Things Fall Apart Read online

  “Then you arrested his son,” the woman said.

  It wasn’t a question. She never would have got away with it on Jeopardy! Colin figured he needed to answer it anyhow. “That’s right. We did, on felony drug-dealing charges,” he said. “In California, anyone arrested on a felony charge has to give a DNA sample. So we took one from Darren Pitcavage.”

  “What was his father’s reaction to that? The chief’s reaction?” a reporter asked.

  “Mike Pitcavage was upset. He wasn’t just upset because his son had been arrested on a felony charge. He was upset because they were going to take a DNA sample. He told me so, more than once,” Colin said.

  “Did he put unusual stress on that?” the reporter asked.

  “Looking back, I think he did. At the time, I have to say I didn’t make that much of it. I just figured he’d come a little unhinged because of what Darren had done,” Colin answered. “Then he killed himself that night. At first, we assumed it was because of his son’s arrest and disgrace.” Colin found himself making a small, unhappy noise down deep in his chest. Much the bigger part of the San Atanasio PD had blamed him for busting darling Darren. That was a very bad time. He made himself continue, “Then we found out he had other reasons.”

  “When you did Darren Pitcavage’s DNA.” Again, it wasn’t a question. Again, it still needed answering.

  Lucy Chen’s turn. “That’s right,” she said. “You need to understand, I am very familiar with the South Bay Strangler’s pattern. When I analyzed Darren Pitcavage’s DNA, I saw at once how close to the Strangler’s it was.”

  “Police departments in California have already solved several cases when the DNA from a criminal’s relative led them to the actual perpetrator,” Dr. Ishikawa added.

  “But chief Pitcavage was already dead before you tested his son’s DNA?” the reporter from CNN asked.

  “Yes. He committed suicide the night after his son was arrested. He must have known Darren’s DNA would point toward him,” Colin said. “He didn’t wait around to see what came of that.”

  “Hadn’t Darren Pitcavage been arrested before?” the CNN guy asked.

  “Yes, but never on a felony. We don’t take DNA samples after misdemeanor arrests,” Colin answered.

  The reporter looked down at his notes. He’d probably carried an iPad before the eruption, but the Net was pretty threadbare these days. Scribbles on paper might not be cool or sexy, but they always worked. “Some of the things he was accused of seem pretty strong for misdemeanors. Did his father have anything to do with the light charges?”

  Of course he did, Colin thought. That had pissed him off for years, though he’d chalked it up to nothing more than a prominent man protecting his only son. Mike Pitcavage had had other things on his mind, though—yeah, just a few. Aloud, Colin said, “I know the police recommended felony charges once or twice. The district attorney chose not to file them till this last time. You’d have to ask him about his reasons.” He didn’t usually pass the buck. Today, he did it without the slightest hesitation.

  “He’s not here.” The CNN guy stated the obvious. Several reporters asked, “Where do we find him?”

  “His office is in the city hall, around the corner from this building,” Colin said helpfully. If the DA didn’t like it, too damn bad.

  “How do you feel about this, Lieutenant Ferguson?” one of the locals called.

  Colin pursed his lips and blew out a long breath. He’d hoped they wouldn’t ask him that. Talking about what happened wasn’t easy, but he could do it. All he knew about feelings was that he didn’t know much about them. If he hadn’t known that, his ex-wife could have instructed him in great detail on his ignorance.

  “You think you know somebody,” he said slowly. “And you do know him. You know him as another cop, and you know him as a guy who puts on a nice barbecue in his back yard, a guy who it’s pretty good to drink a beer with when you’re off duty. But you never imagine the . . . the monster in the cave down underneath, the monster that only comes out at night.”

  Back in the day, he supposed, somebody could have got that kind of shock by suddenly discovering an old friend was gay. People now were harder to stun that way, which was bound to be a good thing. But there were still secrets, dark secrets. Colin was sure there always would be.

