But I’d survived.
Twice now.
And I was stronger for it.
I closed the file on the computer about myself and called up the picture I’d seen of Maura Walsh – standing in front of a police station in her police uniform with her father and looking so full of life.
“I don’t think she got along too well with her father,” was what my source had told me.
I’d always felt sorry for myself because I had no father, but maybe having no father wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe even worse was having a father who didn’t act like your father.
I had no idea what the problems were in Maura Walsh’s relationship with her father and it probably had nothing to do with how she died on the street that night. But, looking at the picture of Maura Walsh again now, I felt a sense of real compassion for this woman.
I wished I’d had a chance to know her.
But it was too late to do that now.
Too late to save Maura Walsh’s life.
All I could do for her now was find out the truth about why she died.
Just like I’d found out the truth about myself.
Four
I met Maura Walsh’s partner Billy Renfro that afternoon at McGuire’s, a bar on the Upper East Side around the corner from the 22nd Precinct.
It sure was another scorcher of a summer’s day in New York City. The temperature had already hit ninety-eight, according to my iPhone. The latest forecast said it might reach a hundred. I wasn’t quite sure why Renfro was drinking in the middle of the day around the corner from his precinct, but I suppose you have to cut a guy some serious slack to grieve when his partner has been murdered. I grabbed a napkin from the bar, used it to wipe the sweat from my cheeks and forehead and then plopped down on the seat next to him.
I knew Billy Renfro from my time on the police beat. I’d worked with him on a few stories over the years. He was probably between forty-five and fifty years old now, with a house in Queens and a boat that he talked about sailing to Florida the minute he put in his retirement papers. I always remembered Renfro as a good guy, a good cop.
“How’s it going, Billy?” I asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“Are you back on the street?”
“Since last week.”
“New partner?”
“Yeah, some kid who barely looks old enough to be my son. Like I really need someone like that to watch my back out there. They keep getting younger and younger every year. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for the job.”
“Maura Walsh was young enough to be your daughter,” I pointed out to him.
“Maura was different.”
“Different how?”
“She was just different. She was good. A good cop. A good person. How could something like this have happened to her?”
We sat back and talked more about Maura Walsh over a few beers. I didn’t have to ask Renfro too many questions, I just let him talk. He seemed to want to talk about her. As if talking about her made it feel like she wasn’t really gone for good – just away somewhere for a while.
He explained how they’d been together on the street for six months. He told me about her first day with him; about the time she managed to slap handcuffs on a four-hundred-pound suspect who was sitting on top of him; about the time she walked into a bodega for a soda and broke up a robbery, capturing two gunmen single-handedly; about how she liked Chinese food and salted pretzels and those hot dogs with sauerkraut that street vendors sell in New York City; about the conversations they had together and the fun and the good times. The not so good times too – about Maura Walsh being a woman cop and how she had to deal with a lot of hassle because of that.
“Many of the guys at the precinct – well, they’re not exactly the most politically enlightened people. Even after all these years, they still don’t like the idea of a woman on the street. Made Maura’s life pretty tough sometimes. They put tampons in her locker. Left obscene messages and pictures on her desk. Made her get coffee for everyone like she was an errand girl or something. I thought being Mike Walsh’s daughter might have saved her from some of that, but it didn’t. Lots of other people – hell, even my own wife – had trouble dealing with the idea someone like Maura was able to do the job. They thought she was there because she was Walsh’s daughter and she was cute and the NYPD was under pressure to make a quota or whatever. Maura never complained though. Me, I got mad when people said stuff like that to her, but she just shrugged it off and said it came with the territory. She handled it really well.”
I waited until I thought it was the right time to ask Renfro about her murder.
“Tell me about that last night on the street, Billy.”
I could see how painful those memories were to him. I knew from all the previous stories I’d done about cop deaths that losing a partner was one of the most traumatic experiences that a police officer could face – almost the same as losing a member of your family. You felt guilty, you felt angry and you felt powerless. But I had to ask these questions. It was my job, just like his job was being a police officer and dealing with all the not so pleasant things that went along with that.
“There’s not much to say,” Renfro told me. “It was just like any other night. Our shift started at five p.m., we made maybe half a dozen stops at places – routine stuff, all of it – and then went on Code 7 to get something to eat at about 10:30. I left Maura in the car and went into a pizza parlor – a place called Delmonico’s down in Little Italy, they make really good pizza – to get a pie. Sausage, extra cheese, but no anchovies – Maura didn’t like anchovies. My God, I’ll always remember that now. Anyway, that was the last time I ever saw her alive. When I got back to the car, she was gone.”
“Do you have any idea how she wound up in that alley where she was found?”
“None at all.”
“Something she saw or heard? Meeting with a contact? Responding to a call for help?”
“Who knows? Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same question over and over again too.”
“What did you do when she wasn’t there?”
“I waited by the car. I figured she’d just wandered off someplace to the can or something. After a while though, I began to get concerned. So I went looking for her. That’s when I found her in the alley. I radioed the call in of an officer down, and the ambulance showed up right after that. But it was too late. She was already gone.”
“What time was your call?”
“About eleven-thirty, I guess?”
He shook his head and stared down at his beer.
“It was just one of those things.” He shrugged sadly. “Nobody’s fault. It just happened.”
“Right,” I said.
But I think he was trying to convince himself of that more than me.
“Just one of those things,” he repeated.
I nodded solemnly.
“Did you ever meet her father?” I continued. “The deputy commissioner?”
“Once. He stopped by the precinct in some official capacity, but he and Maura didn’t spend much time together. Maura was really uptight about her family connections, always seemed to want to put a lot of distance between her and the Walsh tradition. She wanted to make sure no one ever gave her any special treatment. Besides, I don’t think they got along that great.”