“No!” She pointed the homemade weapon in Larkin’s direction before pressing it to Dicky’s neck, tears and snot streaming down her face as she screamed, “Make him go away or I’ll do it! I’ll fuckin’ stab this motherfuckin’ junkie right now.”
“Larkin,” Doyle said calmly. “Take a few steps back.”
Larkin hesitated, then did as asked, instead taking the rear in order to search up and down the walkway for wherever Megan’s hired muscle had disappeared.
“It’s just you and me,” Doyle insisted.
Megan’s voice was hysterical as she said, “I didn’t mean to do it! That sick old fuck’s been around before. My friends would disappear, and we’d all think, I guess they went home. I guess they found a place to crash. Maybe they made enough money trickin’ toget out. But—but—hekilledthem! I know, because he came that night, and I was alone on the platform. He tried—he tried—” Megan couldn’t finish the sentence as she began sobbing.
“You defended yourself?” Doyle asked, and Larkin could hear a tremor intermixed with his words.
“Yeah,” she cried, sounding so very small.
“What happened?”
“He p-put his hands around my neck, but Tony showed me how to get away.”
“Is Tony your friend with the shovel?”
Megan’s response must have been physical because Larkin didn’t hear her reply.
“We know someone put a belt around Alfred Niederman’s neck,” Doyle said. “We know that’s how he died. And we know it was a bullet belt. Maybe something you’d like wearing.”
“He tried to kill me!” Megan protested.
“How’d he end up in the bag, Megan?”
Larkin could hear a struggle, hear water splashing.
“Megan,” Doyle tried again. “Put the weapon down and talk to me. Will you do that for me?”
She sniffled, coughed, and spit before saying, “He’s still up there with you, isn’t he?”
“Don’t worry about Detective Larkin.”
Megan’s voice was quieter, like her adrenaline was beginning to wane, and she said, “Mr. Hernandez found the bag in one of the trash cans on the platform. He helped me drag the body into the utility room because it’d been left unlocked.”
“You called Noel Hernandez for help?”
“He was justthere,” Megan insisted. “He saw everything, but he promised I wouldn’t get in trouble because that old bitch was a bad guy. Mr. Hernandez swore he was—that he got what was comin’ to him. So he helped me hide the body, then told me to just go. Don’t come around St. Jude’s anymore, don’t stay in the city.Go!”
“But you didn’t have the money,” Doyle concluded.
Megan’s whine preceded another volley of tears. “Mr. Hernandez threw my belt away—so no one would find DNA, he said. And that dude—Gary—had a taser, so I couldn’t….”
“What happened was self-defense,” Doyle explained. “But this, what you’re doing with Dicky, isn’t the same thing. Megan, if you kill him, you will go to jail. Don’t do that. Don’t risk your entire life for this.”
“I have to!”
“No, you don’t,” Doyle insisted.
“He’ll just sell us out for more drugs. That’s what happened. He tells old guys where we hang out for some dope, then they come down here—try to touch us….” She faltered, then said in a false bravado, like she was not only trying to convince Doyle, but herself, “I have to do this.”
“Megan!”
Dicky gurgled.
Megan screamed, so high-pitched that it could have shattered glass.