  “May I speak to that?” Lucy said. Since nobody told her no, she went on, “When I recognized that Darren Pitcavage’s DNA was close to the Strangler’s, I didn’t want to believe it. When I tested the chief’s and saw that it matched the Strangler’s, I felt like the world had come to an end.”

  “It felt that way to me, too, when Ms. Chen brought me the results,” Dr. Ishikawa said. “I am a coroner. I work with many things most people do not want to think about. I did not want to think about this. But what choice did I have? What choice do any of us have?”

  Colin hoped that would make the reporters shut up and go away. No such luck, of course. One of them asked, “Lieutenant Ferguson, what tipped you off to the fact that Darren Pitcavage was engaging in drug-dealing activities?”

  Not drug dealing, mind you. Drug-dealing activities. Didn’t anybody speak English any more? It seemed unlikely. Did the fellow with the sprayed hair know about Marshall? Colin took refuge in officialese of his own: “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that right now. Darren Pitcavage hasn’t gone to trial yet.”

  “Let me ask you a different question, then,” the reporter said. “How difficult was it to implement the investigation when the person you were investigating was your police chief’s son?”

  “It was awkward,” Colin answered truthfully.

  “Chief Pitcavage wasn’t aware of the investigation until his son was actually arrested?”

  “That’s correct,” Colin said, and not another word.

  The reporter kept prodding: “That was because you didn’t trust him not to inform his son that he was being investigated?”

  “Yes.” Colin hoped he could get away with leaving it there, but the way the reporters all stirred showed him he couldn’t. With a mental sigh, he went on, “You have to remember, at that time I had no idea Chief Pitcavage was the South Bay Strangler. I didn’t know he would do anything he could to keep Darren from having to give a DNA sample on account of that. But I did know he was Darren’s father, and fathers are liable to do anything to protect their sons.”

  “Suppose the chief hadn’t been the Strangler. How much hot water would you be in now for busting his son behind his back, if you know what I mean?”

  That was an honest-to-God shrewd question. With his jaundiced view of the press, Colin hadn’t thought the man capable of such a thing. Fortunately, it was also a question he didn’t have to answer. “I don’t want to deal in hypotheticals,” he said. “Haven’t we got enough real troubles to worry about?”

  To his relief, another man asked Lucy Chen, “You had access to Chief Pitcavage’s DNA because of the autopsy after his suicide?”

  “That’s correct,” she said. “I didn’t know if Darren Pitcavage had other close male relatives, but I did know his DNA was highly similar to the South Bay Strangler’s. I checked the sample I could get, and I found that it matched the Strangler’s pattern.”

  “There’s no possibility of a mistake?” the reporter asked.

  That was a mistake. Lucy bristled. “I don’t think so,” she snapped. “And this is not just my judgment, not any more. Because the issue is so important, several other analyses have been made independent of mine. They all show exactly the same result. Without any doubt, Chief Pitcavage was the South Bay Strangler.” And you can go fuck yourself, pal. She didn’t say it, but her attitude did.

  “That he killed himself as soon as he knew his son would have to give a DNA sample argues pretty strongly for a guilty conscience,” Colin added.

  “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,” the San Atanasio PIO said, which meant Enough, already. Now get lost.

  They streamed away. Their trucks would send chunks o
f the press conference up to the satellites. People who had power would watch the chunks and decide they knew all about what had happened. Colin Ferguson knew only too well that he didn’t. Only one man ever had, and Mike Pitcavage wasn’t answering questions from any earthly authority.

  “Boy, that was fun,” Lucy Chen said.

  “Not,” Colin agreed.

  “You all did a good job,” the PIO said.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Ishikawa said.

  “I hope I never have to do another job like that as long as I live,” Colin said. The coroner’s head bobbed up and down. So did Lucy’s.

  And so did the public information officer’s. “I believe you,” she said. “But you did it well anyhow. You made San Atanasio look . . .” She paused, perhaps wondering how to finish that.

  Colin took a shot at it for her: “Just bad instead of really awful.”

  “That isn’t what I was going to say.” But the PIO didn’t tell him what would have come out of her mouth. Colin didn’t try to push her. Sometimes not explaining was better.

