by Tim McGregor
The woman praying behind Jim turned away. Others drifted off, not wanting to see anymore.
“My God,” said Puddy. The question hanging over the crowd. “Who is that?”
Jim elbowed through the gawkers, lifting the caution tape overhead. Miro stopped him cold. “Stay back, Jim. Please.”
“Who is that?”
“We don’t know! Let the crew do their job.”
Jim swept past Miro and ran for the gurney. The crowd pressed in after him, sensing a breech in the line, sweeping Miro along its current.
Puddycombe slipped through the chaos, scrambling to find Jim. Jim stood fixed, looking down at the stretcher. Wisps of smoke roiled up from the folds of the shroud.
A firefighter knelt over the body. His mask and helmet peeled off, hair plastered up in sweat. He clocked the two gaping onlookers and barked at them to go back.
Jim stammered, spitting it out. “Who is it?”
The crewman said he didn’t know and ordered them back behind the line. Puddy barked something and Jim dove for the stretcher, throwing the sheet back. Smoke uncoiled and stung his eyes. He waved it away.
The body was carbonized, blackened to an obscene husk. The hands were charred claws, locked and soldered into place like petrified wood. The hair cindered, leaving a blackened egg of a skull. The left half of the face was sooty but unmarked, enough to recognize the features.
Jim bent and vomited over the pavement. Coughing and spitting but unable to shed the taste of burnt flesh from his tongue.
“Oh Christ, is that…”
Jim wiped his mouth. “It’s her.”
What was left of Kate Farrell lay rigid in the smoke, the eyes cooked white in their sockets.
~
Constable Ray Bauer folded his arms and told Jim to slow down. “Take your time,” he said in a soft tone. “Just get it out.”
Ray had arrived ten minutes after the ambulance pulled in. Helping poor old Miro crowd control until Jimmy Hawkshaw yanked him aside and blathered all over him. Incoherent and frantic, pointing to the body bag being lifted into the back of the ambulance. Ray put a hand on Jim’s shoulder and told him to catch his breath. Take it slow.
“It’s Kate,” Jim wheezed. “She was alone in the building.”
The fire was out. The firemen leaned against the pumper truck with bottles of water in hand. Guzzling it back to clear their sooty throats or dribbling it over their heads.
“Okay Jim,” Constable Bauer said. “The medical examiner will confirm all that. Can you two wait somewhere? I’ll need statements from both of you but right now I need to clear everyone out.”
Jim glared at him, fed up with the constable’s cool detachment. “You know who did this, don’t you?”
“Put it in your statement, Jim.” Bauer motioned for them to back away. “Give us some room, huh? There’s nothing for you to do here.”
Puddycombe tugged Jim’s arm but Jim stalled. Reluctant to go but unsure of what to do. Constable Bauer pulled rank, hooking his thumbs into his belt and stared at Puddy with a cop’s practiced air of impatience. “Go home,” he said.
Puddy pulled him away and they elbowed through the crowd. Cars abandoned in the street, parked crazily as their owners had rushed in to see what was going on. Galway Road looked like a disaster zone, news footage of some war ravaged city.
“You meant Corrigan, didn’t you?” Puddy pulled him to a stop. “How do you know it was him?”
“Who else would it be?”
“It was a fire.” Puddycombe shrugged. “It could have been an accident.”
“No.” Jim shook his head. “Corrigan figured it out. He went to Kate for the list of names.”
“Names?”
He told the pub owner about the confessions unearthed from the archives. He tallied up the sequence of events after that. Corrigan had tried to euchre him out of the deal, going after the evidence himself. Kate refusing to give it up. The fire was no accident, no stray match.
Puddycombe’s face went slack as the story unfolded, too numb to speak when it was all told. When he finally did, his voice was hushed. A whisper in church. “The names. The ones on these confessions. Was there—”
Jim nodded. “Michael Patrick Puddycombe.”
Puddy looked like he’d been slapped. “Christ Almighty.”
