by David Hosp
He was in a panic when he woke up. ‘Sally!’ he called. ‘You’re going to be late for school!’ He’d run out into the living room, where Sally was sitting in a T-shirt and leggings. ‘You’re not ready,’ he said.
‘You serious?’
‘What?’
‘It’s Saturday.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Is it?’
‘Yeah.’
He rubbed his face, felt the stubble. At least he wouldn’t have to shave today. ‘I have to go to the office,’ he told her. ‘You should get dressed.’
‘You’re going to work today?’
‘I need to make sure there are no emergencies, at least. Besides, I can’t sit here doing nothing. I’ll go crazy.’
‘Fine,’ she’d said.
Lissa and Kozlowski were already at the office when they arrived. ‘You didn’t need to come in,’ Lissa said. ‘I can keep things moving here.’
‘You expect me just to stay in my apartment?’
Lissa relented. They all sat and talked for a while. It was a half hour into the conversation when Sally brought up the issue of Finn’s potential inheritance.
‘I’m sure I won’t get anything,’ he reiterated.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Lissa said. ‘Under some circumstances, if he didn’t affirmatively disown you in the will, you may be entitled to a cut of the estate.’
‘Seriously?’
‘It was on the bar exam.’
Finn thought about it for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t take it,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ Lissa asked. ‘You’re entitled. The asshole ditched you when you were a baby. He killed your mother.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Finn pointed out. ‘Not to mention the fact that she ditched me, too, remember?’
‘All the more reason you should be entitled to something.’
Finn shook his head. ‘I didn’t need his money growing up, I don’t need it now. Taking his money would be like admitting that I couldn’t make it on my own. I did make it on my own. Fuck him.’
No one said anything for a little while. When it was starting to get uncomfortable, Sally piped up, ‘That’s right. Fuck him.’ Lissa chuckled.
The phone rang and Lissa picked it up. After a moment, she put the caller on hold, looked over at Finn. ‘It’s Mark over at Huron Labs. Did you order a rush on some lab tests?’
Finn nodded. ‘Not that it matters anymore. It was just some insurance to make sure the cops didn’t put the fix in on the Buchanan paternity test.’ Lissa and Kozlowski looked at Finn with curiosity, but he ignored them as he picked up his extension. ‘Hey Mark,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I should’ve called you sooner; I don’t need the tests anymore. If you ran them, that’s fine, just bill me.’
He listened for a moment. ‘No, I don’t need them,’ he repeated. ‘I already –’
Mark had cut him off, already giving him the information. Finn leaned back in his chair. ‘Say that again, Mark?’ he said. He figured he must have misheard. Mark repeated the information.
Finn sat there, staring straight ahead. ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’ Mark said that he had double checked the results. The receiver slipped from Finn’s hand, cracked off the desk and bounced to the floor. Finn didn’t even notice. He closed his eyes.
‘What is it?’ Lissa demanded. Everyone in the room was staring at Finn now, worried expressions on their faces. ‘What?’
Finn shook his head back and forth, trying to make sense of it all. ‘It can’t be,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘It just can’t be.’
The drive took three hours. There was midday traffic going through Cambridge, and more out by Alewife. That was to be expected, though in his mental state it was almost enough to send Finn into a rage.
Kozlowski had offered to go with him. Insisted, in fact. So had Sally and Lissa. He refused the company, though. He needed to be alone. He needed to think, to try to put the pieces together.
It had been less than a week since his last trip up to New Hampshire, and yet the landscape on the drive north was severely altered. The leaves were down, now; gone were the beautiful explosions of reds and oranges. A few pockets of dusty brown foliage still clung desperately to the angular limbs of younger trees, but for the most part the battle was over and the war had been lost. The place now felt cold; there was a sense of resignation that winter had arrived, and acceptance that it would last for another six months.
As he approached the highway sign for the exit leading to the Health Center he tensed. It was mid afternoon; the place would still be open. He’d thought of starting there, but realized it made little sense. If she was alive, she wouldn’t go there.
He drove on – two more exits, another ten miles. He pulled off the highway and followed the directions he’d printed out before he’d departed, through a small, quaint New England town like a thousand others. White clapboard houses lined the streets, set close upon the sidewalks and backed, often, by a river that ran just off the road. The town seemed trapped by the steep hills through which the river had carved a ribbon of flat ground over the millennia.
At the far end of the town, he pulled down a street into a wooded residential area of small houses. He drove slowly now, looking at the numbers that were only sporadically hung on the houses. It didn’t matter; he knew the house instantly without even seeing the number.
It was a small cottage on a corner lot. The leaves that had given up their fight on the trees’ limbs had invaded the yard, making it difficult to tell where the grass ended and the woods began. No one had yet taken a rake to the place to clean it up. It wasn’t clear to Finn that anyone ever would.
There was a car in the driveway, an ancient hatchback. The back was open, gaping wide like a miniature whale. Bags were stacked next to the car, and clothes on hangers were draped over the tailgate. Someone was clearly here.
