Chaser_A Jinx Ballou Novel

by Dharma Kelleher

  45

  I stared at him, not really interested in hearing the ugly details about his previous relationship with Sadie. “Look, you two had a bad breakup. I get it. Ancient history. No big deal.”

  “That’s not it. We didn’t have a bad breakup. In fact, we never dated.”

  “Then what?”

  “For starters, my name wasn’t always Conor Doyle.”

  “What was it?”

  “Liam Patrick O’Callaghan.”

  “I don’t understand. Why—”

  “Because when I was seventeen, I did something stupid.”

  “We all do stupid shit when we’re seventeen.”

  “Not like this.”

  I set down my beer and took his hand. “Conor . . . er, Liam . . . what should I call you?”

  “Conor.”

  “Conor, what happened?”

  Waves of anger and grief radiated from him so intensely I braced myself for what he might say or do. His hand was trembling so much I thought he’d drop his beer bottle.

  I put my hand on his. “Does this have something to do with when your sister was killed?”

  His eyes pricked with tears. His mouth opened, but no sound came out at first. “Yes.” It was more of a croak than a word.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

  “I was five when my da moved our family from Dublin to a small village in Northern Ireland called Gillygooley. He was a member of the Provisional IRA, using his skills as an electrician to wire bombs.”

  “Holy shit.” My chest tightened. “Why?”

  “Most people in the States think the Troubles were about claiming Northern Ireland for the Republic. But that was only a small part of it. Catholics in Northern Ireland faced a lot of brutality and oppression, much like trans people do today in this country. Bad enough the government treated us like second-class citizens, limiting our rights to vote. But loyalist paramilitary organizations like the UVF often attacked Catholics’ homes, businesses, and individuals. Several of my childhood friends were murdered.”

  “Jesus! Couldn’t the police do anything to stop the violence?”

  “The RUC, which was the police force there, usually turned a blind eye to it. Sometimes they were behind it.” He picked at a knot in the wooden table. “That was why the IRA turned to violence themselves. We were fighting for our survival.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I was thirteen when I learned my da worked for the IRA. I wanted to get involved myself, to do my part to protect Catholics. But my father refused. Didn’t want me getting hurt or going to prison.”

  “But you did, anyway.”

  “Eventually. In 1998, it was looking like the Troubles were coming to an end. The Provisional IRA signed an agreement with the Brits early that year ending discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “It was. But that summer, the Orange Order, an organization with loyalist paramilitary ties, staged one of their ‘marches’ through Catholic neighborhoods,” he said with air quotes. “They weren’t really marches. More like terrorist attacks on innocent people. The government tried to ban the march, but the Order rallied thousands of loyalist thugs armed with guns and petrol bombs. Three children were burned alive by loyalist bombs.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Many members of the Provisional IRA, including my da, broke off to form a new organization, the Real IRA. If the loyalists weren’t going to abide by the cease-fire, neither would they. They stole a car, and my da wired it with five hundred pounds of explosives. Another volunteer drove it to Omagh, a town not far from where we lived. It was a Sunday afternoon, and there were a lot of people shopping along Market Street where the bomb car was parked.”

  His eyes grew distant, lost in the horror of his youth. My heart was breaking. I didn’t want to hear more, but I had to know. And at some level, he needed to confess.

  “Since I was seventeen, my da allowed me to get involved. My job was to call the media and give them a general location where the bomb was, supposedly to minimize civilian casualties. But somehow I was told the wrong intersection. As a result, the RUC unknowingly herded people toward the bomb car instead of away from it.”

  I instinctively released his hand and covered my mouth in shock. “Oh my God.”

  Like a piece of paper set alight, his face disintegrated into a knot of agony. “I showed up at the scene moments later, expecting a glorious victory. Instead, it was a bloody nightmare. Body parts strewn everywhere. The air was filled with screams and sirens. It was no victory. It was an abomination. And it was my fault. I had made this happen.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. This was a man whom I loved, and yet I was repulsed by what he had done.

