Dead Irish

by John T Lescroart

  Coming around the building, he saw two priests, neither of them Cavanaugh. One of them was leaning up against a workbench in the garage, silent. The other stood by the gurney, covered by a sheet, under which, presumably, was a body.

  “Hi, guys,” Abe said. Giometti and Griffin had drawn the call, he noticed, and somehow knew it wasn’t a coincidence. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  They were dismissing the second squad car. The rest of the homicide team had arrived and there wasn’t any use for beat cops at this stage. Abe walked into the relatively cooler shade of the garage and lifted the sheet, surprised to see Rose the housekeeper.

  “Bored Abe?” Giometti asked, challenging, coming over.

  “Yeah, yeah, I can’t get enough.” Then he explained, “I was here last week on something. You mind?”

  Giometti shrugged. “Knock yourself out. No mysteries here, though.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “Nada.”

  “You tow Hardy over here with you?”

  Griffin heard this as he came up to them. “Here and gone.”

  “His car’s still here.”

  Giometti smiled. “He’s probably inside, interrogating a suspect.”

  Griffin added, “He thinks this was a murder too. Me, I’m leaning toward a gang hit.” Said with a straight face.

  Abe went back to the gurney. They had loaded it into the van. He picked up the sheet. “Any sign of struggle?”

  Giometti joined him there. “The lady started the car and went to sleep, but as you can see we’re running the usual.”

  The photographer had already finished his work, but the print guy was still kneeling in the front seat, brushing.

  Giometti, shaking his head, said, “Waste of time. We got nothing.”

  Griffin kept playing. “Nothing? How could you forget? She sat on the passenger side.”

  Glitsky said, “What?”

  Giometti snorted. “Your friend Hardy noticed that she was sitting in the passenger’s seat.”

  “Told us to make sure and dust the keys for her prints. Said we wouldn’t find any,” Griffin said.

  “Very helpful guy,” Giometti said. “We probably would have forgot, right, Carl?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  Glitsky, wondering where Hardy had gone and thinking it might in fact be a little unusual for someone who’d killed herself that way to be sitting in the passenger seat, walked back out into the sun.

  He turned around and asked Giometti and Griffin would they mind if he checked out the house. He started across the asphalt.

  Hardy could not believe he had forgotten his gun. Erin’s car was closer, and so he’d run for that. It would have only taken him another minute to get to his own car with the.38 in the glove box. He might even have been able to talk one of the cops into going over with them. But he hadn’t thought at all, he was in too much of a hurry, he might not have a minute.

  And still it might be too late.

  Erin had asked what they were doing as he pulled away from the curb in front of the rectory.

  “What’s the quickest way to your house?” And tried to figure out what he was going to do or say to Erin if they weren’t in time.

  And he could even be wrong. They could have called from the rectory and found out Steven was alone and all right. But he knew he wasn’t wrong.

  He kept his hand on the horn through the intersections, hardly slowing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  WHAT HE thought he would do was make a couple of jokes as he came through the window. Steven was used to that from him. When he got to the bed he would hold a pillow over his face until he was unconscious. He would have to be careful- he didn’t want another investigation like Eddie’s getting started, and there was no way Steven could suffocate himself.

  When the boy was unconscious he would take the switchblade he had once given him and that Steven always kept hidden in the drawer next to his bed, and he would cut his wrists.

  It would make sense. After all, the boy had just run away and been abused a few days before. He was deeply depressed over his brother’s death. It would be compellingly believable. Steven had waited until he was alone-his mother had just gone out-then did what he had been building up to ever since his brother’s death.

  “Steven?” he said again, hoisting himself up into the window.

  Steven willed every part of his body to move. Even with the pills, the pain was awesome. The bandages seemed to be ripping the skin off his whole side, and with the cast on his foot and his arm stuck out at this weird angle.

