The Angel

by Carla Neggers

  She leveled her eyes on him. “There you go.”

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  329 Simon had been gentle with her mother and profes­

  sional with the police, but Keira knew he’d have used deadly force on Jay Augustine if he’d had to. He didn’t just have handcuffs on him—he had a 9 mm Sig Sauer. Of course, he’d made wisecracks once the immediate danger had passed. He had an uncanny ability to sense when people were at their breaking point and knew how to ease their tension, to make them smile in spite of themselves, to remind them that life was too damn short to be serious all the time, even over serious matters. And yet all the while, Keira knew he had other things on his mind—the life and work he’d dropped to check on her in Ireland.

  The long June day was slowly giving way to darkness when Fiona arrived with her two younger sisters, and Bob emerged from Abigail’s apartment, his emotion palpable as he took all three daughters into his arms. “Kiss your aunt,”

  he said, nodding to his bandaged sister. “She’s lucky to be alive with this crazy bastard come to cut her into ribbons.”

  Keira watched her cousins surround her mother, crying, hugging. Her mother’s reserve, the inevitable result of living alone for so many months, lifted, and she let Jayne, the youngest, sit on the arm of her chair. Without any warning, Bob broke into an Irish song as he lit the grill.

  He had an amazing voice. Keira and her young cousins gaped at him, and he grinned. “What, haven’t you ever heard me sing?”

  “Not like that, Dad,” Fiona said, obviously impressed. Simon walked out into the yard, and Keira’s heart jumped at the sight of him with his black curls, his green eyes, his confident manner. He winked at her, then joined in the singing, his voice just as amazing as her uncle’s. The 330

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  two of them adopted Irish accents, and Fiona got up, insert­

  ing herself between the two men and hooking one arm with each, the three of them step dancing merrily as they sang. The tears came next as they belted out a sad song. Fiona, her sisters, Bob and his sister all cried openly. Keira couldn’t stop herself from sobbing, but she noticed that Simon remained dry-eyed, just kept singing with that beau­

  tiful voice. When they switched to a jauntier tune, he scooped her up and spun her across the clipped grass. She didn’t know any of the moves, but he showed her, holding her close, his eyes sparking with humor, and, she thought, desire as he sang and danced with her.

  He tightened his arms around her. “Just don’t you and your mother start singing,” he said, and with one smooth move, swept Keira up and off her feet.

  She shrieked in surprise and started to laugh, and she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she’d rather be. The dissecting of events began over dinner, just as Keira had known it would.

  Colm Dermott joined the crowd as Abigail, tense and quiet, set the table, refusing help from anyone. He placed a computer disk in the middle. “The police have the original, but I’d copied it onto my computer and burned it onto a disk. I’m quite handy, I’ll have you know.” But he sighed, his humor not taking hold as he tapped the disk case with one finger. “Patsy doesn’t say a word about this bloody bastard. It’s just her telling her tale. What a tale it is, too! She was a fine storyteller, Keira.”

  “Here’s my theory,” Bob said, breaking the uncom­

  fortable silence that had descended over the table. He glanced at his daughters, and Keira half-expected him to send them upstairs. But he didn’t, and continued. “We’re

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  331 talking about Deirdre now. I don’t doubt Michael Fuller—

  now known as Father Michael Palermo—was telling the truth when he said his brother called Patsy and got her out to his boat just as he jumped into the harbor in flames.”

  Eleven-year-old Jayne O’Reilly scrunched up her face.

  “That’s gross, Dad.”

  “Yeah. It is.” He winked at her. “Not everyone’s as loving and wonderful as your dad, right, kid? Okay. Back to my theory. Let’s say our fourteen-year-old Michael Fuller knows what his big brother has done and what a monster he’s become.”

  Abigail sat across from Owen, not looking at him as she spoke. “Hadn’t Stuart moved out by then?”

