Bennie asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Mary answered, firmly. “I’m just trying to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. What you hope to accomplish.”
Bennie fell silent a moment, and Mary wasn’t sure Bennie had heard the question. Mary glanced back, but Bennie’s face was turned away, and Mary couldn’t see her expression.The only lighting in the backseat was intermittent, from the streetlights.
“Bennie?” Mary repeated. “Are you okay?”
“DiNunzio.” Bennie turned to face her, and Mary could see Bennie’s eyes glistening with raw emotion. “I’m doing what I’m doing because somebody killed one of my associates. One ofourassociates, a young man who joined our firm and worked hard for us. I’m doing it because he mattered to me. His life mattered to me. And so does his murder.” Bennie wiped her eye quickly, catching a tear before it fell. Her fingers were trembling, which was something Mary had never seen before, but Bennie kept talking, the words coming out with a force of their own. “I’m pretty good at murder cases. I’ve been doing them for years, and so have you. So I’m not going to sit on my thumbs and let two rookie detectives screw this up, or miss something, or forget even a single detail. I’m going to be all over them from day one. From now. Until they find who committed this murder. That’s why I went through the barricade. I heard you say Foxman has no family here, but you were wrong.Wewere his family. And even though we had a family fight, that doesn’t mean we’re not family anymore. That’s why we’re doing this. For him.”
Mary felt a lump in her throat as Bennie turned her head quickly away, looking out the window. Silence fell in the car, and Mary realized how wrong she had been back at the crime scene. She had thought Bennie had been defaulting to professional mode on John’s street. Instead Bennie had been keeping her emotions within, channeling them into action to find John’s killer. Mary felt touched at Bennie’s devotion and loyalty, but she couldn’t say so right now. She tried to hold back her tears, and for some reason, she didn’t look over at Anthony. She knew he felt the same way she did, because she was his wife.
Mary looked out the window as they passed the gritty industrial area around the concrete cloverleafs to I-95, interspersed with boxy warehouses and factories converted to funky apartment buildings. In the distance, the Ben Franklin Bridge glowed a ghostly blue in the dark night. They made their way through the streets cruising in light traffic through the grid of one-way streets. They went west on Market Street past the United States Courthouse, a modern monolith that anchored the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets, then turned onto Seventh, catching sight of the round concrete buildings that gave the Roundhouse its name.
Anthony shifted into the left lane, heading for the Roundhouse’s parking lot, and as soon as they got to the entrance, Mary could see the crowd of media collecting in front of the building with their klieglights, video cameras, and the same crowd of reporters from the crime scene. Their white news vans with tall microwave towers overflowed the press section of the lot, but Anthony found an empty space and parked, cutting the ignition.
Mary braced herself, eyeing the noisy throng of press. “So we just go through and say ‘no comment.’”
“Yes,” Bennie answered firmly. “No fear, DiNunzio. We’ve done this a million times. Just put your head down and keep walking.”
Anthony interjected, “Don’t worry, Bennie. If they want to get to Mary, they’re going to have to go through me.”
“That’s the spirit.” Bennie rallied. “Everybody good to go?”
“Not yet,” Judy answered hesitantly, then she fell abruptly silent.
“What is it, Carrier?”
Judy didn’t answer Bennie, and Mary turned completely around, which wasn’t easy, considering the size of her belly.
“Judy, what?”
Judy bit her lip. “There’s something I have to tell you. You should know it before the police find out.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mary didn’t understand why Judy was stopping them before they went into the Roundhouse. Her best friend’s face was visible in the ambient light, and Judy looked stricken, her agonized expression incongruous with her pink hair and the quirky, multicolored poncho.
“Honey, what’s the matter?” Mary asked, concerned.
“Um, well.” Judy looked down at her hands, fumbling with a ball of soggy tissues. “There’s something you guys should know before we go in. I’ve been keeping it from you. I should’ve told you before now but, well, uh, I didn’t. I didn’t know how you would react.”
Mary frowned, pained. “Honey, you can tell me anything. I won’t react any way. You know that, I love you.”
Bennie looked over at Judy. “Carrier, just tell us,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle.
Judy heaved a sigh that shuddered as she exhaled, then lifted her gaze, which was teary, glistening in the light. “John and I, well, we weren’t just friends. We were dating.”
Mary blinked, hiding her shock. She felt surprised that Judy would keep it from her, but this wasn’t the time or the place for that, and Judy’s heartbroken demeanor made completesense. Judy was taking John’s murder so hard because she had been seeing him.
Bennie frowned. “Wait. You were dating Foxman? An associate?”
“Yes.” Judy sniffled.
“You can’t do that.”
“I knew you wouldn’t like it. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“That doesn’t make it right, that only makes it secret.”
