Black Irish (30 page)

She felt the urge to cold-cock him with her Glock and abscond with the document.

“I have no idea.”

“The speech given by Pádraig Pearse over the grave of O’Donovan Rossa in 1915. The original call to arms. Everything in recent Irish history flows from it. Popularly known as Pádraig Pearse’s Funeral Oration. PPFO.”

Abbie nodded, hurrying him along.

“Pádraig Pearse, a schoolteacher and nationalist, called forth the valiant men of Ireland to rid the nation of the oppressors. His speech became the … the Declaration of Independence for the rebels.”

Reinholdt looked over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming back at her.

“Any member of the Clan na Gael worth his salt would know it by heart. Don’t you see? It was a sort of security device—no need to keep the document around for prying eyes to stumble on. And it’s just one page.”

He turned, picked up the yellowing sheet and turned it over. She saw the heading, “Pádraig Pearse’s Oration at the Grave of Donovan O’Rossa (1915).”

“There are many different printings, of course, and each one changes the line breaks. I nearly lost my mind searching for one that would give us Christian names. I found a copy of the original downtown, and of course, that was the one Collins had in his head. I—”

“Doctor, I’m sorry to do this.”

Abbie reached around for the yellow sheet, snapped it off the table, and began to run for the door.

Her last glimpse of the doctor was of his forlorn shape slumped at the table.

Abbie raced to the parking lot and fumbled for the keys. When she was inside, she jammed the gear into drive and fishtailed toward the exit. On to Delaware. Through downtown, edging through red lights and then slamming the accelerator. Right on Tupper Street and onto
the Skyway.

Abbie came off the Tifft ramp and barely made the turn without slamming the passenger door into the concrete abutment. She raced down Tifft toward the County, pushing the car faster and nearly taking a teenager crossing McKinley out at the knees.

“The fuck—” he yelled at her, but she was gone before the rest of the words could reach her. She turned left on Abbott, her back wheels sending up sprays of water, then whipped the wheel left on Dorrance Lane.

She saw the lights from two blocks away, the neon blue and red flashing off the second stories of the wooden homes. There’d been no chatter on the police radio.

Must be a fire
, she thought.

But there was no ribbon of smoke in the air.

When she got closer, she saw two police units. They were in front of Billy’s house. A cold hand gripped the bottom of her stomach.

No, it can’t be
.

Abbie raced up to the house and angled the Saab into the curb, slamming on the brakes. She was out the car before the headlights dimmed, and ducked under the yellow police tape.

Just let him be alive. Please, that’s all I ask
.

A cop saw her coming and stepped out of the doorway. She was inside the living room, and there was Billy on the floor. But the face wasn’t Billy’s anymore. It was a bad Halloween mask.

O’Halloran was kneeling beside the body, checking his pockets.

She heard someone scream as if their body were being torn apart. O’Halloran turned, his face mottled with shock.

“Kearney, what the f—”

The floor loomed up at her, the rug Billy had bled on after she threw him over the couch. But now there was a lot more blood on it than she’d remembered, soaked deep and crimson.

She remembered nothing after that.

W
HEN
A
BBIE CAME TO, SHE FELT LIGHT, AS IF SHE WOULD FLOAT AWAY
. S
HE
was sitting in her cubicle at headquarters. Z was holding a cold cloth to her forehead and talking to someone on his phone.

“You know there’s no way that can happen …” he said quietly.

The lights were sending stinging rays into her eyes. She felt her eyelids flutter. Involuntary response.

Suddenly, bile rose in her throat, along with the memory.

“Billy.” She reached for Z’s arm.

With an infinite weariness, Z slipped the phone into his shirt pocket and grabbed her shoulders. His eyes came parallel with hers. Sad walrus eyes, red-veined. And something fearful in them.

“Don’t think about that now.”

“Is he dead? Just tell me.”

Z pulled his chair around the foot of the cubicle wall and sat heavily across from her. He took her hands in his.

“He’s dead, Ab. Looks like he was number four.”

