Next of Kin (41 page)

‘If looks could kill,’ Kozlowski said, sitting next to him.

Finn looked at him, and Kozlowski nodded over toward Catherine Buchanan. She was looking at Finn. Staring through him. Almost as though she were wishing him to vanish; to leave her house and her
life and take all the tragedy he seemed to bring to her family.

‘Can’t really blame her,’ Finn said.

‘No? It’s not like it’s your fault.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He looked at his shoes again, unable to bear her look anymore. ‘Even if it isn’t, I’m still the reason for all this. I’m the reason her
world is falling apart. I’m the physical embodiment of everything that was wrong with her husband.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I guess I am truly my father’s son.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Kozlowski said. ‘She married the asshole. She chose her life. You had nothing to do with it.’

‘Maybe not.’

Long walked up, stood in front of them. ‘We’re done here,’ he said. ‘We’ve just got a few more things to take care of down at the station.’

Finn nodded, grateful to be able to get out of the house where he’d never been wanted. He kept his head down as he made his way to the door. He almost made it.

‘Scott,’ came a voice from behind him. He turned. Brooke Buchanan was standing in front of him. Her face was smudged, and she had circles under her eyes.

‘Finn,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Nobody calls me Scott. Everyone calls me Finn.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She looked away, and the tears started rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’m not very good at this. I don’t know what to say.’

‘I don’t know that there is anything to say.’ Finn was desperate to leave.

‘I guess not.’ She looked away. ‘I don’t know how to deal with all this,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ Finn said. ‘I get that.’

‘I’ve never had a brother before.’

‘I’ve never had anything before.’

‘It’s going to take me some time, but when I’m ready, I think I’d like to talk. I don’t know when that will be.’ She looked guilty. She didn’t need to,
Finn thought. It wasn’t her fault, either.

‘If you’re ready in the future, maybe we can get a cup of coffee,’ Finn said. ‘If not, I understand that, too.’

She nodded and started to turn around. Pausing, she turned back and put her hand out. Finn, taking the cue, put his out as well. They shook slowly, looking each other in the eyes.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Finn,’ she said.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Brooke.’

She let go of his hand and walked away.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

‘Do you inherit anything?’

Sally had a way of cutting through emotional minefields to the practical implications of even the most complicated situations.

The question caught Finn by surprise. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t think so. Buchanan must have had a will. Trusts, a tax plan, the whole nine yards.
I’m sure his estate plan excludes me.’ They were sitting at the office the next day. Finn had gotten back to his apartment the evening before at around six o’clock. By
six-fifteen, he was asleep, and he hadn’t woken up for more than fourteen hours. It was a personal record.

He was in a panic when he woke up. ‘Sally!’ he called. ‘You’re going to be late for school!’ He’d run out into the living room, where Sally was sitting in a
T-shirt and leggings. ‘You’re not ready,’ he said.

‘You serious?’

‘What?’

‘It’s Saturday.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Is it?’

‘Yeah.’

He rubbed his face, felt the stubble. At least he wouldn’t have to shave today. ‘I have to go to the office,’ he told her. ‘You should get dressed.’

‘You’re going to work today?’

‘I need to make sure there are no emergencies, at least. Besides, I can’t sit here doing nothing. I’ll go crazy.’

‘Fine,’ she’d said.

Lissa and Kozlowski were already at the office when they arrived. ‘You didn’t need to come in,’ Lissa said. ‘I can keep things moving here.’

‘You expect me just to stay in my apartment?’

Lissa relented. They all sat and talked for a while. It was a half hour into the conversation when Sally brought up the issue of Finn’s potential inheritance.

‘I’m sure I won’t get anything,’ he reiterated.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Lissa said. ‘Under some circumstances, if he didn’t affirmatively disown you in the will, you may be entitled to a cut of the
estate.’

‘Seriously?’

‘It was on the bar exam.’

Finn thought about it for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t take it,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Lissa asked. ‘You’re entitled. The asshole ditched you when you were a baby. He killed your mother.’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Finn pointed out. ‘Not to mention the fact that she ditched me, too, remember?’

