“Go back to her plan for a minute. She’s going to confess and go on trial. And then, at a crucial moment in the trial, she will jump up and takes back her confession. She has the ‘evidence’ that her husband did it, the murder knife with his fingerprints and his bloodied shirt. She turns the evidence over and the police are ready to arrest him.”
“My wife suddenly looks much better,” Flanagan said. “But you still haven’t answered my question about motive, Ryle. Why? It’s a simple question, but I still...oh, never mind, I think I do.”
I nodded. “There she was after the trial, a wronged woman, desperate to save her family, betrayed by her killer husband, the Congressman-elect. He’s going to be arrested. So there’s got to be a new election for his seat in Congress.”
Flanagan made some kind of clucking noise. “And Trigger is going to nominate her. She’ll win the sympathy vote. Her innocent husband is going to jail. And she’s going to Washington.”
“She would be a national figure, Flanagan. Who knows how far she could go? Maybe the first woman president. Who knows what her dreams were?”
“So put this another way. What proof do you have?”
“I have proof that she rented a motel room.”
“And?”
“And that’s it. The rest of it is guesswork.”
Betsy said, “You mean she can’t be arrested? She gets away with it?”
We all looked at Flanagan.
He held up his hands.
“Katie Lucey is a free woman. No one is going to arrest her.”
“That’s not fair,” Betsy called out.
I couldn’t remember when I felt worse.
Ari came over to me.
“You want to go for a ride?”
“Thanks. I want to go see my father. He did a favor for Rabbi London and I want to tell him I appreciate it. Then I think I’m just going to sleep for a week and hope this nightmare goes away.”
But I knew it wouldn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My father was on the phone when I got there. He was remembering old times with a friend, now retired in Florida. I signaled to my father that he should go ahead and talk, that I was fine waiting until he finished.
After he did, he said, “You hungry, Danny?”
“No. Al Flanagan just stuffed me with deli food.”
My father nodded.
“But I have ice cream.”
“I might have a little more room.”
And I did.
“Dad, don’t blame Rabbi London. I know he wasn’t supposed to say anything about you and his brother or about you helping the Rabbi with his heart. I’m proud of you. I don’t get to say that often, but I am.”
“A parent always likes to confound a child’s understanding of who the parent is.”
“I’ll remember that when I have children of my own.”
We talked about our family, about my mother, about Thanksgivings we had, about my dad and my brother and sister and me watching baseball games.
“You look sad, Danny. Are you okay?”
“You could always read my face, Dad.”
“It was a course in parent school.”
“You must have done well.”
“Seriously. What’s the matter?”
And it all spilled out.
I told my Dad the whole story of the Luceys and Marilyn Park and the trial and what happened in Flanagan’s office.
My father said, “This is life, Danny. Justice doesn’t always overlap reality. You just have to let it go.”
“I know I do. Ari said the same thing to me. It’s part of me. I can’t shake it.”
“Ice cream is the universal answer, Danny. You did all you could. What else can be expected of you?”
“I’m supposed to be the fixer, Dad. She tricked me at every turn. Maybe I should look for a different profession.”
“I don’t think you’re meant to work in a store or an office, Danny.”
“Or anywhere else.”
We talked for another hour. I began telling my father stories about my life that I had never told him.
We both knew I was never going to be able to forgive him for what he had done with his life, about how he had so deeply affected his family and hurt us all. But for that hour it all seemed to disappear in a haze. For that hour I was normal. The universe had cracked and Danny Ryle had become whole.
And then the crack was fixed and I was back to being me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I went home and crawled under the covers. I vowed to stay there for a week.
The phone rang at one-thirty the next morning.
I don’t like to get calls in the middle of the night. I think someone died. Or there was some tragic accident.
It was Flanagan.
“Are you awake, Danny?”
“Almost. Why in God’s name did you call me at this hour? Did you figure out a way to arrest Katie Lucey?”
“I don’t have to anymore. She’s dead.”
“What?”
“Yeah. It happened this evening. I don’t have the exact time. Maybe ten or so. As far as the cops can tell, she started out in Chinatown. Had a big dinner with friends. Everyone was happy for her. Then they walked down Mott Street to Little Italy. At some point they went to a bar on the Lower East Side.
“Katie Lucey went out of the bar alone. Her friends said she just needed a little air. I think she was overwhelmed by emotion and didn’t want her friends to see her cry or whatever.
“Anyway she’s outside. Somebody goes up to her and shoots her three times.”
“Anyone see the shooter?”
“No. And get this. Nobody even heard the shots. That’s what strange. I mean it’s relatively early for the city. You figure the sidewalks would have plenty of people. Maybe she turned the corner to a side street without a lot of people. Maybe there was some kind of silencer involved. That I don’t know.”
