Byrne said nothing.
‘I collected the pills from my patients for weeks, one at a time. I thought Danny might escape on the charges and would be a free man. I couldn’t have that. But when it came time to do it, I walked away. I couldn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘The poor woman had not harmed my family. The Farrens destroyed it.’
‘They’re going to order a second autopsy on Jacinta Collins.’
‘I’m no doctor, but I am a very good nurse, detective. I believe they will find that the woman died of blood poisoning, as it said in the papers.’
‘Who killed Desmond Farren, Anjelica?’
Anjelica rose, crossed over to the window overlooking the street. In this soft light, Byrne could see the younger woman, the woman whose world imploded that night in Schuylkill River Park.
‘I remember when I saw him for the first time,’ she said. ‘Des Farren, that is. Him and his funny white suit. Do you remember that awful suit?’
‘I do.’
‘Mind you, I didn’t know then that he was daft,’ she said. ‘I thought he was kind of handsome, actually. Like all the Farrens.
‘And then, one time, we were at the market. The one on South. Catriona was just a wee girl. Still had the baby teeth, you know? Desmond was out front that morning, cracking walnuts with his foot on the sidewalk, and eating them. Can you imagine?’
Byrne said nothing.
‘He put his eye on her that day. My Catriona.’
‘How do you know?’
Anjelica eased the creases in her skirt. ‘A mother knows, she does.’ She turned to face Byrne. ‘I’ve never gotten that out of my mind. The smell of the bus exhaust, the sound of the cracking walnuts. I’ve not been able to experience either in the past forty years without the walls of my heart crumbling.’
She sat back down.
‘I don’t know who killed Des Farren, detective. I surely would have done the deed myself, and burned what was left of him, but I was still frightened then. I’m not now.’
‘Was it Jimmy?’
Anjelica said nothing.
‘He’s going to be district attorney, Mrs Leary.’
‘So we’re back to Mrs now, are we?’ she asked. ‘How time works against you when you’ve got a few spots on your hands and a bit of gray.’
Byrne waited for a reply.
‘District Attorney James Doyle, God love him,’ she said. ‘A boy from the Pocket. A boot-strapper.’
‘Are you really ready for what’s about to happen to you?’
‘I’ve been in hell for forty years, Kevin Byrne. A few more won’t break me. When the last of the Farrens is dead I’ll sleep like a baby, no matter how cold and hard the bed.’
She glanced at one of the moving boxes. On top was a framed photograph. It was a close-up of a smiling Catriona Daugherty.
‘I may not know much, but there is one thing I know for certain,’ she said.
She turned to look at him. Gone was the grieving young mother he recalled from the park that night. In front of him now was a murderer.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘The world is full of weeping.’
58
On July 4, four days after Jimmy Doyle secured his party’s nomination to become the next District Attorney for the City of Philadelphia, Byrne stood at the edge of Schuylkill River Park.
After the fireworks had finished and the last of the revelers had staggered off, he walked over to the grove of trees near the ball diamond.
He’d thought he would find the man there, and he was right.
‘Congratulations, counselor.’
Jimmy Doyle turned to look at him. He seemed surprised, but not shocked.
‘Thanks, Kevin.’
They did not shake hands. After a few moments, Jimmy knelt down, picked some grass, smelled it.
‘It’s the smells that bring me back,’ he said. ‘You?’
Byrne nodded. ‘Always.’
‘Soft pretzels, water ice, caramel corn. Were we really that young?’
‘We were.’
Jimmy stepped over to the area where Catriona’s body had been found. Byrne had not remembered it being so close to the slope that dropped toward the railroad tracks and the river. He imagined that a lot of things seemed bigger when you were that age. Relationships seemed closer, events more dire, more intense. Time was a great thief of detail. This far from the avenue, he could hear the sound of the river. He thought for a moment of the water that had passed this very spot over the past forty years, the secrets that had been carried with it.