The ambulance blurted, clearing a path through the street. They watched it trundle away. Jim rubbed the sting from his eyes. “Where are you meeting Berryhill?”
“At the pub. Why?”
“Get him and Hitchens and anyone else willing.” Jim marched for his truck, patting his pockets for keys. “You meet me at the old schoolhouse on the Roman Line. You know the one?”
“I know it.”
“And bring a baseball bat.”
Puddycombe stammered. “Why the old schoolhouse?”
“It’s got a clear view of the Corrigan house. We meet there, form a plan.”
“Wait a minute. That old schoolhouse, that’s where they met before. Back then.”
“I know.”
A cell phone buzzed. Jim’s. He dug it out of his pocket and nodded to Puddy. “Half an hour.” He put the phone to his ear, watching Puddycombe make for the pub. “Hello?”
“Dad?”
The boy’s voice startled him. Travis had never called him on the phone before. Ever. “Travis.” He didn’t know what to say after that. Not after what had happened. “You okay?”
“Come home.”
Quiet and low. There was something wrong in the boy’s voice. Jim jammed the phone harder into his ear. “What is it? Travis, what’s wrong?”
“It’s mom. Just come home.”
~
The chains tinkled, a metal chink ringing in the dark. The tail end knocking off each wooden step. Corrigan dragged the contraption in one hand, a sledgehammer clutched in the other. The ground was still soft from the rain and the spike might not hold but there was nothing to do about it now. Counting his paces in the dark, he hummed a tune, trying to remember all the words. How did the song start?
McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There’s a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
Dropping the tools into the grass, he pulled the flashlight from his back pocket. Chased the spotlight over the grass and back to the house, eyeballing the distance. Good enough.
There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign lands
He lost the rest of the song, the lyrics too fast to remember so he hummed it out. The iron spike was heavy, over a foot long. He slotted the point through the loop of the chain’s anchor and stabbed it into the ground.
The hammer swung clean, clanging the spike with a sharp ring. The spike drove in, fixing the chain to the earth. He adjusted the base, using a screwdriver to torque the spring load. A handful of wet leaves sprinkled overtop and he was done. Still humming the tune, coming to the slow part where he knew the words.
You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing Billy’s in the bowl
Corrigan wiped his hands, satisfied. He marched back to the house, singing loud and bold.
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church
28
The phone rang and rang but no one picked up. Not Emma nor Travis. Eyes on his phone, Jim took the corner onto Roman Line too fast, fishtailing the rear end in the gravel. A hair away from crashing into the grader Joe Keefe’s crew had parked on the roadside.
He couldn’t stop the flood of horrific images bubbling in his head. Emma dead, kicked to death by that goddamn horse of hers. Mangled and bleeding at the side of the road, or—
Stop. Concentrate on the road. Don’t anticipate anything, just deal with it when you get there.
The p
ickup bucked, hitting potholes too fast. Spinning into his driveway, damn near driving straight up the porch steps. The engine sputtered and ticked from being pushed too hard.
He banged through the door, screaming their names.
Nothing. The parlour was empty, the kitchen too. A finger of panic down his backbone.
Travis sat on the bottom step, elbows tilted on his knees. Watching his dad storm into the hall.
“Travis, what happened? Where’s mom?”
The boy flinched, ducking his head and a cold hole opened in Jim’s belly. His son was afraid of him, shrinking at his touch like a dog that had been kicked too many times. His cheek was still red.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Upstairs. She won’t come out.”
Jim’s eyes shot up the stairs to the second floor. Dark. “Out of the bedroom?”
“She locked the door.”
“Is she hurt?”
“She won’t say.” He pulled his elbow out of his father’s grip. “Her lip was bleeding.”
The horrific snapshots were back, flipping through his mind. “Did she fall? Did the horse kick her?”
“You…” Travis sputtered, trying to spit the question out. “You didn’t do it?”
