by Sydney Bauer
More silence, as the cold clarity of Chris’s reasoning hit home.
‘Marshall, on the other hand, has proof of my adulterous relationship, he has the curse-covered satchel found in Marilyn’s apartment and he has my telephone records showing I tried desperately to reach Marilyn on the day of her death. He made sure my involvement in Lorraine Stankovic’s death was made admissible, which means he’ll have proof that my mother used her contacts and her chequebook to get me out of a very serious jam, which he’ll then use to show pattern when it comes to my paying off Marilyn to get her out of my life in an effort to advance my political career.’ Chris was on a roll and it was making David sick to his stomach.
‘Finally, Marshall has my visit to Marilyn’s apartment giving me the opportunity to take back the money, he has the lies I told to McNally on that very first day at the 3rd Precinct and at the morgue, he has evidence that I have a propensity to violence because of the altercation with that thug here at County, and . . . and . . . he has that goddamned fucking shoe.’
‘Chris,’ David began. ‘I—’
‘No, DC,’ Chris interrupted him. ‘You and I are smart men. We may have played out our legal careers on opposite sides of the fence, but we both know that I am fucked. The only positive in all this is that my case is playing out now, instead of a few years ago when capital punishment was still on the table, because then I would be facing death by lethal injection, instead of a life behind bars.’
Chris collapsed back in his chair, his anger making way for despair at the complete futility of his case. Tears started to track silently down his face even though his body showed no other signs of crying, as if he had given up making the effort, as if he had been milked dry.
And in that moment, David knew Sara and Arthur had been right. Marilyn was gone and nothing they could do or say would bring her back. This was about saving Chris no matter what the cost to Marilyn’s memory, and so David placed his hand on Chris’s forearm and said, ‘There’s one other option, Chris – you’re forgetting the two pieces of evidence that act in our favour. The evidence of rape and the still unidentified DNA from under her fingernails – no matter what, they prove someone else was with Marilyn on the night of her death.’
‘But we have no way of finding him,’ said Chris, his head down.
‘Then we paint a picture that he was one of many, and that Marilyn . . .’ David swallowed, unable to say it.
Chris looked up. David knew this strategy must have crossed his mind, but the fact that David was voicing it made it all the more deplorable.
‘You want to go into court and paint Marilyn as a slut, despite the fact that we know she was raped before she was killed? You want to tell the world she was a nothing better than a prostitute, a goddamned whore who spread herself between a married politician and any other john who was willing to—’
David knew there was no avoiding it, so he cut his friend short. ‘It might be the only way, Chris. At the very least it will create doubt in the jurors’ minds – we don’t know the identity of this mystery rapist, but if we can convince them that he was one of many, that Marilyn put herself at risk every time she picked up a guy at that nightclub she worked at, or when she was out drinking herself into a stupor . . . ?’
But Chris was shaking his head. ‘No, I won’t do that to her, DC. And even if I wanted to it wouldn’t work. The jury would need to see these men. We’d need to throw as many lovers as we could in front of them on that witness stand and convince them that she lived her life like a tramp.’
‘We may have one,’ David said then, his heart stinging at the words.
Chris’s brow knotted. ‘No we don’t, Marilyn did not sleep around.’
‘Not in recent times, Chris, but she did once – years ago – which is why you ended up sleeping with Rebecca.’
It had been decades since they’d spoken about it. In fact, David recalled, they had not really spoken about it, even back then.
‘You want to unearth the guy who slept with Marilyn when we were in our final year of college?’
‘I know it’s a long shot, Chris, but if this guy will come to the party, we can use his testimony and back it up with evidence of Marilyn’s drinking problem, her suspension at work. If we try hard enough we can do it, Chris. As much as I hate to say it, Marilyn being who she was, her reputation was there to be ruined; even she knew that, all those years ago.’
But Chris was shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘But this could be our only chance, Chris.’ David’s frustration was all-encompassing. ‘Why won’t you even consider it?’