He had turned over the gun and the other items in that box, the bus pass and the glasses. He’d given a full statement regarding his involvement in the incident with Desmond Farren in this very park. The chips would fall where they fell.
It hadn’t taken long to discover that James Patrick Doyle was a minority partner in Greene Towne LLC, the company that was rehabbing the row houses in Devil’s Pocket. Byrne knew that the news of his submission of the items had crossed Jimmy’s radar. There was no point insulting the man’s intelligence with that detail.
‘The Inquirer is going to dig,’ he said. ‘There’s going to be blowback about that gun being found in a building you own. About Des Farren’s bus pass, his glasses.’
Jimmy turned to look at him. ‘I’ll answer the question,’ he said.
‘What question?’
‘The one you want to ask.’
Byrne said nothing.
‘I didn’t put the box there, Kevin. Not forty years ago, not twenty years ago, not last month. I don’t know who did. The last time I saw that gun was a few weeks before the Fourth. Back in ’76.’
‘Did you go back to where you’d originally hidden it?’
Jimmy hesitated before responding to this. ‘I did. If for no other reason than to prove to myself it was still there, that it could not have been used in Des Farren’s murder.’
‘And?’
‘It was gone.’
‘Who knew it was there?’
Jimmy laughed. ‘Who didn’t know it was there? You knew about it. Dave and Ronan. My stepfather.’
‘Tommy knew about the gun?’
‘Tommy Doyle knew everything. Drunk, violent bastard that he was.’
Byrne took a few steps away. ‘Ronan died in that wreck in ’96. Cops said there was another set of tire tracks. You weren’t there, were you, Jimmy?’
The man said nothing.
‘And Dave. Dave gets shot to death in Pittsburgh while you were there. Know anything about it?’
‘Only what I read in the papers.’
‘What happened in the park that night in 1976?’ Byrne asked. ‘Where did you go?’
Jimmy looked out over the river. ‘I went looking for my stepfather. Him and Bobby Anselmo.’
‘What for?’
‘I might have talked a good game, Kevin, but I was just a skinny kid. I knew my stepfather hated the Farrens. If there was even the slightest possibility that Des Farren had something to do with Catriona’s death, Tommy would have killed him.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
‘I couldn’t find either of them that night. I just went home.’ Jimmy turned to look at Byrne. He let a few long moments pass. ‘What did you do, Kevin?’
Byrne had expected this. ‘After you left, I lost Des Farren in the crowd. I lost everyone in the crowd.’
‘I tried to get you on that walkie-talkie,’ Jimmy said. ‘You never answered.’
‘That’s because the battery was gone.’
‘Gone? You mean dead?’
‘I mean gone, as in not there,’ Byrne said. ‘I got to the corner of 27th and Lombard, you were nowhere in sight. I tried to get you on the walkie, and it was dead.’
‘I remember a battery being in there when you gave it back to me.’
‘That’s because I replaced it.’
Jimmy nodded. Byrne wondered if he was processing all this in his lawyer’s brain, weighing
how it would sound to a judge and jury.
‘Dave Carmody,’ Jimmy said. ‘He was always the weakest.’
‘He was strong in other ways,’ Byrne said. ‘There was never a more loyal kid.’
‘He always felt like he was part of it. He felt like we made Des Farren kill Catriona. So did Ronan. I don’t think the guilt and shame ever lifted from their hearts.’
‘The Des Farren case is still open,’ Byrne said.
‘As is Catriona Daugherty’s,’ Jimmy said. ‘You turn up anything, you bring it to me and I’ll present it to a grand jury. You have my word.’
Byrne took a moment, shaping his thoughts. ‘I recall a meeting in your office where I was told to go wherever the case took me,’ he said.
‘It was true then. It’s true now.’
‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘You’ve never been one to be talked out of doing the right thing, Kevin.’
‘Despite my many times being complicit in all manner of larceny, both petit and grand.’
