Desolate Angel

by Chaz McGee

  They would not let her see the old man yet. They were still working on him in a treatment room. But Maggie had other people to visit as well. I followed her up three floors and down a deserted hallway. Sorrow filtered out of each room, clinging to me like wisps of cotton candy. The people here were sick, and more than a few were weighing whether it was worth staying alive when staying alive meant so much pain. But the sorrow did not come from them, it came from those who loved them and had visited earlier, leaving their fear behind.

  Two night nurses were bent over their charts at a well-lit station. When they saw Maggie, one barely looked up, but the other clearly knew her well. “Hey, Maggie. How have you been?”

  Maggie stopped to talk. “Same as always, Lexi. Working hard. Catching bad guys. Bad girls, too, these days.”

  The nurse smiled at her. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said, a catch in her voice. And then it was there: a flash of memory so brief I barely had time to catch on to it and understand what I had seen: a frail woman lying alone in a hospital bed, surrounded by darkness lit only by the electronic screens of the machines keeping her alive. Her face was emaciated and pulled tight against the bone, the skin as dry as parchment, the mouth hanging open as she waited for breath. Maggie stood by her, holding her hand, staring down at the body struggling to hold on to life in the bed before her. “It’s okay, Mom,” Maggie was whispering. “You can let go.”

  In an instant, the memory was gone. Maggie would not allow it to linger any longer.

  “What are you doing here tonight? I didn’t see you when I came on duty.” The nurse was staring at Maggie, waiting for an answer.

  Maggie shook off her memory and managed a smile. “A friend was brought in earlier tonight. I’m here to see her. I know it isn’t visiting hours.”

  The nurse looked down at her papers, amused. “It’s okay, Maggie. I wouldn’t let a little thing like visiting hours stop you now.”

  Maggie was still smiling when she entered Peggy’s room. She was asleep, her body sprouting endless cables and tubes that connected her to a cluster of machines humming by her bedside. She did not wake when Maggie took her hand, but her vitals were strong and I could feel her fighting the injuries that threatened her body. Peggy would be fine. Peggy would live to once again explore the miniature landscapes of the lab she loved so much.

  Maggie was at home in a hospital room. She pulled up a chair and sat for a few moments, doing nothing more than holding her friend’s hand, letting the darkness surround them, absorbing the calm and the quiet. Maggie pulled the safety of the room around her like a cloak, gaining strength from her surroundings.

  I sat at the foot of Peggy’s bed, watching Maggie, wondering how she had managed to train herself to shut off her memories whenever they got in the way of the present. It would keep her a mystery to me.

  After fifteen minutes, Maggie left her friend and, waving a quick good-bye to the nurses, returned to the first floor, where the fear and the jangled remnants of violence hung in the air, choking away the peace I had gained watching Maggie with Peggy. The emergency waiting room was dotted with people in various stages of drunkenness or shock. Maggie ignored them all as she made her way toward a group of people clustered together, looking frightened at the far end near the vending machines.

  It was the old man’s family. They were sitting in two long rows, facing one another, finding the strength in each other to face what might be coming. They ranged in age from the frailest of old ladies down to a sleeping boy who could not have been more than a few years old. His face was slack with the blissful unconsciousness of childhood sleep and drool trickled out of his mouth onto his mother’s shoulder. He slept, secure in the knowledge that he was completely and utterly safe. There would be time enough for him to discover the truth about life. For now, I envied him his innocence.

  I stared at the others, separating out the generations who had followed the kind old man: sons, daughters, their spouses, their children, their children’s children.

  And then I saw her.

  She was sitting next to a trim man who was deeply tanned, holding his hand. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her and her brown hair fell in silky curtains over her face. Her boyfriend sat awkwardly next to her, wanting to be a man and lend her comfort, but unsure of what to do.

  It was the young girl Alan Hayes had stalked, the young girl from the school bus who had befriended Sarah Hayes and escaped death at the hand of Sarah’s father by seconds.

  Maggie saw her at the same time I did, but her eyes slid away: she was going to let the girl recognize her first.

  I don’t think the girl had told her father about what had happened when he had left her alone. She gave Maggie a quick smile, out of nervousness more than friendliness, and her eyes glanced quickly at the tall man sitting beside her. Maggie smiled and passed her by. She would not interfere.