‘Because your arguments are tenuous at best, because this has a ten per cent chance of working, and most of all, because enough is enough.’ Chris curled his hands into fists. ‘How many lives has this thing destroyed, DC? How many hearts has it broken? Marilyn’s, mine, Rebecca’s, Connor’s and the twins, Jack Delgado’s, Mike’s, yours? No, the chances of this working are too remote. I won’t drag another innocent man and his family into this mess on those odds David, last-ditch effort or not.’
‘He slept with your girl almost twenty years ago, Chris. Maybe he’ll be okay with coming forward, and even if he’s not, you don’t have any obligation to protect him.’
‘Don’t I, DC?’
David saw it in his expression then, the look of pure defiance. And finally he thought he understood. ‘It was Mike. He told me it wasn’t, but it must have been. Mike slept with her just before he entered the priesthood. Maybe that’s what prompted him to take his vows – when Marilyn went back to you.’
But Chris was shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t Mike. This man was a good man, I am guessing he still is, but he was married and . . .’ Chris hesitated before looking at David once again. ‘You’re my friend, David,’ he said. ‘Probably the best friend I’ve ever had. So when I say “no”, understand that I make this decision not just for myself and the man I hope I am, but for the woman I loved and for you.’
It was as if someone switched on a light – a harsh, cold, unforgiving light that explained everything, before sending David’s entire world crashing down around him.
‘It was Sean,’ he said.
Chris did not contradict him.
‘My brother slept with your girlfriend and shot all our lives to hell.’
85
His head was hot, full, like too much blood was pumping into the veins around his brain. The light was harsh, strong, so much so that it hurt his eyes. He grappled around the glove box for his sunglasses, but he couldn’t find them and the entire contents of the compartment fell out and onto the car floor. He was driving one-handed, the filthy junkyards holding the skeletal remains of used-up eighteen wheelers and bulldozers slipping past him in a blur. He could think of nothing but getting home. It was quarter to ten on a Sunday morning and he knew exactly where his brother would be.
Sean had been avoiding him. David had not seen him since his return to Newark a little over two weeks ago. But he usually picked up their mom for Sunday morning mass at Saint Stephen’s, while his wife Teresa and their three kids took their station wagon and met them there. David suspected that this Sunday, unlike the previous one when Sean had waited in the car out front, that his brother would venture inside when he saw David’s Land Cruiser wasn’t parked in the drive.
The sun disappeared behind a cloud – a big black cumulus that promised rain and lots of it. But David didn’t give a crap about the weather or anything else as he jerked the wheel to his left and did a U-turn to park behind Sean’s two-seater utility. The truck was spotless – probably because Sean cleaned it every Saturday in preparation for driving their mother to mass. Sean’s dedication to their mom was usually a comfort to David, but this morning it was making him sick.
He was in the kitchen in seconds.
‘David,’ Sara looked at her watch. Lauren was in a highchair at the far end of the table, chewing on a cracker that was smeared all over her face. ‘You’re back early. Did you talk t
o Chris?’ Her eyes slipped sideways toward Sean who was drinking coffee at the table to the right of Lauren. And so she moved diplomatically forward, lowering her voice to say, ‘Do you want to go upstairs so we can talk about it?’
‘Where’s Mom?’ he asked of Sara while looking directly at Sean.
‘She’s upstairs, getting ready for church. Sean is going to drive her.’
‘Not today he isn’t.’
Sara’s gaze went from one brother to the other, and she obviously saw the confusion in Sean’s eyes. ‘You want me to take her?’ she asked David.
David knew it was best his mom wasn’t around to see or hear what was about to go down. The genie was out of the bottle and there was no shoving it back in.
‘Yes,’ David replied, before turning once more toward his brother. ‘Then you and me are going outside.’
‘You got something you want to say to me, DC?’ Sean finally responded.
