by Chris Mooney
Mike nodded, got out of the car. The sun was warm on his face as he walked up the slope of damp grass, heading toward what looked like a utility shed and to the right of it, a small patch of trees that hadn’t been cleared.
When he reached the top, Mike moved behind a tree and saw the contraption that would lower Jonah’s coffin into his final resting place. No trees out there; no shade. The gravesite was exposed and it worried him for a reason he couldn’t explain.
Several minutes later, the hearse and limousine pulled onto Evergreen. A half dozen or so blue uniforms directing traffic cleared the area to let the vehicles through. A moment later, the hearse and limo had pulled up against the curb, and the young pallbearers got out and carried Jonah’s coffin up the slope, Father Jack dressed in his priestly robes in line behind them.
The pallbearers placed Jonah’s coffin on the lowering device and stepped back. Mike wiped the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his forehead.
Father Jack opened his Bible. “Let us pray.”
“Michael.”
Wide awake with that middle of the night terror that tells him something’s wrong with the baby. Jess is coming up on week twenty-two of her pregnancy with the girl they’re going to name Sarah and now something’s wrong.
The keys and wallet are on the nightstand so he doesn’t have to hunt for them in the middle of the night. He scoops them up, sits up in bed.
“It’s okay, Michael. Give me your hand.”
He does, and she places it on her belly.
Kicking. The baby was kicking.
“Can you feel it?”
He did. Sarah was kicking up a storm. Jess lies back down, and he relaxes, eases himself against her back, his hand never leaving her belly, that feeling of life forming beneath her skin. Just give me this, God. Just give me this and it will be enough.
A rumble of gears and Mike saw the coffin being lowered into the ground.
Jonah on the morgue table, fighting to free the words from his lips.
Only God knows what is true.
The gears stopped working.
The coffin lay in the ground now, waiting to be buried.
“Amen,” Father Jack said, and closed his Bible.
Mike dug his fingers into the bark of the tree. It kept him from screaming.
Mike paced the lawn around the cruiser, trying to work the knocking sensation out of his knees. His cell phone vibrated against his hip for the third time in the past two minutes. Mike checked the caller ID again: OUT OF AREA. Probably a reporter. Mike clipped the phone back on his belt and saw Father Jack walking this way.
The priest stepped up to him. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
“Did he, you know …”
Father Jack bowed his head and studied his shoes.
Mike’s cell phone vibrated again. He pulled it out from his back pocket, checked the caller ID. It was Bill. Mike answered it.
“Jess just called me,” Bill said. “She’s trying to call you on your cell and just called and said she hasn’t been able to reach you.”
OUT OF AREA—those calls were from Jess.
“Thanks,” Mike said and hung up, Father Jack’s eyes locked on him now.
“Francis was a bitter man. Bitter and very angry. He was in denial.” Father Jack shook his head, sighed. “I tried.”
Mike felt a thick, bulging wetness in his throat that he couldn’t swallow back.
“I’m sorry,” Father Jack said.
Okay. Okay, so Father Jack didn’t know anything. There was still Merrick to talk to, and the nurse, Terry Russell. One of them had to know something. There was still hope.
Mike’s phone rang again.
“Michael?” It was Jess, her panicked voice having an odd echo to it.
“I can barely hear you.”
“I’m calling you from France.” Her words came out hurried to the point where she sounded breathless. “I just found out. I’ve been staying out on a farm, there’s no TV or—it doesn’t matter. I just booked a flight and will be home tomorrow afternoon. Are you okay? Where are you?”
Mike’s attention ran up the hill, stopped at Jonah’s headstone.
I can’t take it anymore, Bill. I’m tired of living with a shell. I’m tired of living with a woman who is terrified of life and has made me a prisoner in my own home. I’m tired of having to fight for the simple things like taking my six-and-a-half-year-old daughter sledding. I’m tired and I want out.
His words, spoken in an almost silent prayer that night on the Hill.
“Michael? You there?”
“I’m at Jonah’s gravesite,” he said.
“What? Why? Why would you do that to yourself?”
The need to cry and scream was building inside his chest. He wanted to reel it in, wanted to look away from the gravesite and couldn’t.
“You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself. How many times have I told you—remember that time in the grocery store? Sarah was with me and I turned my head just for a second and she was gone. They tore the place up and five minutes later I found her outside talking to that woman. Sarah thought it was the mother of a friend and she had followed her out—”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” Jess sounded on the verge of tears. “Please, let me in. I want to help you.”
That night on the Hill I let Sarah walk up that hill by herself because I was pissed at you. That night I prayed for a way out and for once God was listening.
“Talk to me, Michael. Don’t shut me out again. Not now.”
Mike opened his mouth to speak and a moan escaped his lips. The guilt, the anger, the love he still carried for his daughter and the life they had once shared, everything he had carried for the past five years was ripped out of him in sobs.
CHAPTER 25
Slow Ed pulled the cruiser into his driveway, where Mike’s truck was parked.
“Jonah’s nurse, Terry Russell,” Mike said. “She say anything about Jonah talking in his sleep about Sarah?”
