The Night Caller Read Online Free

for him to know the essential answers, or to learn them without help. He couldn’t take seriously Maureen’s suspicions of a police cover-up. That was paranoia talking. But that didn’t mean the detectives investigating the case would speak frankly to the victim’s father, even if he was a retired cop.
    He decided to go see Billard. His old friend in the department ought to be able to fill him in. Tomorrow, though. Right now he was exhausted from the funeral, from Maureen. He wanted to take off his shoes, lie back on the sofa, and rest.
    No, he told himself, not tomorrow.
    He made himself stand up and shrugged back into his suit coat.
    Not tomorrow. Today.
    He couldn’t rely on tomorrows.

Chapter Four
    Billard’s office was at the other end of Queens from his restaurant at Howard Beach. To Coop it felt like another world. This was Long Island City, a crowded, noisy district of old warehouses and factories and row houses that had been occupied by working people until yuppies moved in during the eighties. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan loomed just across the East River.
    The dense, mixed population of the area kept the precinct house busy.
    As he walked down the hall toward his former patrol car partner’s office he could hear the background chatter of a police radio, the earnest pleadings of a man and woman at the booking desk, bursts of muffled, outraged shouting from the holdover cells on the second floor. Two plainclothes detectives he didn’t recognize passed him, grinning and chattering about something other than police work, but the suit coat of one was unbuttoned and with each step flapping to afford a glimpse of the checked butt of his belt-holstered 9mm handgun. Coop had loved it all and still did, the sounds and sights, and the scent of desperation on the not so fresh air.
    The desk sergeant was a grizzled old warrior named McCreary. Coop remembered seeing him in Seconds. McCreary remembered Coop, addressing him as “Lou,” department slang for “Lieutenant.” Making him feel at home. McCreary called Lieutenant Billard to notify him that Coop was in the building.
    Billard’s office door was the only one in the hall that was slightly ajar, as if be wanted to make sure Coop could find it.
    Coop knocked as he pushed the door open farther and stepped inside.
    It was a small office with plaster walls painted a dull green. A lot of greasy cobwebs were stuck to and moving around the rectangular heating vent up near the ceiling. The room’s one window had a wire grill over its dirty glass and looked out on the precinct house parking lot. A row of gray file cabinets lined one wall, a table with a computer on it sat against another. About a dozen yellow Post-its were stuck haphazardly to the frame of the computer monitor. Coop wondered why people never arranged them symmetrically, the way they did postage stamps.
    Billard was seated behind a cluttered gray steel desk. He stood up, came around the desk, and the two men hugged.
    When they stepped apart, Billard gave Coop’s arm a pat.
    “I feel like crap not making it over to Maureen’s after the funeral,” he said. “I was on my way, but all hell broke loose here this morning and…well, you know how it is. The Job never lets up.”
    Coop nodded, feeling awkward, thinking maybe Billard should have come no matter how much hell had broken loose. But he knew he was being unreasonable. “It’s all right, you were at the cemetery.” He waited while the bulky Billard, his girth testing the seams of his blue uniform shirt, moved back behind the desk and sat down with a sigh. Billard motioned for Coop to sit in the uncomfortable oak chair set at an angle in front of the desk. Coop sat, thought the hell with it, and stood back up. “I’m here because of Bette,” he said.
    “I kinda figured you would be.”
    “How close are they to making an arrest?”
    Billard hesitated long enough to give him the answer. “Don’t guess it’d do much good to tell you