‘I don’t want to do this in front of Mom. But I will if I have to.’
‘What’s wrong?’ said Patty Cavanaugh, now standing in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a pale blue summer dress, her hair was down and she would have looked quite beautiful had not her pale green eyes been shadowed with worry. ‘I said, what’s wrong?’ she asked again as she moved into the kitchen proper. ‘Sean?’ She turned to her elder son.
‘It’s okay, Mom, DC and I have something we need to discuss. Sara has offered to drive you to church.’ He turned to Sara. ‘Tell Teresa I’ll be along shortly.’
Patty looked to David. ‘David?’
‘It’s okay, Mom. We just need to—’
‘Patty,’ interrupted Sara, now scooping Lauren from her highchair and brushing off the crumbs. ‘It’s almost ten. You’re going to be late.’
Patty Cavanaugh said nothing, merely looked from one son to the other. Her face was contorted with concern, but there was a sense of inevitability in her eyes, as if she knew this confrontation was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
‘Make sure you’re there before communion,’ she said to Sean, before grabbing her keys from the kitchen counter and following Sara out the door.
Sean rolled up his sleeves and stood from the table. He met David’s eye before tilting his head slightly to the left – a gesture David took to mean he was ready and willing to go at it.
David threw his keys on the kitchen counter before following Sean down the corridor and past the family room – a burst of thunder shaking the house as Sean pushed through the wire-screen door and down the back stairs.
‘What the fuck is this about?’ said Sean, placing himself dead centre in the patchy Cavanaugh backyard. The space was filled with memories, most good but some not so, the reminiscence fed by the smells of the caliper trees and bluegrass.
‘You’re a fucking hypocrite is what this is about.’
‘And you’re a fucking nutcase. Where in the hell do you get off worrying Mom like that?’
David ignored his last question, taking three steps toward him. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know,’ he repeated, this time louder. ‘All this time you’ve been calling Chris the adulterer, all this time you’ve been sitting on your fucking high horse pontificating to me and anyone else who does or doesn’t care to listen. But you’re full of shit, Sean. You’re my big brother and you’re a fucking fraud.’
David felt the heat between them then, as the humidity rose and the clouds advanced and Sean Cavanaugh – the boy, the man he had, despite it all, looked up to for most of his life, stood tensed, speechless before him.
‘Does Teresa know?’ asked David, taking another step forward.
The veins in Sean’s arms stood up around his muscles, the sweat on his brow now thick.
‘Did you ever tell her, or have you carried this dirty little secret around for years?’ David went on. ‘Why did you do it, Sean? I thought Marilyn was beneath you? Or maybe that was what turned you on in the first place – the fact that she was beautiful but had that whole slutty thing going on.’
BAM.
David barely saw it coming. Sean’s right fist was up and slicing across his jaw. David hit the grass but was up in seconds, this time pummelling his brother in a rugby tackle across the lawn, the pair of them landing in the far southern corner where the trees hung low and the grass refused to grow.
‘Come on then,’ panted Sean. ‘You want a piece of me, you got it. You’ve been dying to do this for years, little brother, so here’s your chance.’ Sean’s fists were up and primed. ‘Show me what the fuck you’ve got.’
David was strong but Sean was stronger – a result of years of working on the docks and the fact that he was built more like their father. But David was angry, years of frustration exploding as he pulled back his right arm and swung hard, directly across Sean’s nose. The blood flew, spraying both brothers with red. Sean rolled to rise onto his knees, snapping to his feet to drag his little brother up before hitting him again, this time in the ribs.
‘You really want to do this, DC?’ he asked as David tried desperately to catch his breath. ‘You really want to spend the next hour beating each other senseless? Because I am up for it, little bro, if you need to do this – to make yourself feel better. But I gotta warn you, nothing I say or do will change things. We are what we are – chalk and cheese. Mom knows it, Dad knew it and we fucking know it too.’
