Dead Irish (26 page)

Glitsky wagged his head back and forth. He looked again at his watch. “Well, I listened to the tapes.” He got up.

“You want to at least check the voice prints?”

Glitsky was putting on a jacket. “Nope,” he said. Hardy followed him out. “Abe, come on.”

Suddenly, his patience all gone, Glitsky wheeled around, his strained voice loud, very loud and pissed off, cutting through the office noise. “Where’s your fucking
motive
?”

The room went silent.

“Hey, easy, Abe.”

People were looking at them. Glitsky glared, first at Hardy, then back at the room in general.

Hardy, the voice of reason, said, “He’s always wanted Erin Cochran.”

Glitsky stared at his friend witheringly. “Do yourself a favor, Diz,” he said, showing Hardy his back. “Don’t quit your day job.”

33

AT FIRST IT didn’t seem all that hard to figure out, but the only thing Steven came up with that made any sense didn’t make any sense. Father Jim had loved Eddie, probably more than anybody except maybe Mom. No
way
he could have killed him.

But how else did you figure it?

The day before, when Pop and Eddie had had that big fight about Hitler and doing the right thing, Steven remembered clearly enough—Eddie coming into his room afterward, really ticked off at Pop.

“He teaches you one thing, and then when it’s time to do something about it he says forget it.”

“So? What do you expect?” he’d said to Eddie.

And Eddie going, “I don’t know. Something.”

“What? From adults?”

“Hey, I’m an adult.”

“You’re a dork.”

“You’re the dork. What would you do?”

That was Eddie. Like his kid brother’s advice really counted. But he hadn’t had any advice to give. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Father Jim.” Eddie seeing the face he made and saying, “What’s the matter with
him
now? It’s getting so you think something’s wrong with everybody.”

“He’s okay.”

“But you don’t really think so?”

“I’m getting that way with everybody, ’cause everybody’s that way.”

“Not Father Jim, Steven.”

“Doesn’t he make you sort of nervous? A little, even? You know, when he flips out, like?”

Eddie had laughed. “That’s not flipping out, it’s just letting go a little. It’s harmless. Even a priest can be too serious all the time.”

“Sometimes it just makes me a little nervous, is all.”

“That’s ’cause you’re not very mature.” But teasing, kidding. Then saying, “I’m gonna call him.”

So right there, in that bedroom, Eddie had called and talked to Father Jim, making an appointment to see him the next night. The night he’d been killed.

And Steven remembering that only now. And Eddie had kept the appointment—how else could Father know about Frannie being pregnant? Then Father went to where he kept the gun?

(He, Eddie and Father had gone shooting enough times below Candlestick. Like the switchblade, or the races down Highway 1 just flying along against the ocean, it was one of those secrets between Father Jim, Eddie and himself. Mick had never made the cut—he was too uptight. The secret things about Father Jim had been another of the bonds between Eddie and himself. )

It was still too far a stretch to imagine Father Jim thinking he was going to kill Eddie, or wanting to, but he could play with it for a minute, see where it led him. . . . Eddie had gone to visit Father, thinking about this problem he was having with a guy from work. (Steven wished he had paid more attention about the details of that, but it had just been another thing Eddie was doing.) Then Father might have said that meeting a guy alone at night, trying to mess with his business, might be dangerous. He’d go along as moral support, and also, just to be safe, he’d bring the gun.

He wouldn’t use it. They wouldn’t plan on using it. But what if the other guy shows up and he’s got a gun, too? Might as well be safe. It hurts nothing. Eddie might have thought the whole idea was dumb, but if Steven knew Father—and he thought he did—he’d make it seem like some kind of game and Eddie would go along with it.

Okay, so now he had Eddie and Father Jim together, with the gun, at the lot. And there it stopped for him. Maybe they’d been goofing around, shooting at things, and there’d been a mistake, an accident, and after that Father had gotten scared. Sure, that made sense. Father didn’t plan to kill him. Steven could see how he’d feel, being like one of the family and all. And having to explain to Mom and Pop about the gun. They might see it as his—Father’s—fault. And it wouldn’t have been. It could easily have been an accident. . . .

And how about this? Father burying Eddie in the Catholic cemetery, absolutely—he used the world “morally”—certain that Eddie hadn’t killed himself.

For all of his carrying on, Father was first and foremost a priest—he would never have buried Eddie in sacred ground unless he knew for a fact he hadn’t committed suicide. And how could he know that if he hadn’t been there?

Steven leaned his head back against the pillow. In the front of the house he heard his mother vacuuming.

Mom. That was the whole problem now. Her thinking that Eddie had somehow rejected them all, didn’t love them enough. It was eating her up.

And suddenly there it was! The solution to everything. It was easy to explain, although it would be pretty hard to do. Except Father Jim and he were friends and maybe it was time to break out of the kid thing and take Eddie’s place a little, be a little more adult. He wasn’t as good at arguing as Eddie, but he was way better than Mick, and if he could only catch Father in the right mood, and alone, he might be able to get to him.

See? All Father had to do, he figured, was tell Mom. That’s all. Not Pop. Not Hardy or anybody else. Mom was closer to Father, was more likely to forgive him. And that would be that. And
he
—Steven—would be the one who’d pulled it all together. For Mom. So she could start being okay again, and maybe find some room to fit him into her feelings.

Convincing Father to tell Mom, that would be the hard part. But really all he had to do was make Father realize how it had affected Mom, how she would certainly continue to waste away. Like him, like Eddie had been, Father couldn’t stand it when Mom was unhappy. So all he had to do was make it clear to him that she was miserable, and why.

But first he had to make sure it had happened the way he’d figured it, and there was a way to do that. Just ask Father.