“I never heard anything along those lines.”
“What did she tell Merrick?”
“I don’t know specifics. You’ll have to talk with Merrick about that. He’s in Maine. His father’s not doing too well from what I hear. Alzheimer’s. He supposed to come back today, so I’ll have him call you, I promise.”
“What about the autopsy report? Something show up there?”
Slow Ed shifted in his seat, the springs creaking. “Sully, why don’t you come in? Sheila made this kick-ass chicken parm.”
“Sheila?”
“New girlfriend. Come in and hang … hang out for a bit.”
“Maybe another time. Thanks for today, Ed.”
“I know you’re staying at Bam’s condo in Melrose. You want to be more local, I’ve got an extra room here. You’re more than welcome to stay until this blows over. It should all die down in a few days.”
Blow over,Mike thought. Die down.
· · ·
Mike called information and twenty minutes later was driving down Vikers Street in what was called Old Town. The houses here were a big step up from the ones on Evergreen: duplexes separated by long, thin driveways; small, nice front lawns sectioned off by chain-link fences. Here, there was no stink of desperation. The houses had fresh coats of paint, manicured shrubs and freshly planted flowers, the street mostly quiet, everyone at work except for the few retirees out washing their cars or hosing down the windows on their houses.
Number fifty-three was a triple-decker with a front porch and steps and floorboards painted gunmetal gray. Mike parked on the street, got out and jogged up the flagstone walkway and up the stairs to the door on the left. He rang the buzzer, relieved to hear the sound of footsteps, of bolts being unlocked. The door swished open.
It was the woman he had seen that night inside Jonah’s house.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Terry Russell said.
“I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced, but I was wonder
ing if I could talk to you.”
“Of course,” she said and opened the door.
Three steps and Mike was standing inside a large, rectangular room of hardwood flooring,bright yellow walls and a bluestone fireplace with bookcases built on either side of them. Lots of religious books in there with titles like The Purpose Driven Life and Conversations with God; lots of porcelain figurines too: Jesus hanging on the cross, St. Anthony, several of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sunlight flooded the warm room, pouring in from the windows overlooking a backyard where a group of four or five toddlers took turns kicking a soccer ball.
“Would you care for something to drink?” she asked. She was dressed in jeans and a black cardigan sweater, the plain gold chain and gold crucifix proudly displayed over her white turtleneck. It was the only jewelry she wore. No earrings or rings—no makeup either. “I don’t have any coffee, but I do have tea and some Coke.”
“I’m all set, thank you.”
She sat down on one end of a chocolate-brown couch, the only piece of furniture in the room. Mike sat down on the other end. The windows were cracked open, and he could hear kids giggling, screaming to one another.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Please, call me Mike.”
“And call me Terry.”
Mike forced a grin. “I understand you were working with the police.”
Terry nodded. “I’ve been working with Detective Merrick, talking to him at the end of each day when Francis was alive.”
Hearing her calling Jonah by his first name angered him for some reason.
“I take it by your tone Detective Merrick never told you about any of my conversations with Francis.”
“No,” Mike said. “He didn’t.”
“Detective Merrick was … well, he was rather specific in his instructions with me.” She brushed at the tops of her jeans, wanting to tread forward gently and, he supposed, to choose her words with care. “I’m sorry about all of this,” she said. “I just feel awful.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for. I was just hoping—” Mike’s voice caught on the word. “Did Jonah talk about Sarah at all?”
“Not to me. And I never asked him. Dr. Boynton was very specific on that point.”
“Dr. Boynton?”
“A criminal profiler or psychiatrist, I’m not sure which. He’s based out of Boston, I think. Anyway, when Detective Merrick approached me and asked if I would help in the investigation, he had me meet with Dr. Boynton. We discussed my conversations with Francis. We became quite close—Francis and myself, I mean. I know that may sound odd, even monstrous to some degree, but when a person is in a terminal situation, it’s not all that unusual for them open up—even to strangers. Francis didn’t have any friends, unless you want to count his lawyer. But that’s not really a friend, is it?”
“I suppose not.”
“I think he considered me a friend,” Terry said. “At the beginning, it was mostly chit-chat stuff. ‘Good morning, Terry. You look very nice today, Terry. How’s the world treating you?’ That sort of thing. But over time, he opened up. He’d tell me stories about growing up here in Belham, about how he knew he always wanted to be a priest, how proud it made his mother.”
“Did Jonah follow the news?” Mike remembered some TV shrink pegging Jonah as a narcissist, someone who took an avid interest in following himself on the news, using it to stay ahead of the police.
“He liked news programs. CNN and programs like Crossfire. If a reporter started talking about, you know, the case, Francis would switch the channel—at least that’s what he did when I was there.”
“So you never talked to him about it.”
