Long Bright River

by Liz Moore

  Nguyen and DiPaolo call for backup. Then they take all of us down to the station—me and Kacey and Lafferty and McClatchie—all of us in separate cars.

  We’re kept apart, and then we’re interrogated.

  I tell the two of them everything I know, from start to finish. I leave nothing out: I tell them about Cleare. I tell them about Kacey. I tell them about Thomas. I tell them about Lafferty, and what Kacey told me about him. I even tell them about Truman, and my embarrassing behavior in that regard.

  I tell them the truth, the whole truth, for the first time in my life. Then the two of them leave.

  * * *

  —

  Several hours go by. It occurs to me that I’m starving, and that I have to go to the bathroom, and that I’ve never wanted a glass of water so badly in my life. I shift uncomfortably. I’ve never been on this side of things before.

  Finally, DiPaolo enters the room I’m being held in. He looks tired. He nods at me, pensive, his hands in his pockets.

  —It’s him, he says. It’s Lafferty.

  Wordlessly, he holds forth a printed picture of a young woman, smiling, wearing a pretty dress.

  —You recognize her? he says.

  It takes me a moment, and then suddenly I’m back on the Tracks in October, leaning over a log, peering toward the first victim. Next to her, in my memory—I shudder to think it—is Eddie Lafferty. I think of the face of the victim, on that day: pained and unpeaceful. I think of the spattering of red dots near her eyes. The violent way she died. I think of Lafferty’s reaction to her. Impassive. Aloof.

  —Who is she? I say.

  —Sasha Lowe Lafferty, says DiPaolo. Eddie Lafferty’s most recent ex-wife, he says.

  —No, I say.

  DiPaolo nods.

  I look at the picture again. I remember Lafferty talking about his third wife, about her youth. She was immature. Maybe that was the problem.

  —She was badly hooked herself, says DiPaolo. Using every day. The rest of her family had cut ties with her over a year before. They’ve had no contact with her since then. Her only contact was with Lafferty.

  He pauses.

  —Why she was never reported missing, I guess, he says.

  —Jesus, I say.

  I’m still looking at the photo. I’m glad to see this woman at a different moment in her life. I close my eyes quickly. Open them again. I let the image of the smiling woman before me replace in my mind the pained, deceased version of Sasha Lowe Lafferty that I’ve been carrying around in my mind since I found her.

  —Guess where they met, says DiPaolo.

  I know before he says it.

  —Wildwood, I say.

  DiPaolo nods.

  —Jesus, I say again.

  DiPaolo looks like he’s hesitating for a moment. Then he continues. You asked about Simon Cleare, he says.

  I steel myself. I nod.

  —I want you to know, he says, I looked into it. I wasn’t trying to blow you off. After we met, I assigned a guy to tag him a few days in a row. Sure enough, on day two he heads up to Kensington, middle of a workday, no assigned reason to be there.

  —Okay, I say.

  DiPaolo looks at me. He’s got a problem, Mickey, he says. He was there for the same reason everyone else goes to Kensington. Bought a thousand MGs of Oxy off a guy we know. No heroin, that I know of, but that’s probably next. How he affords that much Oxy on a detective salary . . .

  DiPaolo trails off. Whistles.

  I look down at the table.

  —I see, I say. That makes sense.

  I think of Simon’s words to me when I was young. The tattoo on his calf. I went through a phase of it myself, he told me, when I was frightened for Kacey.

  At the time, it had brought me such comfort.

  After Kacey and I are released, the two of us leave together through the front door of the station. My car is all the way back at the cathedral, two miles from the station. So is the car Kacey borrowed from our father.

  Speaking of our father: I call him as soon as I can. Tell him Kacey’s okay. That she’ll be home soon.

  —And you? he says.

  —Excuse me?

  —Are you okay too? says my father.

  —Yes, I say. I’m okay.