The back door banged open, and there was a rustling in the overgrown shrubs that flanked the entryway. She walked around the corner, weary in her step, carrying an armload of clothes. Looking down, she made her way to the car, oblivious to the man sitting in the little MG watching her.
Finn got out of his car. When he slammed the door she looked up. For a moment Finn thought from her expression that she was going to run, but, of course, there was nowhere for her to go. They both knew that. So instead, she put the clothes on the ground. She just stood there for a moment, looking at him. Then slowly, reluctantly, she made her way over to him. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘There was no body,’ Finn said. ‘The man with the scar killed a lot of people, but he never hid the bodies. I couldn’t see why he would have hidden yours if he’d killed you. I figured that meant there was a chance you were still alive. And if you were, I figured there was a chance you’d come back when you read what happened in the papers.’
‘Only for a couple of hours,’ Shelly Tesco replied.
‘You found your daughter?’ Finn said. It was an educated guess.
She nodded. ‘He did. The man with the scar.’
‘How’d the reunion go? Have you met her yet?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I know where she is, though. She’s out in Ohio. I’m moving there, just to be close to her. Someday I’ll figure out a way to approach her. For now, I’m just glad to know she’s safe.’
Finn nodded. ‘That’s good.’
The rustling leaves filled the quiet between them. ‘You probably have some questions,’ she said at last.
‘And you probably have some answers,’ he replied.
‘Some. Not all.’
He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Some is a start.’
Long sat on a bench at the edge of Boston Common, staring at the kids playing on the grass. It was one of those perfect autumn days when the sun stabs through the New England sky with a clarity that can blind. Long closed his eyes and raised his face to the rays, trying to drink in the energy through his skin. It had been two days since he
last slept, and it didn’t feel as though rest would come any time soon. There was too much to do, and his thoughts were too cluttered and confused to relax.
It had all happened so fast. With the national media and the various different law enforcement branches hovering around the scene of Buchanan’s murder, the BPD had closed ranks quickly, eager to create the impression that the investigation into the Connor murder had been handled properly. By necessity, Long was praised by police brass from every microphone that could be commandeered. Overnight he had gone from pariah to star.
He didn’t like it.
What he liked even less, though, was the nagging feeling that he was missing something. The entire department was desperate to close the books on the investigation. No one questioned the shooting, and with all the players in the sad psycho-drama dead, there seemed little desire to figure out what exactly had happened. Long understood that, but the questions still nagged at him.
He felt the shadow cross his face. ‘How’d you find me?’ he asked.
‘Just a hunch,’ Racine said. ‘I figured hiding in plain sight was your only option.’
‘Got that right,’ he said.
‘Tough being a celebrity, is it?’
He opened his eyes, looked sideways at her as she sat next to him. ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want it.’
She nodded as she slipped her hand into his. ‘I know,’ she said. She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘At least your job is safe,’ she pointed out. ‘They’ve got no choice.’
‘For now,’ Long agreed. ‘It doesn’t change anything, really, though. I’m still an outcast.’
‘Maybe.’
They sat there for a while, neither of them talking. Finally he said, ‘Does it bother you?’
‘What?’
‘That we don’t know.’
‘Know what?’
‘What happened. Why it all went down the way it did. Don’t you want to know?’
Racine sat up and looked at him. ‘You mean with Buchanan?’
He nodded. ‘With all of it. Buchanan. McDougal. His son. Connor. All of it.’
‘What more is there to know? Buchanan was a dirty politician who was hooked up with McDougal’s mob. Connor knew enough about Buchanan to put him away on a couple of fronts, so one of them hired Coale to kill her. Seems pretty simple. You and the lawyer started pulling at the threads, and the whole thing fell apart.’
‘But why?’ Long said. ‘What made it fall apart? And what sent Coale on his killing spree?’
‘You said it yourself,’ Racine pointed out, ‘he was a psychopath. A killer. Maybe that’s all there is to it.’
‘Maybe,’ Long said. ‘But then why did he leave Finn alive?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She leaned back into him. ‘All I know is that we have a chance to put all this behind us. You have a chance to start over. Fresh slate.’ She squeezed his hand as she closed her eyes. ‘Isn’t that enough?’
He didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did, he spoke very quietly. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know yet.’
‘I don’t know who he was,’ Shelly Tesco said. They were sitting at the table in her kitchen. She had made coffee. The back door was open, and a breeze blew some leaves in onto the linoleum floor. She didn’t seem to care.
‘What happened?’
‘He came to find out about the file.’ She dipped her head as she looked at him. ‘Your file.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. When I first saw him, I thought he was going to kill me. He had a knife, and a look in his eye that seemed to have no mercy. He didn’t kill me, though, as you can tell. He said that if I told him what he wanted to know, he’d even help me. He told me he knew where my daughter was.’
‘How did he find her?’
‘He said he convinced the head of the agency that handled the adoption to give him the information.’
