Long Bright River: A Novel (36 page)

I know the other man is Eddie Lafferty before he turns around. I see his bald head, his stance, his height. I remember the slight stoop he had.
Bad back,
he told me.

I have my hand on my weapon. Before I can think, I draw it. I hold it before me.

—Hands, I say, loudly and clearly. Let me see your hands.

I recognize that I’m using my work voice, the particular cadence I borrowed from Kacey, from Paula, from all the girls I grew up with, a toughness that served them at school, at work, in life. And it occurs to me suddenly that it might not be natural to them, either. That they, too, may have adopted it, out of a different kind of necessity.

The two men turn toward me. Lafferty and McClatchie.

I can tell that it takes Lafferty a second to place me. I’m out of uniform and out of context. I am unshowered and wild-looking, my hair pulled back into a low knot. I’m tired and strained.

—Whoa, says Lafferty. He smiles, or tries to. Obediently, he raises his hands into the air. Is that Mickey? he says.

—Get your hands up, I say to McClatchie, who finally complies.

—Move away from her, I say to McClatchie, nodding toward Kacey.

I don’t like how close he’s standing, an arm’s length from my sister, who herself is leaning against a ledge. I don’t know how far the drop is to the floor of the nave, but I know I don’t want her going over. Below us, there is still the low murmur of footsteps and coughs and voices, nonsensical now, echoing indecipherably.

—Where to, says McClatchie, dryly. He’s even skinnier than the last time I saw him.

—Against that wall, I say, gesturing, with my head, to my right.

He walks to it. He leans back against it. Puts a foot up.

Eddie Lafferty is still smiling at me, sickly, as if racking his brain for some funny explanation, a reason we all came to be standing here together.

—You undercover too? is what he comes up with.

I say nothing. I don’t want to look him in the eye. I also don’t want to look away from him for an instant. I’m not sure whom to focus on: McClatchie or Lafferty. Kacey is standing behind the latter. And I realize, suddenly, that she is mouthing something to me.

Looking past Lafferty’s right ear, I squint at her. Kacey nods toward McClatchie. Her lips are moving, forming words I can’t parse.
He’s
something.
I.

I’m still focused on Kacey’s mouth when I notice Lafferty’s body tense in that particular manner of a police officer about to give chase. And then he charges at me and knocks me to the ground. My weapon discharges once, shattering a section of ceiling, and then it goes skittering across the carpeted floor of the choir loft.

Below us, a woman screams, and then the cathedral goes silent.

Lafferty is standing over me, one foot on either side of my torso. McClatchie leaves his post and picks the gun up.

I lie very still. I’m panting. From the ground, I study the arched ceiling of the cathedral. Dimly, I can make out where the bullet found its mark. A little cloud of plaster dust descends slowly in a shaft of light. The ceiling, once painted celestial blue, is peeling now. A bird’s nest, I notice, occupies the nearest corner.

The shot is still echoing in my ears. Otherwise, the cathedral is silent as a tomb.

I picture my son. I wonder what will become of him, if today is the end for me. I think of the choices my own mother made—and realize, painfully, that I am not so different from her after all. It’s only the nature of our respective addictions that diverged: Hers was narcotic, clear-cut, defined. Mine is amorphous, but no less unhealthy. Something to do with self-righteousness, or self-perception, or pride.

Thomas, I think, uselessly. I’m so sorry I left you.

When a few long seconds have passed, I glance over at McClatchie. He’s clutching my weapon, the one he retrieved from the floor, but he’s not holding it right. It occurs to me, suddenly, that he has no idea what he’s doing. I’m considering how I might use this to my advantage when he suddenly says, to Lafferty, Kneel down.

Lafferty looks at him for a moment.

—You’re joking, he says.

—I’m not, says McClatchie. Kneel down.

With a certain amount of incredulity, Lafferty does so.

—Keep your hands in the air, says McClatchie.

He glances at me where I lie on the ground.

—Is that right? he says to me.

I lift my head. My forehead got knocked pretty badly when Lafferty plowed into me, and I’m still seeing stars. My neck aches.

—You stand up, McClatchie says to me.

