Long Bright River: A Novel (15 page)

—Yes, I said.

—You’re beautiful, said Simon. Do you believe that?

—Yes, I said.

It was the first time in my life that I did.

Late that night, lying next to my sister in bed, I had the urge to tell her. Years earlier, when Kacey had had her first kiss, she had described it to me. She was twelve years old at the time, and we were still best friends. Kacey had come home from playing outside and had shouted my name
once, excitedly, had run up the stairs to our room and flung herself down on the bed.

—Sean Geoghehan kissed me, she said, her eyes bright. She put a pillow over her mouth. Screamed into it. He kissed me. We kissed.

I was fourteen. I said nothing.

Kacey lowered the pillow and regarded me. Then she sat up, her face concerned, and stretched out an arm.

—Oh, Mick, she had said. It’ll happen. Don’t worry. It’ll happen for you too.

—Probably not, I said. I forced a laugh but it sounded sad.

—It definitely will, said Kacey. Promise me you’ll tell me about it when it does.

The night Simon kissed me, I wondered where I would begin. Before I could speak, I heard the soft, unguarded exhalation that meant that Kacey had drifted into sleep.

I did what Simon told me to do. I graduated high school, and I continued to live in Gee’s house. I moved, finally, into the middle bedroom, which still felt haunted by my mother’s presence. I started part-time work as a cashier at a local pharmacy, and I began to pay Gee two hundred dollars in monthly rent. I took my sixty credits at CCP. Then took the police exam. At twenty, I became a police officer. No one came to my induction ceremony.

Kacey, meanwhile, continued to decline. She was wild and erratic by then. In her late teens and early twenties she sometimes worked as a bartender, for cash, and sometimes worked at our uncle Rich’s car dealership in Frankford, and sometimes babysat for any irresponsible parents who would hire her, and sometimes still dealt, I believe, for Fran Mulroney, Paula’s older brother. She lived at Gee’s and with friends and on the street in equal turns. In those days she spent more time in Fishtown than in Kensington, which meant I didn’t see her, yet, on my shifts. I never knew where she would be when I walked in the door at night, and I lived in anticipation of the day that she would not return at all. We rarely spoke.

Still, she was the only person who knew about my relationship with Simon. She had found a note from him among my things—it occurred to me only later that she had most likely come across it while looking for
cash to swipe—and had thrust it furiously into my chest the next time she saw me.

—What the hell are you thinking, she said to me.

I was embarrassed. The note referenced a recent night we had spent together in a hotel. My time with Simon was a relief to me, an escape, the first true happiness I had ever known, and if it was a secret, well, I liked it that way. It was mine.

I put my hand over the note protectively. I said nothing.

What I believe Kacey said next was,
He’s a fucking creep.
Or, worse:
He’s been trying to get into your pants since you were fourteen years old.
Today I shudder to think of it. Since I was a small child, I have always tried to maintain my dignity in every situation. At work now, I strive to maintain my professional dignity. At home, with Thomas, I strive to maintain a certain parental dignity, to protect him from overhearing anything that might upset him, or anything untoward. Therefore, because it feels undignified, I have never enjoyed the feeling of anyone else worrying about me or being concerned for my well-being, preferring instead to give the impression that I am in all ways fine, and that I have everything under control. Largely, I believe this image to be an honest one.

—That’s not true, I said.

Kacey laughed. It was not a kind sound.

—Whatever you say, she said.

—It isn’t, I said.

—Oh, Mick, she said. She shook her head. And I saw, in her expression, something like pity.

At twenty years old, I thought what Kacey said was neither a fair nor accurate assessment of the situation. It was I who had pursued Simon, and not the other way around. I never thought of myself as romantic, but I sometimes told myself that the moment I laid eyes on him was my only experience with love at first sight; whereas Simon told me that it had taken him years to see me as anything more than a child. Both Simon and I were aware, however, of how our relationship might be
perceived by others who had known us when I was his charge, and so we always took pains to keep quiet about it. Simon had recently taken the detective exam, at last, and had passed, and was beginning a career with the South Detectives, and he didn’t want anything to derail it. When we met, it was in hotels; he said he didn’t want to risk his son, Gabriel—eleven then—learning about us, and Gabriel’s mother sometimes brought him by unexpectedly, and it was all very—
complicated
, was the word he used.