  “As I walked through the carnage, I got a call from my mum telling me to come quick to the hospital. My sister, Bernie, had been in town, shopping for a friend who was ill.”

  He began bawling. “When I got there . . . God almighty . . . the floors were slick with blood. They were so overcapacity, people lay dying in hallways. And Bernadette, my sweet, generous big sister, who had a heart big as the moon . . . they’d tried to save her, but she’d lost too much blood. Her face was so mangled, I barely recognized her.”

  He buried his head in his arms and sobbed uncontrollably. I laid my head on his shoulders.

  Over the next hour, he confessed that a friend of his father’s had helped him get papers under the name Conor Doyle and get the money to travel to the States, where he started a new life.

  “Sadie knew about this?”

  Conor sighed. “I used to work for Aaron Levinson, Sadie’s father. She was working as his office manager at the time. I learned he was giving kickbacks to attorneys who hired him to bail out their clients, which is, of course, illegal. When I confronted Aaron about it, he told me they knew about my past.”

  “How’d he find out?” I asked.

  “Some documentary the BBC did on the bombing. Aaron recognized me in one of the photos they showed of potential suspects. He made it clear that if I turned him in over the kickbacks, he’d notify INS and have me deported. I would’ve been turned over to Scotland Yard to face charges. We made a pact to keep quiet about each other’s crimes. I quit working for Aaron. A few days later, Sadie called and asked why I quit. I told her to ask her father. That was the last time I spoke to them.”

  I found myself wrestling with feelings of betrayal. And yet it was obvious he had suffered for his crimes. I didn’t know whether to scream at him or comfort him. “So you and Sadie were never a couple, huh?”

  “We shagged a few times. But she’s a wee bit posh for my tastes.”

  “Why are you only telling me now after we’ve been dating a year? I told you I was trans before we were ever romantic.”

  “I should have. I’m sorry. I’d like to think I’m not that same person anymore. Liam O’Callaghan died the day I saw my sister’s body in the hospital. He was a naïve kid, in the middle of a war he didn’t understand.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” I confessed. “I thought I did, but this . . .”

  “I’ve worked hard to become a good man, the man who loves you.” His gaze met mine. Our fingers intertwined.

  “I love you too,” I whispered, though the words felt empty. My mind struggled to wrap itself around the horrors of Conor’s past and the fact that he’d waited until now to tell me. Could I love such a man? If I had grown up as he did, would I have done the same thing? I couldn’t count the number of times I’d wanted to plant a bomb in some transphobic politician’s office. But to kill innocent civilians? It was all so much to take in.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I suggested when I’d drained the last drops of my beer. I wasn’t feeling much pain. The ice in the pack was melted.

  “I’ll help ya up the stairs.”

  “That’s okay. I can manage on my own.”

  I hobbled up to the loft, with Conor behind me, where we found a double
bed. I stripped off my vest, wincing. The mushroomed .40-caliber slug was still embedded in the layers of Kevlar. I dug it out and pitched it across the room.

  When Conor helped me off with my shirt, I found a bull’s-eye-like bruise the size of a grapefruit under my left breast—a swirl of dark crimson around a black, fingernail-sized spot of dried blood.

  “Oy, that’s a nasty bruise,” Conor said, kneeling down shirtless in front of me. A similar bruise darkened his upper chest. “How’s mine?”

  “Ugly. How’s it feel?”

  “Hurts, but don’t think it broke anything. A twenty-two doesn’t do near the damage of a forty cal at point-blank range.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He held out the rolled ACE bandage. “Ya want me to wrap your chest?”

  I shook my head. “Rather not.”

  “Suit yourself.” He set it on a nearby table. “If ya change your mind, let me know.”

  “Good thing it was a twenty-two rifle,” I mumbled, remembering my shock when he’d been shot. “Most hunting rounds go through Kevlar like butter.”

