Keeper

by Greg Rucka

NO MORE BUTCHERS.

  MY JUSTICE.

  It was, as always, unsigned. “It’s like the others,” I said to Bridgett. “It’s another veiled threat about Romero and—”

  “Read this one, stud,” she said.

  We traded letters.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  This is my final letter. I have finished my work now, and now the world knows. No more tricks, no need for games. We are both dead, and I am now to be judged by the only Law that matters.

  I did what I’ve done because Dr. Felice Romero murdered my child. Her punishment was something I am glad to give my life for. Common Ground has failed.

  I did what my Lord wished. I have no regrets.

  Paul J. Grant

  “It’s a suicide note,” I said.

  “An unmailed suicide note,” Bridgett said. “Grant was supposed to carry the bomb to the conference. These should have been mailed yesterday, or even the day before.”

  “But he didn’t show at the conference,” I said. “And the letters are here.”

  Bridgett scowled at Crowell’s body. “So Crowell knew what Grant was going to do. Rich made the bomb on Crowell’s orders, and Grant was supposed to deliver it.”

  “But he didn’t. For some reason he didn’t.”

  “No. So Rich used Mary Werthin as a backup when neither Grant nor Crowell showed at the conference.”

  “Grant had killed Crowell,” I said. “That’s why Crowell didn’t attend.”

  “Why, though? What’s Grant’s motive? Baechler, we’ve got that, but why kill Crowell?”

  “Grant never wrote the letters Felice was getting,” I said. “Crowell did. He was setting Grant up. Somehow Crowell or Rich or Barry, one of them, found out that Grant murdered Baechler, and they decided to use that to get Grant to kill Felice.”

  “And they never knew he wanted to kill Katie, too?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  Bridgett opened her Altoids, dropped the remaining mints into her mouth. “One of us should call Scott.”

  “You can,” I said. “He’s got a crush on you.”

  “I know,” she said, and went to find a phone.

  Scott tore each of us a new asshole, threatened to have us arrested, and then, when he arrived, threw us out of the apartment.

  “Go back to Logan’s and stay there or I swear to God I’ll shoot you both,” he said when we were in the hallway.

  “I like a man who shows his anger,” Bridgett told him.

  “Then you’re falling in love with me,” Scott said, and slammed the door on us.

  “Whatever gets you through the night,” she told the closed door, then hooked her arm through mine and led me to the elevator.

  In the lobby, the doorman finally asked us if we lived here or not.

  “Sure do,” I told him. “We’re the McKennas in fifteen-G.”

  “But I’m not his wife,” Bridgett said, patting my hand. “I’m his mistress. Maybe you recognize me? I’m Kim Basinger.”

  The doorman politely asked us to leave.

  We went out arm in arm.

  Bridgett decided she was hungry and that we should stop for brunch before going back to her place. I had no objections to that, so we ended up at a diner off Tenth near a taxi depot, both sides of the street outside lined with yellow cabs in various states of health. I had a bowl of oatmeal with some brown sugar, and Bridgett had a plate of steak and eggs. She didn’t clean her plate.

  My punchiness wore off over the meal, and when we were back in the Porsche, heading to her place, she said, “All right, stud, spill it.”

  “Where’s Grant?” I asked.

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “My point exactly. He hasn’t left town.”

  “You don’t think so? He missed the conference, he’s got three bodies to his name. He’s got to know that the FBI, the NYPD, and the marshals are all looking for him.”

  “He hasn’t finished the job,” I said. “He wants Romero.”

  “Maybe, stud. But he’s run out of opportunities.”

  “There’s the funeral.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment. “Yeah, there is. But then again, that’s what you’re for, right? And he knows by this point that you’re no slouch.”

  “I take the compliment as it comes.”

  “Take it however you find it.”

  Bridgett went out to rent a couple of videos, and while she was gone I called Dale and gave him a quick brief over the phone about the funeral. After that I called Natalie’s place. Rubin picked up.

  “Enjoying your time together?” I asked him.

  “A night of rarefied bliss, my friend,” Rubin said. “I can almost forget that my Cerebus issue-one went up in smoke.”

  “You lie.”

  “I do,” he said. “I’ll mourn that issue forever. But I’m trying.”

  “Crowell’s dead,” I told him, and then ran it down. “So tomorrow we worry about Grant?”

  “Most likely. I expect Fowler will call to confirm that one way or another. But the funeral will be well covered, let’s face it. All of us, cops, Feds, what more could we ask for?”

  “Close air support?”

  I laughed.

  “So, what’s the deal with you and Logan?” he asked. “She’s like her car,” I said. “A wild ride that pushes the envelope.”

  “That’s an awfully sexual metaphor. Are you speaking from experience?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But?”

  “But what?”

  “Remember who you’re talking to, buddy-boy,” he said. “It’s crossed my mind,” I admitted. “We came close last night.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “An inability to perform.”

  “You had that problem, too?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Thank God,” he said. “I thought it might’ve been something I ate.”

  I heard the front door opening and. said, “I’m going to go. See you at the safe apartment tomorrow, all right? Tell Natalie to get there by seven.”

  “Will do,” Rubin said.

