by Lowe, Tom
There was a knock at the trailer door. Three seconds later a man with a baritone voice and an Irish accent asked, “Mrs. O’Sullivan, is everything all right in there?”
She stepped to the door and opened it slightly. A slender man, long neck, ruddy face, had his nose close to the door. He said, “Just checkin’ to see if you needed anything from the store.” He tried peering in through the reflection on the glass.
She said, “I’m fine, John. I have plenty of groceries. Everything’s okay. Thank you for asking, though.” She coughed and braced her hand against the doorframe, her balance off.
He stood there for a few seconds, not quite sure what to say. He ran his tongue inside his left cheek and licked his dry, thin lips before turning to walk to his blue pickup truck.
Katherine returned to the couch. “Living in this village has its good and bad points. Sometimes the word clannish really means nosey when it comes to minding everyone else’s business. But, for the most part, they mean well. John McCourt’s a sweet man.”
“You said that this priest, Father Thomas Garvey, the man who raped you is Dillon’s father, and the person most likely to know where to find Dillon.”
“He’d be the one person who’d know Dillon’s whereabouts, but he’d never disclose it. To openly disclose it is to publically admit to being his father … and the rape.”
“Courtney is trying to find him, isn’t she?”
“There’s no stopping her. God knows I’ve tried. Although she won’t admit it, I know she’s searching for him to avenge the deaths of her parents and to return something Dillon stole from me.”
“What was it?”
“Are you wearing the triquetre?”
“Yes.” I pulled the silver chain from under my T-shirt, the pendent hanging from it.
She slowly reached out and touched it, her lined face filled with awe. She raised her eyes up, meeting mine, and she smiled. “Sean, this is very old. It’s believed to be the first metal works of the Celtic Trinity Knot. It was estimated that metal workers fashioned it two thousand years ago. Your father found it and an ancient Irish torc in a bog. He was using a metal detector, and he found it under a foot of muck. The torc is a holy bracelet, maybe worn by a prophet not long after the death of Christ. And the triquetre is one of the earliest artifacts in history unearthed that gives historians a physical indication of how long ago the Holy Trinity was part of the Celtic culture—part of its Christian religion.”
“And Dillon, your son … my brother … stole the torc from you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he sold it?”
“No, he knows of its symbolism and its connection to the time of Christ. He’d rather possess it than sell it because …”
“Why?”
“Some believe the torc, like the triquetre you wear, is made by man from a mold made by God. It’s said to be a physical instrument from a higher power. Man was the blacksmith. God the designer. But it’s a power that really begins in the heart of its owner … an unselfish heart. Dillon may own it, but he’ll never be part of what it means. Sean, maybe you can get to Courtney before she comes close to Dillon. She’s blinded by her darkened heart for blood. She needs to come home, bring her back to me.” She paused, her face occupied with thoughts from an earlier time. “I used to take her to elementary school, and pick her up, too. The John Calhoun School.”
“I’ll do my best to find Courtney.”
“She’s been through so much. She kept cutting herself … self-mutilation. It got so bad I had her with at least three therapists, and she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for two months. I was terrified she’d kill herself. And now she has turned all that anger into hunting down Dillon.”
She glanced down at the image of her and the man she said was my father. “This photograph was taken on a bluff in County Kerry overlooking Puffin Island.” She touched the glass with two fingers. “I so loved being there. The little puffins put on such a magnificent show, riding the air currents. They’re superb fliers, it’s as if they can perform ballet in the air.”
I gestured to the art on the walls, paintings of the coasts of Ireland, castles, wildlife, grazing sheep in the foreground, the sea as a backdrop. “Did you paint all of these?”
“Most of them. I don’t paint much anymore. Between the arthritis and my failing eyesight, I’m afraid I’m not very good. If I can’t do it to the best of my abilities, I won’t do it.”
I pointed to a medium-sized painting of a young woman standing in a lush field of clover, pink and white heather at her feet, the blue ocean behind her, gulls and puffins in the air. She wore a wide brim hat and a sundress. “Did you paint that?”
