The Most Dangerous Thing

by Laura Lippman

  “We’ll have fun tomorrow.” Although he’s only echoing her words, and with less conviction than she would like, it has the weight of a promise. They’ll have fun tomorrow. Whatever is happening is happening only now, and it will be forgotten by tomorrow. A person can forget a lot, if she’s willing to try. Doris has always been willing.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Gwen finds herself almost laughing—almost—when Tim tells her the guitar is in the trunk of his car.

  “Exhibit A, prosecutor?”

  “I know,” he says. “It’s ridiculous. But I wanted it out of my mother’s house. She thinks I should throw it into Leakin Park, and maybe I will.”

  “So why bring it?”

  “Because it’s concrete. Real. Nothing else is. Real, that is. We have our memories, but Mickey is the only person left who can tell us what really happened that night, why she covered for Go-Go.”

  “And my father.” She has to ask. “Tim—can he be prosecuted?”

  “Legally? Yes. Your father says he witnessed a homicide and didn’t report it. At the same time, he also says he didn’t believe it, not until my mother visited him a few weeks ago. He managed to persuade himself that he couldn’t know, in fact, that my father killed Chicken George. But my dad’s dying declaration changed that.”

  “As an officer of the court—are you obligated to tell someone? Someone official?”

  “Yes.”

  She wants to cry, she wants to pummel him, she wants to throw herself out of the car. It’s unfair, this mess that his father has left behind for hers. Before she can do any of these things, Tim says: “But I’m not going to. We didn’t do anything, Gwen. You, me, and Sean. We agreed not to tell the grown-ups that Mickey pushed Chicken George, or that we had an ongoing relationship with him. But we believed everything we said. My father believed us. Your father, too.”

  “What about Rick? He was there as well.”

  “He died a year ago. I found his obituary online. I think this is a case where all the lucky ones are dead.”

  “You can’t call Go-Go lucky.”

  “No—no, that’s true.”

  “I wish we could find Sean,” Gwen says. They have both tried him repeatedly, but his cell phone goes straight to voice mail, and they have been reluctant to leave any message beyond “Call me.” Gwen is actually a little hurt by Sean’s inattention.

  Tim gives a laugh that’s a good imitation of the sound she made when she heard about the guitar. “I have a hunch he’ll meet us there.”

  McKey’s apartment has a security system that requires visitors to call up. But when Gwen reaches for the receiver, Tim grabs her and sweeps her up in an embrace, pressing her against the wall and pretending to kiss her, although he has his hand over her mouth. Frightened by his odd behavior, Gwen is getting ready to kick him in the shins, then stops when she realizes his intent. He is counting on the person entering the vestibule to be embarrassed and not protest when Tim grabs the open door and hustles in behind them.

  “It’s not much of a security system, especially if the apartment number is next to the name,” he says. “They should use random codes, so people can’t find someone if they sneak in as we did.”

  “It was a neat trick.”

  “Thanks. I stole it from a movie.”

  He pounds on McKey’s door even as he presses a button on his phone, sighing when he hears a distinctive ring tone from the other side, a burst of classical music.

  “You have McKey’s number in your phone?” Gwen asks, mystified.

  “No,” Tim says. He pounds again, speaks in a firm voice. “It’s Gwen and Tim. You have to let us in.” There is no sound on the other side of the door. Tim presses a button on his phone again, the same ring tone sounds from the other side of the door. But what does this prove, Gwen thinks. McKey clearly is not here. She just happened to leave her phone behind.

  Tim speaks into the door. “I’ve got Vivian’s number in my phone, too. I’m dialing that one next.”

  Vivian?

  “It’s a three-one-seven number, right? Is that the cell or the home phone?”

  McKey answers the door, wearing a floor-length robe, a bit of floaty lavender far too pretty to be useful. Gwen cannot begin to read the look on her face. Triumphant? Smug? Angry?

  “Why did you bring Gwen? Do you think it makes you look less pathetic?”

  “I don’t think I’m the pathetic one in this situation. I mean, I’m not the one who had to make up a lie about a golf date so I could cheat on my wife.” He walks over to her coffee table. Gwen sees a bottle of wine, two glasses, both with some dregs.