  Still, he got himself sitting upright, though it had to be on the right side of the bed, facing away from the open window. He was trying to stand, twisting to look back, when Father Jim boosted himself onto the sill.

  “Hey, why didn’t you answer me?” he said, smiling.

  Steven couldn’t stop him from getting in. The only hope was if he could maybe get to the bathroom and lock the door. He stood, wobbly, not yet putting any weight on the bad foot.

  “Steven, come on”-still smiling-“what are you doing up?” His upper body was through the window.

  He had to move faster. He stepped onto the foot in the cast.

  “Steven, what’s the matter?”

  It wouldn’t hold him. The leg crumbled and he came down on top of it. He didn’t mean to, but he cried out, a wordless scream of pain.

  Father Jim in the room now, over him. Kneeling on one knee, still a gentle look on his face. His arms reached out as though to cradle him.

  “Get away from me-”

  “Steven…”

  “You killed Eddie, you killed him…”

  Father pulled his arms back, no longer reaching for him. He sank back on his leg.

  “What are you talking about? You can’t believe that?” He was actually surprised.

  “Now you’re gonna kill me, aren’t you? That’s what you came here for?” Father Jim widened his benevolent smile. How can he be so relaxed if he’s going to kill me…?

  “Steven, Steven, Steven,” Father Jim said. “I came here to visit your mother.”

  “But she just went to see you.”

  “So that’s why she’s not home.” He just kept smiling. “You’d think after all these years we’d communicate a little better. I thought we were meeting over here.”

  He reached down for Steven again. “I think those pills might make you hallucinate a little. Come on.” He put one hand under his head. “Just lean into me. Let’s get you back in bed.”

  It was hard to keep up this charade.

  He lifted him first to a sitting position, then up onto the side of the bed. He had to be in the bed-that was essential. But this movement was so awkward, all plaster and bone. The joints didn’t bend the way they should.

  “I didn’t mean it about Eddie,” Steven said. “I don’t know, I just thought…”

  “It’s okay, Steven.”

  “But the other thing, the accident…”

  “I did want to talk to you about that.” Put him at ease again. It was going to be all right. “Let me go get a beer,” he said. “You get comfortable.”

  Out to the kitchen, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, like walking in a tunnel. He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle, started twisting the neck going back to the bedroom.

  Good, he was back lying down. Okay, now put the beer on the bed table. (And remember to take it when you go.)

  “Here,” he said, “let me get that pillow for you.”

  “Whose car is that?”

  Erin didn’t know, it wasn’t Jim’s car. But there was somebody there! In her house, with Steven. “Oh, God!”

  Dismas pulled the Volvo up over the curb onto the lawn. She already had her door open, running.

  Where’s the knife?

  Steven always kept the knife in the bottom of the drawer here -he’d seen him pull it out a dozen times.

  Now he was beginning to moan again. He hadn’t believed Steven had had th
at much strength.

  Maybe in the second drawer. And if it wasn’t there, he’d try to put him under again, but the timing of that was tough. He thought he’d held the pillow down too long last time when he’d pulled it up and the boy’s lips were blue.

  He opened the second drawer.

  God! Dismas had the keys.

  “The keys! The keys!” She pushed at the doorbell. “Steven! Steven!”

  Dismas was up next to her, giving her the keys. Fumbling, seconds going by.

  “Which one?”

  Dismas taking the key, getting it in, turning it. Pushing it open, the door, pushing him aside, and running running into the hall, yelling her son’s name.

  Cavanaugh was standing by the bed when Steven opened his eyes. He was holding a pillow in front of him with both hands. And there was Mom in the door to the room.

  “He’s not dead? God say he’s not dead!”

  Then she was next to him, her arms around his neck. He couldn’t move at all, or talk. Maybe he was dead.

  And Mom saying, “You might as well kill me as kill my baby.”

  Her hand running down the side of his face, again and again, like a cool breeze.

  Her baby. She thought of him as her baby. He might as well kill her as her baby.

