Long Bright River: A Novel (31 page)

It’s nine o’clock when I finally drop my father back at his house. We have made no plan. He has my phone number now, and I have his. That will suffice until Kacey and I both determine our feelings on a potential reunion with one another.

My father says he will talk to her. Try to convince her.

—You girls need each other, he says.

—You don’t have to convince Kacey of anything, I say stiffly. If she doesn’t want to see me, that’s just fine.

—Okay, says my father. All right. I hear you.

But I can tell, from his voice, that he doesn’t believe me.

After I drop him off, I wait for a while, watching as he runs up the steps. The shades on the house have been lifted, and I can see inside it. Each lit-up window contains within it the possibility that Kacey will pass by.

But she doesn’t, and doesn’t, and finally I drive away.

My phone, after a long day of being out of the house, has died completely, which adds to my sense of unease. I don’t like being out of contact with Thomas.

No one is on the road. It’s snowing lightly. A fat yellow moon sits in the sky. I try to picture Thomas and Mrs. Mahon, and I try to tell myself that they are tucked in and cozy, watching something to do with
Christmas on television. Maybe, I think, Thomas will still be awake when I get home. It will make me feel better, less guilty for leaving, if I can at least say good night to him.

When I park the car and walk up the back stairs, I see a low flickering light through the window next to the door. I turn my key as quietly as I can, in case Thomas is sleeping already. But the door stops an inch from its threshold. I push it again, more frantically. There’s something blocking it.

Through the window at the top of the door, I see Mrs. Mahon’s round concerned face. She looks past my shoulder for a moment, too, as if making certain I haven’t been followed.

—Mickey? she says through the door. Is that you?

—What’s going on? I say. It’s me. Are you all right? Where’s Thomas?

—Just hold on, she says. Hold on one second.

A scraping sound as she drags something away.

At last, the door swings open, and when I enter the apartment I scan the room quickly for my son.

—Where’s Thomas? I say again.

—Asleep in his bedroom, says Mrs. Mahon. Then she says, Thank God you’re home. They’ve been looking for you.

—Who has? I say.

—The police, says Mrs. Mahon. The police came here about an hour ago and rang your doorbell. Poor Thomas was terrified. I was terrified, Mickey. When they turned up in your doorway, I thought they were going to tell me you’d died. They said they’d been trying to call you but couldn’t get through. They came to find you at home.

—My phone’s dead, I say. Who was it? What officer?

Mrs. Mahon fishes in her pocket, takes out a card. Hands it to me.
Detective Davis Nguyen,
it says.

—There was another one too, she says. Another man. I can’t recall his name.

—DiPaolo? I say.

—That’s the one, says Mrs. Mahon.

—What did they want? I say.

I move to the corner of the room, where I keep a charger on an end table, and plug in my phone.

—They didn’t tell me that, says Mrs. Mahon. Only said to have you call them when you got in.

—All right, I say. Thank you, Mrs. Mahon.

—I wonder, though, says Mrs. Mahon, if it has anything to do with the news.

—What news?

Mrs. Mahon inclines her head toward the television, and I follow her gaze. It’s not a Christmas movie playing in the background: a correspondent is standing on Cumberland Street, near an empty lot that’s been taped off. The same light snow that’s falling on Bensalem is falling there.

Christmas Day Murder,
says a caption below the reporter’s pale face. She’s bundled into a purple parka. Into her microphone, she’s saying, Two weeks ago, the Philadelphia Police Department was assuring the public that they had a suspect in custody. Today, however, there is speculation that this homicide may be connected to the string of homicides that took place in Kensington earlier this month.

Mrs. Mahon is shaking her head, making small disapproving noises. Poor girl, she says.

—Who, I say. Have they named the victim?

—No, says Mrs. Mahon. Not yet. Only said it was a female.

—Anything else? I say.

—Said she was discovered around noon today. Seems like she’d only been dead a short time.

I’m still holding my phone in one hand. At last, it is sufficiently charged, and it comes to life at my command.

