For some reason the Jeep guy didn’t seem to see the same thing. “I don’t want to tell you guys what to do,” he said, “but I’d check the keys for her prints.”
“Thanks, Hardy,” one of the men said sarcastically. “Fingerprints, you mean?”
“Yeah,” the man Hardy responded. “From her fingers, you know? Little whirly things.” He turned away, nearly bumping into Father Paul. “I’d bet you won’t find ’em.” He said, ’Scuse me, Father,” and went back out into the sunshine. “Who found her?” he asked Dietrick.
“I think Father Cavanaugh’s already made a statement to the police.”
Hardy was matter-of-fact. “I bet he has.”
“What’s the matter here?” Father Paul asked. “Didn’t the woman kill herself ?”
Hardy skewered him with a look. “Doubt it,” he said. Then, to Dietrick, “The rectory, you said?”
Steven said, “I know how it happened. That’s what I was talking to Father Jim about.”
Erin, pouring a glass of water by Steven’s bed, said, “How what happened?”
“You know, Mom. Eddie.”
“Please, Steven.”
“No, really. He didn’t kill himself, Mom. He loved us. He did. ”
“Okay, Steven.” She was having trouble with the top of the pill container. She grimaced, pushing down while trying to turn. “How’s the foot?”
To be honest, the foot felt like it was being crushed in a vise, but he didn’t want to bother her with that now. The pills would solve it quick enough. “You’ll see. I can’t tell you yet, but I know how it happened.”
Okay, she’d listen. “Why can’t you tell me?”
“There’s one or two more things I want to get right.”
She handed him the pills. He popped them and then took the glass. This having only one movable hand wasn’t that much fun.
She took a breath and held it, then let it out slowly. Humoring him. “Well, when you get it right, I’ll listen. How about that?”
She leaned over and kissed him, not really answering anything, just going through that motion, along with all the others.
He leaned his head back into the pillow. “Where are you going now?”
“Just over to the church a few minutes. I’ll be back in time for lunch.”
“Can Father Jim come back with you?”
She stopped by the door. “I don’t know. I can ask. Why?”
“The thing about Eddie. I just want to ask him something.”
She slumped a little. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “You get some rest, okay?”
Cavanaugh parked about six houses down the street, in the opposite direction of the way he knew Erin would drive. There was a three-quarter-ton Dodge pickup on blocks in one of the driveways between where he was parked and the Cochrans’. Erin wouldn’t be able to see the Honda until she was in the street, and it would mean nothing to her if she did see it.
It had taken less than three minutes—two minutes, thirty-eight seconds—and he had stopped still at every one of the seven stop signs. It would be a poor time to get a ticket.
He waited.
After what seemed an hour he checked his watch and realized it had not yet been five minutes. He rolled down the car’s window. The day was unnaturally still. He reached over and cracked open the passenger window, hoping to get some cross-ventilation. It didn’t do much good.
Could she have left in the time it took him to drive over? He thought about it. Unlikely. He had gotten out of the rectory within thirty seconds of hanging up with her. Unless she had been ready to walk out her own door when they were talking, she would have needed at least five minutes to say good-bye to Steven, comb her hair, get her purse.
Still, if she didn’t come out within another couple of minutes, and only a couple, he would somehow have to check.
He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and ran it over his brow, around his neck. He felt clammy, and now a tiny breeze finally stirring in the car made him shiver. Was he getting sick? Even his hands felt sweaty, sticky.
Come on, Erin, he thought. Come on.
Ah, here she was.
She backed the Volvo wagon into the street. She didn’t even glance behind her in his direction. His breathing started coming a little more easily. The Volvo stopped at the corner, let a UPS truck pass in front of her, then turned left out of sight.
Cavanaugh turned the key, pulled into the street and parked in the Cochrans’ driveway. He walked across the familiar brick path to the front stoop, mounted the stairs and rang the doorbell.
“Steven,” he called. “Erin!”
He rang the bell again.
“Who is it?” Steven’s voice sounded thin and far away from back inside the house.
“Father Jim, Steven.”
A pause, then another distant yell. “I can’t get up, Father. Come on in.”
“What are you doing here?”
Hardy, seeing Erin crossing the little patch of lawn, opened the door and stood in the front doorway of the rectory.
Her face really was incredible, he thought. “I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “Is Jim inside?”
“Jim isn’t around.”
