The Likeness

“He knew he was cornered, he had no intention of going to prison-and I don’t blame him; can you see him making friends with the boys on the cell block? So he picked his way out and he went for it. I’ll give the guy this: he had guts. I underestimated him.”

“Frank,” I said. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

He reached for my smoke packet, watched the flame as he lit his cigarette one-handed. “Yesterday was a good shoot,” he said, when he’d put his lighter away. “It happened, it was no fun, in a few weeks it’ll be over. The end.”

I didn’t answer. Frank blew a long trail of smoke at the ceiling. “Look, you closed the case. If you had to shoot someone along the way, it might as well have been Daniel. I never liked the little fucker.”

I was in no mood to keep a lid on my temper, not with him. “Yeah, Frankie, I spotted that. Everyone within a mile of this case spotted that. And you know why you didn’t like him? Because he was exactly like you.”

“Well well well,” Frank drawled. There was an amused twist to his mouth, but his eyes were ice blue and unblinking and I couldn’t tell whether he was furious or not. “And here I almost forgot you’d studied the old psychology.”

“The spitting image, Frank.”

“Bullshit. That guy was wrong, Cassie. Remember what you said, in your profile? Prior criminal experience. Remember that?”

“What, Frank,” I said. I realized my feet had come out from under me and were braced, hard, on the floor. “What did you find on Daniel?”

Frank shook his head, one small ambiguous jerk, over his cigarette. “I didn’t need to find anything. I know when someone smells wrong, and so do you. There’s a line, Cassie. You and me, we live on one side of it. Even when we fuck up and wander over to the other side, we’ve got that line to keep us from getting lost. Daniel didn’t have it.”

He leaned over the coffee table to tap ash. “There’s a line,” he said. “Don’t ever forget there’s a line.”

There was a long silence. The window was starting to dim again. I wondered about Abby and Rafe and Justin, where they would spend tonight; whether John Naylor would sleep sprawled in moonlight on the ruins of Whitethorn House, the one-night king of all our wreckage. I knew what Frank would say: Not your problem, not any more.

“What I’d love to know,” Frank said after a while, and his tone had changed, “is when Daniel made you. Because he did, you know.” Fast glint of blue, as he glanced up at me. “From the way he talked, I’m pretty sure he knew you were wired-but that’s not what’s bothering me. We could have wired Lexie, if we’d had her; the wire wasn’t enough to tell him you were a cop. But when Daniel walked into that house yesterday, he knew for definite that you had a gun on you, and that you’d use it.” He settled into the sofa, one arm spread along the back, and drew on his smoke. “Any idea what gave you away?”

I shrugged. “I’d bet on the onions. I know we figured I’d saved that, but apparently Daniel played better poker than we thought.”

“No kidding,” said Frank. “And you’re sure that’s all it was? He didn’t have a problem with, for example, your taste in music?”

He knew; he knew about the Fauré. There was no way he could be certain, but all his instincts were telling him something was there. I made myself meet his eyes, look puzzled and a little rueful. “Nothing springs to mind.”

Curls of smoke hanging in the sunlight. “Right,” Frank said, at last. “Well. They say the devil’s in the details. There’s nothing you could have done about those onions-which means there’s nothing you could have done to prevent yourself getting burned. Right?”

“Right,” I said, and that at least came easy. “I did everything I could, Frank. I was Lexie Madison as hard as I knew how.”

“And if, just say, you’d figured out a couple of days ago that Daniel had made you, is there anything you could have done that might have made this end better?”

“No,” I said, and I knew that was true too. This day had begun years before, in Frank’s office, over burnt coffee and chocolate biscuits. By the time I tucked that timeline into my uniform shirt and walked back to the bus station, this day had been ready and waiting for us all. “I think this was the happiest ending we were ever going to get.”

He nodded. “Then you did your job. Leave it at that. You can’t blame yourself for the stuff other people do.”

I didn’t even try to explain to him what I was seeing, the fine spreading web through which we had all tugged one another to this place, the multiple innocences that make up guilt. I thought of Daniel with that unutterable sadness like a brand on his face, telling me, Lexie had no conception of action and consequence, and I felt that slim blade slide deeper between her and me, twisting.