“No. If the subject came up, Dr. Boynton suggested I use what he called a third-person approach. You know, ask Francis something along the lines of ‘What kind of person would leave a jacket up on the hill like that?’ Dr. Boynton thought it might get Francis to open up, get him to talk about it in a safe way because he wasn’t talking about himself. I remember Dr. Boynton saying something about how that approach was used on Ted Bundy. He denied he had anything to do with what happened to those young women, but when the FBI profilers asked Bundy his thoughts on what kind of person would, you know, actually commit that sort of atrocity, Bundy talked about it in the third person.‘This man would commit this crime in such and such a way.’” Terry sighed. “I tried to get him to open up. The problem was, Francis was deteriorating rapidly.During the day, all he wanted to do was sit in his rocking chair and go through his photo albums and play with his toys. They all do that—revert back to childhood. They’ll want to look at pictures, play with toys, sing old songs, talk about people from their past. It’s a way of comforting themselves. This one patient I had last year, Martha? She carried a football with her everywhere she went: bed, to the hospital, the bathroom, you name it. Wouldn’t let it go. And all of sudden she’d give me this real serious look and then she’d scream,‘Go long,Terry.For the love of Jesus, go long!’Martha was a real card. I miss her.”
Mike wanted to hurry this up, get right to the heart of it; but another part, an overwhelming part, convinced him of the importance of being patient. It was clear Terry needed to take her time and not be interrupted with question after question—the way Merrick had probably treated her. Maybe this need to talk was her way of reconciling her version of Jonah with what the rest of the world thought; or maybe she just wanted to exorcise Jonah from her mind and talking was the only way she knew how to do it.
“Francis asked me to get down a couple of boxes of Christmas decorations from the attic. He wanted me to help him string lights around the living room and his bedroom. They were the plain, white lights—not the flashing ones. His mother kept some of the toys Francis had from when he was younger. Francis would just sit there and hold them. Sometimes he cried. He loved the Christmas ornaments the best. Each one had a story. Francis loved to tell stories.”
Mike couldn’t picture Jonah as a person who had once been a child nursed by a mother, a boy who had turned into a man, into a monster.
“At night, Francis would sit in his chair and stare at those white lights. Just sit there and be quiet with his thoughts. The lights calmed him, I think. That and the medication. He cried a lot. He was such a lonely, lonely old man, and I know that hurt him.” She shook her head, visibly sad.
“It sounds like you liked him,” Mike said.
“I liked the parts he revealed to me. I know that must sound terrible, knowing what he,you know, did. But when people reveal themselves to you in those situations—in pain, knowing they’re dying—sometimes it’s impossible not to form an emotional connection. They teach you to block it out, but honestly, how can you? And I suppose I was drawn to him to a degree because he was a priest. That carries a certain amount of respect. I thought about attending his funeral today.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The press. They don’t know about me, and I didn’t want to invite them into my life.” Terry sighed. “Whatever side was capable of doing those things, Francis kept it hidden from me. How he acted after I left, whatever thoughts ran through his head? I couldn’t tell you. When I was around, Francis acted as human as the rest of us.”
“Did it surprise you that he committed suicide?”
Terry thought about it for a moment.
“At first, it did,” she said. “For two reasons. Francis was a priest, and he knew it was a sin. Secondly, he wasn’t in any physical pain—at least he didn’t tell me he was. I’ve never lost a patient to suicide. It’s almost unheard of. That being said, Francis wasn’t like most patients. He had this … he had a lot of stuff inside his head—stuff I couldn’t treat. The guilt, maybe. And like I said, he was so lonely. You can’t medicate that.”
“Hanging himself … it didn’t seem his style.”
Terry shrugged. “It’s hard to say what goes through people’s minds. I saw Francis that morning. On Sunday. He looked … he wasn’t himself. He was al
l shaken up. I’ve had some time to process the whole thing, and the only answer I came up with is what I told Detective Merrick: I think Francis knew the police were coming to arrest him, and rather than die in jail, he decided to take his life.”
Coming here wasn’t about rekindling hope. Mike realized that now. The reason why he had gone to the funeral, why he was here talking to Terry—it was about closure.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said.
Mike nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything left he wanted to say—at least anything he could think of, so he thanked her and stood up.
Terry reached inside her sweater pocket and came back with a business card and a pen. She wrote on the back of the card and handed it to him.
“The number on the back is my home phone number,” she said. “If you have any questions, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call me.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Mike thanked her. She walked him to the door. He took one last look at her gold crucifix, thanked her again and stepped outside.
“Mr. Sullivan?”
He turned back to her,Terry’s face behind the screen.
“I’ll keep you and Sarah in my prayers.”
Mike was on his way home when, lo and behold, Merrick called and asked if they could meet.
“If it’s about what the nurse told you about Jonah, don’t bother. She was nice enough to fill me in.”
“I have the autopsy report,” Merrick said. “And we found some items in Jonah’s house.”
Mike tried to concentrate on the road, on where he was heading.
“Are you free right now?”
“What did you find?” Fear and hope mixing in Mike’s voice.
“I’d rather discuss it in person.”
CHAPTER 26
Dakota’s was yet another example of a new downtown business that had sprung up overnight. It was located at the far end of Main Street, where Alexander’s Shoes used to be, and had a parking lot full of high-end cars: Saabs, BMWs, even a Mercedes. Dakota’s: Belham’s first yuppie bar.