“Thank you for bringing Steven here,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Now, Steven, let me drive you over to your apartment.” I hesitated. “I have to say, though, I’m concerned about how well you’re going to be able to assimilate. It’s been such a long time since you’ve been in a city.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s almost like riding a bike. I came back into the city with Heather, and it really did feel like coming home. I’m going to have to learn everything, though. Heather was explaining more to me about the Internet and cable television. This HBO sounds like a pretty groovy thing. And she told me about VCRs and DVD players and CD players.” He shook his head. “Wow. It’s amazing how much the world moves in really a short period of time.”
“Don’t I know that. Anyhow, let’s go to your apartment. I hope you don’t mind, but I furnished it, too. I just wanted you to be able to move on in and not have to worry about much.”
Steven nodded. “I really don’t know how to thank you, Harper,” he said.
“Well, you’ve been a real help to me. And I think that I need to ask you some more questions, too. I have a feeling that you might actually help me crack my Uncle’s case. So, I know that you’re going to be feeling that you owe me, but, really, I might end up owing you a whole lot more.”
Heather left my office and Steven and I drove to his new apartment, which was in the Hyde Park area of town. Hyde Park is an area that is stratified, to say the very least – there were some parts of Hyde Park that were older and a bit run-down, but, just down the street a bit, there were veritable mansions. These were mansions that were built around the turn of the century for the barons of the day - they weren’t the “McMansions” that popped up post-1980, but actual mansions.
Steven’s studio was in a quiet tree-lined neighborhood and it was part of a four-plex – two apartments downstairs, two upstairs, all of which had either a balcony or a front porch. This building was built in stone and brick, and was probably at least 100 years old. The hallway had a musty smell, and, as we stood outside the apartment, waiting to get in, a twenty-something guy with a man-bun and a bicycle walked out of the apartment next to us, and wheeled his bicycle out the door.
Steven looked at the man-bunned guy and smiled. “Is that the style?” he asked.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” I said. “I actually think that the man-bun style is the worst thing since mullets, but that’s just me.”
“Mullet?”
“Yeah. Short in the front and side and long in the back. We call it business up front and party in back.” I shook my head. “That was all the rage in the 1980s. Be happy that you missed that particular era. The Reagan era.”
“Reagan?”
“Ronald Reagan.”
He looked confused. “The movie actor? Win one for the Gipper and Bedtime for Bonzo? That guy?”
“One and the same. He was a surprisingly serious President, considering his background, but I don’t think that he was a very good one. I didn’t like his policies, but I was just a kid when he was in office.”
Steven shook his head. “Wow.”
“Well, our current President was a reality-TV star.”
“Reality TV?”
“Yes.” I shook my head. “Don’t ask. I mean, I’ll tell you all about that in a little bit, but I really need to ask you some more questions. There are some things that have been nagging in my mind since I saw you in Oregon.”
“Okay.” He looked around his little apartment. I furnished it with a futon, which I showed him how to work, a flat-screen television, and a coffee table. In the hard-wood floor was a colorful throw rug, and, on the balcony, I put some flowers in a pot and some tomato plants. There was also a small dining area, and I bought a wooden table and chairs.
Stella, for her part, was sniffing around the place and whining softly.
I showed Steven the microwave oven, and he looked at it with wonder. “You mean you can cook something in there?”
“Yeah, and it doesn’t take very long, either. I try to just heat stuff up, as opposed to cook things from scratch, though.”
“How much is this apartment going to cost?”
“Well,” I said. “It’s $800 per month,” I said. “But don’t worry about that for now. I’ll help you apply for social-security benefits.” I was worried about that, though – Steven dropped out of society 45 years ago. I doubted that he would be entitled to many benefits. I knew that he was going to probably have to find a job. I was going to have to speak with him about that. He had skills – he knew a lot about horticulture and he seemed to be a decent carpenter. I was going to have to help him find something that would put these skills to use.
But first, though, I needed to ask him some follow-up questions.
We sat down on his futon. “Okay,” he said. “Go ahead and ask your questions.”
“Thanks.” I hesitated. “Did you ever remember the name of that teacher who Jackson idolized? You said that his name was Dean. Did you remember the last name of Dean?”
“No.” He shook his head. “That memory is hazy. To say the very least.”
“I guess I also wanted to know another thing. You might know the answer to this question, because you were there. But Eli was used by Jackson to find the little boys and girls for him. I know this because this was in the papers. Do you happen to know, specifically, if he found all the boys and girls or just some of them?”
Steven looked into the distance and squinted his eyes. “That was so long ago,” he said softly. “But I do think that Jackson found most of them himself. He had a van and he told me that he would go around and ask kids if they found his lost puppy. The kid would approach his van and he would snatch them. He also took them from playgrounds.”
I was following a hunch. “But Eli found some of the kids, too. Right?”
He nodded his head. “Right.”
“How did he find these kids?”