  “Erin…” Father began.

  Hardy was standing in the doorway, and his mom started crying. “Oh, he’s breathing, thank God!” She buried her face into the sheets up by his face.

  He thought he heard Cavanaugh say his mom’s name again, but she kept herself up near him, holding him, touching his face, his hair. “Oh, God, I love you,” she said, still crying. “I love you, Steven, I love you. Please don’t die…”

  Okay, he wouldn’t, then. He wouldn’t die.

  “Leave ’em alone,” Hardy said, motioning with his head, taking hold of Cavanaugh’s arm and pulling him out to the living room. He still held the pillow.

  Hardy sat on one of the stools near the bar. “Talk,” he said.

  Cavanaugh even now tried his smile, but it didn’t work out just right. “I told you before, it wasn’t fair,” he said. “But you didn’t understand. You can’t know.”

  “I can’t, huh?”

  “You know what it’s like to live right in the midst of everything you want-day in, day out-and never get to have it? To see the kids growing, perfect. Erin’s kids, Ed’s. We could’ve had that, Erin and me. And she so happy with that, that goddamned gardener. And then it starting to go on, another generation of it, of the perfect Cochrans and their perfect happiness.”

  “Well, you ended that,” Hardy said.

  “I couldn’t accept it anymore. When Eddie told me they were pregnant. It was just for a moment. I didn’t really plan it.”

  “You planned it enough. How’d you get him to fire the gun?”

  Cavanaugh shrugged. “I just bet him he couldn’t hit something out on the canal. It was easy. And he had to fire the gun, you see?”

  “Sure.”

  “And then, once he had, there was nothing left to do.”

  “He just gave the gun back to you and you shot him.”

  He gripped at the pillow, raised it to his face, left it there, shutting out the world. Himself. Finally letting it down.

  “It was too much. I broke-”

  “Like you broke out of the seminary?”

  Cavanaugh opened his eyes wide. “How did you…?”

  “When Erin got married, you couldn’t handle that either, could you?”

  “It isn’t right. It wasn’t the sex. Not having sex. Being celibate. It was Erin.”

  “Fuck you, Father,” Hardy said. “Fuck yourself very hard.”

  Cavanaugh walked halfway across the room and looked out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  Hardy, breathing hard, waited a long time. Finally he said, “You know, you’re the expert on suicide. I got a Suzuki parked out by where you killed Rose, looks like a Jeep. There’s a loaded gun in the glove compartment.” His face crinkled up. “You know how to use a gun, don’t you?”

  Cavanaugh let his hands all the way down in front of him. He dropped the pillow to the floor. Hardy found himself staring at the pillow, hearing the front door open and close as Cavanaugh went out.

  Abe found the note in Father Dietrick’s chair. It was a strange note. “I’m sorry. I’ll miss you.” Did people say they were going to miss people when they were going to kill themselves? Maybe. He didn’t know what minds might do at that point.

  He left the note where it was. He’d send one of the team back to pick it up, check it for handwriting, oils, all that. It seemed to close it up for him, though. Hardy was wrong on this one.

  Speaking of which, where was Hardy? One of the priests from outside, the tan one, was walking toward him in the hallway. “I’m Father Paul,” he said.

  “You know anything about this?”

  “No. I just got here. From Brazil.”

  “Is that right?”

  He seemed to be waiting for Glitsky to say something else.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “I thought I’d unpack,” he said. “But the car seems to be gone.”

  “The car?”

  “Father Dietrick’s car. The one we came in.”

  “It’s gone?”

  He led him to the front door and opened it. “I’m sure we parked it right here, in front.”

  So what? Glitsky thought. “Look, Father, we’re homicide. You got a stolen car, you should call the cops.”

  “But aren’t you…?” Then he pointed. “There it is. Who’s that driving it?”

  The car pulled into the driveway. “That’s Father Cavanaugh,” Abe said. “I want to talk to him.”