‘All the more reason you should be entitled to something.’

Finn shook his head. ‘I didn’t need his money growing up, I don’t need it now. Taking his money would be like admitting that I couldn’t make it on my own. I did make it
on my own. Fuck him.’

No one said anything for a little while. When it was starting to get uncomfortable, Sally piped up, ‘That’s right. Fuck him.’ Lissa chuckled.

The phone rang and Lissa picked it up. After a moment, she put the caller on hold, looked over at Finn. ‘It’s Mark over at Huron Labs. Did you order a rush on some lab
tests?’

Finn nodded. ‘Not that it matters anymore. It was just some insurance to make sure the cops didn’t put the fix in on the Buchanan paternity test.’ Lissa and Kozlowski looked at
Finn with curiosity, but he ignored them as he picked up his extension. ‘Hey Mark,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I should’ve called you sooner; I don’t need the tests
anymore. If you ran them, that’s fine, just bill me.’

He listened for a moment. ‘No, I don’t need them,’ he repeated. ‘I already –’

Mark had cut him off, already giving him the information. Finn leaned back in his chair. ‘Say that again, Mark?’ he said. He figured he must have misheard. Mark repeated the
information.

Finn sat there, staring straight ahead. ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’ Mark said that he had double checked the results. The receiver
slipped from Finn’s hand, cracked off the desk and bounced to the floor. Finn didn’t even notice. He closed his eyes.

‘What is it?’ Lissa demanded. Everyone in the room was staring at Finn now, worried expressions on their faces. ‘What?’

Finn shook his head back and forth, trying to make sense of it all. ‘It can’t be,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘It just can’t be.’

The drive took three hours. There was midday traffic going through Cambridge, and more out by Alewife. That was to be expected, though in his mental state it was almost enough
to send Finn into a rage.

Kozlowski had offered to go with him. Insisted, in fact. So had Sally and Lissa. He refused the company, though. He needed to be alone. He needed to think, to try to put the pieces together.

It had been less than a week since his last trip up to New Hampshire, and yet the landscape on the drive north was severely altered. The leaves were down, now; gone were the beautiful explosions
of reds and oranges. A few pockets of dusty brown foliage still clung desperately to the angular limbs of younger trees, but for the most part the battle was over and the war had been lost. The
place now felt cold; there was a sense of resignation that winter had arrived, and acceptance that it would last for another six months.

As he approached the highway sign for the exit leading to the Health Center he tensed. It was mid afternoon; the place would still be open. He’d thought of starting there, but realized it
made little sense. If she was alive, she wouldn’t go there.

He drove on – two more exits, another ten miles. He pulled off the highway and followed the directions he’d printed out before he’d departed, through a small, quaint New
England town like a thousand others. White clapboard houses lined the streets, set close upon the sidewalks and backed, often, by a river that ran just off the road. The town seemed trapped by the
steep hills through which the river had carved a ribbon of flat ground over the millennia.

At the far end of the town, he pulled down a street into a wooded residential area of small houses. He drove slowly now, looking at the numbers that were only sporadically hung on the houses. It
didn’t matter; he knew the house instantly without even seeing the number.

It was a small cottage on a corner lot. The leaves that had given up their fight on the trees’ limbs had invaded the yard, making it difficult to tell where the grass ended and the woods
began. No one had yet taken a rake to the place to clean it up. It wasn’t clear to Finn that anyone ever would.

There was a car in the driveway, an ancient hatchback. The back was open, gaping wide like a miniature whale. Bags were stacked next to the car, and clothes on hangers were draped over the
tailgate. Someone was clearly here.

The back door banged open, and there was a rustling in the overgrown shrubs that flanked the entryway. She walked around the corner, weary in her step, carrying an armload of clothes. Looking
down, she made her way to the car, oblivious to the man sitting in the little MG watching her.

Finn got out of his car. When he slammed the door she looked up. For a moment Finn thought from her expression that she was going to run, but, of course, there was nowhere for her to go. They
both knew that. So instead, she put the clothes on the ground. She just stood there for a moment, looking at him. Then slowly, reluctantly, she made her way over to him. ‘How did you know
I’d be here?’