Steven put his hand on his chin, lost in thought. “I think that Jackson would take Eli to different neighborhoods, and would drop him off. He would make him approach kids who would be playing in the street and tell them that the ice cream man was coming. The kids would follow Eli to the van, and then my brother would get out and force them in.” He nodded his head. “That was how Jackson said that he used Eli.”
I nodded my head. That would explain why Eli never ran off. It sounded like he didn’t really get that chance, if Jackson was just around the corner.
“Did Jackson threaten Eli? Did he threaten him to make him come back to the van? I mean, how did he know that Eli wouldn’t just go and tell the kids what was going on? How did he know that?”
“Yes.” Steven nodded his head. “Jackson told Eli that he would kill him if he talked. That’s what Eli told me. Eli also told me about the ice cream ruse. I asked him those questions, too. I wanted out of that prison, and I wanted Eli to help. But Eli wouldn’t do it, because he was terrified of Jackson and what he would do. He always told me that he didn’t want to die.” Steven shook his head. “That poor kid. That poor, poor kid.”
I took a deep breath. There was one more question that I needed to ask Steven. It was a question that might, might lead me in a concrete direction on finding Father Kennedy’s killer.
“Steven,” I began. “I would like to ask you another question. I hope that you can answer it for me.”
He nodded. “Sure. I’ll answer it if I can. If I can remember, that is.”
“Okay. Now, you said that Jackson was obsessed with Father Kennedy. Do you know if he confessed to him about what he did?”
Steven nodded his head slowly. “Yes. He did.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I felt excited after I asked that question of Steven, because I suddenly realized that there might possibly be a motive for somebody to kill Father Kennedy and implicate Jack for that murder.
“Why do you ask that question?”
“It’s something that is really very simple,” I said. “My boyfrien
d, Axel, is a detective. I told him the facts of the case, and he told me to look for an intersection. I’m supposed to look for somebody who not only had a beef against Father Kennedy, but also had a beef against Jack. The person who killed Father Kennedy, in other words, was somebody who hated both Father Kennedy and currently hates Jack. And it is somebody who knows that Jack suffers from mental illness and blackouts.”
“Okay,” Steven said. “I’m not quite following your train of thought, but go on. I’ll catch up.”
I stood up and started to pace around the room. “Here’s my theory of the case for whom might have did all this. It was somebody who possibly had a child who was abducted and killed by Jackson Heaney. Maybe this person, whoever it was, found out that Jackson was going to Father Kennedy and maybe this person found out that Father Kennedy knew what Jackson was doing and never told anybody. Of course he didn’t tell anybody, right? Jackson confessed in the priest’s confessional, so Father Kennedy was bound by privilege not to say a word.”
Steven nodded along. “Okay. And Jack? Why would this person hate Jack?”
“Well, maybe the kid who was abducted was abducted because Jack found him. It was in the papers that Jack was responsible for trying to find some of these kids.”
Steven pursed his lips. “But this person, whoever he or she is, how would they know about Jack’s mental illness? And why would they wait this long to kill Father Kennedy for this? This happened so many years ago. If it was known then that Father Kennedy knew about Jackson and his murders, why wait this long to kill him?”
I sighed. Why indeed?
“Well, I didn’t way that this was a fool-proof theory. It was just something that was buzzing around in my head.”
Steven looked out his window. A bird had landed on the railing of his balcony and it was looking at us curiously, his head moving back and forth as he stared at us. “Harper, don’t give up on this theory,” he said. “There are holes in it, but fill in the holes. Fill them in, and maybe you can figure it out. I would hate to see poor Jack serve time in prison after all he went through with my brother. I would hate to see that.”
He hung his head. “He saved my life. He saved Mary’s life. He saved the life of countless other boys and girls who might have ended up Jackson’s victims if he would have lived longer. If Jackson would have remained alive, who knows how many more boys and girls would have been killed? Jack, or Sam, saved so many lives with his heroism. I just can’t imagine him having to go to prison after all he did for so many.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wish that I could figure it out, though. I wish that I could.”
“You can. I have faith in you.”
I smiled. “Well, let’s change the subject. Now, about those reality TV stars…”
For the rest of the afternoon, I filled Steven in on all the different cultural, political and technical phenomenons that he had missed out on. He was astounded to know that we had electric cars – “thank God we do, Harper, because our planet was choking with all those fumes in the air.” He laughed and laughed about the concept of reality television – “you mean people actually want to watch ordinary people do stuff on TV?” And he was generally in awe of all the things that I told him about e-mail and YouTube and podcasts and music that you can play on the go. He was from a time before we even had cassette tapes, let alone Walkmen, so he couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept that you could not only listen to music wherever you are, but that you can put together different songs on a playlist.
And he was really astounded that our current popular genre of music was rap. Rap hadn’t even been invented in 1972. He was of the age of Carol King and The Beatles and Crosby, Stills and Nash. I went through all the genres of music that had came since then, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the concepts of hip-hop, grunge and death metal, all genres of music which were unknown to people in the early 1970s.