“No, your father did. He was very gifted—a good artist and a writer, too. And sometimes a drinker. He enjoyed his Irish whiskey, but he never abused it. He painted that canvas one Sunday by the sea. He wouldn’t let me see it until he was finished. Then he gave it to me for my birthday.”
“Is that you in the picture?”
“Yes, so many years ago. Would you like to have it?”
“I couldn’t take it.”
“If you’d like to have it, the painting is yours. It’s the only thing in this house I can give you that is part of your father and me.”
“Where’s his grave?”
“He’s buried in the Old Abbey Cemetery in County Kerry. I put flowers on his grave before I left for America. I always wanted to return to place flowers on his grave, but—”
“What?”
“Too much time has slipped by, and now my health isn’t what it once was. Makes travel difficult.”
“What if I paid for it?”
She smiled. “My health might be failing, but I still have my Irish pride.” She looked at my shoulder and asked, “May I see your birthmark? I haven’t seen it since I put my last diaper on you.”
I pulled up the sleeve on my T-shirt, drew it beyond the birthmark. She slowly reached out, her hand trembling, the tips of her fingers touching my skin, gently caressing the birthmark no larger than a quarter. She looked up at me, her eyes welling with tears. “Sean, I am so sorry for what I did … so very sorry.” Tears spilled down her lined face.
“It’s all right. You did the best you could—did what you felt was the best thing for me. I don’t want you to feel bad for what happened. I had a good life as a kid, just like you’d hoped. You succeeded. I’m fine. And better now that I’ve found you.” I reached over and hugged her, she sobbed—deep long sobs, her warm tears spilling onto my arm.
“It’s okay, Mom … it’s okay now.”
72
Mambo Eve wrapped Courtney’s head. Courtney sat on a stool in the voodoo shop as the old woman slowly wrapped her head in a royal blue and canary yellow African head scarf. When she finished, Mambo Eve handed her a hand mirror and said, “You look lovely, child. You have the face of an Egyptian queen.” She smiled.
Courtney looked into the mirror and said, “The headdress is beautiful. Thank you. Do you have any hoop earrings?”
Mariah Danford looked up from using Windex to clean the glass case and said, “We do. I have just the pair for you. You could pass a silver dollar through the hoops.” She went behind the counter and removed two earrings. “Let me put them on for you.” In less than a half minute, she’d attached the earrings to Courtney’s ears. “What do you think?”
“Courtney held the mirror up, capturing more light entering the shop. “They’re beautiful. How much are they?”
Maria glanced at Mambo Eve who closed her eyes and nodded. Mariah said, “It’s my treat. I’ll buy them for you.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can pay for—”
“Shhh … I insist. It’s the least I can do for you … for someone who’s got the heart to do what you’re trying to do.”
***
Courtney stood in the shade of a Southern live oak and looked up and down Dumaine Street. She wore dark glasses and the African headdress. A black mixed breed dog
sauntered across the street, head low, rib bones visible under the mangy fur. There was very little traffic. She walked a half block down from where the red Toyota truck was parked, discreetly glancing at parked cars, looking for occupants. Looking for anyone who might be looking for her.
She crossed the street and walked back toward the truck. A low-rider Chevy Malibu turned the corner onto Dumaine. Courtney could see two men in the car, dark features. The driver’s head was shaved, tats up his neck. The passenger wore his hair in a purple Mohawk, sleeves cut from his black T-shirt, thick silver chain around his neck. Rap music pulsated from the car. The passenger stuck his head out the open window and shouted, “Lookin’ fine, Mama. You want some scratch? Crystal. Best in the city.”
Courtney ignored the man.
“Talkin’ to you, bitch!”
She walked straight ahead, music from an approaching ice cream truck, Turkey in the Straw, crossing with the rap beat. Two teenage boys on skateboards coasted by Courtney. They skated around a man standing on the corner, watching the traffic. Watching the people. He wore dark glasses, ear-bud in one ear, and a baseball cap backwards on his round head.