Hardy watched Glitsky disappear into the hallway. A guy sitting at a desk nearby, having heard Glitsky’s heated exchange with Hardy, nodded after the sergeant and said he thought a blow job would be out of the question, and Hardy went back to Abe’s cubicle to get his stuff and return the Walkman.

He still wanted verification on the voice prints. But, hey, he thought, I want to win the lottery, too. Still, the voice comparison looked doable.

The room had gone back to its business. There was somebody there, he was sure, that he could hit on and get the thing done as a favor. Everybody by now knew he was a friend of Abe’s. Whether that was good or bad was a toss-up.

He stood, leaning against the particleboard that defined Abe’s space. Lieutenant Joe Frazelli opened his door far to Hardy’s right, scanned the room and called out a couple of names.

Two guys sitting at desks facing each other doing paperwork stopped and got up. “Yo,” one of them said.

Hardy thought the woman he’d gotten the Walkman from was promising. She sat about midway between Glitsky’s cubicle and the lieutenant’s office, where the door had just opened, so Hardy found himself walking parallel to the two guys, back toward Frazelli. He was just about to open his mouth to the woman when he heard the lieutenant say: “We got an apparent suicide over at St. Elizabeth’s Church. You know the place, out on Taraval? Carbon monoxide. You guys want to check it out? Get out of the office awhile?”

Behind Hardy, another voice called out. “Hey, Joe, where was that?”

Frazelli looked right through Hardy at the voice behind him. “St. Elizabeth’s.”

Hardy saw Griffin saying something to another guy in his cubicle. When he turned back to Frazelli he saw Hardy standing there, staring at him. He spoke to the two officers who had been on their way to the lieutenant’s office. “You guys mind if me and Vince take it? It might tie with something we’re on.”

“Sure, it’s yours,” one of them said.

Hardy spoke up. “I’m gonna tag along.”

Griffin said, “It’s a free country.”

Steven woke up alert. The pills didn’t seem to be knocking him out as bad as they had. Or maybe it was that there was so much for him to think about. Probably that was it.

The vacuuming had stopped. He heard his mother messing around in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, emptying the dishwasher. It was something how quiet the house was with no TV or radio going, no records on, Mom not humming or singing while she worked. She’d stopped doing that, and she used to do it all the time.

In the quiet, the quiet deepened. Mom wasn’t moving at all, maybe just leaning against the counter, or sitting at the table. The telephone rang and he heard her say: “Oh, hi, Jim.” She paused. “What’s the matter?”

Steven reached for the extension phone by his bed and picked up the receiver in time to hear Father Jim saying: “. . . can’t believe this is happening again, right on top of . . .”

It sounded like he was crying.

“Mom,” Steven said, “I’m on the extension.”

“Hang up, Steven.”

“I want to talk to Father Jim.”

“He can’t talk now.”

Father said, “It’s okay. Hi, Steven.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Steven, you hang up,” his mom repeated. “You can talk when we’re finished.”

“Okay, don’t forget,” he said.

What was the boy saying?

Cavanaugh shook his head, trying to clear it. The first two black-and-white squad cars were out by the garage with a distraught Father Dietrick and a confused Father Paul. It had seemed to Cavanaugh to be an eminently logical thing to do—excuse himself to call Erin, his best friend and confidante. He’d establish, with Erin, how badly Rose’s suicide had torn him up. Especially now, hard on the heels of Eddie. So that any suspicion that he might have killed Rose would have to get around Erin’s testimony. He had figured that between Father Dietrick swearing Rose had been depressed and Erin describing how he, Cavanaugh, had been deeply hurt but not altogether surprised by the suicide, he would have covered all the bases.

So he had called Erin. But then her son wanted to talk.

And now Steven was saying to him that he knew all about it, describing it so closely it made him dizzy, as though he were about to topple from some great height. Steven sounding so much like Eddie. It was frightening, almost as though Eddie had come back to haunt him. And all of it whispered, not wanting Erin to hear.

He looked out at the garage again. Six men in uniform—four cops and two priests. A paramedic’s van, or the coroner’s, pulled into the driveway, went past the kitchen and continued out over the asphalt.

Steven was saying: “You know?”

He had to ask what. It was all about Steven understanding and having to tell Erin, all coming out jumbled, or sounding that way to him. Words in a torrent that was drowning him. Steven might even be making a point, but it was blunted by his own onset of panic.

All he knew was that once again, after having to do what he did to Rose . . .

He couldn’t think about that. Even for a minute. This was Steven Cochran, Eddie’s brother. He couldn’t do that to Erin another time. No, he couldn’t. If he did, that would really be the end of it.

But if he didn’t, it would all come out, and he could never ever see Erin again.

He heard himself saying, after Steven had finished, “Can I talk to your mother again?”

“You’re not going to tell her now, are you?”

“Steven, come on,” he said, putting a light edge on it, “I promised.”

Did he? It would have been seconds ago, but he didn’t remember.

He stretched his neck to look out to the street. Dietrick had parked in front of the rectory, not in the back where all the commotion was. The spare keys to that car hung on the same peg by the kitchen door that the spare garage key had hung on.

Then Erin’s voice: “Jim?”

He could easily explain when he got back that he’d just needed to clear his head, take a walk.

“Listen, I know this is an imposition but . . .” He struggled with the words. “But if you could come over here? I’m all . . . I don’t know. It would help me a lot.”

She didn’t answer right away. He didn’t wonder she thought about it—another suicide so close on the heels of her son. But when Erin was needed she came through. Except in one thing, for him. But he wasn’t thinking about that now.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forget it. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s not fair to you.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said, covering, white-lying. “I was just thinking about Steven.” He said nothing, letting her work on herself. “All right, Jim. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”