—Mrs. Mahon, I say. Would you mind staying here a moment while I make this call? I don’t want to send you away if they’re going to need to bring me to the station.

—That’s what I was thinking, Mrs. Mahon says. I don’t mind at all.

It’s DiPaolo I phone, not Nguyen. I know DiPaolo better.

He answers right away, sounding alert. He’s outside someplace: I can hear traffic in the background.

—It’s Mickey Fitzpatrick, I say. I heard you stopped by my house.

—Glad you called, he says. Where are you right now?

—At home, I say.

—And where’s your son? says DiPaolo.

I begin to answer, then change my mind. Why? I say.

—We just want to make certain you’re both accounted for.

—He’s fine, I say. He’s sleeping.

But suddenly I feel the need to know this for myself. As I speak to DiPaolo, I walk swiftly to Thomas’s room and open the door.

There he is.

He has bunched all the blankets into a nest at the center of his bed. He’s hugging them tightly. His jaw is tense. Softly, I close the door again.

—Okay, says DiPaolo.

—What’s going on? I say. Is Mulvey still in custody?

DiPaolo breathes for a bit.

—He was, he says. Until today.

—What happened? I say.

—He has an alibi, he says at last. He’s got a sober friend says he was with Mulvey for two days straight around the time the Walker girl was killed, and Mulvey’s claiming that the reason his DNA was on two of the girls who died was that he was a client of theirs. Nothing more. Both
of them, Mulvey and his friend, they swear he didn’t kill them. He lawyered up. We had to let him go.

—What time was he released? I say. Was he in custody at the time of today’s homicide?

I don’t know what I want the answer to be.

—He was, says DiPaolo.

In his voice, I hear there’s something more he has to say.

—Listen, says DiPaolo, I’m sending a patrol car your way. Rookie from the 9th District. He’ll be parked in your driveway tonight, okay? Don’t be surprised when you see him there.

—Why? I say.

DiPaolo pauses. In the background, I hear a siren go by. He coughs once, twice.

—Why, Mike? I say.

—It’s just a precaution, he says. Probably an overreaction. But the name you gave me when we met at Duke’s—the woman you said made an accusation to you against someone in the PPD?

—Paula, I say. Paula Mulroney.

DiPaolo’s silent. Waiting for me to connect the dots.

—She was the victim today, he says finally.

I tell Mrs. Mahon to sleep in my bed for the night. I’ll sleep on the couch, in the room closest to the front door, where anyone entering would encounter me first.

I want us all under the same roof.

All I tell Mrs. Mahon about the cruiser that inches quietly up our snowy driveway and parks there is that my colleagues are being extra cautious because of some information I was able to give them.

—It’s nothing to worry about, I say, and Mrs. Mahon says, Do I look like I worry about much?

But I know she’s only putting on a brave face, just as I am. And while Mrs. Mahon is using the bathroom, I sneak quietly down the hall and take down, from the lockbox, my weapon.

Now I can’t sleep. I’m thinking about the cruiser in the driveway, wondering why, if DiPaolo is afraid that Paula was killed to silence her, it’s a PPD officer who’s been assigned to guard us. I would feel safer with a member of the state police, an outsider. It’s true: DiPaolo took pains to tell me that he was assigning a rookie to the watch, someone from a different district—and therefore someone, presumably, without many ties to the 24th. Still, I lie awake on the sofa until four a.m., watching the second hand of the wall clock tick in the dim light from the outdoor lamp. Shadows segment it, cast by the slatted blinds. I’d climb into bed with Thomas if I weren’t worried this would wake him up. I want to be
close to him, to know I am protecting him, to know he’s right next to me in the world.

Another feeling begins slowly to take over, joining forces with my worry: it’s sadness, terrible sadness for Paula, whom I can still picture clearly as an eighteen-year-old with a sharp tongue and a quick laugh. Someone who always stood up for Kacey, just as Kacey always stood up for me. I suppose I always liked knowing Paula was out there, watching over my sister, watching over all the women of Kensington.