  We were finishing the third of the four Jackie Chan movies Bridgett had rented when Fowler called. She answered, then handed off to me.

  “Grant’s prints were at the scene,” Scott said.

  “Did he shoot Crowell?”

  “That’s how it looks, but we’re not certain yet. We found some interesting stuff in Crowell’s files, though. Your address and a couple of photographs of you with a young woman, both going in and coming out of the clinic.”

  “That would be Alison.”

  “There were lots of other photos, too. I just bring this to your attention because I know you, you understand. Nice to know that you were under surveillance just for going to the clinic. There’s something else, though . . .”

  “The tackle box and the briefcases,” I said. “I know.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “Who’s going to be covering at the funeral?” I asked him.

  “We’ll have local NYPD and marshals at the church. Sheriffs and marshals in Westchester. We’ll run dogs at both locations,” Scott said. “Grant may have just taken it and run. He doesn’t necessarily know where the Mass or the cemetery service are going to be held.”

  “Do you really think he can’t find out?”

  “No, but I don’t know what more we can do, dude. We’ve got people checking hotels in Westchester in case he’s already up there, but you and I both know they’re not going to find jack-shit. We’ll just have to keep a sharp eye and hope he’s decided not to risk it.”

  We had pizza for dinner, and I told Bridgett about the bomb.

  “It’s a better one, not like that piece of crap that Rich threw together for the conference,” I told her. “This one, the original bomb, is Rich’s masterpiece. That’s why he was so fucking smug. It’s in a briefcase or something like that, and it’s radio-controlled.”

  She folded her slice le
ngthwise and dripped grease onto the wax paper at the bottom of the pizza box. “You mean Grant can plant it tonight and then just sit back somewhere with the detonator?”

  “Yes and no. Theoretically, he could do that, but he won’t risk it going off too early. The longer the bomb stays armed, the greater the chance of some stray transmission detonating it by accident, and he probably knows that,” 1 said. “He’ll plant it tomorrow morning, most likely at the cemetery, and he’ll wait.”

  “A trap.”

  I wiped my hands with a paper napkin and Bridgett closed the pizza box, took it to the refrigerator. She put it inside and came out with two bottles of Samuel Adams, which she opened. “Considering what you’ve just told me, you’re remarkably calm,” she said.

  “The optimal way to deal with the threat would be to find Grant, and I don’t even know where to look. Best to leave that to the Feds and the police. Tomorrow, both the church and the cemetery will be swept with electronics and dogs, and we’ll have done everything short of forbidding Felice to attend. And that last is clearly not an option.”

  “And that’ll be enough?”

  I shook my head. “No. That’ll be the best we can do.”

  She brought me my beer and sat down beside me on the floor. We were both leaning with our backs against the couch. “Can you get to St. James by yourself tomorrow?” she asked.

  “You’re not going?”

  “I’ve got to go early for confession if I want to take communion.”

  “I pity the priest,” I said.

  She elbowed me. “You going to put an arm around me or what?”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and she put her free hand on my thigh, leaning against me. We each drank some of our beers.

  “It’s going to take you and Rubin at least a week or two before you boys can find another apartment,” Bridgett said. “I’m thinking that you’re welcome to stay here until then.”

  “You sure? That’s a hell of a nice offer and you strike me as someone who values her privacy.”

  “True. But you’re a friend in need.” She took another swig from her bottle. “Ready for the last flick?”

  “Shoot.”

  She reached for the remote control and we watched the final installment in our Jackie Chan fest, my arm around her, her head against my shoulder. We killed another beer each before it ended, and when the film was done, she rewound the tape and helped me set up the sheets on the couch.

  “You’re going it alone on the couch tonight, stud,” she said. “Think you can handle that?”

  “I may roll off but I imagine I can survive the fall.”

  “Good thing, ’cause my back can only take so much of that action.” She took the empty bottles and headed to the kitchen, dropping them in her recycling bin under the sink.

  “Night, stud,” she said, and headed for her room.

  “Good night, Bridgett.”

  She stopped, pivoted on a toe, and came back. With no preamble she put her arms around my neck and kissed me, holding me to her mouth for the duration. She released me with a crooked smile.

  “You can call me Bridie,” she said, and then went back down the hall.

  The photograph on the wall, the one of the lighthouse, bounced blue light from the street to where I lay on the couch, alone. I listened to Bridgett down the hall, where she was sleeping with her door open. She talked in her sleep, soft and incoherent, and I gained no insight trying to decipher her mumbled words, instead falling into visions of Grant lurking in the Westchester woods with Rich’s bomb. The imagined images taunted me until sleep came.

  No dreams.

  It was the hole in the ground that I kept returning to, earth cleanly pared away to hold the white casket that had traveled from the city to the sloping and grassy hills of this cemetery, that turned me from observer into mourner. In the hot and humid air, I kept finding the smell of wet earth on the breeze, and my eyes went back to the grave again and again between sweeps of the area.