  She bent over the frail old lady, who was sitting huddled in a plastic hospital chair, a shawl arranged over her lap for warmth. As Maggie introduced herself to the old man’s wife and explained who she was, I stared at the beautiful young girl holding her father’s hand, waiting to hear news of her grandfather’s condition—and I thought back to what I had stumbled on earlier that day: that life was shaped by a series of the most minor of coincidences, the tiniest of actions, the barest touching of one life by another, the seemingly inconsequential decisions of others. This beautiful young girl, her heart pure, her mind still unblemished by what life would bring her, would live out her days because her grandfather had had the courage to stay by that cave. Her grandfather had surely saved her life. And yet she would never know.

  I wondered then if there really was such a thing as coincidence. But I was not yet convinced about the alternative.

  Maggie did not want to intrude. She stayed long enough to hear a progress report from the attending physician—the old man would live, but recovery would be slow. If he was strong, he would make it.

  I looked at the family clustered around the doctor, listening to his every word with anxious faces, and I knew the old man would make it back. Look what he had to live for. And look at the strength they were willing to give him. He had, indeed, lived his life well and he would continue to live it well, dying one day in his sleep, slipping away without sorrow, as a good man should.

  They did not notice when Maggie left. I sat beside her quietly in her car, feeling the need in her to find her own family, to draw comfort from others who loved her. We made our way to the little house with the still-unkempt lawn where Maggie’s father lived and prayed for her safety every day.

  They were waiting for her on the front porch, a trio awake in the dead of the night, a trio holding vigil for the one they all loved: Maggie’s father, Morty the beat cop, and the little terrier. The dog had made friends with Maggie’s father and was perched happily on the old man’s lap.

  “You didn’t have to wait up,” Maggie said as she joined them on the porch and scratched behind the little dog’s ears.

  “Oh, yes, we did,” her father said firmly. “Here.” He held out a bottle and Maggie took it. She surprised me: she unscrewed the top, looked up at the stars, then threw back her head and took a gulp.

  It made her gasp and the two men laughed.

  “Here’s to surviving another day,” Maggie said as she handed the bottle back to her father.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he agreed. He took a swig, then screwed the top of the bottle back on. It was another of their rituals, I realized, a toast to their survival. The bottle was still three-quarters full. I hoped it would be big enough to last them through every close brush with death.

  Maggie sighed, not quite believing that it was all over at last. She pulled a rocking chair over so that she and Morty could sit, flanking her father’s wheelchair, rocking together, their back-and-forth motions synchronized with easy familiarity.

  I sat on the bottom step leading up to the porch and pretended I
was one of them. They felt so bound to one another. I just wanted to be a part of that for a little while.

  Morty did not hold back. “If Bonaventura threw himself off a cliff, it had to be for a damn good reason.”

  “Fahey,” Maggie’s father said. “That’s the reason: Kevin Fahey.”

  “Exactly,” Morty agreed. “He had something to do with Fahey’s death. When our Maggie started pawing through the case files, he started getting spooked. That’s my guess.”

  “I always thought there was something more to Fahey’s death,” Maggie’s father said. “When three people walk into a house and only one comes out alive, he’s usually the one who did the shooting. Danny’s story never quite hung together.”

  “He was dirty,” Morty said.

  Maggie’s father nodded. “He was dirty.”

  “Bonaventura or Fahey or both?” Maggie asked. “Because I don’t get that vibe from what I’m hearing about Fahey. He was troubled, but I’m not convinced he was dirty.”

  “Bonaventura wasn’t in it alone,” Morty said. “They never are. If he was dirty, there were others. Count on it.”

  “It’s not fair to tag Fahey just because of his partner,” Maggie protested.

  “You sound like you need to know,” her father suggested gently.

  “I do,” Maggie said. She sounded surprised at her own words. “I can’t explain it. I feel like, somehow, I don’t know . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Just say it,” Morty suggested. “You’re speaking to one old man who talks to his dead wife and another who chats with his dead mother each morning.”

  Maggie’s father looked at his friend. “I knew not even death could stop your mother from nagging you, Morty.” The old friends laughed together.

  “I just feel like I had some help with this case,” Maggie said. “I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  Morty nodded. “I won’t argue with that. It’s happened to me.”

  “I’m going to ask Gonzales for that as my reward,” Maggie said suddenly.

  Her father started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny about that?” she demanded.

  “It’s probably the one thing Gonzales doesn’t want to give you.”