‘Despite it all,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I stand by what I said. The district attorney stands by it. The City of Philadelphia stands by it.’
‘Sounds like a campaign speech.’
Jimmy broke out the smile that had helped get him to where he was today. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘A little too much salt.’
Jimmy Doyle looked out over the park. In that moment Byrne once again saw the cocksure kid from Devil’s Pocket.
‘You go where your heart takes you, Kevin,’ Jimmy added. ‘You go where your oath takes you. You were always the best of us.’
The two men fell silent. There was just the sound of the river. It was Byrne who spoke first.
‘You’re going to win.’
‘Nothing is a lock in Philly politics,’ Jimmy said.
‘You’re going to win,’ Byrne repeated.
‘You should think about coming over to the homicide unit at the DA’s office, Kevin. No more running and gunning; you still keep the shield and the title. You’d head the unit on your first day.’
‘I’m happy where I am,’ Byrne said.
Jimmy reached to his lapel, took out the carnation that was there. He crouched, put it on the spot where Catriona Daugherty’s body had been found.
‘You know, Catie had this way about her. She looked sometimes like she was so light, so ethereal, that the slightest breeze might carry her away.’ Jimmy stood up. ‘She looked up to me. I couldn’t take care of her. Maybe I don’t deserve this job. I couldn’t even protect an eleven-year-old girl.’
‘One last question.’
‘Sure.’
‘You asked to have Jessica put on the case the same day that box was found. How did that happen, Jim?’
‘It scares me when you call me Jim.’
‘Did you get Eddie Shaughnessy to reach out? Did you expect Jessica to keep an eye on me? To keep an eye on the investigation?’
Jimmy Doyle said nothing.
‘My God.’
‘What?’ Jimmy asked.
‘You don’t know her at all.’
59
By the end of August, what had begun with one wall of his bedroom now encompassed all four. Dates and times and places and sketches and photographs and transcripts.
It was right there, but he couldn’t nail it down.
On Labor Day he took it all down and made five neat piles. He decided to put it all back up again, but not right away.
He made the calls he’d been putting off, each call a slice opening an old wound, places he had no business going, places he’d never thought he’d go.
Over the past six weeks he’d made it a point to not let so much time pass between visits with Jessica. Each time she would talk of the coming regime in the DA’s office, of how things might change when Jimmy Doyle became district attorney, of her future.
Although it pained him deeply to do so, for the time being, Byrne kept what he thought about Jimmy Doyle, what he suspected, to himself.
The day after Labor Day, Byrne flew to Cleveland, rented a car at Hopkins International Airport and called the CPD. He spoke to a detective named Jack Paris, a good cop with whom he had worked once before. Paris made contact with the Summit County sheriff’s office.
Byrne then drove to a small town near Akron.
The next day he was back in his apartment with a new box to add to the growing clutter.
He went back to the day it all began.
July 4, 1976.
60
He had seen her in and around the park for a few weeks. She was a shy girl, always blushing.
On the day–the only one that had mattered for forty years, the anniversary of his own daughter’s murder–he saw her standing alone.
He knew.
He knew the two sides of his mind, his heart, the explosions overhead, the shelling of Cape Esperance, the smell of the rose, the scent of orchids.
The pale yellow ribbon. All the pale ribbons.
They watched the fireworks together.
‘What do they call you?’ he asked.
‘Me?’ she replied.
‘Yes. Do they call you Cyndi June?’
‘No, silly,’ she said. ‘My name is Catriona Margaret.’
61
The text was from Byrne. Jessica was preparing an opening statement in a robbery case. She dropped what she was doing and drove to East Falls.
Laurel Hill was a sprawling cemetery, with 33,000 monuments and more than 10,000 family plots. It was the second oldest rural cemetery in the United States.
Jessica found Byrne in a section near West Indiana. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
‘Hey, partner.’