A wave of nausea rippled through her stomach.
No, not Billy. It should have been me
. She was the reason Billy was dead. Whatever he was going to tell her had cost him his life.

“I should have gone to him first, Z. Why didn’t I go to him first?”

“Ab, there’s nothing you could have done.”

“I could have saved him.”

Z dropped his head.

“What did you say?” Abbie said.

He looked up. “Huh?”

“You said he was the fourth.”

Z nodded.

“The fourth? There’s no way. Billy …”

His face came to her with the name. The smiling, gentle face of Billy Carney.

“Billy wasn’t part of the Clan,” she gasped out.

Z shook his head. “They found a toy. In his mouth.”

“That can’t be right. Billy’s an innocent bystander. He was going to tell me something and the County killed him.”

“Are you up to taking a walk?”

“I think … I think so.”

“Okay, hon. Come on then.”

“Where are we going?”

“Conference room. Perelli wants to talk.”

He lumbered heavily beside her. Her feet seemed as if they were moving a thousand feet below her, boats creeping along as she watched from a high-flying plane.

She saw Perelli and O’Halloran waiting in the conference room.
I don’t want to hear the details
, she thought.
What does it even matter?

Perelli saw her and his expression changed. He nodded to O’Halloran. When she entered, Perelli took her elbow and guided her to one of the black vinyl-backed chairs.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Not good.” Z answered for her.

She lowered herself shakily into the chair. O’Halloran moved to the other side of the table.

“This won’t take long. Things are moving fast. I want to talk to you about Billy Carney.”

Poor Billy. My beautiful boy
.

“He called you today?”

“Yes,” she said, barely audibly.

“What time?”

“Around thirty minutes before I came …”

She saw the living room again, Billy looking as though he’d dropped from ten stories, his face a welter of blood.

“Kearney, can you hear me? What did you two talk about?”

“He knew something about the case. Something new.”

“Did he say that?”

“No. He was going to tell me, but …”

The tears seemed to sweep up from nowhere. She pressed her cupped hand over her mouth. Her eyes crinkled at the edges to prevent a flood of tears.

She saw Perelli watching her, his eyes dry.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay.”

He paused, then went on.

“You had reason to believe he was going to tell you about the Clan case?”

“Yes. He also …”

“Yeah?” O’Halloran said.

“He asked me if I’d opened his windows the other night.”

“The other night?” O’Halloran again.

“Yes. I went to talk to him about my father.”

“Uh-huh.” Perelli now. “And what’s this about the window?”

She looked at him.

“I don’t know. Someone must have been messing with him. I came in through the front door.”

He leaned toward her. “Listen, Abbie. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. I know this case has been personal for you, with your father involved and all.”

They’re all personal
, she meant to say.
But this one was more. Why deny it?
She said nothing.

“I want to make this easy for you. We found a toy monkey jammed into Billy’s mouth.”

She closed her eyes but not before a single tear slid out.

“It can’t be. It doesn’t fit.”

“It fits.”

“How?”

Perelli gestured with his hand to O’Halloran. O’Halloran stared at her while he reached inside his Donegal tweed jacket and pulled out an evidence bag.

Inside she saw the monkey. His arms reached straight up above his head, like he was being held up. She took the bag and turned it to scatter the glare from the overhead fluorescents.

“This one …”

“Yeah?” Perelli said.

She heard the door close. She turned to see Z walking toward his desk.

She turned back to the monkey. Something was different about it.

“It looks newer.”

“Oh, I think it’s the same idea.”

O’Halloran reached into his pocket again. Another evidence bag. Like a magician with the many-colored scarves. She watched his eyes as he pulled it out and laid it on the table.

It was a slug.

“We dug this out of the ceiling in Billy’s living room,” Perelli said.

“Just below where he was found,” O’Halloran said.

Perelli looked at her. “Any ideas?”

She felt as if she were stepping over a cliff in darkness.

“It’s mine.”

“We know,” O’Halloran said.

She felt Perelli’s hand on her shoulder.

“How’d it get there?”

His voice was all wrong. He should have been furious. She’d discharged a gun and not reported it, a breach of Department rules. She looked up at him.