  “Yeah, but he stayed in touch with Michael. Who knows, maybe he knew his little brother was on to him. Stuart didn’t leave much of a trail. Nowadays, it’s harder not to, but thirty years ago…” Bob shrugged. “So Michael’s caught between a rock and a hard place. He doesn’t have enough evidence—at least in his own mind—

  to take to the police. He’s worried his brother’s going to get wind of his suspicions and disappear, and who knows how many girls like Deirdre he’d kill before police caught up with him.”

  “This is an awful scenario, Bob,” Abigail said. “This kid had no one he felt he could trust.”

  Bob didn’t respond right away. He winked at Madeleine and Jayne, as if to remind them they were safe, and he stood behind Fiona, who sat between Owen and Scoop, and patted her on the shoulder, then gave his sister a nod.

  “Eileen, you okay? You hanging in there?”

  “Keep going,” she said in a tight whisper. Keira watched her uncle move back over to the grill and pick up a barbecue fork. She had no idea if he was offering 332

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  a theory that he’d just come up with, or if it was one he’d contemplated on and off over the past thirty years. He stirred the coals and continued. “Michael figures his only way out is to take matters into his own hands. By now, Deirdre’s body has washed up on shore. The police are searching for her killer. Michael knows who the killer is, where he is—but he makes up his mind not to tell the police. Instead, he waits until Stuart passes out from drinking, douses him with gasoline and sets him on fire.”

  Madeleine gasped, but Fiona and Jayne listened silently, wide-eyed. Keira pictured her uncle at twenty, learning the fate of the monster who’d so brutally and terribly slain his friend. The girl he’d taken to the prom. Patsy’s daughter.

  “There were less violent options,” Abigail said. Scoop shook his head. “Kid didn’t want a less violent option.”

  “That’s right,” Bob said. “Michael wanted his big brother to burn for what he’d done. To suffer, here on earth. He wanted him to have a chance to ask forgiveness for his evil acts and save his eternal soul.”

  “Did it work out that way?” Fiona asked.

  “Witnesses say Stuart was on fire when he leaped into the harbor.”

  “Did his younger brother watch?” Keira asked, then added, “At least according to your theory.”

  “There’s no evidence putting Michael on the scene,” her uncle said.

  Abigail tilted her chair back. “Whatever he did or didn’t do, I can’t imagine knowing your brother’s a killer and be­

  lieving you’re the only one who can stop him.”

  Simon stretched out his long legs. “Maybe your theory is off just a little, Bob. Maybe Stuart Fuller actually

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  333 thought he was the devil, and he set himself on fire, thinking he’d survive.”

  Bob made a face. “That’s creepy, Cahill. I’ve got freaking goose bumps now thinking about it.”

  Colm Dermott shuddered. “Aye,” he said. “I do, too.”

  Keira shared their revulsion, but her mother leaned forward, wincing in pain. “It’s also possible that Stuart Fuller really was Satan.”

  Her brother snorted. “Well, if he was Satan, he’s a dead Satan, because I saw his body. In fact, Abigail, your father showed it to me. Hell. That was a long time ago.”

  Fiona got to her feet and hugged her father. “I’m sorry about your friend, Dad.”

  “Yeah, kid. Thanks.”

  But Owen rose and invited her and her sisters into Abigail’s apartment for ice cream. Keira saw how good he was with the girls and wondered if Abigail noticed.

  “Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut,” Bob said, returning to the tabl
e.

  “No,” Abigail said, staring at the retreating O’Reilly girls. “They’ll remember that you leveled with them and didn’t shut them out. But it can be tough, seeing what we see in our work and then thinking about bringing kids into the world. If I could wave my magic wand and rid the world of violence, I’d do it. I’d put us right out of business.”

  “I know you would, kid, but if it’s magic wands you need—talk to Keira.”

  Bob grinned, then laughed, and Abigail groaned and threw a plastic spoon at him.

  Simon put a hand on Keira’s thigh and leaned close to her. “Something’s come up with my work,” he said in a low voice. “I have to go.”