  * * *

  —

  I am, in fact, feeling quite relieved. As Kacey and I walk, side by side, I look at our surroundings. Kensington itself looks different, somehow changed, or perhaps I am simply noticing things about it that I never noticed before. It’s a lovely neighborhood in many ways, and several of its blocks are quite nice, well maintained, blocks that have managed to stave off the encroaching chaos, blocks with grandmothers who have never left and never will, who sweep their stoops each morning, then sweep all the stoops of their neighbors, and sometimes the street itself, even if the city doesn’t come around. We pass a street, on the right, with white lights strung across it for Christmas.

  At last, Kacey recounts her morning to me.

  She, too, went first to the house with three Bs, the last place she knew Connor McClatchie to be living. When she found the house vacant and condemned, she went back to the Ave to ask around. Fairly soon, she learned where McClatchie had gone.

  She drove over to find him. She wanted to tell him what was going on. Ask what he knew about Eddie Lafferty.

  —I can’t believe you did that, I say, interrupting. Why would you do that?

  —I told you, says Kacey. I knew when he found out that Eddie Lafferty might be the one killing those women, he wouldn’t stand for it. I know him.

  I shake my head. I notice, suddenly, that Kacey looks unsteady and pale. She has her hands on her stomach. She is six months pregnant, now, and seems to feel it. I don’t know if she’ll make it the whole way. She keeps insisting she’s fine, but she’s bent forward slightly. How long has it been, I wonder, since her last dose of methadone?

  —Are you okay? I ask her.

  —Fine, Kacey says, tightly.

  We walk in silence a little longer. Then she goes on.

  —Connor can do bad things, Kacey says, but he’s not all bad. Almost nobody is.

  I have nothing to say to this. I picture Mrs. Mahon, her hand tipping back and forth in the air above the chessboard. They’re bad and good both, all the pieces. It is possible to acknowledge, on some level, the truth of this. And yet I hate Connor McClatchie for what he did to my sister. And I know, without a doubt, that I’ll never forgive him.

  —Anyway, Kacey says, Connor told me that Lafferty approached him last summer, told him he was a cop. Told him he’d keep him protected in exchange for a cut. That’s why I recognized him, she tells me. And that’s why they went off to the side to do their business. Lafferty was taking kickbacks from Connor.

  —That fucker, I say suddenly.

  —Which one?

  —Both of them, I say. Both fuckers.

  A thought occurs to me then: Did Ahearn assign Lafferty to my car so that he could dig up some dirt on me? Six months ago, I would have said that was absurd. Now, I don’t know.

  —And Ahearn’s a fucker too, I say. I bet he knew. Maybe got a cut too.

  Kacey, I notice, is laughing.

  —What? I say. What?

  —I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before, says Kacey.

  —Oh, I say. Well, I do now.

  —Well, says Kacey. You’re right. Connor told me Lafferty wasn’t the only one. Taking payment, I mean. Said it happens more regularly than you know.

  —I believe it, I say.

  —Connor didn’t know about the women, Kacey says. That’s the one thing he didn’t know. He didn’t know that Lafferty had been seen with the four victims. He didn’t know people were talking in Kensington. When I told him, he freaked. Punched a wall.

  —Noble, I say.
/>
  —He can be, says Kacey pensively.

  —Anyway, she says, he had Lafferty’s phone number, and he called him right away. Told him he had a business proposal for him, and he wanted to see him in person at the cathedral. Once Lafferty got there, I texted you from Connor’s phone. And I texted Truman Dawes, too.

  —How did you have Truman’s number? I say.

  —Oh, says Kacey. He gave it to me years ago. I don’t think you were even there that day. He came across me on the Ave when I was pretty bad off, looking down and out, and he gave me his card. Said if I ever needed anything, if I ever wanted to get clean, to give him a ring. I memorized it.

  —Oh, I say. Yes. He does that.

  —He’s a good person, she says. Isn’t he.

  —He is, I say.

  She smiles, unaware.

  —Well, she says, I’m glad it all worked out.

  And suddenly I can’t believe her: the danger she put us all in. Truman. Me. Thomas. Herself. And the baby she’s carrying, too.

