Read Online Shadows Still Remain by Peter de Jonge - Free Book Online Page B

it used to be green. Why, you want to buy it?”
    â€œAny reason you didn’t mention the van to Detective O’Hara?”
    â€œShe didn’t ask.”
    â€œWhere is it now?”
    â€œTompkins Square. I scored a great space. I’m good till Tuesday.”
    â€œIt’s Thursday.”
    â€œSeriously?”
    â€œWe need you to show us where it’s parked.”
    â€œI can tell you exactly where it is—Avenue B just above Ninth on the park side. The keys are on the table.”
    â€œNo,” says Lowry, lifting him off the couch by one arm. “You’re coming.”
    Lowry stuffs him in the back of his car, and O’Hara and Krekorian follow them to Tompkins Square, where McLain walks Lowry to a sign reading NO PARKING TUESDAY AND FRIDAY , 9:30 A.M . TO 1:30 P.M .
    â€œI parked it right next to this sign.”
    â€œThen where the fuck is it?”
    â€œSomeone stole it.”
    â€œNo one steals a van worth forty-five dollars.”
    â€œSomeone did.”
    Lowry shoves McLain back in his car, and O’Hara and Krekorian follow them to 19½ Pitt Street, where Lowrybrings McLain up to the detective room and deposits him in the closet-sized box used for interrogations. To watch, O’Hara has to stand unpleasantly close to Grimes as they take turns staring through the portal-sized window in the door.
    â€œWe know you killed her, David,” says Lowry.
    â€œThat’s not true.”
    â€œYou show up at her apartment, and three weeks later she’s dead. You’re the one who reports her missing, and best of all, we’ve got video of your van at six a.m. Thanksgiving morning, pulling away from the building in which she had just been tortured and killed. That’s three too many coincidences.”
    â€œWhy would I kill her? I loved her. She was my friend.”
    â€œBut she didn’t love you, David.”
    â€œThat’s probably true.”
    â€œProbably? We spoke to her friends. None of them had heard of you. You had been here three weeks, and they didn’t know you exist. Francesca was embarrassed by you.”
    â€œMaybe a little.”
    â€œWe know that she thought you were a loser. I bet she was afraid of you too. The last night of her life, she stayed at a bar on Rivington drinking alone till last call, anything not to go back to her apartment and you. When she left that night, she wanted you gone by the time she got back, didn’t she? Is that why you killed her? Because she wanted you out of her life?”
    Lowry is so tall and wide that most of the time, O’Hara can only hear McLain. Over the next three hours, he never asksfor a lawyer or stops pleading his innocence. He doesn’t even ask to be allowed to sleep. His only request is coffee.
    At one point, however, he lifts himself a couple of inches in his chair and tries to look over Lowry’s shoulder at the door. “I need to talk to O’Hara,” he says, on the verge of tears.
    â€œYou can’t,” says Lowry. “And by the way, O’Hara thinks you’re as guilty as I do. She has from the beginning. She’s just been playing you.”
    â€œI need to talk to O’Hara,” he repeats. On the far side of the door, Grimes stares disdainfully at O’Hara and puts two fingers together. “Your boyfriend’s about this close to giving it up.”
    â€œBullshit,” says O’Hara.
    â€œWhat was that?”
    â€œBullfuckingshit.”
    But when O’Hara peers back into the box and catches a glimpse of McLain’s scared face, his features blur. For a second O’Hara isn’t sure if she’s looking at McLain or Axl.

16
    At two in the morning, unable to watch any longer, O’Hara slips out of the precinct house and walks north up Pitt Street. She passes the shopping carts belonging to the skells who reside beneath the Williamsburg Bridge and Samuel Gompers House, the project that Dolores