  “Your consulting work or your FBI work?”

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  “It could take some time.”

  “That’s not an answer, Simon.”

  “You won’t be able to reach me for a while, but don’t worry.” He squeezed her thigh and smiled. “I’ll find you.”

  After Simon left, Abigail and Scoop retreated to their apartments, and Colm bid everyone good-night, whisper­

  ing to Keira on his way out that Patsy’s story was, indeed, perfect for her new book. “She wouldn’t want that devil to ruin it,” he said, “and she’d be so proud.”

  Her uncle closed up the grill. His daughters had come back out with their ice cream and watched as if they were seeing a side of him they’d never seen before. He pre­

  tended not to notice, but Keira thought he did.

  “Looks as if it’ll be me and the womenfolk tonight,” he said. “I don’t have enough beds, but I want you all to stay. Keira, Eileen—you, too. It’ll be a crowd, but it’s been a hell of a day. For a while there…” He shook off whatever he’d started to say. “Eileen, it’ll be like the old days. Remember when we thought it was a big deal to sleep on blankets on the living room floor?”

  She smiled. “We thought we were living large, didn’t we?”

  He pulled out his wallet and took out a cracked picture.

  “I’ve never shown you kids my prom picture.” He held it in front of the citronella candle lit on the table as the girls gathered around him. “This is me. And this—” He paused to clear his throat and pointed gently to the pretty blond girl with him. “This is Deirdre Ita.”

  Fiona touched his arm. “Dad…”

  “She was named for an Irish saint, and she loved angels and a good story.”

  “Oh, she did, Bob,” his sister said.

  As Keira listened to her mother and uncle talk and laugh,

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  335 one story spinning into another about the friend they’d lost so long ago, she wondered if Simon had known this was coming, and that was at least part of the reason he’d chosen that particular moment to make his exit. When they blew out the candles for the night, her uncle tucked an arm over her shoulder. “Well, kid, where’s your fairy prince?”

  “Simon, you mean? He had to leave. I think he might object to being called a fairy prince—”

  “Do you, now? Interesting character. On my way back here from Cambridge, I got a call from a state detective I know. Your by-the-book type. Worse than Abigail’s partner, that prig Yarborough. In a nutshell, this guy said they didn’t find any damn stone angel by the stream, and we all should shut the hell up about one before we get carted to the loony bin.”

  “But, Bob,” Keira said. “I saw it myself.”

  “You saw a rock. So did your mother. The woods out there are full of rocks. They don’t call New Hampshire the Granite State for nothing.” He yawned, dropping his arm back to his side. “Stress can do weird things to your mind.”

  “Then as far as the police are concerned, there’s no stone angel?”

  “No stone angel,” her uncle said. “Of course, that’s not what I told the State guy. I told him maybe the fairies took it. He threatened to come out here and shoot me himself. No sense of humor. But, who knows? I keep thinking about your backpack showing up at that Irish pub, and that scrap of sweater the barman in Ireland says he found.”

  Keira gave him a sharp look. “Bob, I didn’t know you believed in fairies—”

  “I don’t. I just keep an open mind.”

  “Well,” she said, “there was an old man in Ireland…”

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  “What old man, Keira?”

  “I shouldn’t say old. He was probably about your age—”

  He grinned at her. “That’s definitely not old.”

  As they all headed upstairs, Keira related her encounter with the man at the picnic table the night before the summer solstice, and her uncle listened, amused, curious. When she finished, he said, “I think you should go back to Ireland.”

  “I do, too.”

  Bob had a bedroom for his daughter, but they’d already made mats on the floor out of blankets, their aunt stretched out among them, saying she didn’t want the couch. “Will you be staying?” she asked Keira.

  “Yes, Mum. I’d love to stay.”

  She didn’t want the couch, either, and settled on the floor with her mother and cousins. Bob put on the DVD Colm had brought.

