The Once and Future Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Then I’d better get you some coffee.”

  Flashing a quick smile as she tossed him his shirt, Lucy hurried from the room.

  The image of her standing in the doorway, with Elena in her arms, kept replaying itself over and over in his head as he drove to the station. If he had worried about her because of Ritchie’s murder, he was doubly so now that the accountant had been found. But without any hard evidence, it was difficult to get anyone in an official capacity within the department to authorize round-the-clock protection for her.

  He’d called Reed and asked him if he’d mind taking her to work. The man had told him not to worry. But Dylan was worried. Dylan knew this tag-team security system couldn’t go on indefinitely.

  Dylan turned off the thoroughfare, taking the street that eventually led him to the police department’s main building. Maybe he was too close to all this to realize that the danger might be more imagined on his part than real.

  There was no maybe about it, at least as far as being too close to the situation went. Even before he’d slept with Lucy last night, he’d done exactly what he always schooled himself not to do. He had lost his professional perspective.

  He’d lost a lot of things when it came to Lucy, he thought. The piece of tin he called his heart, for starters.

  Dylan forced himself to push thoughts of Lucy out of his head as he hurried up the stone steps leading into the modern-looking building that housed the precinct.

  The meeting was brief.

  Dental records had indeed confirmed the man’s identity. The Den of Thieves’ lost accountant was no longer lost. But what was lost was their edge and the inside information they had still been banking on.

  “So, where does this leave us?” Dylan wondered out loud after the captain had finished his briefing. He looked around at the three other men seated around the small conference table, all the men on the surveillance detail. Two men off regular detail were covering for them for the duration of the meeting.

  The captain cleared his throat. Newly transferred to his position, he appeared none-too-happy about the slow progression of events. “With a lot of video footage of the front of the restaurant, hearsay from a witness who can no longer raise his right hand to swear to tell the truth, so help him God, and not much else.”

  “What about Romano?” Alexander, who along with Hathaway made up one half of the other surveillance team that had been drafted, asked about their man on the inside. “Hasn’t he gotten anything?”

  Dylan had been out of touch the last half of yesterday. He listened for the answer, thinking the news couldn’t continue to be this bleak. With an inward start, he realized that Lucy’s optimism had to be rubbing off on him. There was no other reason for him to believe that the news could be anything but bleak.

  “Yeah, a rash from the wire he’s been wearing,” Watley quipped in frustration.

  The captain looked as disgusted as the rest of them. It was obvious to his men that he didn’t take having egg on his face well. “It looks like we might have to pack it in as far as the investigation goes.”

  A murmur of protest met his words.

  “We can’t quit now,” Dylan told his superior.

  The captain nodded toward Dylan’s partner. “Watley’s unfinished puzzle notwithstanding, we’re putting in too many man hours on this and it’s leading nowhere. The commissioner feels we can better use our efforts elsewhere.”

  Dylan felt otherwise. They had put in too much time to back off now. “It’s not like Bedford’s a hotbed of crime,” he pointed out. “We’re not pulling men away from other, more pressing investigations. Can’t you get us a little more time?”

  The captain tugged on his chin, debating siding with his men or standing against them with his superiors. But Dylan was right. Bedford was growing by leaps and bounds and although it no longer was the sleepy-eyed, three light town it had been twenty some odd years ago, crime in Bedford usually meant tools stolen from a shed or a bicycle absconded from a driveway. To have a place like Den of Thieves in their midst, where money was being laundered with only a semblance of an attempt to hide the fact, was a disgrace and a blot on all their names.

  The captain looked at the four men sitting before him. “Okay, we’ve got the accountant coming forward with what he says was some kind of evidence and he gets killed for it.” He looked at Dylan. “You say Ritchie Alvarez probably had something on Palmero and he gets killed for it. In my book that says there’s something going on here, something we can’t just walk away from.”

  There was silence in the room as the captain debated the course to be followed. “All right, we’ll sink a few more days into it. If nothing comes up in a week, I won’t have a choice. I’ll have to close the operation down.” It was clear that he didn’t want to do that. “See if one of you can bring me Palmero’s head on a platter before then. I’d consider it an early Christmas present.” He looked around him at the men. “Well, get going.”

  Chairs scraped against the newly installed flooring as they were returned to their places and the detectives prepared to return to theirs.

  “Did I interrupt anything?” Watley asked, hurrying after Dylan as they left the room.

  Dylan slanted a look at the other man as he stopped by the coffee machine. The coffee was notoriously bad, but it was better than nothing. Digging into his pocket, he looked for change. Not finding any, he took a dollar and stuffed it into the empty coffee can before picking up the half-filled pot. “What are you talking about?”

  Rather than coffee, Watley availed himself of the pot of hot water on the other burner. Dipping into his shirt pocket, he took out a gold-foil envelope. As Dylan watched him from beneath hooded lids, Watley stripped the foil away to expose a tea bag, which he promptly popped into a cup.

  “This morning. You sounded breathless when you answered.”

  Dylan purposely ignored the knowing expression on his partner’s face. Instead, he pretended to concentrate on the semiblack liquid pouring out of the pot into the mug he kept at the precinct. “I wasn’t expecting a phone call at dawn.”

