by Chris Mooney
Mike looked away from the picture, thinking back to this morning’s run-in with Jonah.
“Anything about the jacket stand out?”
He saw loneliness and fear. He saw defeat.
Nancy said, “ The jacket’s in good shape, wouldn’t you agree?”
She was right. With the exception of the blood, there wasn’t a blemish on the coat, a rip or a tear anywhere, and the white fur lining the outer rim of the hood, Jesus, it looked clean.
“He stored it,” Mike said.
“For the jacket to be in this condition, yes, it would’ve had to been stored somewhere. Now we know a forensic team from the Boston Police Lab came in and tore up Jonah’s house when Sarah disappeared. And we know they walked away empty-handed, which is why they couldn’t build a case against Jonah. The thinking now is that Jonah must have hidden stuff at an offsite location, a storage facility, maybe even a safety-deposit box.”
“I thought Merrick already checked into that.”
“He did—under Jonah’s real name and his fake one. Your daughter’s jacket pops up, so now Merrick thinks if Jonah had one fake identity, who’s to say he didn’t have another one? Word I hear is that Merrick has been digging deep into that area.”
“I don’t understand why he’d keep the jacket. That’s evidence.”
“Some serial offenders often keep souvenirs of their crimes so they can, you know …”
“No,” Mike said, looking up at her. “I don’t know.”
“Owning a piece of the victim’s clothing, a piece of jewelry—they’re called trophies. Some serial offenders often keep these items so they can relive their crimes. It’s another way of maintaining control over their victims. From what I hear, Merrick has been investigating that angle for years. That’s why, when your daughter’s anniversary date rolls around, he puts people on him. Merrick’s even searched through Jonah’s garbage, tracked phone calls—he hasn’t given up. The problem he’s facing is that Jonah’s highly intelligent. His IQ is off the charts, for one, and, unfortunately, he knows how to cover his tracks.
“Now let me answer your next question: Why would Jonah put the jacket on the cross and risk going back to living under a microscope—especially when he’s dying and wants to die in peace?” Nancy said. “Perfectly rational question. The problem is that there’s no rational answer. With the Jonahs of the world, normal, everyday logic doesn’t apply. I talked it over with a few forensic psychiatrists I respect and the overwhelming theory is that Jonah wants to get caught. As crazy as it sounds, a lot of them do. Some get caught and want to brag. Some make it into a game—like Ted Bundy, for example.”
“Jonah was dying this morning and wouldn’t talk.”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“You weren’t there. He was terrified of dying. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Of course he was terrified. You attacked him once. Suffocate or get beaten to death. Which one would you chose?”
Mike said, “ You find anything else?”
“Lab found two fibers, both of them synthetic. One of them matches that imitation raccoon fur on Jonah’s jacket hood. The coup de grâce, however, is the single strand of hair the lab found stuck to one of the cuffs.”
“Jonah’s.”
“Bingo. Based on my sources, Merrick’s going to move on Jonah with a search warrant any day now. With this evidence, I’d be willing to bet Jonah won’t be going home.”
So there it was. Five years and now he had a piece of concrete evidence linking Jonah to Sarah.
Mike stared at the picture of the jacket. All this time, all this energy into fighting and he expected to feel … to feel what? Vindicated? Was that it? If it was, then why’d he feel so hollow?
That hollow feeling is shock.
“I’m going to keep this folder,” Nancy said. “If someone saw you with it and it got back to Merrick or someone else tied to the case, my ass would be in a lot of hot water.”
“Thank you.” Mike felt dazed, out of sorts.
“You’re welcome.” Nancy stood up, satchel and file folder in hand, and left the room, shutting the office door behind her.
Mike leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand across the smoothness of the table as he looked out the window at the half dozen or so buildings dotting the Boston skyline.
“I’m sorry Nancy was so abrasive,” Sam said after a moment. “She’s a good person. She just has a hard time dealing with people who drink. Her father and brother are alcoholics.”