  Felice sat between Natalie and me, slim and stoic in her black dress, hard as coal. Dale and Rubin sat in the chairs behind her, and the other mourners spread from there, familiar faces from the clinic staff and others I didn’t recognize. Veronica Selby sat in her wheelchair with Madeline beside her, both their faces fixed in granite sorrow. Bridgett sat on my left, her hands in her lap, focusing on the coffin, her emotion unreadable. All of us on the gray metal folding chairs, listening to the breeze, or the birds, or the sobs, or the priest.

  “We gather here to commend our sister Katherine Louisa Romero to God our Father . .

  A radio crackled, its volume turned down low, and a sheriff’s deputy turned away to answer it. Transmissions were being made with less care now that the sweep had been completed. No signs of a bomb or Grant, no signs of danger or distress. I watched the deputy listen to the transmission, radio a response, and take the ten steps to where Fowler stood at the end of our row. They put their heads together briefly, and then the deputy stepped away again, sent another transmission.

  “. . . says the Lord, inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . .”

  The earth in the grave looked soft, and I imagined it sweet, perhaps comfortable. The casket had been open at the Mass. Inside it, Katie’s face was still kind, the smile fixed and clearly not her own. I’d looked at her face and seen only the expression she had when shot, the tears pooling in her eyes and the turn of her mouth as she asked for her mother.

  Now the casket was sealed, set on a platform beneath an evergreen. When the breeze moved a branch, sunlight would grace the coffin, the white metal impossibly smooth and shiny.

  A marshal stood beside a sheriff’s van in the distance, helping the deputies there load the dogs back inside. The dogs made no noise, wouldn’t unless they caught the scent of an explosive.

  “Grant that our sister may sleep here in peace until You awaken her to glory, for You are the resurrection and the life,” the priest said. He was in his thirties, and his voice was full and strong enough to carry clearly. He spoke with sincerity and faith. He spoke the way Crowell pretended to speak. “Then she will see You face to face and in Your light will see light and know the splendor of God, for You live and reign forever and ever.”

  “Amen.” I heard Bridgett say it clearly, but Felice seemed to only mouth the word. She took off her glasses, set them in her lap. Somewhere behind us, I heard someone crying.

  A woman stopped at a headstone some fifteen feet away, holding a fresh and simple bouquet. She unbuttoned her blazer before kneeling and then she offered the flowers to the deceased. Her head pitched forward with tears then, and I looked away.

  The van pulled out, passing the line of parked cars that had been our procession out of the city. The road was one hundred yards from where we now sat, perhaps further. The marshal looked our way, wiping sweat from his forehead. He turned and walked back along the line of cars, stopping to check the Sentinel Ford that Dale had driven. The marshal dropped to his knees and looked under the vehicle, then rose and continued, passing a groundskeeper in brown coveralls who was pulling a black trash bag of cuttings beside the road. The lawn had been freshly cut this morning, and the smell of the grass was thick.

  “. . . when the love of Christ, which conquers all things, destroys even death itself,” the priest said. He looked up from his book at us and added, “We will pray silently.”

  Heads bowed. At the far end of our row, in the last seat, Alison looked my way and offered me a smile. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt, and I moved my eyes back to the grave, wondering what the smile meant.

  During the silence, Felice shuddered once and began to weep.

  The priest moved to the coffin, sprinkling the glossy surface with holy water. Another radio crackled. The groundskeeper hoisted his bag and then dropped it, bending to clean the spilled cuttings. He adjusted his cap and looked around, embarrassed.

  The priest began to read the Gospel, Matthew.

  “Blessed are the poo
r in spirit . . .”

  Alison had come after all, had changed her mind. I wondered why she had done it, what had happened to make the funeral become something she felt she could attend.

  “. . . for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness . .

  It was confusing that she had changed her mind. Had she come for me or herself? Or was this, for her, more about our aborted child?

  The priest began the Song of Farewell, and again I heard Bridgett’s voice clearly amongst all the others. She knew the words, and sang with the confidence of someone who’s had voice lessons.

  Natalie had put an arm around Felice’s shoulders. Her eyes were on me, sympathetic for my loss.

  Catalogue of losses, I thought. Home, child, and child again. Felice had said that no matter where you stood on the line, somebody always got hurt, and she had taken the worst of it. What could be worse than outliving your own child?

  I looked at Alison again, and she was still looking at me, now only serious and concerned. She’d never been one to change her mind, and if she was playing games, if this was some guilt maneuver, I wanted no part of it.

  The priest began the Prayer of Commendation as I turned away from her, seeing the groundskeeper get back to his feet, the spill cleaned up, on his way down the road and away from our car.

  “. . . console us and gently wipe every tear from our eyes: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest said.

  “Amen.” Chorused, and I imagined Alison adding her voice to the rest.

  “Go in the peace of Christ.”

  “Thanks be to God,” and that was the only time I heard Felice clearly. Then she was rising, taking my hand as I stood beside her. Dale, Rubin, and Natalie closed around her, too, and we stood with her as she accepted condolences, as if we were part of the same family. Bridgett waited, looking sculpted and immovable. She was wearing a white vest under a black double-breasted jacket and tuxedo pants, and she made them work, made them seem the most appropriate clothes possible for mourning Katie. I had arrived with her, and I would leave with her when the time was right.