by CJ Lyons
“Cops looking to talk with you, boss,” one of Tyree’s goons announced, touching a Bluetooth earpiece.
“Let’s go.” Tyree hauled his breath in with audible effort and straightened, back in control. He turned his back on Jess’s body without another glance. “Spread the word. No one mess with the cops. But anyone knows anything about this, they talk to me first if they want to keep on breathing. Nobody touches my family and gets away with it.”
Tyree and his men beat a retreat back the way they’d come. Leaving Devon and his ghosts.
“We’d better go.” Harold touched Devon’s arm as if guiding a blind man. Devon shook him off.
“Leave me be.” His words sliced through the air. Harold dropped his arm, took a step back.
Devon raised his face to the heavens, his eyes shut tight, wanting to roar with the pain of it all. He had lost Jess. Might lose her daughter. His daughter. Their daughter.
Eleven years of knowing he had a daughter but not knowing her had grown into a twisted fantasy of an imaginary family—one he cherished in secret, like an addict protecting his stash, telling himself that family would be his someday.
Instead of screaming, instead of kicking his way through the wall, he grabbed on to the image of the girl. His girl. Jess’s girl. Esme.
“Come inside, child.” Mrs. Anders’ voice navigated through his maze of pain. “You come with me now.” Gnarled fingers latched on to his arm with surprising strength, leading him down the hall to a room painted sunflower yellow and smelling of raisins and wine. “Sit down now. You’ve had a shock.”
Devon’s body obeyed her as automatically as he had as a child, listening to her Bible stories told in her singsong lilting Nigerian accent. Forty years she’d lived here and still sounded like she’d just gotten off the plane from Africa.
An old bedspread, the kind with little puffy balls of yarn hanging out everywhere, now covered her threadbare tweed sofa, but otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. Still the rocking chair by the window, end table overflowing with books beside it, lamp with the rose-colored shade behind it. Still the Blessed Mother on one wall and a crucifix with a palm snagged in the cross on the other—mother and son locked in an eternal staring contest. With Mrs. Anders the implacable referee between them.
He brushed his palms against his designer slacks, even the fine Italian silk rubbing his scars harshly. How he’d feared and hated Mrs. Anders and the others like her. So quick to blame him and his mother anytime Daniel Kingston went on one of his rampages.
When he was a child, Mrs. Anders had terrified him—but also offered him hope with her Jesus. Not just salvation for his soul, salvation for his mother. He remembered looking up at her, her face always haloed in light. But it was only a childhood illusion.
She was just a gnarled old woman lost in her ways. Powerless. No one to fear. Not anymore.
A big brown dog bounded in from the kitchen, nosing at Devon’s knees as if expecting someone else to be sitting where he was.
“That’s Ozzie.”
The dog licked Devon’s hand, then rested his chin on Devon’s thigh when Devon ignored him.
“What the hell’s going on here, Mrs. Anders?”
“Language, boy. Mind your manners.” Mrs. Anders had been a teacher in a Catholic school in Lagos way back when, and she still went to Mass every day. Sometimes twice a day. At least she had when Devon was a kid. He figured that, just like her apartment, she hadn’t changed.
“No, goddamn it, I won’t mind my damn manners.” He stood up. The dog didn’t growl but did move to stand toe-to-toe with Devon, placing himself between Devon and the old lady. Dog had good sense. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grown man, and I want some answers. Now!”
“Only God has the answers, child. You know that. We should pray.” She bowed her head, hands folded together, shoulders rocking, lips moving, but he didn’t hear her words.
He felt as if he were falling, plummeting down an elevator shaft with no idea when he’d hit bottom. He squeezed his fists tight, trying to grab hold of something, anything, and finding nothing.
Memories sharp as broken glass pierced his vision. Jess laughing. Her smile. The way her forehead got that little knot in the middle when she was angry. The taste of her lips against his. Those eyes—brown with flecks of light that danced when they made love.
Until the night he’d killed that light forever.
Jess was dead. His little girl gone. Missing. Or taken?
