Fall Guy (19 page)

“At home?”

She nodded, then turned away. I thought she must be exhausted. I hadn't seen her eat anything at the memorial and she hadn't had a bite of food before or since then either.

“Shall we order in something to eat? You're looking pale. You must be starving.”

“I dream about it a lot,” she said, “about what happened at Breyer's Landing. We're all there at the top of the mountain, at the swimming hole, my brothers, my cousins and me. It's so clear, as if it were real, Joey still alive. And then it all happens, just the way it did back then, except for one thing.” She faced me now. She walked right up to me, took my hands in hers. “In the dream, it's me. It's not Tim, it's me. My hands are flat against Joey's narrow back, against his white skin. I can feel the wings of his shoulders, his ribs. And suddenly, I push him—hard—and he goes over the edge. He disappears. In the dream, I'm the one who steals his life, not my brother.”

She pulled her hands away and rubbed them against each other before tucking one in each armpit.

“It's me,” she said, tears falling again.

I shook my head and wiped her cheeks with my hands. “Come on,” I said, “we're going to my house. We'll have some dinner and you can stay over. In the morning, after you've rested, we'll come back here and finish up.”

She began to shake her head. “I don't want to be any trouble to you, Rachel. You've been so kind already.”

“It's no trouble,” I told her, picking up Dash's leash, wanting to get her fed and to bed as soon as I could. She would have had to get up early to have gotten here by ten. She'd gone through a
dead brother's possessions, gone to a memorial for him and lost a second brother. On top of that, she'd told her family history, secrets that had been kept under cover at a too high price since she'd been a little girl. I had no idea how she was still standing.

I picked up the briefcase, then hesitated. If the purse hadn't belonged to Tim's mother, then whose was it? I hadn't opened it. The stiff beads made it feel empty, but now I wanted to look inside, to see if there was a price tag, to see if this was just something else Parker had boosted. I opened it and found it wasn't empty. There were two slim gold bangle bracelets inside. And a ring. I emptied the purse into my hand and that's when I saw it, engraving inside the ring: “For EB, love AQ.” Yet another reason Parker needed to get back into Tim's apartment, to rescue his aunt's purse, her ring, get rid of more incriminating evidence. I put the bracelets and the ring back into the purse and put the purse into my briefcase, opening the door for Maggie and Dashiell, locking it behind us.

We left her car wherever she'd parked it and walked to Tenth Street. The air seemed to wake her up a bit. We decided to stop at Pepe Verde and pick up some pasta to go but when we got to my house and sat down to eat, Maggie barely touched her food before putting down her fork and pushing the plate away. I took her upstairs to my bedroom and went to run a hot bath for her. But when I went back to tell her the bath was ready, I could hear her even breathing as I approached the open door. She'd taken off her
shoes, her knee-highs and her slacks and was lying on her side, on top of the covers, fast asleep. I looked at her legs, the skin tight and shiny, even though the scars were nearly as old as she was. Then I turned what was left of the light blanket back onto her, shut off the light and closed the door behind me.

Sitting outside in the garden, Dashiell rooting around in the ivy, I couldn't get the vision of those terrible scars out of my mind. According to the story Maggie had told me, and
story
is without a doubt the operative word, Freddy Baker had been the poor little kid whose legs were burned. But that couldn't have been the story they all told their parents, the cover story, not with Maggie's legs burned so badly.

In that story, the one invented to deflect parental rage, Freddy Baker couldn't have been the victim. He had to have been the culprit, the kid with the matches. Freddy Baker, a kid who didn't exist, had been invented to take the fall. A brilliant ploy, I had to admit. Since there was no Freddy Baker, he could never be found to confirm or deny, not even when the irate father looking for him was a cop, ready, I'd bet, to break both his legs for the harm he'd caused to his only daughter.

Not only that, instead of getting punished, the perpetrators became the heroes. With Freddy as
the bad guy, they were the good guys. They drove him off and saved Maggie from even worse harm.