I glance at Kacey, who nods quickly, and I comply.

Then McClatchie does something I don’t understand: still aiming at Lafferty, he edges toward me until we’re standing shoulder to shoulder, side by side. He hands me the weapon.

—You’re better off with this, he says. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.

As soon as I take the gun and turn it on Lafferty, McClatchie puts his hands behind his head, takes a big breath of relief. He walks to the railing at the edge of the choir loft, leans on his elbows, and looks out at the church below.

I hear footsteps coming up the staircase behind us. For a tense moment, I aim back and forth between Lafferty and the stairs.

The door flies open. I see Mike DiPaolo and Davis Nguyen emerge, guns drawn.

—Drop your weapon, DiPaolo says to me calmly, and I put it on the ground.

I don’t understand.

I think, for a moment, that it was Lafferty who called for backup, which will make the job of explaining my case much harder.

—He’s dangerous, I say, about Lafferty, and Lafferty starts to protest, but suddenly Kacey’s raising her voice above all of us.

—Did Truman Dawes send you? she says to DiPaolo and Nguyen.

—Who’s asking? DiPaolo says. He and Nguyen are still stiff-arming
their weapons, aiming them at all of us in turn. I can imagine their confusion.

—My name is Kacey Fitzpatrick, says Kacey. I’m her sister, she says, nodding at me. I’m the one who contacted Truman Dawes. And that, she says, nodding toward Eddie Lafferty, is the man you’re after.

Nguyen and DiPaolo call for backup. Then they take all of us down to the station—me and Kacey and Lafferty and McClatchie—all of us in separate cars.

We’re kept apart, and then we’re interrogated.

I tell the two of them everything I know, from start to finish. I leave nothing out: I tell them about Cleare. I tell them about Kacey. I tell them about Thomas. I tell them about Lafferty, and what Kacey told me about him. I even tell them about Truman, and my embarrassing behavior in that regard.

I tell them the truth, the whole truth, for the first time in my life. Then the two of them leave.

Several hours go by. It occurs to me that I’m starving, and that I have to go to the bathroom, and that I’ve never wanted a glass of water so badly in my life. I shift uncomfortably. I’ve never been on this side of things before.

Finally, DiPaolo enters the room I’m being held in. He looks tired. He nods at me, pensive, his hands in his pockets.

—It’s him, he says. It’s Lafferty.

Wordlessly, he holds forth a printed picture of a young woman, smiling, wearing a pretty dress.

—You recognize her? he says.

It takes me a moment, and then suddenly I’m back on the Tracks in
October, leaning over a log, peering toward the first victim. Next to her, in my memory—I shudder to think it—is Eddie Lafferty. I think of the face of the victim, on that day: pained and unpeaceful. I think of the spattering of red dots near her eyes. The violent way she died. I think of Lafferty’s reaction to her. Impassive. Aloof.

—Who is she? I say.

—Sasha Lowe Lafferty, says DiPaolo. Eddie Lafferty’s most recent ex-wife, he says.

—No, I say.

DiPaolo nods.

I look at the picture again. I remember Lafferty talking about his third wife, about her youth.
She was immature. Maybe that was the problem.

—She was badly hooked herself, says DiPaolo. Using every day. The rest of her family had cut ties with her over a year before. They’ve had no contact with her since then. Her only contact was with Lafferty.

He pauses.

—Why she was never reported missing, I guess, he says.

—Jesus, I say.

I’m still looking at the photo. I’m glad to see this woman at a different moment in her life. I close my eyes quickly. Open them again. I let the image of the smiling woman before me replace in my mind the pained, deceased version of Sasha Lowe Lafferty that I’ve been carrying around in my mind since I found her.

—Guess where they met, says DiPaolo.

I know before he says it.

—Wildwood, I say.

DiPaolo nods.

—Jesus, I say again.

DiPaolo looks like he’s hesitating for a moment. Then he continues. You asked about Simon Cleare, he says.

I steel myself. I nod.

—I want you to know, he says, I looked into it. I wasn’t trying to blow you off. After we met, I assigned a guy to tag him a few days in a row.
Sure enough, on day two he heads up to Kensington, middle of a workday, no assigned reason to be there.

