Prowlers - 1 (9 page)

They talked about Artie mostly, and Kate some as well. They talked about Molly's going to college in the fall and about graduation from high school. Molly stayed out of school those two days. Two things they never talked about were who had done this awful thing and why it had happened.

On Monday afternoon the police told the Carrolls that Artie's remains would be released on Wednesday morning. Funeral arrangements were made accord-

ingly. A wake on Wednesday night, and the funeral first thing on Thursday.

"I know ... I know it seems quick," Molly told him on the phone Tuesday morning. The pain in her voice was almost more than Jack could bear. "Mrs. Carroll said they wanted . . . that they wanted Artie to complete his journey so the rest of us can begin to heal."

Molly broke down after that, and though he had surprised himself those past days with his ability to comfort her, this time he just could not find the words.

They hung up a few minutes later.

It rained all day Wednesday. The sky was gray and the wind a bitter reminder that summer was still a long way off. The pub was generally closed only on holidays, and on Tuesdays during the winter. But that Wednesday, Bridget's Irish Rose was locked up tight, and as gray inside as it was out.

Bill Cantwell drove them to South Boston for the wake in a fifteen-year-old Oldsmobile that cut like an ocean liner through the storm. Jack didn't have to ask why South Boston. The funeral home was the same one Artie's grandfather was buried out of when the boys were in the seventh grade. Mr. Carroll would bury his son in a grave right next to his own father's.

"How are you holding up?" Courtney asked.

Jack had been watching the rain, his face against the window. Outside it was so dark it should have been night. When he shifted his gaze to his sister, he saw that

she had turned around in the front seat. "I'll be all right."

He saw Bill twitch in the driver's seat, as if he might say something. He didn't. The big man kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road, and only moved to scratch at his beard from time to time.

"Hell of a storm," Courtney said, her words like a fishing lure.

Jack knew she was really calling him a liar, telling him she didn't believe him when he said he would be all right. Of course, that was true—he was lying. But what else could he have said?

The rain spattered the glass. "I keep thinking about Stevie Ray Vaughn."

Now Bill did look in the rearview mirror at Jack. "The blues guy? Guitar player? The one who died in that helicopter crash?"

Jack just stared at the rain. Listened to it strike the peeling paint on the metal roof, and patter on the window. 'Artie loved Stevie Ray," he said, his voice surprisingly strong. 'After he ... died, they released an album of stuff he'd recorded. The Sky Is Crying, it's called."

"Like it was crying for him," Courtney said softly.

"Yeah," Jack replied. "I don't really mind the storm. It seems ... right. It seems just right."

The car was silent after that, except for the splash of puddles against the tires and the rain on the roof and glass. No radio. No talking. Just what remained of Jack Dwyer's family, and his pain, and the crying sky.

Later he would never be able to say why he looked

up just then, glanced between the two big front seats and out at the rain-swept road in front of them. He shuddered with a chill from the cold and the damp and gazed out at the street where the headlights cut through the ominous dark of the thunderstorm.

Artie stood in the middle of the road, gray as the sky, the curtain of rain making him seem little

more than a phantom.

Before Jack could scream, the car passed right through him.

CHAPTER 4

eyes Wide , mouth slightly open, facial muscles slack, and breathing as though he had just sprinted a few blocks, Jack spent the rest of the ride to South Boston staring at the back of his sister's head. From time to time he glanced over at the back of Bill's head as well, but for the most part he kept his gaze locked on Courtney.

She never turned around. Never gave any indication that she had seen anything out of the ordinary. Neither did Bill.

Jack said not a word.

By the time they were pulling into the lot behind O'Connor Funeral Home and jockeying for a parking space, he had begun to breathe normally again. What he had seen was impossible. Jack knew that, of course. Which left only one conceivable explanation.

I imagined it, he told himself as he climbed out of the

backseat of Bill's car. Artie's on my mind so much I just... conjured him out of the rain. I miss him so much that my mind's playing tricks on me, that's all

Bill got out of the car and walked around to pop open an umbrella and hold it over Courtney as she climbed out. The big man looked at Jack's sister with such affection that Jack wondered if Bill might care for her more than he let on. The rain sluiced down Jack's face, and his hair grew damp with the droplets.

"Don't wait for us, Jack," Courtney said. "Go on ahead; stay dry."

Jack made no reply He mentally acknowledged the words but simply could not muster the effort to give his thoughts voice. Courtney glanced back at him, a tender, supportive smile on her face. Then her expression changed.

"Hey, little brother” she said, tentatively, "are you all right?" Though she had to put most of her weight on her cane, Courtney reached out to lay her hand gently on his arm. "You're pale."

Jack nodded but still did not speak. It seemed as though Courtney might say something more, but she only squeezed his arm and then turned back toward the funeral home. Jack had seen the sympathy in her eyes, the love and caring. She thought he was simply overcome with grief that they were here for the wake of his best friend. That was part of it, certainly.

The other was the image in his mind of Artie standing in the rain, the storm cutting through him as though he wasn't there, the car passing through his body. And then he wasn't there at all.

I'm losing it, Jack thought as he followed Courtney and Bill along the path to the front door of the funeral home. Get a grip on reality, Jack. Artie's dead. He's gone.

He felt a bit more stable, more focused, as they climbed the front steps. Courtney maneuvered extremely well with her cane. Though Bill still held the umbrella over her, she refused to let him lend her an arm on the stairs.

"I'm twenty-eight," she told him. "I may have to walk like an old lady, but I won't be treated like one."

Bill blinked as though the words had hurt him. Then one corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile, and he watched her with open admiration. Jack followed them in. Careful to keep it away from Courtney, Bill closed the umbrella and shook the rain off in the foyer of the funeral home.

When his sister cast an inquisitive glance in his direction, Jack nodded again to indicate that she should go on in. Nodding seemed to have become the only form of communication of which he was capable. Courtney moved through the hall of the grand old building and into the swarm of mourners buzzing about. Jack closed his eyes to take a breath, but opened them again instantly. In that darkness behind his eyelids lingered a pallid phantom with Artie's face.

"Hey."

A huge hand alighted upon his back and Jack looked up into the soft, wet eyes of Bill Cantwell. With his beard and his rugged features and those soulful eyes, he resembled nothing so much as an enormous grizzly.

"If you need someone to lean on," Bill said, voice low, "you can lean on me."

Jack patted Bill once on the chest of his ill-fitting sport coat. He nodded again and then felt as though that was not enough. "Thanks," he said, voice barely above a rasp. But it was a word, at least. He could speak again.

With Bill backing him up, Jack inserted himself into the crowd of mourners. A great many people—family and friends, people from the neighborhood, and some kids from Emerson College—had come to grieve for Artie Carroll and to sympathize with his parents. There were students and teachers from Boston Catholic, including a great many Jack recognized. One or two had been classmates of his and had graduated with him the previous year. The others were in

Kate and Molly's class.