  “Aye! Suppose we should count our lucky stars.”

  “Too tired to count. Just want sleep.” I lay on the bed, my head swimming with the beer. Our confrontation with Holly and the Delgados played on a loop in my mind, mixed with horrific scenes from Conor’s confession. I tried to will it all to turn out differently. It never did. Somewhere in the early hours, I drifted into a restless sleep.

  46

  I woke around nine the next morning to the aroma of fresh coffee drifting up from the kitchen. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings. Log cabin. Middle of fucking nowhere. I hated waking up in a strange bed.

  My mouth was dry as cotton. My head felt achy and hungover. My rib cage burned, but breathing seemed easier. Maybe I hadn’t broken a rib after all. Still, it was another morning without my hormones. God help whoever got in my way. I was out for blood.

  I pulled myself into a seated position. My clothes and gear lay in a pile in the corner of the dimly lit loft. I had only the vaguest memory of taking them off. Too much beer, no doubt. I remembered Conor’s confession, and the empty, unsettled feelings returned.

  I shuffled down the stairs, wearing only my shirt and underwear, following the savory aromas of breakfast. Conor stood over the stove, cooking.

  “Morning, love. How ya feeling?”

  “Like I lost a fight to a heavyweight champion.” I leaned my head on his shoulder, clinging to the memory of the man I thought I knew.

  “Hungry? Managed to scrounge some eggs and bacon. Coffee’s by the sink.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.” I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I needed the fuel if we were going to catch Holly. I kissed him on the ear and sat at the table. “Any ideas on getting out of this little prison in paradise?”

  “Now that the sun’s up, I’m hoping we can locate your keys. If not, we can break the window and hot-wire your lorry.”

  “It has a chipped key. Makes hot-wiring it a bit difficult.”

  “Ah, yeah. Not like the good old days, huh? When I was a lad in Ireland . . . never mind.”

  He brought over a plate with a couple of over-easy eggs, their yolks a pale pink. The bacon wasn’t as crisp as I liked it, but I didn’t complain. The coffee was strong and helped pull me out of my funk.

  “After breakfast, I’ll climb the hill,” I said. “Try to get a phone signal.”

  He nodded as he lay into his own breakfast. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled on my gear and stepped outside. The air was chilly and damp with the scent of evergreens. It felt good. Climbing the hill helped warm me up.

  By the time I reached the summit, my heart was hammering in my chest, and I was gasping for breath as if I had just run a sprint. At six thousand feet above sea level, the air was quite a bit thinner than the low desert in Phoenix. My rib cage burned as I tried to avoid breathing too deeply.

  I checked my phone. I had one bar of connectivity. The battery was at two percent, enough for one call. I was about to dial Becca when the phone rang. I tried to push it off to voicemail but hit the answer button by mistake. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Ballou, I need an update,” a very stern Sadie Levinson said. “We’re down to the wire here. Do you have Holly Schwartz in custody?”

  “Not exactly. We had her, but she gave us the slip.”

  “Again? I thought you were better than Fiddler.”

  “We are. I mean, I am. Unfortunately, she’s got two guys helping her. But we’ll bring her in. I swear it.” I had no idea where Holly was, but I wasn’t going to tell Sadie that.

  “You keep saying ‘we.’ You’re working with Conor, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m working with Conor.”

  “After I specifically told you not to.”

  “Look, lady, you want this girl brought in or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me do my job and leave my personnel choices to me.”

  “You want to split your bounty with Mr. Doyle, so be it. But unless Ms. Schwartz is in custody by the end of the day, I will no longer require your services. Are we cl—?”

  The call ended. My phone was powering down. Out of juice. I hoped Conor hadn’t used up all of his phone’s battery while looking for the keys last night. I slogged back down the hill, shivering from the chill. If we couldn’t find my keys, it would be a long-ass walk back to civilization.

  I found Conor sitting on the cabin’s front steps, my keys dangling from his index finger.

  “Where’d you find them?” I asked.