  The hawk-faced black policeman jogged across the blacktop and got to the Honda as Father Cavanaugh was getting out. They shook hands, and while Father Paul was still crossing the lot, fighting the glare from the van and the other automobiles, he heard a funny, high-pitched laugh. It must have been Father Cavanaugh, as though he’d just heard a good joke, though it seemed poor taste to be laughing right then in the presence of mortal-sin death.

  The two other policemen came out from inside the garage. Father Cavanaugh, the hawk-faced policeman and the other two all stood in a knot out in the sun. Father Dietrick had become a statue. Maybe he was in shock. Father Paul should go over to him, try to help him. That would be the Christian thing to do.

  But he was more interested in what Father Cavanaugh was saying to the policemen. He hurried his pace a little, getting there in time to hear Father Cavanaugh saying, “I’m not lying.”

  And the hawk-faced policeman saying, “I don’t think you’re lying.”

  Father Cavanaugh wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You mind if I sit down a minute?” His face had a sick look, shiny white as though he might faint. “I’d like a minute alone.” Telling a joke, like. “I think it’s my last chance to be alone for a while.”

  They watched him walk the ten yards or so over to the Jeep and get in the front seat. All three policemen were quiet, watching him. He sat there, seeming to be catching his breath, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his forehead.

  “Father, you all right?” the shorter white man asked. Father Cavanaugh nodded. The other men closed in on one another, and Father Paul stepped up to hear them. Father Paul glanced over to the Jeep one time. Father Cavanaugh was doing something, like fussing with the radio knobs.

  He heard the taller man say, “Well, that was easy,” and the hawk-faced one started to say something when suddenly Father Dietrick yelled “Father!” but it was drowned out almost immediately by a tremendous explosion.

  Father Cavanaugh had come halfway out of the Jeep. His upper body lay out on the ground, one leg caught at a funny angle as though it had stuck up under the front seat.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  THOUGH HE generally preferred to stand in his doorway and bellow, this time Lieutenant Joe Frazel
li elected to use his intercom. He pushed the button, got an answer, and said, “Frank, come in here you get a sec.”

  Maybe a minute later there was a knock on his door and he was looking up at the tall frame of Frank Batiste.

  “Close the door,” he said. Then, “What kind a cake you like, Frank?”

  Batiste stayed standing. He was a quiet, thorough officer who was especially good when paired with less experienced men. Of everyone in homicide, he had perhaps the least pugnacious character. Not that he couldn’t mix it up when he had to, but he preferred to leave alone the office posing and pecking. Well, Frazelli thought, somebody’s got to be that way. It sets him off a little, and that’s to the good.

  “Cake?” Batiste asked. “I don’t know. I guess they’re pretty much the same. I’m not much of a cake eater, Joe.”

  Perfect. Frazelli loved it. “Goddammit, Frank, I don’t give a shit about what you like. I got Marylouise out there humping her telephone to make a call down to the bakery and get a cake, and if she don’t hear from me in about another minute then the whole goddamn office is gonna know before I want ’em to.”

  Batiste, not born yesterday, nodded and broke a smile. “Plain chocolate, sir. Chocolate icing. Chocolate on the inside. Boy, makes my mouth water.”

  Frazelli punched the intercom again and whispered to Marylouise that Frank liked chocolate cake. He asked her how long it would take, and she said usually about twenty-five minutes.

  “Sit down, Frank, you make me nervous hovering like that. But before you do…” Frazelli stood up behind his desk and extended a hand. “Congratulations, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “You mind if I call my wife?” Batiste asked.

  Frazelli shook his head. “Wait ’til after the cake, would you? The whole timing of this office is centered around Marylouise and her fucking cakes. We can’t get new cops, but we got petty cash for cakes up the wazoo. Well,” he said, grinning, “it ain’t my problem anymore. You’ll get used to it.”

  Batiste scanned the office. “How long you been here, sir, as lieutenant?”