I wondered if they had omitted the last name, saying it was a kid named Freddy from Nyack, that that was all they knew. Or was Freddy Baker a name they only used among themselves, telling their parents that they didn't even know the first name of the kid who'd been so malicious, or so careless, whichever way they'd played it? Whatever the specific details of the original story were, clearly Freddy Baker was their code name for the bushy-haired stranger.

But why was Maggie still lying about the incident now, thirty years later, and to someone not a member of her family, someone whose opinions shouldn't even matter? Or was the question not why, but who? Whom was she covering for this time? Was it Tim again? Had it been his bright idea to capture Maggie, tie her to the tree and set the leaves on fire? She would have jumped at the chance to play with the boys. She would have agreed to anything. Anything, of course, short of the fire. Is that why she still told the story, to mask her own complicity, to hide her brother's guilt?

Something was nagging at me. Suppose it was Tim who had set the fire, even accidentally, carelessly tossing a cigarette too near the dried leaves. And a year later, it was Tim who had pushed Joey off the rocky cliff. That might explain why he had devoted himself to locking up the bad guys at work but trying to save them from themselves, one at a time, on his own. He spends his life trying to make up for his own mistakes by trying to set other people right. And then, at a low point in
his life, overwhelmed by grief and disappointment, he kills himself. Given his family history, the recent circumstances and his easy access to a means, this shouldn't be difficult to buy.

The police bought it, didn't they? His own partner bought it.

And then, unrelated to the suicide, Parker, suddenly without someone to supply him with a home, food, money and even a little unwanted advice now and then, kills his aunt so that he can live at her apartment, if only until the next rent bill comes due.

And Dennis? He parks his Lexus across the street from his late brother's apartment and then what? A mugging gone wrong? Fine. Then why not take the car?

But the car was still there. I had the feeling that when the cops had shown up, a sea of blue around the faded Dumpster, Dennis's wallet was still in his back pant pocket, his watch still on his wrist.

I could stretch my imagination around the first two deaths, but not around the third. Things just didn't fit together properly. Something was still very wrong.

Not a mugging. Something else.

I could hear the cell phone ringing where I'd left it on the kitchen counter after feeding Dash. I could have sent him for it but I didn't. I waited. But it didn't beep afterward to let me know there was a message waiting. Then I heard the house phone ring. Someone was anxious to get me.

I walked inside and stood on the stairs, listening. The office door was open. I heard Dashiell's
recorded bark, then the incoming message as the answering machine was recording it. It was Brody, back at the house, still working but checking in to see how things were going. He wanted to know how Maggie had taken the news that her last remaining brother was dead. He wanted to tell me, he said into the machine, that the keys I'd found next to Dennis weren't his, that they fit the lock to Elizabeth Bowles's apartment door.

I grabbed the downstairs phone, told him I was here and walked back into the garden, the lights off so as not to attract bugs. I stood under the night sky, the air cool now, listening to his voice.

“Maggie's here,” I told him. “She's upstairs, asleep in my bed.”

“How did it go?”

“It was pretty awful.”

“Yeah,” he said, “it would be. How are you?”

“Pretty awful.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I was going to call. I have something for you.”

“What's that, Rachel?”

I told him about the beaded purse, the mistake I'd made thinking it had belonged to Tim's mother, and then what I'd found inside it.

“Is it okay if I stop by for it in about ten minutes?”

“Sure,” I told him, “I'm not going anywhere.”

I went inside and put up coffee. Then I went upstairs and washed my face. Maggie and Brody weren't the only ones who were tired, but weary as I was, I was wide-awake. Even with Brody's news, I couldn't write a story I was willing to buy. I couldn't get that tickle out of my mind, the feeling that something was terrifically off.

I heard the bell and Dash and I ran out to the gate before it rang again. I was hoping to let Maggie sleep.

“Have they found him yet?” I asked when he stepped into the tunnel between the town houses.

“Parker?” He shook his head, his eyes hooded, his mouth tight.