Courtney was within fifty feet of her Toyota truck. She walked faster, the ice cream truck coming down Dumaine. And then she spotted them. Two men in a van. The van was parked on the side of the street, a parked car in front of it and one behind it. Courtney could see the driver start the engine.
The teens on the skateboards turned around and were heading back in her direction. As they got closer, she smiled at them and said, “You guys look hot. You want some ice cream?”
One teen, silver ring through a nostril, inflamed acne on his cheeks and chin said, “Sure. Sounds good.”
The other teen, a taller boy with dirty blond dreadlocks, grinned. “You buyin’?”
“Yes, I am.” She handed them a ten-dollar bill. “Go back to the corner, there’s a blue van parked between the white car and the black car. Stop the ice cream truck by the parked van and buy your ice cream.”
“No problem,” said the dreadlocked boy.
Each boy used his left foot and leg to build speed on his skateboard, kicking off the pavement, rocketing back toward the van.
Courtney watched them a moment. She could see movement in the van, the men watching her. The moment the teenagers flagged down the ice cream truck, near the front of the van, Courtney bolted and ran for the Toyota. She fumbled with the keys, unlocking the door and sliding in behind the steering wheel. She started the motor, her heart racing. She glanced in the side-view mirror pulling away from the curb.
Her stomach turned. One man had jumped from the van, pointing a pistol at the teens and the ice cream truck driver. Courtney could see that the gunman was shouting, gesturing with the pistol. She zoomed away from the curb, accelerating down Dumaine, passing the bar where the old bluesman strummed his guitar and had a stare on his face that seemed to look a thousand yards away.
73
The setting sun was coating the tree tops in a blood red profile when I left my mother’s home. I pulled to a stop at the end of her long driveway, windows in the Jeep down, and simply stared at the hand-drawn puffin on her mailbox. At that moment, the puffin lit by an enchanted light from a dying sun, the air now cooler, I felt more alive than I had in a long time. The quirky little bird on the box was like a long lost renaissance masterpiece treasure that I’d found. Even in this village of the weird, the Celtic McMansions, doublewides, warehouses, cow pasture lawns, new cars and trucks parked near abandon old cars, I felt like I’d arrived in the Promised Land.
I’d spent the last four hours trying to make up for forty-three years. Four hours of getting to know a mother—my mother, someone I never knew existed. I heard about my family on her side and my father’s side, where they were raised, how they’d met, and how much they’d loved each other. My thoughts moved in a whirlwind of what was, what is, and what might have been.
If the course to your future is shaped by your past, and you discover your past is made from a lie, what does that say about the present, and how will that affect your future?
I thought hard about that. I tried to put it in some kind of perspective, to hold this moment in time up to the light, hoping for clarity, hoping for a better insight into who I was—who I’d become as a man. I thought about genetics. I reflected on the loving upbringing I had from my adoptive parents, but on the outside looking in, from a scientific viewpoint—my life could have been a psychological experiment. My identity and persona under the microscope, a petri dish specimen in the venerable controversy of nature verse nurture.
And then there was my new-found brother, Dillon. Did genetics, a brutal rape of our mother, play a role in him becoming a killer—someone who’d rape and kill a member of his own family? His sister. My sister. Our sister. Was he conceived in evil? Or is the seed of evil planted in all of us, lying dormant in some people under the loam of good, in others sprouting deep roots, luring and hanging in temptation from the tree of life? Can good be short-circuited in anyone’s fuse box by the rising of a black tide under the influence of a dark moon?
My mother raped by a priest inside a church, his offspring spawned to reproduce the cycle. Uncle Dillon. No wonder Courtney was so damn confused, so angry.
What I knew now was my biological father was dead, murdered. My mother is alive, but apparently ill. Courtney Burke was my niece. Dillon Flanagan was my brother. And the daughter who Andrea Logan conceived was still out there somewhere—anonymous. Maybe that was the nugget of hope found in the mix of pebbles and mud at the bottom of a gold pan.