“Was she robbed?”
“No. And she wasn’t touched.”
“So the motive was just to kill her?”
“Yeah. You won’t believe it, but I had the cops check on Ken Lucey’s whereabouts. He was surrounded by fifty people at the time of the shooting.”
“Maybe he hired someone. Or Trigger O’Dell did for making him look like a fool.”
“I don’t know. The killer was pretty good though. It’s early. Obviously there’s no weapon. Some of the young ones leave fingerprints on the bullets. Nope. And the bullets can’t be traced. It’s ironic, isn’t it? We couldn’t prove Katie Lucey killed Marilyn Park and now we can’t find who killed Katie Lucey. Oh, well, I guess I’ll chalk it up to cosmic justice. Go back to sleep, Danny. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, Al.”
I lay in bed.
I knew, of course.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Why did you kill her, Dad?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Danny.”
“Don’t be coy. We both know you murdered Katie Lucey. You once told me you never killed women.”
“A rule becomes a rule only when there are exceptions to the rule.”
“What are you, a Zen master? I wouldn’t have told you the story if I thought you would have done this. I was unhappy that she got off, but I feel dirty. I feel responsibility for her death.”
“You’re not responsible. The person who killed her is responsible.”
“I thought we were getting to understand each other, Dad.”
He stared at me for a second.
“I have a darker shade of blood than you do, Danny. I’m closer to the mean and nasty corner of human existence.”
“And you’re proud of this?”
“I’m neither proud nor not proud. I just am like that.”
“That’s ridiculous. We all have moral choices.”
“If you didn’t have some of my darker blood, do you think you could solve the murders you have? Do you think you could understand some of the people you do?
”
“Maybe there’s some darkness in me, Dad, but I’m not dark enough to kill people.”
Again, my father stared. I had the feeling that he realized that he had never truly understood me.
“What are you after in life, Danny? Tell me. I really want to know.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how to live, how to navigate my way through the confusion. I know there are no simple rules. Every time I think there’s a good system for living, along comes life to show me that it’s all way more complex than a single ethical system can grasp. I’m trying to fix what I can. I’m trying to help people when I can. I’m definitely not trying to get people killed.”
“Even murderers? Didn’t you tell me that she talked about Lizzie Borden? That you thought she might try it again?”
“I said that because it would give us another chance to catch her.”
“After innocent people were killed. Doesn’t it make more sense to catch her now?”
“I won’t let you justify murder to me, Dad. I just won’t do it. I won’t let you tell me that I’ll understand when I grow up. I’m grown up now. I understand just fine.”
“I hope so, Danny. The world is an unforgiving place. It doesn’t allow for mistakes even when they are made in the name of goodness.”
“Good-bye, Dad.”
“Come back soon.”
I ignored him.
I drove over to West Meadow Beach in East Setauket and stood there as the blazing sun disappeared and the empire of night roared out its presence. I watched the waves promise a never-ending future as they crashed into the shore only to be replaced by more waves. It was very cold. In the distance some teenagers had made a fire and were laughing.
I wondered if I would ever laugh again.
I drove home.
Ken Lucey and his mother were waiting for me.
We talked for an hour. Ken thanked me and said it was time to get to work.
His mother asked if I could walk with her into the living room. She held my arm like a mother would as she comforted a grieving child.
“You’ve had a difficult time, Mr. Ryle.”
“More than you can imagine.”
She nodded.
“You can’t rest,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You need a murderer and a victim. You need to solve a case. You need to help people. You need to make a wronged world right again. You need to push against injustice staking a claim among us. You don’t even understand how to relax. To stop your work would drive you crazy. That’s what someone who wanted to punish you would do to hurt you.”
“It’s pretty sad that I need a murder to feel whole again,” I said.
And yet I wondered how long it would be until I had the stirring feeling of solving a puzzle and catching a murderer. It was like being on some endless ride, like that mythical character Sisyphus who had to keep pushing a rock up a hill, only to find that when he got it there it would roll back down and he had to do it all over again.
That was his fate.
I thought I had the same fate. I thought all people had the same fate.
I felt as though I had fallen into a crater of sadness and only solving another murder would get me out of it. I wondered exactly how dark my shade of blood was.
Mrs. Lucey came over to me. She took my hand to steady it because it had been trembling.
I shook my head.
My job was to wait for the next dead person.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lawrence J. Epstein served as an Advisor for two members of the United States Congress and two additional Congressional candidates. He is also a former English professor and the author of more than twenty books.
Please sign up for his mailing list to be among the first to know when his next Danny Ryle novel will be published: http://www.lawrencejepstein.com/list.
The Dead Don’t Talk is the first book in The Danny Ryle Mysteries: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LF13Y3G
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