His gut bottomed out. Flipped, burned and roiled. Too many things coming too fast. Horrified at what his son was asking, ashamed that the boy had reason to. How could he think that? He wanted to shake the boy again. Shake some goddamn sense into his head.
It all churns to anger so fast. He pulled away and boomed up the steps two at a time. Calling her name.
The porcelain door knob wouldn’t turn. Locked, but it was old and had never worked properly. Jim shouldered it open. The room was dark, the hallway bulb casting an oblong of light onto the floor.
“Emm?”
A silent form on the bed, curled up. Her back to him.
The floor squeaked as he moved around the bed. Her chestnut hair fanned over the pillow, hiding her face. His fingers touched her brow, meaning to brush the hair back but her hand shot out and stopped his wrist.
“Emm, you’re scaring me,” he said. This wasn’t like her. “Look at me.”
Her grip went slack and he swept the hair away, tugging it free from where it clung to dried tears. His heart stopped at the first glimpse. Her lip was split and bloodied. Swollen, raw-looking. A black cake of dried blood under her nose.
“Jesuschristwhathappened?”
She wouldn’t even open her eyes. Playing dead or suddenly gone deaf. Jim felt the anger churning back. Wrong response, he knew but— He pulled her up by the arms, into the light from the doorway.
“Emma. Talk to me.”
She recoiled from his grip. Knocked his hands away. “Don’t.”
“Okay, okay.” Hands up and easy tones, like talking a jumper down from the ledge. “We should go to the hospital.”
“No.”
She was balancing on a knife edge, he could see that. Exploding or collapsing. He kept his mouth shut and his hands off. Waiting for her to slide one way or the other.
“I messed up.” Her voice a dry-throated hiss. Emma’s eyes came up and bounced off his and dropped again. Mute.
“Who did this to you?”
“I was looking for Travis. The lights were on at Corrigan’s so…”
Done. The rest, history. The bastard’s name was already written on a headstone. “Corrigan did this to you.” Not a question, just confirmation. A gavel banging down a death sentence.
Her eyes went to the open door. “Where’s Travis?”
“Downstairs.” He reached out and touched her arm. Her skin cool and damp but she didn’t pull away. Something volcanic was rising in his throat, boiling his brain and building enough power to geyser. He swallowed it. “What happened?”
She trembled, the tears coming on full force. Emma wasn’t a crier. A yeller, a stomper of feet, yes but rarely tears. Jim waited, useless and awkward before her wet eyes.
“It’s okay now.” He pulled her close. “Just let it out.”
Emma heaved and rocked and after a minute, settled. Her voice was brittle as frost. “He said he’d end everything. Suing us, trying to take the farm if—”
“If what?”
Emma shook her head. Whether refusing to say more or simply disbelieving it all, Jim couldn’t tell. Impatient, he whispered as soft as was able. “Tell me.”
She brushed her eyes with her hands, took a deep breath and blew it out. “He said he’d end it all if I slept with him.”
Puzzle pieces slotting into place, Jim put the rest together. “You refused. He hit you. Jesus, Emm.” His hand rubbing her back, something he knew comforted her. But she didn’t fold into him this time. Emma remained rigid, pulling a hand away to wipe her nose.
“Emm.” He started sinking through the floor, the room spinning. “Is that what happened? You said no and he hit you?”
“Jim…” It was all she could get out. The rest choked off, unsaid.
His hands snapped back. On his feet. Stung.
Emma sputtered but none of it was coherent. Not even words, just sobs. Pleas. She had seen this before. A stupid horror movie. The woman with vampire bites on her neck, the man recoiling. Unclean, unclean! She wanted to explain it, tell him what happened but the only thing registering in her head was this stupid horror movie cliché. Oh God.
“What did you do?” The venom in his voice was just there. Unbidden and unwanted, his gut speaking for him.
“I wanted him to leave us alone.”
“Emma! What the hell did you do?”