  “They landed in a patch of prickly pear. Managed to fish them out with a twig.”

  “Thank God! Now for the love of Xena, can we get the hell out of here? We have a fugitive to catch and not a helluva lot of time to do it. Sadie’s about to have kittens over us not having Holly in custody.”

  “She called?”

  “Just as I got to the top of the hill. My phone died in the middle of the conversation.”

  “No worries, love. I think I know where Holly may be headed.”

  47

  “So where are we going?” I asked once I was again behind the wheel of the Gray Ghost, my phone plugged into the charger. The narrow, rutted dirt road was much easier to navigate in the daylight.

  “When I was walking around to the back door before we made entry, I caught bits of the Delgados’ conversation. They were talking about getting new IDs.”

  “They mention where from?”

  “Picardo.” Conor beamed.

  Picardo was the top producer of fake IDs in Phoenix. No matter what the state or federal governments did to try to make passports, drivers’ licenses, and other identification hack proof, Picardo somehow had a way to duplicate them.

  Over the years, Conor had developed an arrangement with Picardo. He’d help us track down our fugitives who used his services, and we wouldn’t turn him in to the law. So far it had worked well for everyone involved except our bail jumpers.

  When we got back into Prescott and within range of cell towers, my phone rang. Kirsten. Shit! The meeting with the FBI. I sent it to voicemail and looked over at Conor. “We’re going to be in big shit, dude.”

  Conor nodded and placed a call of his own. When he hung up, he said, “Good news. Picardo says a woman and a man matching Holly and Richie’s description showed up at his place this morning, asking for two complete sets of IDs. Passports, credit cards, birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, and a digital paper trail to boot. New names are David and Olivia García. They’re due to pick up the new IDs day after tomorrow.”

  “Day after tomorrow? That’s no good. We need them today, or the bond defaults.”

  “That’s what I told Picardo. He’ll see if he can get them in this afternoon.”

  I stared out at the serene hilly grassland around us, which contrasted with the maelstrom of concerns and emotions battering my psyche. Losing out on this bounty
now seemed the least of our worries. Missing this meeting with the feds could mean charges and prison. For a trans woman, that could easily be a death sentence. It could also mean they’d discover Conor’s true identity and deport him overseas. While I was still wrestling with my thoughts on his past, I wasn’t ready to lose him.

  By one o’clock, we were hitting the outskirts of metro Phoenix. Conor’s phone rang. He spoke to the caller for a few minutes and hung up.

  “Picardo talked to Richie. Told them he bumped them up on the schedule. They’ll be at Picardo’s at three.”

  “Think they’ll suspect a setup?”

  Conor shrugged. “With these people, I don’t know what to think. Holly’s a clever girl, no doubt. But they’re desperate. Ya heard them in the cabin.”

  I glanced at the clock. “Three o’clock gives us two hours. I could really use a shower and a change of clothes.”

  “You and me both.”

  Traffic was light coming down the Black Canyon Freeway, though it slowed when we reached Glendale Avenue. I turned off onto Thomas Road a few exits later. When I pulled up in front of my house, my phone rang. It was Becca.

  “You get your fugitive?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied. “But we’re closing in.”

  “I’ve been tracking credit cards belonging to your buddy, Christopher Delgado.”

  “And?”

  “He just bought a bunch of tickets.”

  “What kind of tickets?”

  “Multiple plane tickets, train tickets, and bus tickets. Nearly twenty total. All in pairs in the name of David and Olivia García, each leaving from Phoenix but going to different destinations.”

  “Why different destinations?” I thought about it a second. “He’s trying to throw us off the trail.”

  “That would be my guess. They’re harder to catch if you don’t know where they’re going.”

  “What are the destinations?”

  “Plane flights are headed to Honduras, New York, and Toronto. Train tickets show destinations as Dallas, Philly, and DC. Buses are headed to El Paso, Salt Lake City, and San Ysidro, California.”