There were two ways to show to the media, and ultimately the voters, that Courtney wasn’t Andrea’s daughter—my daughter. The first was to find Courtney, do the DNA testing. The second was to prove she wasn’t a serial killer, but that would mean finding the person who was the killer. The image of an army of news reporters, satellite trucks, helicopters closing in on my mother’s trailer, in her condition, caused my head to throb above my left eye. I wondered if Detective Grant had made any progress. I picked up one of my disposable mobile phones and started to call him.
Then I spotted the pickup truck.
Same white truck that had moved slowly by me when I was about to drive up my mother’s driveway. Same wide off-road mud tires. The truck was parked under cottonwood and oak trees across the street from my mother’s mailbox. The sun set in the horizon behind the truck, framing a silhouette of a man looking at me through binoculars.
I started to turn right, head for the highway and the first decent motel I could find. But then the cross-roads of time—of forty-three years and the last four hours, added up to that single moment for me to turn left rather than right. The clarity I sought, the meaning I was searching for, immediately started down a brand new path for me. The first destination was that pickup truck and whoever I found behind the wheel.
I headed for the truck. Drove across the scraggly lawn or pasture, kicking up dust in the orange sunlight, scattering cow shit and grass, going straight for the driver’s side door. I reached for my Glock stopping beside his door. The truck window was down. He turned his head toward me. Narrow face red from the sun. Thin lips. His nose had been broken and reset, leaving a white scar and slight hump on the bridge. No expression. No surprise. Nothing but a cold stare, smoky gray eyes, pupils like pewter dots. His dirty blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
I could smell burning weed. I held the Glock in my lap and said, “Good evening.”
No response.
“You must be the neighborhood watch. You watched me arrive at the house across the street, and you are watching me leave. Why the special interest?”
No response.
“I see. You’re a good listener. Not much of a talker. Well, listen to this, pal. That lady in the trailer is my mother.”
His eyes opened a notch, nostrils flaring. I had his attention. “Yes, my mother. Which means Dillon Flanagan is my brother.”
The carotid ar
tery on the left side of his neck throbbed. He touched the tip of his nose with his index finger and said, “Take your game elsewhere. In one minute I can have a dozen men here.”
“Good. They can carry your body away, because in two seconds I can turn what’s left of your brain into applesauce.” I saw his right hand move. “Don’t be stupid. Right now we’re simply communicating. You pull a gun on me and it turns to war, turns to one body bag--yours.”
He stared at me, dry swallowed, his jawline like a rock. “Tell Dillon that his younger brother, Sean, sends his regards. I’m sending something else: a warning. Tell him Courtney Burke is off limits. She’s to be left alone, unharmed. If he does something to her, tell him there is nowhere on earth that he can hide. I will find him.”
The man in the truck half grinned. He propped his elbow on the inside of the door. “Mister, I don’t know who the fuck you are or who you think you are, but you ought to go back to fuckin’ Florida. Dillon Flanagan will tear you a new asshole. You got no idea who you’re messing with, okay? He’s a prophet. The man can only be found when he wants to be found. You being at his mother’s house won’t set well with him. You won’t have to find him, he’ll find you, and he knows how to do it through others. The man can walk through trees.”
“Give him my message.”
I put the Jeep in gear and drove back across the grass to the street, turned left, and headed toward the highway and a hotel. A shower, food, and some aspirin couldn’t happen fast enough. I dialed Detective Dan Grant’s mobile, wondering if he’d answer an incoming number he didn’t recognize. He did answer.
“Dan, it’s Sean. I found Courtney Burke’s grandmother. I know Courtney’s story, and it’s a horrific one. I know who she’s hunting for and why.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in the Carolinas. Lonnie Ebert was stabbed to death with an ice pick.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Sean.”
“How about the name of the man who probably did it because he used an ice pick when he killed his brother-in-law after raping and strangling his wife … the killer’s own sister.”