  Watley grinned, tossing out the used tea bag. “Obviously,” he commented, then backed off. “Did you charge your cell phone?”

  Exasperation creased Dylan’s forehead. He’d never been one for questions. It reminded him too much of interrogations he’d gone through as a kid, interrogations his father conducted because he enjoyed making him sweat. Once Dylan had picked up on that, he refused to show his father any emotion whatsoever. That was when the beatings were stepped up.

  “What are you, my keeper?” He bit back his annoyance, cooling off. “Yeah, I charged it.” Plugging the phone into the portable charger, he’d given the battery a quick dose while he showered.

  Watley’s grin spread, but there was gentle humor in his eyes. “What else did you charge?”

  Dylan knew the baiting was harmless, but he still wasn’t in the mood for it. Because it was his partner, he went easier on him than he might have. “Back off, Watley, or Michelson’s not the only one they’re going to be sending dental charts for.”

  Laughing, Watley set down his empty mug and shook his head. “Don’t know what that woman sees in you. I guess her tastes run to Neanderthal types.”

  Dylan looked at his watch, not for the first time, and wondered if Reed had taken Lucy to the shop yet. She should be there by now.

  “She doesn’t see anything in me.” Watley was still grinning at him. “And can we keep my personal life out of this?”

  “Speaking of which, the desk sergeant asked me to give you these,” Watley said. Digging into his inside jacket pocket, Watley pulled out a wad of blue pages. Each paper represented a message the sergeant had taken for Dylan.

  Taking them, Dylan stared at the pieces of paper in silence. They were each from the same person. His father. Raising his eyes, he saw that Watley had already made the same discovery.

  “I’d say for a man who was dead, he’s being pretty persistent.”

/>   The word urgent underlined several times jumped out at him before he shoved the messages into his back pocket. “No one asked you to say anything.”

  “I’m generous that way,” Watley quipped. Then the smile faded a little as he grew serious. “Why don’t you call him? Or better yet, go see him.” Dylan gave him a dark look that warned him to back off. “Hey, whatever’s between the two of you needs clearing up.”

  Dylan thought better of the retort that rose to his lips. For all his hounding and heavy-handedness, Watley meant well. “You’ve been listening to that radio shrink again, haven’t you?”

  Watley shook his head. Because Dylan was already walking away, he hurried to catch up.

  “No, this is from personal experience. I didn’t talk to my old man for five years. Some blowup, I don’t even remember about what anymore. Point is, I faced him, got things squared away. Now we talk maybe once a week, sometimes more. He’s turned into a decent guy. Maybe your old man has, too.”

  That could work for some people, but not for Dylan and not for the man who had made his life a living hell for too many years.

  “Not unless you believe in miracles.” He thought of his mother and shook his head. She’d gone on hoping his father would change until the day she died. It was the misery his father had brought into his mother’s life that Dylan couldn’t forgive the man for. “Besides, it’s too late for that.”

  “It’s never too late,” Watley told him. “Not while both of you are breathing.”

  Dylan curbed the impulse to tell Watley to get off his back. “I’ve used up all my personal time.”

  “Since when?” Watley hooted. “Until this case came up, you amassed enough time to send the entire department on a two-week vacation. Hell, McMorrow, you never take any time off. People are beginning to think you’re part of the furniture.”

  Dylan walked outside, holding the door open for Watley. He glanced at his partner, debating. There had been more than ten messages in the last two days. Curiosity rubbed at him, leaving a small dent in its wake.

  “Your wife ever get a chance to do any talking when you’re home?”

  Following him down the stairs to where their vehicles were parked, Watley laughed. “Why do you think I talk so much when I’m around you? She never lets me get a word in edgewise. Once the baby’s born, I may even forget how to talk altogether.”

  Dylan laughed shortly. “I should be so lucky.”

  “Why don’t you go see him?” Watley urged. “Be the bigger man. If he’s anything like you, you’ll both grunt at each other and you’ll be at the stakeout before I get there.” He opened his car door. “You know where to find him?”

  Same place he had been for the last forty years, Dylan thought. “Yeah, I know where to find him.”

  But he didn’t.

  When Dylan arrived at the house where he’d grown up, there was no one to answer his knock. For a moment, he stood on the sagging front porch, telling himself he was crazy to come back. That this was pointless. Hadn’t he sworn never to set foot in the house again?

  Dylan shifted and the wood beneath his boots groaned loudly. Or was that the echo of childish groans from years gone by?

  There were demons here, he thought, demons he had fled. Demons he realized he needed to face now so that he could continue on with his life, such as it was. Making a decision, he used the key he had kept for reasons that were beyond his own comprehension and let himself in.

  He was assaulted with a barrage of memories the second he walked into the airless, dusty house. For a moment, it felt as if he couldn’t breathe, his throat closing as he struggled with feelings he didn’t want to deal with. Telling himself that he was a grown man, that what had happened within these walls could no longer touch him, he still struggled to make his way quickly through the one-story structure.

  “You here, old man?”