  “I thought you were in AA,” Gwen says stupidly. It’s easier to focus on this small detail than the larger one, the buzz of words from Tim, the details that don’t track. Two glasses. Cheat. Golf date. That robe.

  “I was,” McKey says. “Then I realized I’m not an alcoholic, that I was just a little unnerved by some episodes before the holidays. I can drink in moderation.”

  “Yeah, two glasses is really moderate,” Tim says. “Look, let’s not drag this out. His phone is here. We heard it ring.”

  “He stopped by earlier today. I didn’t realize he left it here. This is awkward. I’m entertaining.”

  “I bet you are,” Tim says, holding his phone out at arm’s length. Gwen understands. He can’t read the screen close up without reading glasses. “Here’s Vivian’s number—I wonder if I can set up a conference call among our three phones.”

  Sean comes into the living room, fully dressed. Gwen wants to laugh at the silliness of it, this odd little moment straight out of a bedroom farce. Sean proper and composed, as if the fact of his clothing, his combed hair, proves he’s innocent. Yet she’s sad for him, too. Oh, Sean. I wish you had told me what you were thinking. Because I would have talked you out of it. Not out of jealousy, although she admits to herself that she is jealous, that she does feel as if McKey has seized something that was hers. But mainly she’s sad because he’s done something he can never take back. And she knows he’ll want to take it back, whatever the outcome, even if there is no outcome. Her father may be right about people being too honest. But the problem with cheating is that you can never be spared that knowledge about yourself, whether you tell or not.

  “We forgot our prop,” she says to Tim, not wanting to think about what’s happening here and now.

  “That’s okay. We won’t need it. We might all need alcohol, though.” McKey has no intention of playing the hostess, so Gwen goes to the kitchen, finds it stocked with wine and beer and a healthy array of whiskey, although no food. She brings a selection to the table, with a choice of glasses. She herself selects bourbon. She’s not driving in any sense of the word. Let Tim take the wheel.

  “Over the past twenty-four hours, Gwen and I, separately and together, have learned a lot of things that change everything about what we thought we knew about the night of the hurricane.” Tim is in his professional mode. “First—and this is going to be hard to hear, Sean—Gwen’s father says that Chicken George was probably alive when they got to him, but our father killed him, beat him to death with a flashlight. And our father told Mom as much the night he died.”

  Sean shakes his head. “If that’s so, it would have been reported at the time. There weren’t so many bodies dumped in Leakin Park that such a thing would have gone overlooked.”

  “It didn’t. But the body was out there for a very long time, much longer than anyone could have guessed, washed into a culvert. It was months before it was found, but it happens that there is an open case from the winter of 1980.” Tim looks at McKey. “Was it hard, going back and seeing him there, or had the stream already washed him away?”

  Gwen understands that Tim is testing McKey. There’s no reason to believe that she took the guitar, but the accusation might shake something loose.

  “I didn’t go back.”

  “Someone did. I found the guitar in my family’s attic today. And it’s hard for me to imagine
Go-Go going back by himself, to see the body of the man who allegedly molested him.”

  Gwen sees Sean’s head snap up at the adverb allegedly. McKey has no reaction, and that’s reaction enough.

  But all she says is: “I don’t know why Go-Go did what he did. He’s dead, so I’ll guess we’ll never know.”

  “Want to know something interesting about Go-Go’s death, Mickey? A few months ago, an old priest from our parish asked Go-Go to be a character witness for him. A former student had come forward, said he had recovered memories of sexual abuse, seemed to be interested in shaking cash out of the archdiocese or even the priest himself, who comes from a well-to-do family and has pockets deep enough to be attractive to someone angling for a quickie settlement. Go-Go agreed to be his character witness. Then he abruptly backed out, wouldn’t even answer phone calls from the person trying to set up the deposition. Why would he do that?”

  “Why do you keep asking me about Go-Go, what he did? He’s not my brother.”