—One day you’ll get your own place, he told me often, and then we’ll be able to stay there.

It was largely for this reason that I banked all of my money for the first two years of my career with the PPD, and used these savings on a down payment for a house in Port Richmond. I was twenty-two years old when I signed the papers. I put down forty percent of the home’s price—admittedly, a small sum—but still more money than I have ever again had in my bank account at once. The realtor told me, impressed, that not many twenty-two-year-olds had the restraint to save up so much money, instead spending it on evenings out with friends. I am not like most twenty-two-year-olds, I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t.

Leaving Gee’s house—and the terrible fights that she and Kacey had, which now sometimes escalated into physicality—felt like escaping from a war.

I had told neither Kacey nor Gee my plan to move out in advance. There were two reasons for this: The first was that I didn’t want either one to know much about my finances—Gee because she might begin to demand more in rent than what she already collected from me, and Kacey because I didn’t want her to have any more incentive to solicit me for cash. (I had put my foot down, by then, but every now and again she would still come to me with a plea.) The second reason I kept my plans to myself was that I believed, truly, that neither Gee nor Kacey would care.

I was surprised, therefore, when Kacey met my announcement with sadness.

The day I moved out for good, she came home to find me moving boxes down the stairs.

—What are you doing, she said to me. She crossed her arms. She frowned.

I paused for a moment, breathing heavily. I had nothing aside from clothes and books to move, but I had too many of the latter, and was learning quickly how heavy a boxful of paperbacks can be.

—Moving out, I said.

I expected a shrug. Instead, Kacey began to shake her head. No, she said. Mick. You can’t leave me alone here.

I placed the box I was holding on the stairs. Already, my back was aching; it took me days to recover.

—I thought you’d be happy, I said.

Kacey looked genuinely puzzled. Why would you think that? she asked.

You don’t even like me,
I wanted to say. But it felt too maudlin, too self-pitying and morose, and so instead I told her I had to get going, that my plan was to return and tell Gee that night. Somewhat formally, Kacey held the door open for me as I passed. I looked back at her, just once, searching her face for signs of the old Kacey, the ghost of the child who once depended on me so entirely. But I could find no trace of her.

The house I bought was ugly and old, but it was mine. Most importantly, there was no shouting or fighting inside of it. I came home from each shift and stood for a while just inside the front door, leaning against it, my hands on my heart, letting the peace of that house settle onto my shoulders. Telling myself, You are alone here.

The empty house had a warm and pleasing echo. I was slow to decorate, wanting to be careful in my selections, spending the first months after the move with only a mattress on the floor and several cheap chairs I picked up on the street. When I began to buy furniture, I did so carefully. I went to antique stores, to secondhand shops that would give me good deals on objects I thought beautiful. The charms of the house were beginning to reveal themselves to me. There was a strange stained-glass panel to the right of the front door, with red-and-green flowers outlined in lead, and it brought me satisfaction to know that someone else had once valued this house as much as I did, thought well enough of it to include such a small and beautiful detail. I stocked my refrigerator with plentiful, healthy food. I listened to music in peace. When I finally purchased a real bed, I spent money on it—the only luxury I permitted myself. I made it as comfortable as I could, selecting a queen-sized mattress from the Macy’s in the old Wanamaker Building. From the same store I purchased bedding that a saleslady promised me was the finest I’d ever sleep on.

Simon and I now had a private place to go. At last, he sometimes
stayed with me all night. When he did, a deep and pleasant calm came over me. I hadn’t slept so well since Kacey and I were small. Since my mother was alive.

During the several years that followed my departure, I saw both Gee and Kacey only on occasion. Each time, Kacey looked worse and worse, and Gee looked older. I never asked Kacey what she was doing, but still, she volunteered a profusion of information that I largely took to be false: I’m going back to school, she said on several occasions. I’m going for my GED. (As far as I know, she never even took a course.) And then: I’ve got an interview lined up tomorrow. And then: I’ve got a job. (She didn’t.)