  But there was no one to answer his call. Passing through the rooms, he satisfied himself that his father was nowhere on the premises. Well, he’d tried. Which was a hell of a lot more than his father had ever done, even in the best of times.

  Walking out again, he pulled the door firmly shut behind him, as if to keep the memories from leaking out and onto him. He was almost to the curb and his car when he heard his name being called.

  “Dylan, is that you?”

  He turned at the sound of the reedy voice and saw a thin woman squinting at him from the porch of the house next door. Recognition set in. He remembered thinking the woman looked old when he was a child. She seemed to have remained the same. Only he had aged.

  Giving himself a little more time, he stepped away from the curb. “Hello, Mrs. Olsen. Yes, it’s me.”

  Obviously pleased to see him, the old woman bustled over, her eager smile erasing some of the wrinkles on her face instead of emphasizing them.

  In the manner of an adult with a child she hadn’t see for a long time, Mrs. Olsen was quick to take his hands in hers. “Let me take a look at you, it’s been such a long time.”

  The woman, a widow ever since he could remember, had been friendly with his mother. In deference to that, Dylan stood still for the scrutiny she subjected him to even when all he wanted was to leave.

  Alice Olsen nodded with approval. “You’ve turned out to be a fine, handsome young man, Dylan. Always knew you would. Look like her, you do.” She sighed, patting his arm, remembering his mother with fondness. “Did you come looking for your father?”

  The denial was a reflex, but he suppressed it. “Yes, you can tell him I came by.” With that, he turned to leave.

  “He’s in the hospital, you know,” she called after him. “The ambulance came and took him away just before eight o’clock last night.”

  Dylan turned slowly around.

  Chapter 14

  The corridors didn’t smell of antiseptic, not even faintly. That surprised him. He’d always associated hospitals and the sick with antiseptic.

  Dylan stood outside the third-floor hospital room, his hands in his pockets, wondering what he was doing here. The intensive-care-unit beds were all full, the fresh-faced receptionist at the first-floor information desk had told him, so his father had been placed here, in the surgical care section. Harry McMorrow’s condition was serious and he was deteriorating fast. There wasn’t anything anyone could do but wait.

  Twice on the twenty-mile drive over to Harris Memorial, Dylan had almost stopped and turned his car around. Yet somehow, he hadn’t. He’d continued. And now he was here, standing outside his father’s hospital room, still not certain why he came, still not certain if he should even bother going in or not.

  The man on the other side of the door was his father only in the strictest dictionary, biological sense of the word. There was nothing about Harry McMorrow that remotely made him a father the way greeting cards and sentimental dramas envisioned fathers to be. There had never been any long talks where wisdom had been handed down from one generation to the next, or moments to treasure and remember. On the contrary, to Dylan’s complete recollection, Harry McMorrow had never been anything but cold, self-centered and controlling. He had kept his wife and his son on short emotional leashes every day of their collective lives together.

  When he had become old enough to understand and make his own judgments, Dylan had strained against the tether his father had wound around him. His father had tried to beat the willfulness out of him. Instead of breaking his spirit, the beatings only made it stronger, made his resolve stronger until he’d finally run away. More than anything, he’d wanted to take his mother with him, to save her. But she had been too afraid to leave the only man she had ever been with.

  This was, she’d told him over and over again, the way life was supposed to be. One life, one man. And she wound up giving her life to her husband because eventually, he’d killed her. Not with a single blow or a single incident, but he’d killed her spirit, her laughter and her promise until she had finally given up her will to live.

  It was all that
and more that he held against his father.

  Remembering, Dylan told himself that he was a fool to have come, to be here now, wavering before the door of a man he had once deemed a monster.

  Maybe it was the cop in him, wanting to know why, after all this time, the man who had never loved him was asking so insistently to see him. He’d never mattered to his father before.

  Some ingrained instinct of survival had Dylan passing his hand over his gun, hidden beneath his jacket, as he walked into the room.

  Sunlight had made itself at home in every corner, its rays adding a ghostly cheeriness to the room as they rested along the frame of a man who was no longer robust, no longer a threat except in memory.

  For a second, as he looked at the sleeping shell of a man, Dylan thought he’d made a mistake and entered the wrong room. The emaciated figure, almost lost within his bedclothes, bore little resemblance to the man who had stood at Dylan’s mother’s grave site ten years ago, contemptuously egging him on to fight, one last time, for his mother’s honor.

  He’d been too full of sorrow and loss to raise a hand then, though a part of him had wanted to. But no blows, no victory would have brought his mother back. So he had turned his back on his father and walked away. A flurry of vile names had followed him out of the cemetery.

  The man in the bed looked almost a hundred pounds lighter than that man at the cemetery had. There were tubes crisscrossed over him, like Scotch tape that had come loose from a gift that had been tossed aside and overlooked. His hands, once so powerful and threatening, now seemed weak and lifeless, lying on top of the blanket as if someone had posed them there as an afterthought.

  Lids that were almost translucent fluttered, then opened. Watery pale blue eyes stared at him in stony silence. Dylan wondered if his father even recognized him.