He knuckled his fists against his temples. “I need to find her.” He swallowed, dared to say her name, breathing life into the fantasy. A fantasy that had suddenly become his worst nightmare. “Esme.”
“Amen.” Mrs. Anders stopped her singsong cadence and looked up. “Take Ozzie. He’s your best chance. Start at St. Tim’s.”
“The church?”
“Sister Patrice was here earlier. Maybe she knows something about—” Mrs. Anders shivered violently and avoided looking at the door Harold leaned against.
So many questions thundered through Devon’s head. He didn’t have time for questions—or answers. He grabbed the leash hanging beside the door and hooked it to the dog’s collar.
“Harold, you wait five minutes, then call in a 911 about Jess. I don’t want her lying there alone.”
“I’m coming with you,” Harold protested.
Devon shook his head. He needed to talk with this nun, Patrice, alone. Find Esme, get some answers. “No. You and the others wait here, keep an eye on Tyree. I know he’s behind this, somehow. Or he knows who is. I’ll call you when I need you.”
“But—” Harold swallowed his protest, obviously not liking the change in plans. “No problem.”
“I’ll watch her,” Mrs. Anders said. “Jess. Hold vigil.”
Devon whirled on her, her soft voice of contrition igniting his fury. “You? Lot of good your prayers ever did anyone. Worse than useless, you and your God.”
His words flew at her like a slap, shaking her. For the first time, he noticed how skinny she was, her skin so thin you could see the veins and blood running through it. Old. When had she gotten so old?
“Living long as I have around here, you learn not to see or hear anything.” Her bony shoulders barely creased the thin cotton of her housedress as she shrugged. She didn’t meet his gaze as she spoke. “But I don’t know who did that—who hurt Jess. I don’t think Tyree does either. He’s been watching out for the folks here since you left.” Finally, she looked up. “He’s changed, Devon.”
Devon’s anger spiked through his body, rooting him to the ground. Tyree? Changed? No way. Tyree was a liar, a user, a master manipulator. He’d never change.
Finally, he was able to draw in a whistle of air through his gritted teeth. He nodded to Mrs. Anders, yanked on the dog’s lead, and walked out. The dog whined and tried to stop when they passed the door to Jess’s apartment, but Devon refused to yield. He wound the lead around his hand so tight it choked the blood from it. He had no time for distractions, no time for pain. Had to focus on what was important.
Jess was dead. Esme was alive.
And Esme was his. Had been his for eleven years, eleven years stolen. She was all he had left.
He was going to kill Tyree.
No, first he was going to save Esme. Claim what was his.
Then he’d make Tyree pay.
Even if it meant burning the Tower to the ground.
Tyree was as good as dead.
CHAPTER NINE
Like most Catholic schoolgirls, I had a crush on our priest, Father Kersavage. After my dad died, I never stepped foot inside St. Tim’s again, but I still had to go to school. The kids knew the whole story behind my father’s death—everyone in the parish did—making me the center of gossip and unwanted attention. Plus, of course, I felt guilty as hell.
I was only twelve; I would have blamed myself for war, famine, and poverty if you gave me half a reason to. My self-involved need to feel some semblance of control over this me
ssed-up world ranked second only to my need for reassurance that the bad things that happened really weren’t my fault or in my control.
Of course, no one gave me that. Because my dad’s death was my fault.
Father Kersavage was the only person who would talk to me about Dad. Said it wasn’t up to me to try to understand the Lord’s plan. That would be an act of hubris. Instead, he said all I could do was accept it, ask for forgiveness for my sins, and abandon my willful ways. In other words, I needed faith more than I needed my father.
All that normal Catholic guilt bullshit. We can’t control anything, but we’re still responsible enough that we should feel guilty even if it’s all pre-ordained? What kind of twisted logic is that?
So, yeah, my schoolgirl crush morphed into resentment. At the Church, at Father Kersavage, at the entire universe.
I couldn’t change what happened to my dad. I’d have to live with it every day for the rest of my life. But, damn it, I didn’t have to be their Judas goat.