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’
Byrne shrugged. ‘I didn’t know who else to tell.’
‘You look like a hundred bucks.’
Byrne smiled. ‘Sweet talker.’
‘My only virtue.’
‘What’s going on with Anjelica Leary?’
‘We’re starting to build the case against her. The DA has released Danny Farren. He’s in the hospital now. He doesn’t have long.’
Byrne gestured to a bench. On it was a white box. They sat down.
He told her the story, the whole story, of his summers in Devil’s Pocket, and that terrible night of July 4, 1976. While the whole city was celebrating the bicentennial, a dark story had begun to take shape in Kevin Byrne’s life, his heart.
He told her the story of how he and his friends had seen Desmond Farren watching the girl, how Jimmy Doyle had braced the man.
‘Jimmy stabbed him?’
‘He cut his leg, yes,’ Byrne said. ‘We kept waiting for the Farren brothers to react, to take Jimmy out, but they never did. Even when Des Farren turned up dead. It never happened.’
Jessica knew there was more. She waited.
Byrne pointed to a low monument nearby. Jessica looked at the headstone. It read:
FLAGG CHARLES ANN CYNTHIA
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘His name was Charles Flagg. Ex-army chaplain, Second World War. Served at Guadalcanal. He owned a variety store in the Pocket called F&B. He was also part of a neighborhood block watch.’
Jessica just listened.
‘Turns out that Charles Flagg shot himself that night of July 4th, just a few hours after Catriona was killed. I worked backward from there.’
‘Backward to what?’
Byrne opened the box, took out a typed page, handed it to her.
Jessica immediately saw the pattern. It was a summary of five homicides.
July 4, 1936. Cynthia June Flagg, 10. Unsolved.
July 4, 1946. Anna Blossom Gresham, 10. Unsolved.
July 4, 1956. Constance Lenore Schute, 11. Unsolved.
July 4, 1966. Victoria Francis Jones, 10. Unsolved.
July 4, 1976. Catriona Margaret Daugherty, 11. Unsolved.
‘Desmond Fa
rren didn’t kill the girl,’ Jessica said. ‘He didn’t kill Catriona Daugherty.’
‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘It was Flagg.’
He again reached into the box next to him. He took out a worn leather edition of the King James Bible and five clear plastic envelopes. Each contained a hair ribbon, each of a different pastel color.
‘I made some calls,’ Byrne said. ‘I located Flagg’s grandson, who it turns out works for the sheriff’s office in Summit County, Ohio. After Flagg’s death, his effects were boxed up and moved a dozen different times. His confession is in there. No one opened that bible in forty years.’
Jessica looked back at the sheet. ‘All on the Fourth of July, all the victims around ten or eleven years old. And then it stops.’
Byrne nodded. ‘I checked every July since. I ran June and August just to bracket the crimes. Nothing even close.’
‘Why didn’t anyone pick up this pattern?’ Jessica asked. As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. At one time–still–she was the anyone. Byrne said what she was feeling.
‘No one was looking.’
‘So all of this, the dominoes that started falling after Catriona Daugherty’s murder, didn’t have to happen.’
Byrne didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. They’d both heard and felt the repercussions of the music of chance.
‘Flagg lived in every one of those neighborhoods at the times of the murders,’ Byrne said. He held up a thick file folder. ‘These investigations start here and now. I’ve already talked to the captain.’
Jessica was going to ask him if he was sure this was what he wanted, but she knew that it was. She watched as Byrne gently put the ribbons back in the box, followed by the old bible.
She glanced at her watch. As much as she hated to leave, she had a ton of work on her desk.
‘Call me if you need me,’ she said. ‘Day or night. Even if it’s just to talk.’
‘Thanks, partner,’ he said. ‘It means everything.’
Jessica got up, walked back to her car, slipped inside. She thought about the cases. Her daughter wasn’t much older than those girls had been when they were murdered. She couldn’t imagine the shackles of grief.
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