  Gwen realizes that McKey is even smarter than she ever knew, careful not to say anything. She has not made a single assertion so far, other than insisting that she didn’t take the guitar, and she may be telling the truth. But she knows Go-Go wasn’t molested by Chicken George.

  “Go-Go did tell Father Andrew that he wanted to do this for him because years ago he was molested by two high school boys, but he lied and blamed it on someone else. The weird thing is, based on what he told Father Andrew, he was molested by the older kids in 1980. So what really happened the night of the hurricane? What did you see? Why was Chicken George chasing you, trying to grab you? You, Mickey, not Go-Go. He tried to grab you—and you pushed him.”

  “Only because I was closer to him. Go-Go was faster. I went to the cabin. I saw Chicken George touching Go-Go. He chased us.”

  “I think you took the guitar that night and that’s why he chased you. It never made sense for him to run after you with it, as you said.”

  McKey smiles. Why is she smiling? “Suit yourself. But, as you recall, your brother and I agreed on what happened. What little boy would tell such a story if it wasn’t true? As for the high school boys—I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe Go-Go thought that was more credible. Maybe Go-Go liked sex with men.”

  Sean has been listening intently, trying to catch up. He is uncomfortable, Gwen knows, with having the least information of anyone in the group, and now he breaks in. “That’s ridiculous. Go-Go wasn’t gay.”

  “I’m not saying he was.” McKey’s tone, when talking to Sean, is earnest, sweet. She’s trying to create teams. With only four of them, they can go two-on-two. “I’m just playing Tim’s game. He’s making stuff up. I’m making stuff up, to show him how ridiculous it is. Look, I’m truly sorry about your dads. It can’t be fun, finding out your fathers are killers. It was easier on everyone when we thought this was an accident.”

  “Rick was there, too,” Tim says, even as Gwen tries to parse McKey’s grammar, her tenses. It was easier on everyone— She already knew this part. She knows about what Tim Senior did. Yet Go-Go didn’t even tell his brothers. Why would he confide in McKey? Because she’s as responsible as he is for whatever happened.

  “Yes. Well, Rick wasn’t my father. It’s different. Still, they did what they did. Don’t make this about me.”

  “Go-Go told Father Andrew—”

  “According to Father Andrew. And who knows what Go-Go would say on any given day?”

  Something tugs at Gwen’s memory. Tim said something about picking pockets. She hears a squeal of brakes, a woman’s laugh. She is standing on the steps of the private detective’s office. No, it’s not that moment. It was something from earlier in their conversation, something about her methods, which even she found deplorable.

  “You went to AA to spy on Go-Go, just like the private detective’s operative did. No, not spy, because obviously he saw you and knew you were there. You wanted him to see you, wanted him to know you were watching him. You wanted to make sure that he didn’t talk in AA, the way he did to Father Andrew. Why did you care, McKey? What secret did you need Go-Go to keep? Chicken George’s death? Something else?”

  McKey drops her eyes to her lap and picks at the embroidery on her robe. It’s pretty, feminine, the kind of thing that Tally used to wear. In fact, it’s a dead ringer for an old robe of Tally’s that was in Gwen’s dress-up box. They played dress-up on the rare days they spent indoors, and McKey, who lived in overalls and cutoffs, always chose the frilly, girly items.

  Gwen thinks about the cabin, the night of the storm. Why would McKey and Go-Go have gone there together? It has never made sense, McKey stumbling on him there, two of them winding up there independently. No one went there alone—except Sean and Gwen, and she didn’t want to go anymore because she thought someone was watching them. Tim said straight out that he tried to watch them only once, in the Halloran basement. So if someone was watching—

  “Did you spy on us, in the woods. You and Go-Go? Did you watch us?”

  McKey’s posture is defiant, but she won’t meet Gwen’s eyes. “It was an accident. We went there to play and you were . . . already playing. Anyone would do what we did.”

  “But it wasn’t just the one time, was it? You went back. You went back again and again. You went back the night of the storm, but we weren’t there.” No, she and Sean were in her bedroom, trying to figure out how much they could do without arousing Tally’s suspicions. And Gwen, as always, was the bolder one. Sean was scared to death of being caught.

