I shook my head slowly

His voice lost its levity. “Are you all right? Really? I’ve heard snippets of what happened, but not much.”

“I just want to go home, Cheswick. I’m tired and I got blood all over me, and I’m hungry, and I’m not in the best of moods.”

He patted my arm. “Well, I have good news from the DA then. From everything he’s heard, they have nothing to charge you with. You are to consider yourself released pending further investigation, don’t take any sudden trips, blah, blah, blah.”

“My gun?”

“They keep that, I’m afraid. Ballistic tests, etcetera.”

I nodded. “Figures. Can we leave now?”

“We’re gone,” he said.

***

He took me out the back entrance to avoid the press, and that’s when he told me about the photographer. “I confirmed it with the captain. The man definitely took pictures of you. He strings for both papers in town.”

I said, “I saw them hustling him out of there, but it didn’t register.”

We walked through the parking lot toward his car. His hand was on my back, as if he were ready to run interference for me or simply to hold me up. I wasn’t sure which. He said, “Are you OK, Patrick? You may want to stop at Mass. General, have yourself checked out.”

“I’m fine. What about the photographer?”

“You’ll be on the front page of the News late edition, which should be coming out any minute now. I hear the Trib picked it up too. The papers love this sort of thing. Hero detective, a morning ”

“I’m no hero,” I said. “That’s my father.”

We drove through the city in Cheswick’s Lexus. It seemed strange, everyone going about their business. I’d half expected time to have stopped, everyone frozen in place, holding their breath, awaiting further news. But people ate lunch, made phone calls, canceled dentist appointments, got their hair cut, made dinner plans, worked their jobs.

Cheswick and I argued about my ability to drive in my present state, but in the end he dropped me back at Hamilton Place and told me to call him day or night on his private line if I required his services. He drove up Tremont, and I stood outside my car, ignored the ticket on the windshield, and looked at the Common.

In the four hours since it had happened, everything had gone back to normal. The barricades had been taken away, all the questions asked, all the witnesses’ names written down. Blue Cap had been lifted into an ambulance and driven off. They’d rolled Jenna into a body bag and zipped it up, carted her off to the morgue.

Then someone had come along and hosed the blood off the cement until everything was clean again.

I took one last look and drove home.

TWELVE

When I got home, I called Angie across the street. “You heard?”

“Yes.” Her voice was small and quiet. “I called Cheswick Hartman. Did he ?”