The sickening vertigo coming full bore. Jim floundered into the wall and his fingers clung to its edges for ballast. Bile on his tongue, bitter and poisonous. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“I couldn’t do it!” Rage broke through the despair. How dare he? She wanted to kill him. “I said yes but I couldn’t go through with it. That’s when he hit me!”
He heard nothing, clinging to the wall for life. If he let go, he’d be swept overboard and never come back. “How could you?”
“He wouldn’t stop. I tried to fight him off but he just kept coming. You have no idea!”
His lips moved but no words came out. He felt like he was freefalling.
She saw the revulsion in his eyes. Turned away, looking for a rock to crawl under. “Don’t look at me like that!” Again the horror movie trope. A monster shirking the sunlight.
A silhouette broke against the hall light. Emma and Jim froze.
Travis stood, watching. His face dark, backlit from the hallway. Now tilting to his dad. “Why are you yelling at her? It wasn’t her fault! Didn’t you hear her?”
Oh God. He’d heard it all.
Jim was back in the dark river, not knowing which way was up. The panic of drowning. He raised his hands, as if calling for a time-out. A do-over. Anything but this. “Travis—”
“Where were you?” The boy’s eyes screamed murder. The accusation like battery acid to the face. “You should have been here,” he hissed. “You shoulda been home.”
Emma clamped her palm over her mouth. She was going to be sick. She wanted to crawl under the bed and never come out. Anything but this. “Travis,” she said. “It’s not your dad’s fault. Come here, honey.”
Travis’s eyes shot from dad to mom and swung back. Laser guided death rays. “That’s a lie. It is your fault. All of it.”
Jim reached for him. “Stop it.”
Travis ducked back. “What are you gonna do? Hit me?” He vanished from the doorway. The sound of his heels banging down the stairs.
No one spoke. Neither parent willing to look the other in the eye.
~
The mason jar hit with a pop and shattered. Penny nails scattered over the floor. A coffee tin on top of the metal locker tipped over, raining drywall screws on Jim as he rattled the door. The lock stuck, the little key refusing to turn. He bashed it with his fist, jarring the handle back and forth trying to shake it loose. Nothing.
Jim looked around the cluttered basement for a hammer. Dusty furniture that would never be repaired. Travis’s hockey gear dangling from a hook, outgrown and needing to be replaced come winter. Where was the axe?
The lock turned. He flung the doors open and rifled the shelves. Knocking out of the way, he swept it all to the floor and reached way into the back. Fingers wrapping around the prize.
He slid the bundle out, laid it across the washing machine and slipped the sock from the shotgun. A Mossberg pump action he used for duck hunting and taking potshots at the odd turkey vulture. Two summers ago, a young bear had roamed the back country of the Roman Line tipping garbage cans. He’d kept the gun over the back door, worried the stupid thing would get into the barn where the horses were. Twice he’d spotted it but it had vanished by the time he ran back for the shotgun.
The safety was on, the open chamber empty. He held the release and pumped the action three times. The action smooth, no forgotten hulls in the magazine. He laid it aside and reached back into the locker. One last box of ammunition. He shook out the contents. Four rounds and no more.
Enough to do the job.
Back up the basement steps, the gun sheathed in the green sock. He thumbed through the list of names on his phone, a faint hope that he had Puddycombe’s cell number. Nope. But then why would he? They weren’t really friends. Puddy was just the guy who slung pints at the pub, everyone’s friend in the moment. After tonight that would change.
The cell’s battery was low. One bar and no time to recharge it. No matter. He dropped it back into a pocket and turned off the basement light.
Travis stood in the mist of the open freezer door, scooping ice into a wash cloth. An ice-pack for his mother’s battered face. The boy’s eyes dropped immediately to the rifle in his father’s hand.
“Why did you get the gun?”
Jim moved his thumb over the grip, feeling for the safety. Ensuring it was on. He hadn’t expected to find Travis in the kitchen. “Where’s your mom?”