‘There was no body,’ Finn said. ‘The man with the scar killed a lot of people, but he never hid the bodies. I couldn’t see why he would have hidden yours if he’d
killed you. I figured that meant there was a chance you were still alive. And if you were, I figured there was a chance you’d come back when you read what happened in the papers.’

‘Only for a couple of hours,’ Shelly Tesco replied.

‘You found your daughter?’ Finn said. It was an educated guess.

She nodded. ‘He did. The man with the scar.’

‘How’d the reunion go? Have you met her yet?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I know where she is, though. She’s out in Ohio. I’m moving there, just to be close to her. Someday I’ll figure out a way to approach her. For
now, I’m just glad to know she’s safe.’

Finn nodded. ‘That’s good.’

The rustling leaves filled the quiet between them. ‘You probably have some questions,’ she said at last.

‘And you probably have some answers,’ he replied.

‘Some. Not all.’

He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Some is a start.’

Long sat on a bench at the edge of Boston Common, staring at the kids playing on the grass. It was one of those perfect autumn days when the sun stabs through the New England
sky with a clarity that can blind. Long closed his eyes and raised his face to the rays, trying to drink in the energy through his skin. It had been two days since he last slept, and it
didn’t feel as though rest would come any time soon. There was too much to do, and his thoughts were too cluttered and confused to relax.

It had all happened so fast. With the national media and the various different law enforcement branches hovering around the scene of Buchanan’s murder, the BPD had closed ranks quickly,
eager to create the impression that the investigation into the Connor murder had been handled properly. By necessity, Long was praised by police brass from every microphone that could be
commandeered. Overnight he had gone from pariah to star.

He didn’t like it.

What he liked even less, though, was the nagging feeling that he was missing something. The entire department was desperate to close the books on the investigation. No one questioned the
shooting, and with all the players in the sad psycho-drama dead, there seemed little desire to figure out what exactly had happened. Long understood that, but the questions still nagged at him.

He felt the shadow cross his face. ‘How’d you find me?’ he asked.

‘Just a hunch,’ Racine said. ‘I figured hiding in plain sight was your only option.’

‘Got that right,’ he said.

‘Tough being a celebrity, is it?’

He opened his eyes, looked sideways at her as she sat next to him. ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want it.’

She nodded as she slipped her hand into his. ‘I know,’ she said. She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘At least your job is safe,’ she pointed out. ‘They’ve
got no choice.’

‘For now,’ Long agreed. ‘It doesn’t change anything, really, though. I’m still an outcast.’

‘Maybe.’

They sat there for a while, neither of them talking. Finally he said, ‘Does it bother you?’

‘What?’

‘That we don’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘What happened. Why it all went down the way it did. Don’t you want to know?’

Racine sat up and looked at him. ‘You mean with Buchanan?’

He nodded. ‘With all of it. Buchanan. McDougal. His son. Connor. All of it.’

‘What more is there to know? Buchanan was a dirty politician who was hooked up with McDougal’s mob. Connor knew enough about Buchanan to put him away on a couple of fronts, so one of
them hired Coale to kill her. Seems pretty simple. You and the lawyer started pulling at the threads, and the whole thing fell apart.’

‘But why?’ Long said. ‘What made it fall apart? And what sent Coale on his killing spree?’

‘You said it yourself,’ Racine pointed out, ‘he was a psychopath. A killer. Maybe that’s all there is to it.’

‘Maybe,’ Long said. ‘But then why did he leave Finn alive?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She leaned back into him. ‘All I know is that we have a chance to put all this behind us. You have a chance to start over. Fresh
slate.’ She squeezed his hand as she closed her eyes. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

He didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did, he spoke very quietly. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know yet.’

‘I don’t know who he was,’ Shelly Tesco said. They were sitting at the table in her kitchen. She had made coffee. The back door was open, and a breeze blew
some leaves in onto the linoleum floor. She didn’t seem to care.