“Come on in.”

He stopped at the stairs again and sat.

“Coffee?”

He looked surprised, then nodded.

“Black?”

He nodded again.

I went inside, poured the coffee and retrieved the beaded purse from O'Fallon's briefcase. When I closed the door behind me, we were in the dark. Brody reached for the cup. I sat next to him, the purse in my hand, thinking about what Maggie had told me, about the push, deciding to keep it where it belonged, to myself. I thought about the fire, too, but didn't think that was my story to tell either. So I just sat there, not knowing what to say, not saying anything.

Brody put down the coffee and took the purse, opening the latch and looking inside. He reached in and took out the gold ring, an antique piece with an oval of jade. He held it close to see the initials but it was too dark. I reached into his jacket pocket, took out his matches and lit one.

“I always heard that some criminals seem to want to be caught,” I said, my voice heavy with sadness.

“You'd think so, the things they leave behind.”

I looked over at the purse.

“He'd probably confess, too,” Brody said.

Probably. “You mean if you caught him.”

Looking at me, not smiling. “Yeah. If.” He sounded cautiously pessimistic. It was a big city, an even bigger country. Parker could be anywhere.

“I wonder if Tim knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That he was failing with Parker. That it was too late for him, that he was never going to be…” I could feel the tears coming, and though I tried to stop them, I felt first one, then another roll down my cheek. “I never saw anyone cry the way Maggie did,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. “It's the worst job on earth, what you were stuck with. I'm sorry I couldn't do it for you. I had to—”

“Don't. It's just the way it was. I didn't expect you to take care of it. It's just a lot of loss, all at once. A lot of death.” Dashiell got up then, walking over to the stairs, lying down against the bottom step, leaning on my feet, his chin on one of Brody's thick-soled cop shoes. Two sad birds with a single stone.

“She'll have to identify the body.”

I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut.

“I'm sorry. You never should have been involved in all this.”

“Why is that?”

He reached for my arm, put his hand there, thought again and took it away. It's not easy comforting a stranger, but it was part of the job. I wonder how many of them thought about that before entering the academy.

“Because he wasn't my friend, my brother, my partner?”

Brody's expression didn't change.

“That doesn't matter now, does it? For whatever reason, I'm in it. It's too late to change that, way too late.”

“And you'll see it through.”

“I will.” Thinking that I, too, was a product of my family history, like Timothy O'Fallon, like Maggie. “I can't believe what some people live through,” I said, “what they live with. The whole family, every last one of them, it's been…”

That's when it happened, an oceanic force pulling at me, taking me where I didn't want to go, where it was too damn dangerous to go. I reached for him, putting my hands on his shoulders, leaning toward him until I was kissing his mouth, tasting the coffee he'd been drinking, taking in the heat of his body, the scent of his skin. He reached around me with both arms and pulled me closer, kissing me back. For a moment, everything else disappeared, all those people, all those questions. For a moment, death disappeared. Then I let go, pushed myself back, the sadness rushing back at me.

A cop. A secretive workaholic with an aversion to showing emotions. What the hell was I thinking?

But, of course, I hadn't been thinking. That had been the point. Hadn't it?

Brody slipped his foot out from beneath Dashiell's head so that he could get up. “I'm going to go now,” he said.

I stood, too. “Because if you stay, we'll both regret it in the morning.” More a statement to myself than a question directed at him.

“No,” he said, surprised. “Not that.” He reached for my face, gently wiping my eyes with his fingers. “Because someone's in your bed.”

I thought he might start to laugh, but he didn't. He was dead serious.

What the hell was
he
thinking?

I began shaking my head. “Just like that? No dinner, no movie, no flowers?”

Brody smiled. We followed him to the gate. I unlocked it and held it open. But he didn't leave. He just stood there looking at me as if I were the hunk of cake I'd neglected to give him with his coffee. Then he put his warm hand on my cheek, bent to ruffle one of Dashiell's ears, turned and headed back toward Tim's house.