“I guess I have a lot to learn,” he said.
“Well, I’ll get cable hooked up for you on the TV,” I said. “And you can kind of explore what’s on there. It’s literally a whole new world.”
As I sat there with Steven, explaining everything that he needed to know to get up to speed, I was struck by something – I had taken way too much for granted. I thought about all the times when I cursed because my Internet was slow or my computer crashed. I really should be grateful that I had a computer and an Internet in the first place. In Steven’s world, people still typed everything on typewriters and, if you wanted to do research of any kind, you were hoofing it to the library. You couldn’t just get on Wikipedia to find out about this or that – you were buying Encyclopedia Brittanica for $1,000 a set.
I thought about typewriters, and how, if you left out a single word, you would have to write your entire paper again, and how you tried to erase something but all it left was a smudge, and I felt grateful and happy that we didn’t have to go through all that. I never had to use a typewriter, but my mother told me all about it, and it sounded like absolute hell.
I realized that there was another good thing that I got from Steven – I was going to learn not to take anything for granted anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Axel came over that evening and made dinner with me, while the girls were in the living room playing video games. Rina had informed me, when she got home, that James had, indeed, went around and told everyone that he lied about him and Abby.
“And Abby is more popular than me now, mom,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about how brave she was for not pushing James into a locker.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Whatever. She’ll be back with the geek squad before the end of next week.”
Rina, I gathered, was a queen bee at the school. I hoped and prayed, however, that she wouldn’t become a full-on “mean girl.” I was one of the girls who was tormented by my own mean girls in middle-school and high-school, and I wasn’t going to put up with her attitude if she became one of them. I was going to have to monitor it.
Axel smiled. “All’s well that ends well, huh mate?” he asked while he chopped up lettuce, baby carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes for our salad. He opened up a bag of croutons and poured them on top.
“I guess. I’m still astounded, absolutely astounded, that kids are having sex at that age, though.” I shook my head. “I assumed that I was going to get at least a few years leeway before I had to worry about that, but I guess I’m not so lucky.”
I was standing over a pot of red sauce that I was stirring. I put some on a small spoon, blew on it, and stuck it in Axel’s mouth. “What do you think?”
He nodded. “I think it needs some more garlic,” he said. “But, then again, I always think that everything needs more garlic, so what do I know?”
“What, indeed?” I smiled and took out three more cloves of garlic and pressed them with the back of a knife, which took off their peels. I put them all through a press and stirred some more. “So,” I said. “I think I might be getting closer to finding out who might have had a motive to kill Father Kennedy and hurt Jack at the same time.”
“Oh?” Axel asked me. “Tell me, lass, your theory.”
I took the spaghetti I had ready to go and poured it into the boiling water. “Father Kennedy knew that Jackson was murdering kids, but he never told anybody about it. He was bound by privilege not to divulge what Jackson told him in the confessional booth.”
“Ah, I see. I see. Very good. But why wait until now to kill Father Kennedy?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. I-“ I blinked my eyes. “I wonder if it just became known that Father Kennedy knew all this.” I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Do you think that Father Kennedy might have went to a confessional of his own? Does a priest confess his sins to other priests? Maybe this was something that he held in all these years, and he couldn’t hold it in any longer, so he went to his own confessional and spilled all?”
I could feel my excit
ement suddenly build. This was something that I was going to have to figure out.
“Lass,” Axel said. “So, he confesses his sins to another priest. And that other priest has the same restriction – he can’t very well turn Father Kennedy in, because this would have also been in a confessional. Right? And you’re going to tell me that this priest, whoever it was, killed him over this confessional? And how does Jack fit into this whole scenario?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t say that I had it all worked out. I just think that there might be something to this. Because you’re right – Father Kennedy has known this secret about Jackson for all these years, and he was just now murdered. And whoever it was also had to know that Jack was partially responsible for finding the victims for Jackson, and that Jack was suffering from DID. It does all seem very far-fetched, but if I could find somebody who somehow found out recently that Father Kennedy was privy to this information and this person also knew Jack, then maybe that is our killer.”
It was a far-fetched theory, but it was better than no theory at all, which is what I was working with previously.
“Well,” Axel said. “You can start with that Father Mathews that you told me about. The one who was at that basketball game. If anybody would know who Father Kennedy might have confessed his sins to, it would be him. Right?”
“Right.”
I stirred the sauce some more. Something was still nagging at me. There was just something about those tattoos that I saw on Father Mathews’ arms that was significant. And I just couldn’t place it.
I went over to chop the mushrooms when I stopped in the middle and looked up.
“Mick said something about Father Mathews’ tattoos,” I said, squinting. “Oh, god, yes, yes, yes. He did. I was in the car with him, taking him to court, and he mentioned Father Mathews having tattoos and that he thought that Father Mathews was smoking hot.”
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