  Colin stood up and stretched. Something in his back crunched. The city chair hadn’t been what anyone would call comfortable. He hadn’t been exactly loose while he was sitting in it, either.

  “Back to work,” he said. “If I don’t have to mess with anything but punks and drunks and lunks for a while, I’ll be the happiest man in the world, and you can take that to the bank.”

  For years, he’d walked to his desk in the big communal office in the cop shop without anybody paying attention to him unless someone needed to talk about the latest robbery or stabbing or whatever the hell. He’d taken that anonymity for granted. It was part of fitting in at your job.

  Or it had been. He’d lost that immunity from notice when Mike Pitcavage killed himself. Most of the people in the San Atanasio PD had decided he’d driven Pitcavage to it by arresting Darren. The rest figured Darren had it coming, and that his father overreacted to the humiliation. Everybody on both sides stared at every move Colin made.

  Now people knew the chief had had other reasons for committing suicide. They still stared at Colin. He wished like hell they’d cut it out. Chances were the world would warm up after the supervolcano eruption finally wore off before he got his wish—and the poor old world probably wouldn’t warm up again till long after he was dead and gone.

  He wasn’t sorry to see Gabe Sanchez nod at him. “How’d it go, Colin?” Gabe asked. They’d worked together a long time.

  “Well, it could have been worse,” Colin allowed.

  The detective scratched at the corner of his graying mustache. “Can’t ask for too much more than that,” he said. Like Colin, he had a limited sense of possibility—except for the ways things could go wrong. He stood up and headed for the door. “Gotta get my fix. They’d string me up by the short hairs if I lit one in here.”

  They would, too. Not many places had stricter rules against smoking indoors than San Atanasio’s. Colin was glad he’d escaped one bad habit, anyway. His eyes followed Gabe to the exit. As far as he could tell, they were the only ones that did. He was jealous of his friend because of that.

  He sat down at his desk. Yes, the eyes were on him. No, he couldn’t do anything about it. All he could do was go on. People didn’t stop robbing and fighting and shooting just because Mike Pitcavage grabbed some of the headlines for a little while.

  He was checking to see if they’d found a match for the prints in a robbery at the Popeye’s Chicken on Braxton Bragg Boulevard when the phone rang. He picked it up. “Ferguson.”

  “Hello, Colin.” A woman’s voice: familiar, familiar with him and familiar to him. For a split second, he thought it was Louise. But it wasn’t his ex. He’d just realized as much when the voice—the woman—went on, “This is Caroline Pitcavage.”

  “Oh,” he said, more an exhalation than a word. It was an exhalation of more than a little pain, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. After a moment, he managed, “I’m sorry, Caroline. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “Funny,” Mike Pitcavage’s widow said, though she didn’t sound amused. “I was calling to tell you the same thing. After Darren got arrested, after Mike . . . did what he did, I thought some horrible things about you. I said some horrible things about you, too. I blamed you, is what I did. But now I know why Mike . . . swallowed the pills and put the bag over his head. I owe you an apology, a big one. I am sorry, Colin—God knows I am.”

  “It’s okay,” Colin said. “Before we knew, uh, what was up, I was kicking myself pretty hard, too.” Before they knew what was up, he’d wondered whether Caroline would come after him with a shotgun. He’d also wondered whether a San Atanasio jury would convict her if she did. Not that he would have been in any position to appreciate the verdict either way.

  “I believe you,” she said. “Now I believe you, anyway. Now I just wish he would have done that years ago, the first time he got the urge to do . . . what he did. I lived with a monster all those years. I lived with a monster, and I had no idea. Not a clue. Not one single, solitary goddamn clue.”

  “I know you didn’t, Caroline,” Colin replied. As he’d said at the press conference, some people who did things like that were normal—at least on the outside—except when the compulsion grabbed them. It didn’t happen often, thank heaven, but it happened.

  Caroline Pitcavage went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “Everything I had, everything we had together, it was all nothing. No, it was worse than nothing. It was a lie. How do you go on when most of your adult life all of a sudden turns out to be a lie?”