Last, and worst, comes guilt. If the person we’re looking for is in the PPD; and if I am the one who first spoke Paula Mulroney’s name—to Ahearn, and then to Chambers, and then to DiPaolo—then, yes. It is possible that I am the one responsible, indirectly, for her death.

I close my eyes. I put my hands to my head.

Off the record?
I said to Ahearn.

Off the record,
he said to me.

By the next morning, the PPD still hasn’t released Paula’s name to the news.

I spend a little while searching for information about her online. Quickly, I come across a Facebook page, set up by friends in her memory.

On it, I find information about a mass for her. It will be at Holy Redeemer this Thursday.

There’s no viewing. The implications of this settle queasily onto me.

I intend to go.

All day, I wait for more information about the circumstances of her death. I want to watch the news, to see whether they’ve apprehended anybody, but I don’t want to frighten Thomas. Instead, I listen to local radio, using my cell phone and an old pair of headphones that I find in a box in the closet. I wear them around the apartment, doing laundry, organizing, while Thomas builds his wooden train tracks into an elaborate maze.

—What are you listening to? he says several times.

—The news, I reply.

The cruiser in the driveway has departed, but a new one comes by our house every so often, driving slowly down the street. I can see it from my bedroom window. Sometimes, I find it comforting; others, I find it threatening, foreboding, predatory. I try to keep Thomas away, but he’s quite observant, and he knows something is afoot.

The station I’m listening to is the local public radio affiliate that Lauren Spright works for. At the end of a one-hour show, I hear the host say her name.

I remember, suddenly, our encounter in Bomber Coffee, and her offer to host a get-together for Lila and Thomas. It occurs to me, in fact, that I might ask Lauren whether she could do this during Thursday’s funeral for Paula. Spring Garden Day School is closed for the week between Christmas and the New Year, which means that Lauren, too, might be at home.

I retreat again into the bedroom, call her, and leave a message, telling her I have a funeral to go to and asking if it might work for Thomas to come over at that time. A minute later, she calls me back.

—Sorry, she says. I didn’t recognize your number. That sounds great. I’ve been looking for stuff for Lila to do. This break is never ending.

Lauren laughs briefly, and then stops. I’m sorry about your friend, she says.

—Thank you, I say. She wasn’t, I say, she wasn’t a close friend. She was a friend of my sister’s more than mine.

—Still, says Lauren. A friend of the family. No one likes for anyone to die young.

—No, I say. That’s true.

Paula’s funeral is underattended, despite the fact that the PPD has finally released her name. I walk in ten minutes before the mass is due to begin, and seat myself in a pew toward the back, genuflecting out of habit before sitting.

I have two reasons for being here: The first is to pay my respects. I am not certain whether or not I believe in an afterlife, but I do believe in trying to do what is right during one’s own life, and if I don’t know with certainty, yet, that my mention of Paula’s name to the PPD led directly to her death, what I do know is that it was, at least, a betrayal of her trust. I am here, therefore, to make my amends.

The second reason: I feel it is possible that I might overhear something useful while I’m here, may hear speculation about the cause of her demise.

This morning, I dressed myself in black pants and a black shirt and realized, suddenly, that I looked like Gee in her catering uniform. So I put on a gray shirt instead, and kept my hair and face as plain and inconspicuous as possible.

Now, from my pew in the back, I can see that the first few rows on either side of the church are full, but the rest of the room is empty. I recognize most of the people in the church, either from working in the 24th or from high school. All of the attendants seem to me to be in varying degrees of sobriety today. A handful of men sit together, one of them coughing outrageously, another nodding out. A dozen women, some of whom I know I’ve brought in.

The parish, Holy Redeemer, is the one we grew up going to as kids, and the one affiliated with the first grade school we attended. It’s a big stone church, cool in the summer even with no air-conditioning, cold in the winter, as it is today. I have many memories from this church: I made my First Holy Communion here, and then Kacey did two years later, wearing the same dress. I can still see her, dressed as a tiny bride, trying to remember to walk slowly.