  Patsy was at her kitchen table with a pot of tea and a plate of brown bread, and she had on a pastel blue sweater, her eyes bright and filled with life. “Once upon a time,” she said in her Irish lilt, “there were three brothers who lived on the southwest coast of Ireland…”

  Keira bit back tears and felt her mother take her hand.

  “This is how Patsy would want to be remembered,” she whispered. “For telling a good story.”

  It was true, Keira thought. And she knew what she had to do. She’d camp out here tonight with her family, and tomorrow she’d head back to Ireland. There was unfinished business there, although she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  And there was Simon.

  She would trust him to find her.

 
  East Boston, Massachusetts

  10:00 p.m., EDT

  June 24

  Simon had his feet up on the table on the top deck of his boat and didn’t rise to greet John March, who seemed to have come out to the Boston Harbor pier alone—although that was unlikely if not impossible.

  The FBI director’s presence was not unexpected. He’d warned Simon he was on his way.

  “My voice is hoarse,” Simon said. “I’ve been singing Irish songs.”

  “You always could sing.”

  “Maybe that could be my new job.”

  “Hell of a day, Simon.”

  “Yeah.”

  March looked out at the harbor, the city lights glistening on the dark, still water. “I wonder what would have happened if I’d remained a Boston cop. Deirdre McCarthy’s murder is one of those cases that stays with you, eats at you 338

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  forever. I know that from a law enforcement point of view, it doesn’t matter if the victim of a crime—a brutal murder—

  is a good person or a bad person. We have a job to do, re­

  gardless. But Deirdre…” The FBI director shook his head with emotion. “Deirdre was a good person.”

  “You wanted out of BPD before her murder. You were always ambitious.”

  “Her murder helped me to understand why. Abigail can do that work in a way I never could.” He sighed at Simon.

  “You’ve complicated my life. You know that, don’t you?”

  Simon shrugged. “You can handle it.”

  “Reporters are already calling to ask me what I remember about Deirdre’s murder. They know Abigail’s my daughter.” He gave a grim smile. “Wait until they find out about you, Simon.”

  “You’re not just talking about my FBI status.”

  “That’s right. There’s also your father.”

  “Yes. There’s my father.”

  “Someone will start digging and find out we were friends and that he died the way he did. Maybe it’s time I talked about him. Brend
an Cahill was a dedicated Federal agent. He deserves better than my silence.”

  “You have nothing to hide,” Simon said.

  “That’s not the point, is it? Talking reminds me of my own failings, but that part doesn’t get me so much. I wish I could have saved him, Simon. That’s the truth of it.” But March didn’t linger on the thought and smiled suddenly.

  “Your father could sing, too. Do you remember?”

  “He’s the one who taught me my first Irish drinking song.”

  Simon thought of Keira and how much she still didn’t know about him. Then again, she was nosy by nature—

  curious, she’d say. It was how she could sit in an old woman’s kitchen and get her telling stories, and it was why

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  339 she was interested in the first place. That curiosity—that sensibility—showed up in her artwork. She could go off to Ireland by herself for six weeks, but she wasn’t a loner.

  “Simon?”

  He gave himself a mental shake. “What’s going on with Estabrook?”

  “We’re making our move now. He’s still in Montana—I’m expecting a call in few minutes. It’ll be a big story. Simon, you need to drop out of sight for a few weeks.”

  He’d figured as much. “I’m on my way to Scotland. Will’s castle. He wants me to play golf.”

  “And if Fast Rescue needs you?”

  “Owen’s up to speed on the situation. I’ll be back in action as soon as possible.”

  “You’re good, Simon. You don’t crack under pressure.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve fallen for a folklorist who paints pictures of Irish fairies.”

  March cracked a smile. “I hear she’s also quite capable of defending herself. Sounds as if she’s a woman right up your alley.”

  “It’s going to take her a while to put this week behind her. She’ll do it her own way, just as you did…. Stuart Fuller?”