So I’d fled Cambria as soon as I could drive. Got a job, got a GED, got emancipated. Worked the system to get through college and medical school, fell in love, married a man from Cambria, and wound up right back where I’d started. How’s that for irony?
But you can never go home again. Living my own life seems to have given my family only more reason to resent my role in my father’s death.
Father Kersavage is now dead and buried—alcoholic cirrhosis. And he was never anything like the priest who stood before me now.
This priest, Father Vance, looked more like a pro basketball player than a priest. He wore jeans and a U2 T-shirt smeared with white paint. A jagged scar raked across the corner of his jaw and down the side of his neck, disappearing beneath his collar, while his hands had more scars across the knuckles. I imagined Father Kersavage would have given this priest the same condescending lectures he’d saddled me with. Penance, he called our little talks. Instructions on humility.
The priest before me didn’t look like he’d put up with that kind of bullshit. Not at all.
He stared at Ryder, seeming to effortlessly read between the lines furrowing Ryder’s face before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. Brief, manly, but telling. They knew each other fairly well. They looked about the same age, although Vance carried a few more pounds on him and had a few inches on Ryder’s six feet.
The men stepped into the sacristy, and I followed.
“Hell.” Vance made the epithet sound like an apology. “No way you’d send the goons to babysit me and come here looking like that unless it was something bad.”
Ryder said nothing, just nodded. Vance sucked in his breath, braced himself.
“Is there someplace we can talk?” Ryder asked Vance.
“If it’s bad news, no place better to hear it.” Vance took a seat in the front pew and it looked like it would take a bulldozer to budge him. He folded his hands as if in prayer but didn’t bow his head. Instead, he looked at Ryder straight-on. “Tell me.”
I liked the priest. Liked his no-nonsense style, the way he didn’t go all cold and remote but still seemed to have human feelings and wasn’t ashamed of them. Not trying to be holier-than-thou.
Ryder’s face fissured with pain. The uniformed officer saw it and cleared his throat, looking away.
“McInerny, why don’t you go help Petrosky?” Ryder’s voice was strong, his expression one of command. “She’s in the alley coordinating the search for a missing girl.”
“Missing girl?” Vance said. “Ryder, what’s going on?”
McInerny left, his boots ringing against the marble floor. Ryder leaned his back against the altar rail, arms crossed, frowning. Candles flickered on either side of him, shadowing his face more than illuminating. Vance arched an eyebrow, nodding to the crucifix hanging above him. Rude to turn your back on your savior. Ryder straightened, looking two decades younger for a flitting moment, his hand jerking up in a quick sign of the cross as he pivoted and took a seat beside Vance.
“Sister Patrice is dead. Shot.” Ryder’s words were blunt, his tone compassionate. I could tell he’d done this before. He knew it was better to say the words in plain English, no sugarcoating or dancing around.
“Patrice? No.” The last word came out drawn and quartered. At first in confusion and disbelief, then denial, and finally, despair. “No. Not Patrice. Who—”
“We don’t know. We think it happened in the alley behind the church. Did you see anything?”
“No.” The priest’s voice was choked. “No. I was downstairs painting. Had the window open for ventilation and heard the shots, but I couldn’t see anything with the rain. By the time I got upstairs and ran out to look, there was nobody there. I had no idea—” He bowed his head, lips moving without sound, eyes closed.
I watched him pray, amazed at the sudden calm that drifted over his grief-stricken features. No amount of praying had ever done that for me. Maybe I was doing it wrong? Or it worked only for people who believed.
Ryder gave him a moment. Vance crossed himself and looked back up.
“Dr. Rossi,” Ryder nodded to where I stood behind a marble pillar, doing my best to stay out of sight of the crucifix, “says there’s a young girl, around ten, missing.”
“Esme. Patrice was going to see her, her and her mom, Jess. Was she shot as well?”
“We don’t know. Who’s Esme?”
“Esme Willard. Lives with her mother in the Tower. Apartment…” His face blanked, then morphed to frustration. “Damn it, I can’t remember.”
