“Victor? What about him?”
“He’s a mess.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“He’s a mess,” Craig said. He pointed a long finger at Joe. “But he’s a great judge of character, and he’s always liked you. And don’t blow this off. He may be intellectually delayed, but his intuition is off the charts. He knows things. He’s always liked you.”
“I bring him candy. And I’m nice to your wife, and the cat, and—”
“Plenty of people do those things. But Victor likes you. He always has, since he was a toddler.”
“So?”
“So you’re not a murderer—of your mother, of a young woman, of anyone. Victor knows it. I know it. Prove it to the world.”
“Here’s the thing,” Joe said. He felt hope—an annoying sensation as much as it was life affirming—rising in his chest and pushing other things aside. He was set on staying miserable, and this was complicating matters. “Let’s say you’re right. Somehow, someway, Hathorne is behind this. If that’s really the case—that Aaron Hathorne has his tentacles out in the world, killing people—then I don’t want Aideen anywhere near him. I don’t want her in his sights, Craig. I don’t want that.”
“That would be her decision. Let her make it.”
“She’s in mourning!”
“She’s a grown woman,” Craig said. “She did this job, just like you. She’s seen all sorts of terrible things. And, anyway, I’m not sure Aideen mourns for long. About anything.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You come on. You know her as well as I do.”
“I know she’s . . .” Joe trailed off. He was looking for a retort, but, frankly, he didn’t have one. Yes, he knew Aideen. She was as tough as nails, but that was kind of a cliché. And, anyway, so were a lot of people who had come up in, and navigated, the New York legal environment. Still, Aideen’s strength was different. She was oddly nontemperamental. Nothing seemed to rattle her, but it went deeper than that. Her highs and lows were strangely close to one another. To Joe’s knowledge, she had grown up in a functional family, give or take. She had married a good cop who was now, tragically, dead. But through it all—the marriage, the shock of 9/11, the birth of the kids, and then her husband’s illness and death—she really hadn’t vacillated much up or down. It was like she had been born with a baseline emotional state and didn’t deviate from it.
So maybe she is the person to take on someone—something—like Hathorne, he thought. It was a tantalizing argument but one that another part of his mind wanted to demolish.
No, God, no. Don’t put her in his sights. If you go down for this, at least Hathorne will probably stop whatever he’s doing. He’ll be satiated.
“I can’t,” Joe said finally. “I can’t do that to her.”
“Okay, you’ll infantilize her instead,” Craig said with a mocking tone. This was the side of him that wasn’t pleasant. At worst, it was bludgeoning.
“Don’t . . . just don’t.”
“This is your life, Joe.” Craig leaned forward and tapped his finger on the desk. “I’m an asshole, I know. I’m also usually right. Aideen can make her own decisions. If she thinks this is too much, she’ll tell you.”
“She’s got kids.”
“She’s well aware of what’s on her plate.” There was another long pause in which neither man spoke. They just stared at each other, a clock ticking on the wall.
“You know what I really learned from that case?” Joe asked finally. “The Hathorne case?”
“What?”
“I learned how random this . . . this level of cruelty is.” He looked away for a second and then cut his eyes back to his boss. “I mean the type of cruelty a guy like Hathorne dishes out. You see, that’s the thing. You don’t hope to win against Aaron Hathorne. You don’t hope to put him away. You just pray to God you never meet Hathorne. You pray you don’t cross his path.
“No bullshit, Craig, I mean it. I could say he’s like a shark, but it’s worse than that because he can make choices. You hope—if you’re smart—just not to be where he is. You know, there were a couple of mob cases Jack and I worked. We weren’t the lead attorneys; they just picked us up to run some witnesses down and do some legal errands. Anyway, I met a few mob associates. I mean, I grew up in Staten Island; it’s not like I didn’t come up with one or two of them. And they can be exactly what you see on TV, these ‘wise guys’ everybody laughs about and who seem so much like your own goombah relatives. But if you get too close, you see what they really are. The big players. They’re pleasure seekers. They’re not funny. They’re not comical stereotypes. They’re just hunters, things that tear apart whatever they encounter. Maybe it’s immediate and bloody. Maybe it’s over time, and there are papers people sign. But that’s what they do. They destroy. Everything they touch.”