She stopped, her expression flickering. “Well, of course he is. I just talked to him.”
“You just talked to him?”
“He said he needed me over here.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago.”
“Over here? At the rectory?”
“Yes, is something wrong?”
Still in the doorway, Hardy frowned. “I hope not.”
They started back through the house. “Rose is dead, you know,” Hardy said.
Erin touched Hardy’s arm the way she did. They faced each other in the hallway. “Jim said she killed herself, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘too’?”
Erin looked down. Hardy picked up her chin with his finger. “Eddie didn’t.”
He could tell it was hard for her to hear it, but she had to know.
“Steven just said the same thing. He said he’d figured out how it happened. He was just talking to Jim about it.”
Hardy felt the blood draining from his face.
“What’s the matter?”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When was he talking to Jim about it?”
Erin had taken his hand, as though to steady him. “Just before I left, just before he asked me to come over, I think.”
Hardy was frozen for a few seconds, letting the coins drop. “Jesus Christ!” He looked behind her. The front door was still closed. “Give me your keys.”
“What?”
“Your keys. Give me your keys!”
Obediently, she opened her purse. Then he had the keys and was running for the door. “Come on, come on!” he said. “Your car. Let’s go!”
35
THE FRONT DOOR was locked.
He was just about to call out for Steven again, then realized it would be better not to draw more attention to himself. He looked both ways down the street. It was a slow Tuesday, still before lunchtime. There was no one outside on the entire block. And Cavanaugh knew Steven couldn’t get up—so what good would calling him do?
He tried the door again. No, it was locked. Probably dead-bolted, too, if he knew Erin.
He went past the Honda again, along the side of the house on the driveway. All the windows were closed. In the backyard he went up onto the deck and tried the sliding glass doors. They, too, were locked, with a sawed-off broom handle wedged into the runner on the floor to make sure the door wouldn’t open.
Cavanaugh looked at his watch, sweating now. Too much time was passing. He had to get inside, and it must not look like forced entry.
Walking off the deck, he rounded the corner and started up to the front again, along the other side of the house where there was just a strip of grass and a fence.
It wa
s so vivid it could not have been a dream, but if it wasn’t a dream, then where was Father Jim? Steven was sure he’d heard him call out from the front door. He’d even called back that he couldn’t move, that he should just come in.
But had he heard him? He hadn’t come.
His eyes were heavy, and he really couldn’t remember if he’d dozed off or not before the bell rang. He knew he’d taken another dose of the pills before Mom had left. His foot didn’t hurt, so they must have already kicked in.
He closed his eyes. Maybe it was like when he thought he’d seen Eddie here in his room the other night. That had seemed so real it wasn’t until the next morning that he realized it couldn’t have happened. Okay, the doorbell had seemed real, and Father Jim’s voice. . . . But it had happened right after the pills, too.
Besides, it made no sense. Mom had just gone to see Father Jim. What would he be doing here?
He had begun to figure it out just as he saw the fingers come around the bottom of the windowsill, open about four inches to let in some air. The hand pushed at the window and it slid up until Father’s arm had straightened—maybe another foot.
He heard his name again, quietly this time.
“Steven?”
Glitsky heard the follow-up call-in on his way to his appointment in the Projects. He was going to meet a steady source named Quicksand Barthelme that Dick Willis would love to get to know. But Glitsky didn’t work for the DEA, and Quicksand was too valuable an ally in the Projects to worry about how he made his money. Quicksand could operate safely forever, as far as Glitsky was concerned. He was small time, was grateful for the umbrella of Glitsky’s favor, and knew everybody. Willis no doubt had a few murderers among his sources, and it probably bothered him about as much as Quicksand’s drug activities bothered Abe.
But today Quicksand didn’t show. It happened. These guys, it wasn’t like you made an appointment with their secretary and did a power lunch. Sometimes—hell, all the time—the street had its own rhythm and you had to go with it.
So Abe was half listening to the squawk box, still furious with himself and Hardy and pissed at Quicksand and the heat when he heard that there was a suicide at St. Elizabeth’s. That decided what he was going to do with the rest of his morning.
One of the squad cars was pulling out as he turned into the driveway. He saw Hardy’s car over by the garage as soon as he passed the rectory. The guy was persistent—he gave him that. He parked in the thinning strip of shade along the side of the garage.
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, which was 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.
36
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 o
n 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.)
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