—Okay, I say.

DiPaolo looks at me. He’s got a problem, Mickey, he says. He was there for the same reason everyone else goes to Kensington. Bought a thousand MGs of Oxy off a guy we know. No heroin, that I know of, but that’s probably next. How he affords that much Oxy on a detective salary . . .

DiPaolo trails off. Whistles.

I look down at the table.

—I see, I say. That makes sense.

I think of Simon’s words to me when I was young. The tattoo on his calf.
I went through a phase of it myself,
he told me, when I was frightened for Kacey.

At the time, it had brought me such comfort.

After Kacey and I are released, the two of us leave together through the front door of the station. My car is all the way back at the cathedral, two miles from the station. So is the car Kacey borrowed from our father.

Speaking of our father: I call him as soon as I can. Tell him Kacey’s okay. That she’ll be home soon.

—And you? he says.

—Excuse me?

—Are you okay too? says my father.

—Yes, I say. I’m okay.

I am, in fact, feeling quite relieved. As Kacey and I walk, side by side, I look at our surroundings. Kensington itself looks different, somehow changed, or perhaps I am simply noticing things about it that I never noticed before. It’s a lovely neighborhood in many ways, and several of its blocks are quite nice, well maintained, blocks that have managed to stave off the encroaching chaos, blocks with grandmothers who have never left and never will, who sweep their stoops each morning, then sweep all the stoops of their neighbors, and sometimes the street itself, even if the city doesn’t come around. We pass a street, on the right, with white lights strung across it for Christmas.

At last, Kacey recounts her morning to me.

She, too, went first to the house with three Bs, the last place she knew
Connor McClatchie to be living. When she found the house vacant and condemned, she went back to the Ave to ask around. Fairly soon, she learned where McClatchie had gone.

She drove over to find him. She wanted to tell him what was going on. Ask what he knew about Eddie Lafferty.

—I can’t believe you did that, I say, interrupting. Why would you do that?

—I told you, says Kacey. I knew when he found out that Eddie Lafferty might be the one killing those women, he wouldn’t stand for it. I know him.

I shake my head. I notice, suddenly, that Kacey looks unsteady and pale. She has her hands on her stomach. She is six months pregnant, now, and seems to feel it. I don’t know if she’ll make it the whole way. She keeps insisting she’s fine, but she’s bent forward slightly. How long has it been, I wonder, since her last dose of methadone?

—Are you okay? I ask her.

—Fine, Kacey says, tightly.

We walk in silence a little longer. Then she goes on.

—Connor can do bad things, Kacey says, but he’s not all bad. Almost nobody is.

I have nothing to say to this. I picture Mrs. Mahon, her hand tipping back and forth in the air above the chessboard.
They’re bad and good both, all the pieces.
It is possible to acknowledge, on some level, the truth of this. And yet I hate Connor McClatchie for what he did to my sister. And I know, without a doubt, that I’ll never forgive him.

—Anyway, Kacey says, Connor told me that Lafferty approached him last summer, told him he was a cop. Told him he’d keep him protected in exchange for a cut. That’s why I recognized him, she tells me. And that’s why they went off to the side to do their business. Lafferty was taking kickbacks from Connor.

—That fucker, I say suddenly.

—Which one?

—Both of them, I say. Both fuckers.

A thought occurs to me then: Did Ahearn assign Lafferty to my car
so that he could dig up some dirt on me? Six months ago, I would have said that was absurd. Now, I don’t know.

—And Ahearn’s a fucker too, I say. I bet he knew. Maybe got a cut too.

Kacey, I notice, is laughing.

—What? I say. What?

—I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before, says Kacey.

—Oh, I say. Well, I do now.

—Well, says Kacey. You’re right. Connor told me Lafferty wasn’t the only one. Taking payment, I mean. Said it happens more regularly than you know.

—I believe it, I say.

—Connor didn’t know about the women, Kacey says. That’s the one thing he didn’t know. He didn’t know that Lafferty had been seen with the four victims. He didn’t know people were talking in Kensington. When I told him, he freaked. Punched a wall.

