under the garbage, insects crawled. In the air over the garbage, birds circled and descended on graceful wings to select morsels to their taste. They fought over prizes. In the shade, rats feasted on discarded leavings of the great city. By the wall, a man lay still. A dog jerked awake, snapped lethargically and ineffectively at loud insects, then dropped his head back to the chilled hand he protected. Flies buzzed.

3:00p.m. Monday 16th

Tom was about to make his regular half hour call to Central Dispatch, checking for news of Jim, when Fisk's call came through. Saunders and Wainright had just recovered Jim's coat from the river.

"What makes them think it's his?" Tom asked.

"His badge, Tom," the Boss answered.

Marty drove at breakneck speed toward the detention centre where Marybeth was being held.

The lady in question smirked as she and her lawyer entered the room. Marty waited until she was seated and leaned over the table and into her face. "What'd you do with Jim Dunbar? You fucking serial cop killer."

She turned to her lawyer and said, "See, I told you they'd be abusive. They framed me the first time, they'll try it again now."

Tom watched as the vein at Marty's temple pulsed faster. He put his hand on his partner's arm and drew him away.

"Give me a few minutes, Marty," he spoke so only Marty could hear him.

"Tom, we might not have it."

"If he's already dead, he'd rather we put her away than throw the case by being hot headed. If he's alive, we need a successful strategy."

Marty looked into Tom's eyes for a long time, before finally nodding. Then he turned away and stared out the window.

Tom ignored the woman who primped and preened without moving a muscle. He spoke to the lawyer. "I'd rather she didn't confess, because in Maryland I can ask for the death penalty."

"You have no evidence, and I won't let you frame her again."

Marybeth smirked, Marty was watching her reflection in the window. His blood pressure rose and he let loose.

Fisk shook his head. Marybeth had given them nothing, and it sounded like Russo had lost it during the interview. Better bring her in, cool her down and maybe he would take the interview himself. "Bring her back here. She's more likely to break in our house. Then I want you and Russo to get back out and re-canvass. Use her photo, get people focusing on the hour or so after Bettancourt dropped him off. Find someone who saw something around that park, a car, a woman, anything."

Marty could hear the Boss clearly. He made eye contact with Tom. It was re-scouring old ground but what else were they going to do?

5:01 p.m. Monday 16th

"And here, you can see where the New York City Council is making more land." Miguel pointed to the landfill and his tourists oohed and aah'd together. These Americans were so brash, so confident in their right to reshape the world as they saw fit that they turned the very sea into land to build on.

One young woman pointed. "Coyote?" she asked, looking at the dog who stood barking from a small mound by the wall that separated the river from the future building site.

Miguel pulled out his binoculars, not a Coyote but a dog. Now, you can think what you will of Miguel, for trying to make extra by showing off the toilet of the city, but he was a good man and went to help the dog.

Tom and Marty ran in the door, "Boss, we got a possible lead. Two separate people who were in the park on Friday say they saw a white pickup truck. Between them we got a full license plate number."

"Well, what you waiting for? Run it, run it."

Marty was already seated and hooking into DMV. Fisk and Tom waited. Within moments Marty had it. "Bingo. Michael Pale, aged 38, lives in Maryland."

"Where Marybeth started out," Tom said.

"Okay, I'll get an APB out on it now." Fisk headed back to his office. "You two go lean on her with that."

They were getting nowhere with the woman being questioned when Fisk yanked open the door. "Pale just got picked up heading east. You can go get him." He handed Tom a sheet of paper and gave Marybeth a cold look.

As Marty and Tom drove out to get the guy, Tom spoke up, "Marty, we need to take this calm, make sure he doesn't clam up like Marybeth did."

Marty look at his partner, anger boiling, he hated to be told to calm down. But he nodded, it was too important they found out what had happened. Dunbar's life could be depending on it and he made the effort to distance himself.

Twenty minutes later they had the guy shaking in his boots in interview two. Fisk looked on from the observation room. The suspect was tall and brawny, not too bright and very scared.

"No, I haven't been to any park. It must have been another truck." The tall man tried to sink lower into the chair. He couldn't look the detective in the eye for more than a moment. "Hey, can I go to the bathroom?"

"Not until we know what we want to know," Marty explained coldly. "You won't be the first guy to fill his pants in this room."

Pale blanched further and sweat beads popped out of his forehead. "Do I need a lawyer?" For someone with no priors, the guy was quick to defense.

Tom gave a chilling smile. "Depends, Pale, you done something illegal?"

"No, no I didn't do anything."

"Then why deny you were at the park?" Marty said reasonably, neatly pulling the guy away from lawyering up. "Seeing as you didn't do anything bad?"

"Seeing as you didn't kill anyone," Tom prodded.

Michael looked around like a rabbit looking for a way out of the lights.

Marty sat at the table across from the sweating suspect. He pulled two photographs from his jacket and put them face down on the table. "Just tell me everyone you saw in the park on Friday night."

"I told you, I wasn't at a park on Friday night." But Michael's attention was on the photograph and he didn't sound as certain about his own whereabouts now as he had been a moment ago.

Marty nodded and sucked at his bottom lip. "So, any security camera photo I have of you is fake is it?"

Michael looked between Tom and Marty. He swallowed, kept silent and nodded.

Marty nodded and smiled to himself. He peaked under the edge of the photos like a bad poker player and suppressed a grin. Then he turned his burning gaze on Michael who couldn't look away. The suspect's hands began to shake and he shoved them under the table onto his lap.

"You know Michael, as detectives we are trained to know when someone is lying and you are lying."

"If you tell us what you know before we show you these, it'll go easier on you. You wait, and you lose any chance you have of us taking it easy. We'll go after you for full murder one and make sure you go to the nastiest cell in the nastiest jail in the nastiest way," Tom explained from the window sill. He looked cold, mean, and confident.

Michael just shook his head.

Marty smiled. He flipped one of the photos. Marybeth, looking mean and bitter in a prison suit glared out at Michael Pale. He had no hope of hiding the recognition in his eyes. Marty read more, trust, betrayal, fear and attraction, just the tools to open up a reluctant man. Marty leaned closer. "She's in the other room telling us how you killed a cop."