It is not out of the question, I know, that Kacey herself might be here. Surely she has heard by now of Paula’s death, and I thought perhaps she might make the decision to come. But I don’t see her anyplace. Not yet. Every so often, I turn back to check the door.

The service begins. The priest—Father Steven, who has been here so long that he also led our mother’s service—speaks quickly, intoning the rites. I imagine, morbidly, that funeral masses in this neighborhood have increased in number in the past two decades. Father Steven seems quite accustomed to his role.

From here, I can see the profile of Paula’s mother, in the front row on the side opposite mine. She’s wearing jeans and sneakers. She doesn’t take her puffy jacket off, but keeps it wrapped around herself, another layer of protection. She has her arms crossed about her middle in an odd way, so that the palms of her hands are facing the ceiling. She is gazing down into them, as if cradling the memory of her daughter, recalling the weight and the warmth of the baby Paula. Wondering what went wrong.

Fran Mulroney, Paula’s older brother, delivers a eulogy that’s mostly about his own anger with the perpetrator.
Whoever did this,
he says, over and over again, wagging his head back and forth with as much menace as he can muster in a church. Father Steven clears his throat. Toward the end, Fran hints at his anger with Paula, for being in the situation she was in. He remembers her sense of humor, how sweet she was as a child. I just don’t know what happened, he says, several times.

—I wish she made better decisions, says the person who introduced everyone around him to the pills that would eventually undo them all.

The service ends. A receiving line is forming at the back. Fran Mulroney and his mother and someone else, a grandfather, maybe, are standing at the front of it, near the main doors.

Kacey never came.

I slink down a side aisle, and then I position myself in line behind a group of women I recognize from working the 24th. They are friends of Paula’s, and were friends of my sister’s, too.

I look down at my phone, trying to be casual, in case they turn and see me. Most of them, I imagine, would recognize me, despite my lack of a uniform today.

They’re speaking in near whispers, but I can hear snippets of what they’re saying, one word every so often that gives me an indication of their views.

—That fucker, says one, and another repeats, That fucker.

At first I think they are talking about Fran Mulroney. They’re looking in his direction, at least. But then the conversation shifts, slightly. At one point I hear, distinctly, the word
cop.
At another I hear
wrong guy. Bail,
I hear. My view is mainly of the back of their heads, but every so often one of them turns to another and inclines her head to whisper something, and I catch a glimpse of her face and her expression, in quarter-turn.

Suddenly, one of them—she is standing at the front of the pack, turning back to listen to something her friend is saying—spots me and freezes.

—Yo, she says to her friend. Yo. Shut up.

All four of them, seeing where she is looking, turn in my direction. I keep my eyes on my phone, pretending not to notice. But I see, peripherally, that no one is turning back around.

The woman closest to me is short and strong looking. She’s wearing purple jeans. She points her finger right at me, almost touching my chest, so that I am forced to look up.

—You’ve got some fuckin’ nerve, she says. Showing up here.

Her hair is slicked back into a low ponytail. She wears earrings that come almost to her collar.

—I’m sorry? I say.

—You should be, says another woman.

All four of them are moving toward me now, menacingly, hands in pockets, chins thrust forward.

—Get the fuck out of here, says the woman in purple jeans.

—I don’t understand, I say.

She snorts.

—What are you, she says. Stupid?

It’s a word I’ve never liked. I frown.

The woman is snapping her fingers in my face now. Hello? she’s saying. Hello? Go home. Leave.

A sudden movement, behind my aggressors, catches my eye. Someone is entering the church, moving in the opposite direction as the departing crowd.

I don’t recognize her at first.

Her hair is light brown, as close to her natural color as I’ve seen it since she was a child. Her complexion is pale. She’s wearing glasses. I’ve never seen her wear glasses before.

Kacey. My sister.