“Least you know where you stand with her. Thanks for arranging this, Sam. I owe you.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Mike shook his head and shut his eyes. As he rubbed them, trying to get some wetness going, he pictured Sarah’s jacket stuffed in an evidence box, taped shut and locked away in some dark cabinet.
When he opened his eyes, Sam was staring at him, her face open and vulnerable, the way it had been all those years ago during those nights on the beach when they sat around and shared their disappointments and hurts. Back then, she had listened to his stories of his father and hadn’t judged him, and Mike was willing to bet she wouldn’t judge him now.
“I keep having these dreams,” Mike said. “Sarah sleeping in her room and she’s crying. She won’t stop crying.” He took in a deep breath and continued. “I grab a pillow and hold it over her face. The other night I had another dream where we’re in a car and Sarah was crying and I kicked her out. Me. Her father. Why would I be having dreams like that?”
CHAPTER 23
Later that night, Sarah came for him. She stood on the edge of Salmon Brook Pond, her pink jacket zippered to the top but her hood down,her face clear and bright. Her mouth was open, and the tip of her tongue was out, rubbing against her bottom lip.
“Look,Daddy, look!” she screamed, borderline hysterical as she skated across the pond in that wavering tap-tap-tap and “Oh-God-I’m-about-to-fall-on-my-bum” shuffle of all young skaters, her arms standing out by her sides, flapping like wings.
Mike skated up next to her. It was a perfect winter day: sky a hard blue, air cold but lacking that angry bite that drove you indoors. The kidney-shaped pond was packed with kids and parents. Down at the far end, away from the crowd, a group of kids was playing a heated game of hockey, the sound of their sticks thwacking across the ice echoing through the air.
“You’re doing great, Sarah.”
“Come skating with me.”
“Can I hold your hand?”
Sarah had to think about it for a moment.
“Okay,” she said, still tap-tap-tapping forward, “but we have to do the twirly-birdy jump.”
“You know I can’t do that, sweets.”
Sarah stopped skating, looked up, and pushed her glasses back up her nose. Here, out in the sunlight, every feature on her face seemed magnified: the dimpled cheeks on her pale Irish skin; the blueness of her eyes.
“But that’s how the judges judge us,” she said.
He frowned, trying to think through her thought process.
“On TV, Daddy, remember? The man and woman skated around and then they got numbers.”
“Oh, you mean the figure skaters.”
“The man picks up the girl and holds her up in the air and the judges give out the numbers.”
“Now that I can do. You ready?”
“Ready,” she said, and gave him her hand, its smallness reminding him of the early hair-trigger days Sarah spent in Mass General’s NICU, the hospital’s unit for preemie babies, all four pounds of his daughter being monitored by wires hooked up to all sorts of computerized gizmos, Sarah fighting to breathe on her own because her lungs were underdeveloped and then fighting off an infection that had almost killed her.
“Daddy!”
“Yeah, sweets?”
“You’re not paying attention. The judges are watching us. They’re waiting for you to pick me up and hold me out front.”
He did as instructed, holding her out
front—not difficult since she barely weighed forty pounds, Sarah still so tiny for her age.
Sarah spread apart her legs and arms, forming an X.
“Starfish! Now you do one.”
He lifted Sarah up, placed her on top of his shoulders, and then wrapped one arm around her shins and hugged her legs close to his chest. He took his other arm and pointed it out in a straight line.
“How’s that?”
“Call out what you’re doing, Daddy!”
(Wooo-Woof!)
“Arrow!”
Sarah said, “ The judges won’t like that name.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Fighting fish!”
(Fang barked again:Woo-woo-WOO!)
Mike’s eyes cracked open. Moonlight flooded the bedroom. Fang wasn’t in bed. Mike turned over and saw the dog standing next to one of the opened windows overlooking the backyard, his snout pressed against the screen, snorting at the air, his tail lolling back and forth.
Probably a raccoon or something. The upstairs windows were open, and all kinds of scents were blowing through the house.
“Fang, come on.”