—Noble, I say.

—He can be, says Kacey pensively.

—Anyway, she says, he had Lafferty’s phone number, and he called him right away. Told him he had a business proposal for him, and he wanted to see him in person at the cathedral. Once Lafferty got there, I texted you from Connor’s phone. And I texted Truman Dawes, too.

—How did you have Truman’s number? I say.

—Oh, says Kacey. He gave it to me years ago. I don’t think you were even there that day. He came across me on the Ave when I was pretty bad off, looking down and out, and he gave me his card. Said if I ever needed anything, if I ever wanted to get clean, to give him a ring. I memorized it.

—Oh, I say. Yes. He does that.

—He’s a good person, she says. Isn’t he.

—He is, I say.

She smiles, unaware.

—Well, she says, I’m glad it all worked out.

And suddenly I can’t believe her: the danger she put us all in. Truman. Me. Thomas. Herself. And the baby she’s carrying, too.

I stop walking and turn toward her. Goddammit, I say. Goddammit, Kacey.

She flinches, slightly. What? she says. Don’t shout.

—How could you do that to me? I say. Put me in the position you put me in today. I have a son to think about.

Kacey goes silent. Both of us turn away from one another and start to walk again. In my peripheral vision, I see Kacey begin to shiver, her teeth chattering.

We reach an intersection and I stop at the crosswalk to let the cars go by. But Kacey continues. She walks out into traffic, blindly. A car screeches to a halt. The one behind it nearly rams into it. Horns go off in all directions.

—Kacey, I call.

She doesn’t turn around. I toe the ground in front of the sidewalk. The cars don’t slow. I wait until, at last, I have the right of way, and then I break into a trot. Kacey is fifty feet ahead of me, walking fast. She turns the corner onto the Avenue, and I lose sight of her momentarily.

When I finally reach the Ave, I turn left, like Kacey did, and I see her twenty yards away, squatting on the ground, elbows on her knees, head in hands. Her belly points down, toward the sidewalk. I can’t tell from here, but it looks like she’s crying.

I slow to a walk. I approach Kacey carefully. We’re at the intersection where she and Paula used to work, right in front of Alonzo’s store, and I have the feeling, now, that if I say or do the wrong thing, I’ll lose her: the Avenue will take her back, away from me. Kacey will sink into the ground and disappear.

I stand over my sister for a minute. She’s shaking with sobs. She’s crying so hard that she’s gasping for breath. She doesn’t look up.

—Kacey, I say.

I put a hand, finally, on my sister’s shoulder.

Violently, Kacey windmills her arm.

I bend down, get to eye level with her. Pedestrians move around us.

—What’s going on? I say. Kacey?

She lifts her head up, at last, and looks at me. Looks me right in the eye. Says, Get the
fuck
away from me.

I stand again. What the hell, Kacey, I say. What did I do?

Kacey stands up, too, chest out, belly out. I brace myself.

—You knew, Kacey says. You might not have known about Lafferty, but you knew this shit happened. You must have. You’d been told before.

I bristle.

—I didn’t, I say. Nobody ever told me.

Kacey laughs loudly, once.

—
I
told you, says Kacey. Me. Your own sister. I told you that Simon Cleare took advantage of me when I couldn’t say no. You didn’t believe me. You said I was lying.

—That’s different, I say. I was wrong about that. But it’s different.

Kacey smiles, sadly.

—What’s Simon? she says. What is he? Is Simon a cop?

I close my eyes. Breathe in.

—Because I thought he was, says Kacey.

Kacey looks at me for a long time, searching my face.

Then she looks past me, toward the corner, toward Alonzo’s store. She’s frozen. I turn, finally, to see what she sees, but no one is there. And I know, without asking, that Kacey is picturing Paula Mulroney standing there, one leg propped up against the wall, cocky, smiling, her usual stance.

—They were my friends, says Kacey, quietly now. All of them. Even the ones I didn’t know.

—I’m sorry, I say at last.

She doesn’t reply.

—Kacey, I’m sorry, I say again.

But the El train is going by now, and I don’t know if my sister can hear me.