  “It’s not easy,” Colin said slowly. He’d thought he’d had a fairly happy first marriage. And he had, at least from his point of view, till Louise decided she wasn’t happy and decided to try her luck with her aerobics instructor instead. Colin had reacted to the ordinary tragedy the way an ordinary man would have. He’d drunk too damn much and he’d gone on vacation to Yellowstone National Park to run away from his troubles. And he’d met Kelly there, and his life had started to turn itself around.

  But that was an ordinary tragedy. Ones just like it happened every day in towns from Nome to Key West. Caroline’s was piled a lot higher and deeper. No sooner than that thought crossed his mind, she said, “You know what the real kick in the head is?”

  “Tell me,” Colin urged.

  He was sorry immediately afterwards, because she answered, “If the son we raised hadn’t turned out to be a stupid little shit, I’d still be glad I was married to a mass murderer. How about that?”

  “Caroline . . .” Colin said helplessly.

  “He didn’t take all the pills. He knew just how many he needed. I’m sure I could find another plastic bag somewhere, too,” Caroline said. Quickly, she added, “No, don’t call 911. I don’t mean it. That would be something he’d want me to do, damn him. I wonder how much Oprah or Ellen would pay me to turn myself inside out on national TV.”

  Probably quite a bit, Colin thought. Aloud, all he said was, “Maybe you don’t want to do anything too real fast.”

  “Maybe I don’t. But maybe I do, too. Gotta get on while Mike’s still hot news, right?” Caroline sounded brittle, and who could blame her? She went on, “One more thing to talk to my lawyer about. He’ll send his kids to Harvard thanks to me any which way, if it hasn’t frozen solid by the time they get there. Take care, Colin. None of this was your fault, and I am sorry I thought it was.” She hung up before he could respond.

  “Jesus,” he said as he set down his own phone’s handset.

  Gabe had come back from his cigarette break. “Who was that?” he asked from a couple of desks away.

  “Caroline Pitcavage.”

  Gabe said “Jesus!” too.

  “Tell me about it,” Colin said. “Right this minute, drinking lunch looks like the best idea I’ve had in years. Wanna come along?” Gabe didn’t tell him no. Colin hadn’t thought he would.

  II

  L

  ouise Ferguson looked n
ervously at the battery-powered clock on the wall in the condo’s cramped little kitchen. She had to head for the bus stop if she was going to get to the Van Slyke Pharmacy on time. Where was Marshall, dammit? If she had to drag James Henry with her when she went in, nobody would be happy with her, not her preschool son, not her grown son, and not her boss, either. The security gate at the front of the condominium complex stood open. When the electricity was out, as it was so much these days, the gate was useless. Arrivals couldn’t buzz the people they were visiting. One of these days, the turbines on the Columbia that the dust and ash and silt from the supervolcano had killed would finally get replaced. One of these days, but who could guess which one? When the new turbines got to work at last, power up and down the West Coast would grow more reliable. So Washington claimed, anyhow.

  Washington had claimed all kinds of things since the eruption. It delivered on about one in three, maybe one in four. Some disasters were too big for even the most powerful country in the history of the world. This one, for instance.

  Feet on the stairs. The clank of a bicycle frame against the iron railing. A muttered “Shit!” outside the front window. A knock on the door. Marshall Ferguson, to the rescue! And just in the nick of time. The scriptwriters couldn’t have done it better . . . if the bus didn’t run late, anyhow.

  She opened the door. In came Marshall, bike in one hand and typewriter case in the other. “You made it!” Louise said in relief.

  “Yeah.” Marshall grudged a nod. If she didn’t pay him, he wouldn’t be here. He set up his bicycle next to the dinette wall. “Just starting to rain.”

  “Oh, hell,” Louise said. She had an umbrella in her purse—even in the L.A. basin, you could get rain any old time now that the supervolcano had done its number on the global climate—but she’d hoped she wouldn’t need to use it today. Then she called, “James Henry! Come say bye-bye to Mommy!”