The dog wouldn’t move. Mike stood up, feeling Sarah’s face starting to fade, and quickly grabbed the dog by the collar.
“Daddy.”
Mike jerked back from the window and almost tripped over the dog. Startled, Fang whipped around and started barking.
Sarah’s voice. It was Sarah’s voice and it had come from outside.
It’s the dream. The dream’s still floating around in your head and your imagination, it hiccupped it back up.
A rush of wind blew back the curtains. His heart climbing high in his chest, he got down on one knee and looked past the window screen. A full moon hung over the darkened tops of the pine trees, the moonlight turning the remaining patches of snow a light, neon blue. He scanned the backyard, waiting.
You’re hearing things. You ran into Jonah today and had the dream and now—
“Daddy, where are you?”
“Woo-WOO-WOO!”
Sarah’s voice. It was Sarah’s voice and she was calling for him.
Mike scrambled for his jeans and put them on, his hands shaking as he worked the button and zipper.
“Daddy?”
He shoved his bare feet into a pair of sneakers and ran down the stairs and into the family room, Fang following behind him, barking. Mike’s shaking hands worked the lock on the sliding glass door and then slid it open and the dog rushed out into the night. Mike took the trail, the overhead branches and limbs fanned with pine needles and leaves blocking out most of the moonlight, the woods growing darker and darker as he ran, Fang bounding somewhere ahead of him, barking, branches snapping back.
“Daddy, where are you?”
Sarah’s voice, it was Sarah’s voice, and by some miracle of God she had come home and was now lost in the woods and he was about to see her and bring her home.
“I’m here, Sarah. I’m here.” He ran faster, almost tripping.
Mike stood at the edge of where the trail opened up onto the dirt road, lit up by moonlight.
“Sarah, I’m out here in the woods with you.”
The wind whistled through the trees, shaking the limbs overhead. Mike waited for her to answer, his eyes were wide as they took in every shadow and shape. His legs were shaking and he kept swallowing.
“Daddy?”
Her voice coming from straight ahead, from deeper into the woods.
“Hold on, Sarah, I’m coming.” Mike stepped off the trail and worked his way down the slope, the rubber treads of his sneakers slipping against the half-frozen ice, thinking about Sarah’s voice, how wonderfully calm and patient it sounded, that was good, so wonderfully, beautifully good.
It was nearly pitch black down here at the bottom, and the terrain was uneven, with swift, sudden dips, bumpy with large rocks, downed branches and limbs. Mike moved deeper in the woods, walking quickly but carefully, branches whipping past his face, cutting into his hands and arms and face. Up ahead, in a patch of moonlight on the snow, he thought he saw Fang’s big, bulky frame tear up the side of a steep embankment.
“I can’t see you,” Sarah called from somewhere above him, Sarah still patient but starting to get scared.
“I’m right below you,” Mike called out. “Just stay where you are. I’m coming up.”
Mike made his way up the steep slope, grabbing branches for support. It was slow going; with his sneakers, he couldn’t get any traction.
“Daddy?” Sarah was on the verge of tears.
“Don’t panic, honey. Just talk to me. I’m almost there.”
Mike continued making his way up the slope, sweat pouring off his face.
“Where are you?” Sarah called again.
Fang barked.
Both sounds above him, louder now, and closer.
“Just listen to the sound of my voice, Sarah. And those other sounds you hear, all those branches snapping—that’s Fang. He’s come out here to see you too. We’ve both missed you so much.”
“Daddy, where are you?”
“Honey, I’m right—”
The voice was wrong. It was Sarah’s voice, no question, but it was her old voice—her six-year-old voice. Sarah was eleven now. Her voice would be different now. It wouldn’t have that high-pitched, reedy quality to it. It would be deeper, maybe.
“Sarah,” he yelled up the slope. “Tell me the name of your dog.”
No answer.
“Tell me your favorite color.”
Fang barked.