His eyes were soft, softer than she’d ever seen him. And it hit her.

“I’m not the killer,” she said. “Call Dr. Reinholdt at the Historical Society. I was with him until just before the murder.”

“All you needed was ten seconds for Billy Carney to open the door and you to fire a warning shot into the ceiling, then slash his throat. Why’d you use a knife instead of your gun?”

Abbie only stared at him.

Perelli shrugged. “You get back in your car and circle back. Two minutes total. I drove it myself. Tell me how I’m wrong.”

She wanted him to blow up, to pound the desk. Or tell her to stop talking nonsense. But instead he was treating her like some kind of invalid.

“I didn’t kill Billy Carney,” she said.

O’Halloran’s eyes were as hard as stone.

“You killed all of ’em,” he said.

“What did you say?”

Perelli took something out of his shirt pocket, a small black piece of plastic.

“We found this in the bedroom. It’s a common listening device. Works on radio waves. Distance of two hundred yards. Someone was listening to Billy’s conversations.”

He turned it over in his hands, studying its components. Then he looked at her.

“Did you hear him talking to his friends at the Club? Telling them he knew who did Ryan and the rest? Is that what made you kill him?”

“Why would I kill those men? Why?”

“Goes back to when your father got you, I think. Is that it? He pulled you away from your real family and you hated them for it. Or was there more? Was there any kind of … abuse, Abbie, that all the boys were involved in? If that’s it, I can understand.”

She stood and pushed the chair away, looking at the two men wildly.

“Are you out of your minds?”

“Sit down, Kearney,” Perelli said quietly, turning the chair toward her.

“Chief.”

He frowned sympathetically and nodded at the chair. “Sit down.”

The black waves were coming. They were lapping at the back of her brain.

“What about the blood?”

“What—”

“The techs sent out all the blood samples from Cazenovia Park. There was only one partial match, from a swab taken from one of the branches that Collins was tied to. He ran it against all the files of the investigators who worked the scene, to eliminate them.”

Perelli leaned over.

“You came up a match. There wasn’t enough to do a full DNA run, but he’s got enough for a 95 percent maternal match. Good enough for me.”

“I … I cut myself.”

“Stop bullshitting me, Abbie. You cut yourself
after
the samples were taken. You saw Michaels walk out. He had the swabs with him. That was the last time he visited the scene.”

How could her—

“Someone put my blood there.”

“Okay, O.J.,” O’Halloran said.

Perelli shot him a look. Then he leaned down until his face was eye level with hers.

She didn’t want to look at him.

“The scene was sealed off immediately after the body was discovered. No one came in or out.”

“Then it was a cop, Chief. You
know
O’Halloran was running a parallel investigation. They’d prepared this ahead of time for the next crime scene. Why can’t you see that?”

Perelli’s eyes were eighteen inches from hers, magnified by his steel-rimmed glasses. The warm sympathy had drained away. He looked at her like he would a noxious bug on a slide.

She could not speak.

“You’re insane, Abbie. You don’t even know it. You tell me what happened and I’ll personally escort you to EC Med for a psych evaluation.
They have real nice facilities there—you know that, you’ve escorted prisoners there yourself. It’s a hospital, not a prison. You belong in a hospital right now, Abbie. Until we can get this figured out.”

“Stop calling me Abbie.”

Something flitted in the back of her mind. She started in her chair.

“What is it?”

She shook her head violently.
It can’t be
, she thought. Something was squeezing her brain. Her lips twisted violently. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw O’Halloran’s eyes widen.

“What is it, Abbie?”

“I couldn’t have done those things,” she whispered.

“You’re right.”

“I’m right?!” she shouted.

“You’ve heard of split personality disorder. I think that’s what we’re looking at, don’t you? It
wasn’t
you, Abbie, it was someone else inside you.”

“How can you say I killed those people? I wasn’t even there.”

“We checked your whereabouts for all four cases. You were unaccounted for, as far as we can tell. We’ve rebuilt your last two weeks. There’s room for the murders.”