  “I don’t care. He said I could have anything I wanted. And I want to look into Fahey’s death.”

  Maggie’s father was shaking his head. “Ah, Maggie. You were the most stubborn little girl I ever saw. If I had known then that your stubbornness would one day give a man like Gonzales grief? By god, I’d have encouraged it a hell of a lot more.”

  They all laughed together and the sound gathered, then swelled, rising up into the night like a cloud of goodwill sent off into the darkness. Oh, how I had squandered the opportunity to laugh while I was alive.

  Maggie rose and stretched, then rubbed the small of her back.

  “You’re not going to do it now?” her father asked, incredulous.

  “I have a lot of paperwork to file on this,” Maggie said defensively. “Might as well get it done.”

  “You’re not going into the office to do paperwork.” Her father shook his head, half proudly, half in exasperation. “You’re going to look at Fahey’s file.”

  “I am,” Maggie said cheerfully. “I want to know what happened. I want to know why Danny threw himself off a cliff. I want to know why Fahey had to die.”

  “You act like you knew the guy,” Morty said. “Like you owe him something.”

  “I do owe him something,” Maggie explained. “I owe him the truth. From one cop to another. I owe him the truth.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Maggie May,” her father said gently. “You, my daughter, are a piece of work.”

  And so she was. As we walked to her car together, I knew she could not see me. Indeed, she did not even suspect I was there. But that was okay. We were still a team. She did not walk alone.

  I thought back to earlier that night, after Alan Hayes and Danny had died. As I followed Maggie to her car, I had passed by the field where I had first seen the body of Vicky Meeks. It had been beautiful in the moonlight, every stalk of grass and swaying weed illuminated in the glow, rendered stark by light and shadows. It felt peaceful. Nature reigned there once more, the violence of man eradicated by the passing of day, followed by night, followed by more days and nights. I had found that comforting.

  I had also seen a young woman standing on the opposite edge of the patch of flattened weeds where Vicky Meeks had lain. Her face was hidden in shadow. I’d wondered if she was human or more like me, but I did not have to wonder long. The moon was bright in the sky and I turned my face up to it, my attention caught by what had seemed like a single flash of silver moonbeam. When I turned my attention back to the clearing, the girl was gone.

  “How long would I be left behind?” I had wondered. How many years would I be doomed to watch others move on while I wandered this plane alone?

  Now I thought I knew. I thought of the stack of haphazardly solved cases filling my old file drawers, and of the many more that remained unsolved.

  My redemption lay in those files, I thought. I had set things right for Alissa Hayes and I had helped Vicky Meeks. But my penance had just begun.

  I could have felt overwhelmed. I could have felt disappointed. But the truth was—I felt elated. I had a purpose. For the first time in my life, and the first time in my death, I had a purpose. Kevin Fahey, the dead detective. The righter of wrongs, most especially my own. Defender of those who have gone before me into the darkness.

  And protector of Maggie Gunn. Her very own, most imperfect but most dedicated guardian angel.

  I could do it. I could do that job well. And I would do it, too. I would always be there for her, for as long as I could. Because some people believe in angels. Some people believe in god. Others believe in evil and the power of prayer. But me?

  I believe in Maggie. And that’s all I need to know.

  Epilogue

  A woman sits alone at a desk in a deserted room, poring over the files spread open before her. It is nearly dawn and she has worked through the night, living only in the world described before her. She has spent hours now, her thoughts caught in a dirty abandoned house on the banks of the Delaware River years before. She can almost smell the whiskey sweat of fear radiating off the men gathered there. She has gone through it in her mind over and over. One drug dealer, also a murderer. Two police officers, one also a victim. Guns. Bullets. Death. Betrayal. Greed.

  What else was in that room?

  She shuffles the papers once more, rereading a statement, then checking the report of the crime scene investigators. She stares at the photos of a grime-encrusted wall, the flowered wallpaper peeling off in strips, pockmarked by bullet holes.

  Something is wrong and she will not sleep until she finds it.

  That’s it, she thinks at last, tapping a photograph with her index finger, feeling the truth in her epiphany as it flashes through her mind. Too many bullets. Too many bullets for two dead men to have fired.

  She knew then what had happened.

  Gonzales would want to block the truth.

  But the truth was that Kevin Fahey had been a clean cop. And she owed it to him to make sure that the world knew it, too.

  She would not let Gonzales stop her. She could not.

  At the very least, the dead deserved the truth.