“Did Sister Patrice have an office?” I asked.
Both men stared at me, Ryder with approval and Vance with relief. “Yes. Yes, she did. Come with me.” He stepped toward me, then stopped, looking down and blinking his eyes clear. “I’m sorry. You are?”
Ryder intervened. “This is Dr. Angela Rossi. She tried to save Sister Patrice.” And failed, he didn’t add. I was thankful for the omission. For some reason, I wanted Vance to like me. Killing a nun didn’t seem like such a good starting place.
Vance took my hand, folding his around it as if praying. “How did you know Esme was missing?”
“Not sure. I just know a ten-year-old black girl was with Patrice when she got shot. Patrice sent her into the Tower to hide.”
Vance nodded as if that made perfect sense. He genuflected, then turned and kept walking. Ryder, however, grabbed my arm. “How did you know she was there when Sister Patrice was shot? How did you know Sister Patrice was there at all?”
Whoops. Well, hell, it wasn’t like I’d gotten messages from not-quite-dead people before. And I’m a terrible liar. Much better at knowing when others lie. I’ve had tons of practice in that: Everyone lies in the ER. Just a fact of life.
“Esme’s mother was the last person called on Patrice’s cell phone.” I went with an edited version of the truth.
“You went through Sister Patrice’s effects?” Ryder’s tone was sharp. I couldn’t really blame him. “That’s tampering with evidence.”
“It was on the floor of the trauma room. All I did was pick it up before someone stepped on it.” Thankfully, we arrived at a side hallway lined with two wooden doors before he could ask anything more.
Vance opened a door and gestured for us to go inside. “Patrice and Sister Monique work out of this office.”
“And Sister Monique is where?” Ryder asked, his notebook at the ready.
“At the Mother House for the holiday. Patrice drew the short straw, stayed behind to make sure I didn’t starve to death and to see to any emergencies.” Vance picked up a photo from one of the desks. “Here’s Patrice and Esme.”
I held the picture, not sure if I should be relieved that I hadn’t imagined it all or terrified that somehow Patrice really had spoken to me as she lay dead, my hand on her heart. I decided to focus on finding the girl. I’d figure out the rest later. Ah, the power of denial. “That’s her, that’s the girl.”
Ryder shot me a how-the-hell-could-you-kn
ow look. “Can you get me Esme’s contact information?” he asked Vance. “And I’ll need to take this to make copies.”
Vance nodded, getting busy at Patrice’s computer. As he waited for the machine to boot up, he asked, “She made it to the hospital alive? I don’t suppose anyone was able to give her last rites?”
Ryder sucked in his breath but otherwise maintained his unemotional facade. I’m sure we both were remembering Patrice’s ravaged body after I cracked her chest. His cell rang, leaving it to me to answer Vance’s question.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, fighting the urge to bounce my weight from one foot to the other like I was a kid back in catechism class. “It happened too fast.”
Whatever Ryder was hearing, it wasn’t good news. “What do you mean you can’t open it? I don’t care if you have to wake Daniel Kingston. I don’t care if you have to wake the mayor. We need to get that door open. Have the fire guys cut through it, if you need to.”
He pocketed his phone. “I have to go. Are you sure you can’t think of any reason someone would want to hurt Sister Patrice or that little girl? Anything going on around here that might be tied in to this?”
I noticed how his questions weren’t as direct when they were aimed at Vance. Was that because he was trying to give the priest an out in case something had been divulged during a confession? Or because they were friends? Ryder didn’t seem the kind of guy who would cut someone a break for old times’ sake—not when murder was involved. And he’d known Patrice as well. No, he wasn’t letting Vance off easy, I decided. If Ryder didn’t get the information he needed, he’d be back for more.
Vance seemed to understand that as well. He gave Ryder’s questions serious thought, his fingers still at the keyboard, gaze unfocused. Finally, he shook his head in a motion that rumbled through his entire body. “No. Nothing.”
Vance returned to the computer. “West tower, apartment 304. That’s where Esme lives.”