Finally, the slope leveled off. Moonlight trickled inside the area of woods where Mike now stood, and he could see the main road and beyond it, part of Salmon Brook Road. Fang had his snout pressed against the ground, sniffing around the base of a massive, sprawling maple.
“Daddy, where are you?”
Mike turned around. Resting on top of a rotted tree stump was a portable stereo, what he used to call a boom-box. The speakers were pointed in the direction of his house.
“Daddy?” Sarah cried from the speakers.
Mike wasn’t looking at the radio anymore. His attention was locked on the same thing that held Fang’s attention: Francis Jonah, hanging from a limb of the maple tree.
Remembering Sarah
CHAPTER 24
Francis Jonah was buried on Friday, the first day of spring. The former priest’s last will and testament called for a private funeral service—absolutely no reporters. That job was left to Father Jack Connelly. The well-respected and much-loved priest had a lot of pull in the community; he managed to convince the police, a good majority of them Catholics themselves, to leave judgment in the hands of God and honor a man’s final wishes.
What Father Jack couldn’t contain were the leaks. Someone had tipped off the media, and they had set up camp in front of the church.
The front doors of St. Stephen’s opened and the pallbearers, four young men on loan from McGill-Flattery Funeral Home, stepped out with the casket, not expecting to see the small group of reporters crowding the front steps. Flashbulbs popped and cameras clicked. The police detail moved into action, starting to clear a path to the hearse.
Mike sat in the passenger seat of Slow Ed’s cruiser parked across the street, his eyes covered by sunglasses and scanning the faces of the hundred-plus crowd of people.
“Cemetery’s going to be just as bad,” Slow Ed said. “Probably even worse.”
Mike didn’t respond, just sat there, staring, a thin, slowly dissolving membrane of separateness dividing him from the rest of the world.
Slow Ed started the cruiser and pulled away from the curb.
“We can keep the media out of the cemetery, but we can’t keep them from holding their cameras up over the cemetery wall. They set up shop on Evergreen. They’re standing on the roofs of their vans to get a better view of the gravesite. You told me you wanted to keep your face off the tube. You go in there, your face will be playing on all
the news cycles.”
Downtown traffic was light. They pulled onto Parker Street and climbed the steep hill, and when they passed Evergreen, a long street of tract housing for the terminally jobless and lost, Mike saw some of the residents gathered out on their front steps, their faces drowsy with sleep and pinched with hangovers, their hands trembling as they lit cigarettes and drank coffee and watched reporters fix their hair and makeup.Vans were parked up on the sidewalk, satellite feeds extended into the air.
“If the reason you’re going there is because you want to see Father Jack,” Slow Ed said, “I can turn around and drive back to his office. You want, I’ll wait with you until he comes back.”
Slow Ed giving him an out. There really was no reason to go ahead with this—no logical reason Mike could put into words. He had tried. Slow Ed had asked, and so had Bill, and Mike couldn’t explain the reason for wanting to be at the cemetery to either of them or himself and yet this need was still there, this throbbing, unexplainable compulsion that told him he needed to be at the cemetery when Jonah was buried. Maybe this sudden need had to do with the dreams of Sarah and the new ones where Jonah lay on the cool steel table, his last words still on his tongue—Mike could see them, Jesus, they were right there, let’s pick them up and sort them out. But nobody wanted to do it. They started to sew Jonah’s mouth shut and he’d scream at them to stop and they would ignore him.
The dreams, Mike felt, were a signal to keep digging. Or maybe he just wanted to punish himself. He had, after all, set all of this into motion.
Slow Ed hooked a left onto Hancock. Two cruisers were set up by the entrance. He rolled down his window and waved, and a patrolman opened the gate. They drove into the cemetery and when Slow Ed pulled over to the side,Mike saw, up on the hill and in clear view, the section of dirt where Jonah was about to be buried and felt a well of fear rise up in him that tore through that protective membrane like a bullet.
“I know you are—were—close to Father Jack,” Slow Ed. “That’s why I don’t think he’ll have a problem with you being here. But if he asks you to leave, we have to respect that.”