‘You’re right,’ said David. ‘I don’t cheat on my wife.’
‘And I don’t have to justify my mistakes to you.’
And there it was – an admission. David didn’t know whether to cheer or cry.
‘We all make mistakes, Sean, it’s just that some of us are humble enough to acknowledge our own failings rather than preach perfection to others. Why did you do it?’ David straightened up, the two of them now exhaling plumes of steam and sweat as they circled each other in anticipation. ‘Did you actually like her or was it just some macabre attempt to stroke your own fucking ego? So you slept with Chris Kincaid’s girl – you took something that belonged to him. Did that make you feel big, Sean? Part of me hopes so, because the damage you caused has lasted decades, may have even led to her death.’
Sean lifted his chin and their identical green eyes met. ‘Chris Kincaid killed her. That has nothing to do with me.’
‘He didn’t do it, Sean. It was a kid from Saint Stephen’s.’
Sean’s jaw twitched, just a little.
‘The boy was after the money – the 100K Gloria Kincaid offered Marilyn in an attempt to pay her off. But Marilyn wouldn’t take it. She was too proud, too decent. And now she’s rotting in some unkempt state cemetery because her life didn’t go the way it was supposed to. She belonged with Chris, Sean – and Chris belonged with her.’
Sean Cavanaugh took a breath as he hung his head and wiped the blood from his face. He then wiped his hand on his previously crisp blue checked shirt – the smear cutting a swathe of crimson across his chest.
‘I didn’t do it to hurt her,’ he said, still not meeting David’s eye. ‘She came to me, she was upset. She said Kincaid was going to dump her the moment he got back from college. She told me his mother looked down on her. She said she used to like me and she regretted the choices she’d made and . . . she said she needed to be loved, just once, by someone other than Chris Kincaid. She said she didn’t know how else to hurt him – and I slept with her to help her in her cause.’
‘You hated him that much?’ asked David, lowering his voice slightly. ‘Jesus, Sean, you barely knew the guy.’
‘I knew what he represented. I knew what he was.’
‘It wasn’t Chris’s fault that he was born a Kincaid. I know what Gloria did to Mom, but do you think this would have been what she wanted? You didn’t need to avenge her, Sean. Mom is stronger than you think.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you, DC?’
‘You don’t think I understand how tough it was for Mom?’
Sean was shaking his head. ‘You ever wonder why it wa
s so hard for her to watch Dad go and work for them like he did? Didn’t you ever ask yourself why he quit before the job was done?’
David felt it then, a burning in his belly that told him he was about to open a box he didn’t want to look into.
‘Daniel Kincaid was gay, DC, a closet homosexual who stayed with his wife to further his goddamned career. They were having an affair, David – our father and Gloria Kincaid. They were sleeping together at the same time that Mom fell pregnant with you.’
‘I . . .’ David began, his head now spinning. ‘That’s crazy. Dad would never . . .’ But David would never have thought his brother would have slept with Marilyn Maloney. ‘No,’ he argued, not even wanting to consider it. ‘You’re wrong. Daniel Kincaid fathered a son – the same year I was born.’
Sean met his eye.
The box opened.
And David Cavanaugh saw it all.
‘You think Chris is Dad’s son?’
‘I’ve known it since I was a kid, DC. I was old enough to see it – Mom’s pain, her grief, Dad’s regret. And besides, Chris Kincaid looks more like our father than I do.’
An old memory came back to David then: ‘I thought you had the hots for David’s brother,’ Chris had said to Marilyn at that school dance all those years ago. ‘I do,’ Marilyn had smiled. ‘But he’s not here and you look even more like Matt Dillon than he does.’
‘Chris is my half-brother,’ said David.
Sean nodded – the anger in his face replaced by a sense of inevitability. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’ve been attacking one brother while trying to defend the other.’ Sean shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, DC,’ he said, moving forward to look his brother in the eye. ‘I thought I could save you from knowing.’