What she was actually doing in those days was difficult to determine. I don’t believe she had begun, yet, to do sex work; in any case, I still didn’t see her on my shifts. In a moment of clarity, once, Kacey told me that time spent in addiction feels looped. Each morning brings with it the possibility of change, each evening the shame of failure. The only task becomes the seeking of the fix. Every dose is a parabola, low-high-low; and every day a series of these waves; and then the days themselves become chartable, according to how much time, in sum, the user spends in comfort or in pain; and then the months. Confounding all of this are periods of sobriety, which occur voluntarily on some occasions—when, for example, Kacey checks herself into Kirkbride, Gaudenzia, Fairmount, other cheap and local rehab facilities with dubious success rates—and involuntarily on others: when Kacey finds herself in trouble, and then in prison. These periods, too, become part of the pattern: waves of sobriety, followed by relapse, followed by larger waves of active use. Always, the constant baseline is the Ave, the feeling of family and routine that it offers.

These ups and downs might have gone on indefinitely if Kacey’s poor decision making hadn’t gotten in the way. In 2011, she let a boyfriend convince her to help him steal a television from his parents’ place. The parents, not wanting their son to go to prison, blamed the theft on Kacey.
And Kacey took the fall. By then, she had a long track record, and the judge came down on her hard.

She was sentenced to a year at Riverside.

Some might have found this regrettable. I didn’t. In fact, for the first time in a long while, I had hope for
her.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the same young detective, Davis Nguyen, comes into the common room at morning roll call, looking tired. He’s wearing an expensive-looking suit today, tailored differently from the baggy suits the older detectives wear: it’s slim and cut short, and beneath it his socks show, ever so slightly. His hair is cut in a style that I’ve seen on the kids in Northern Liberties and Fishtown, the sides buzzed to nothing, the top flipped at an angle. How old is he? Late twenties? He might even be my age, but I feel like he’s from a different generation. Probably, he went to college for criminal justice. In his hand, I notice, is a cup from Bomber Coffee.

—A little news, Nguyen says. We might have a lead on the Kensington homicides.

In the room, a small murmur.

He bends over the computer. Pulls up a video on the screen in the main room.

It’s footage from a private security camera set up by a homeowner, not far from the lot off Tioga where Katie Conway’s body was discovered.

In it, a young girl walks, in grainy black-and-white, across the screen. Five seconds later, a man—hood up, hands in pockets—does the same.

—That, says Nguyen, rewinding to the girl, is Katie Conway.

—That, he says, pointing to the man, is a person of interest.

He pauses, zooms in. The man’s face is grainy. It is difficult to discern much about it. Race uncertain, to my eyes. He seems big, though it might also just be that the girl is tiny.

His sweatshirt, the hood of it pulled up to obscure his hair, seems to give us the most information: it says
Wildwood
right across the front of it, the
Wild
on one side of the zipper, the
wood
on the other.

Wildwood, a shore town in southern New Jersey, is a common enough destination that it won’t be terribly helpful. I have been there once, with Simon, one of the few weekend trips we ever took together. Almost everyone in Philadelphia, I think, has been to Wildwood. Still, the specificity of that sweatshirt offers us a glimmer of hope.

—Anyone seen this guy around? Nguyen asks. But his voice isn’t optimistic. Around the room, a shaking of heads.

—We’ve already sent the image down to Wildwood’s PD. They’re asking around, says Nguyen. In the meantime, check your phones. We’ll send the video to you today. Keep an eye out, ask about him whenever you take someone in.

Ahearn thanks him, and Nguyen turns to leave.

Before he goes, another cop, Joe Kowalczyk, says, Question.

Nguyen turns around.

—If you had to guess, says Kowalczyk. Race? Age?

Nguyen pauses. I almost hesitate to say, he says, because I want you guys to keep your eyes open for everyone. And that tape wasn’t clear.

He looks up at the ceiling. Continues. But if I had to, he says, I’d say white guy, forties. That’s the profile, anyway. That’s who usually does this kind of thing.