  “You went to watch us, but we weren’t there. We hadn’t been there for a while. What did you do, Mickey?” There is no doubt in Gwen’s mind that Mickey, not McKey, is the person to whom she needs to talk, the one who has the answers. “What did Chicken George see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mickey—”

  “A game. Just a game.”

  “A sexual game?”

  Mickey’s eyes skate, looking for a safe place to land. She decides on Sean. “I guess you could call it that.”

  “He was nine. You were almost fourteen.”

  “There was no law against it.”

  “There is now.” Gwen has no idea if this is true, and she looks to Tim for confirmation. But he and Sean seem mainly bewildered, unsure of how to react. “You had to know it was wrong, otherwise you would have admitted it. Chicken George knew it was wrong. Even Go-Go must have known. That’s why he followed your lead, when you lied and said Chicken George molested him.”

  “He pushed Chicken George. Go-Go. From behind. All these years, I was protecting him.”

  But not even Mickey sounds convinced of what she’s saying, and Tim comes back to life. “Oh, come on.”

  “He did. I was covering for him. That’s why he was willing to lie, because he was the one who hurt him. We weren’t doing anything bad. We made each other feel good. What’s the big deal?”

  “He was nine,” Gwen repeats.

  “Most nine-year-old boys would be thrilled to have a girl touch them.” She appeals to the two men in the room. “Am I right?”

  Sean starts to stammer something, then stops. “Don’t ask him,” Tim says. “He’d pay a crack whore to initiate his son into sex if it could keep him from being gay.”

  “Fuck off, Tim. Duncan’s not—”

  “Out, Sean. Not out. But everyone knows he’s gay. His cousins get it, even our littlest. Mom has figured it out. Everyone but you. Has it ever occurred to you that Duncan hasn’t come out because he can sense you’re less than thrilled, that he’s being solicitous of your feelings?”

  Gwen sees Mickey’s eyes gleaming. She has distracted them, divided them. She’s winning.

  “What about the boys?” Gwen asks her.

  “What boys?”

  “The high school boys. The ones that Go-Go told Father Andrew about.”

  “As I said, maybe he liked sex with boys.” She tries to give a blithe shrug but can’t pull it off.

  “Did
it appear that he liked it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you were there. You made it happen. If it was just you and Go-Go, that one time, then he might figure out one day that he really hadn’t done anything wrong, but you had. So you made sure that he had other things to be confused and ashamed about. You came up with more games, knowing that Go-Go would always want to do whatever the big kids were doing.”

  Mickey curls into herself. She crosses her arms, brings her feet beneath her. She’s like the turtles she used to torture, poking them with sticks so they withdrew all their limbs, even the snapping turtles. Gwen can tell that she’s not going to talk, not to her. And not to Tim. Gwen looks to Sean, who is flushed and angry. Over the comments about his son or his brother?

  Gwen asks: “Why? Why did you do it?”

  Although it is Gwen who is pressing her, she addresses herself to Sean. “I didn’t think it was wrong. I wanted to be with you, but you chose Gwen. So I chose Go-Go.”

  Tim says: “If you had wanted to fool around with one of Sean’s brothers, I would have been glad to oblige.”

  If he meant the joke to distill the tension in the room, he has failed. Not even Tim seems amused by this brief return of his lummox self.

  Sean asks: “Is Gwen right, Mickey? About the boys? Did you do that to Go-Go?”

  “Hockey mask,” Tim says. “It’s in the attic, too.” Sean nods. Gwen has no idea what they’re talking about.

  Mickey shakes her head. “I gave him that. I got the money out of my stepdad, telling him it was for school stuff.” She looks small, sitting on her sofa. Gwen remembers the girl she met almost thirty-five years ago. So pretty, so scruffy, so lacking in things that the others, even the Halloran boys, took for granted. A girl who would be your best friend for a drawer full of candy.

  “You know something?” Gwen is speaking to the Halloran brothers. “Go-Go never said anything about Mickey. Even to Father Andrew, whom he told about the high school boys. He lied about Chicken George to protect her. All these years, he’s protected Mickey, for whatever reason.”