‘I’m guessing he could be pretty persuasive,’ Finn said.
She didn’t respond.
‘So, what happened?’ Finn asked.
She shrugged. ‘His information checked out, right down to the birth certificate. So I told him what he wanted to know.’
‘Which was?’
‘He wanted to know about you. He wanted to know about Elizabeth Connor. I told him what I found. When I was done, he told me to leave. He told me that people would be looking for me, and if they found out that I was alive, they would kill me. He told me where my daughter was and he gave me three minutes to pack. I tore through everything in my closets.’
‘And the bloody handprint on the bed?’
Shelly Tesco smiled shyly. ‘That was my fault. I was in such a hurry as I was packing that I slammed my finger in the dresser drawer. It bled like you wouldn’t believe, but I just wrapped it in a towel, got in the car and took off. He gave me some money.’
‘How did you know that you could come back?’
‘He told me to watch the news, read the papers. He said it would be obvious when things had come to a head. As long as I stayed away until that happened, he said I’d be fine. I’m still leaving though. It doesn’t feel safe here anymore. Even if it wasn’t for my daughter, I think I would want to get away.’ She got up and poured what was left of her coffee into the sink. ‘I need to leave,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’
Finn looked at her. ‘Do you still have my file?’
She was still and silent for a moment. Then she nodded slightly.
‘He didn’t take it with him?’
‘He said he had no use for it,’ she said. ‘He said you might come looking for it, and that I should give it to you.’
‘Will you do that?’ he asked. ‘And will you explain what it all means?’
She nodded again. ‘You deserve that, at least. Let me go get it.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
It was seven o’clock by the time Finn got back to Boston. He called Kozlowski and Lissa to tell them he was going to be later than he anticipated. They demanded to know what was happening, but he refused to say. ‘I need to deal with this myself,’ was the most he would offer. Lissa cursed a blue streak at him, but there was nothing she could do. Kozlowski said little over the phone. ‘I’m here if you need backup,’ was the extent of it. Finn told him he would keep that in mind.
It was almost November, and by the time Finn pulled across the Longfellow Bridge from Cambridge into Boston, night had fallen. The days would continue getting shorter for another two months. Finn found it depressing.
He guided the car around the traffic circle where Cambridge Street joins with Charles and spins off onto Storrow Drive. A group of homeless was gathered around the pharmacy across the street from Massachusetts General Hospital. It affected Finn to see such a pocket of poverty so close to one of the richest neighborhoods in the country.
He drove down Charles Street, past the bars and four-star restaurants. Halfway to Beacon Street and Boston Common, he turned left and headed two blocks up the hill to Louisburg Square.
The news crews that had staked out the house for most of the day had packed up and moved on, like vultures grown tired of a carcass picked clean. All that was left was the profusion of cardboard coffee cups and cigarette butts that were scattered around the Square. It looked as though an early snow had hit the area.
The police tape was gone, and the house had been, for the most part, restored to order. In all likelihood the office upstairs where the senator had actually been killed was still closed off, but with three witnesses to the killing it was unlikely that it would stay that way for long. After all, there was no mystery as to what happened as far as the authorities were concerned. There might be political fallout from Buchanan’s connection to McDougal, but now that they were both dead, there was no one toward whom the press could direct a righteous anger. Notwithstanding the need for the twenty-four-hour news stations to feed off tragedy, the story would die as soon as
another scandal came around. In a country so prone to violence, Finn figured that wouldn’t take long.
He walked up the front steps, rang the doorbell. No one answered. After a moment he rang again. It wasn’t until the third ring that there was any sign of life within the house. A voice called out, ‘Leave us alone!’
‘It’s Scott Finn!’ he shouted back.
He heard shuffling behind the door. It cracked open. Brooke Buchanan looked at him, frowning. ‘I thought the newspeople had come back,’ she said. It was not an apology; she didn’t seem much happier that it was Finn. ‘I told you, I’m not ready to deal with this,’ she said.
‘I’m not looking for you to be my sister right now,’ Finn said. ‘I have some questions I need to ask you.’
‘About what?’
He hesitated. He had no desire to talk to her on the steps of the house. ‘Can I come in?’
She frowned even more deeply, regarding him with suspicion.
‘It’s important,’ he said.
She relented and opened the door, stepping back to let him in. They stood there in the foyer, staring at each other. ‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to put you out, but I’ve been driving all day. Is there any chance I could have a glass of water?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Come with me.’ She led him back to the kitchen, pulled out a glass, filled it with tap water. ‘It’s been a really shitty couple of days,’ she said to him.
‘For me, too,’ he agreed. At that, her attitude softened. He took a long drink of the water, considering how to approach the young woman.
She started the conversation. ‘So? What’s so important that you needed to talk to me tonight?’
‘I wanted to know about the tests the police used to prove that you and I have the same father. Did you go in to the police to give them the DNA to test?’ Finn asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did.’
‘Whose idea was it?’
She stared at him. ‘I don’t understand what you’re asking.’