  I stop walking and turn toward her. Goddammit, I say. Goddammit, Kacey.

  She flinches, slightly. What? she says. Don’t shout.

  —How could you do that to me? I say. Put me in the position you put me in today. I have a son to think about.

  Kacey goes silent. Both of us turn away from one another and start to walk again. In my peripheral vision, I see Kacey begin to shiver, her teeth chattering.

  We reach an intersection and I stop at the crosswalk to let the cars go by. But Kacey continues. She walks out into traffic, blindly. A car screeches to a halt. The one behind it nearly rams into it. Horns go off in all directions.

  —Kacey, I call.

  She doesn’t turn around. I toe the ground in front of the sidewalk. The cars don’t slow. I wait until, at last, I have the right of way, and then I break into a trot. Kacey is fifty feet ahead of me, walking fast. She turns the corner onto the Avenue, and I lose sight of her momentarily.

  * * *

  —

  When I finally reach the Ave, I turn left, like Kacey did, and I see her twenty yards away, squatting on the ground, elbows on her knees, head in hands. Her belly points down, toward the sidewalk. I can’t tell from here, but it looks like she’s crying.

  I slow to a walk. I approach Kacey carefully. We’re at the intersection where she and Paula used to work, right in front of Alonzo’s store, and I have the feeling, now, that if I say or do the wrong thing, I’ll lose her: the Avenue will take her back, away from me. Kacey will sink into the ground and disappear.

  I stand over my sister for a minute. She’s shaking with sobs. She’s crying so hard that she’s gasping for breath. She doesn’t look up.

  —Kacey, I say.

  I put a hand, finally, on my sister’s shoulder.

  Violently, Kacey windmills her arm.

  I bend down, get to eye level with her. Pedestrians move around us.

  —What’s going on? I say. Kacey?

  She lifts her head up, at last, and looks at me. Looks me right in the eye. Says, Get the fuck away from me.

  I stand again. What the hell, Kacey, I say. What did I do?

  Kacey stands up, too, chest out, belly out. I brace myself.

  —You knew, Kacey says. You might not have known about Lafferty, but you knew this shit happened. You must have. You’d been told before.

  I bristle.

  —I didn’t, I say. Nobody ever told me.

  Kacey laughs loudly, once.

  —I told you, says Kacey. Me. Your own sister. I told you that Simon Cleare took advantage of me when I couldn’t say no. You didn’t believe me. You said I was lying.

  —That’s different, I say. I was wrong about that. But it’s different.

  Kacey smiles, sadly.

  —What’s Simon? she says. What is he? Is Simon a cop?

  I close my eyes. Breathe in.

  —Because I thought he was, says Kacey.

  Kacey looks at me for a long time, searching my face.

  Then she looks past me, toward the corner, toward Alonzo’s store. She’s frozen. I turn, finally, to see what she sees, but no one is there. And I know, without asking, that Kacey is picturing Paula Mulroney standing there, one leg propped up against the wall, cocky, smiling, her usual stance.

  —They were my friends, says Kacey, quietly now. All of them. Even the ones I didn’t know.

  —I’m sorry, I say at last.

  She doesn’t reply.

  —Kacey, I’m sorry, I say again.

  But the El train is going by now, and I don’t know if my sister can hear me.

  LIST

  Sean Geoghehan; Kimberly Gummer; Kimberly Brewer, Kimberly Brewer’s mother and uncle; Britt-Anne Conover; Jeremy Haskill; two of the younger DiPaolantonio boys; Chuck Bierce; Maureen Howard; Kaylee Zanella; Chris Carter and John Marks (one day apart, victims of the same bad batch, someone said); Carlo, whose last name I can never remember; Taylor Bowes’s boyfriend, and then Taylor Bowes a year later; Pete Stockton; the granddaughter of our former neighbors; Hayley Driscoll; Shayna Pietrewski; Pat Bowman; Sean Bowman; Shawn Williams; Juan Moya; Toni Chapman; Dooney Jacobs and his mother; Melissa Gill; Meghan Morrow; Meghan Hanover; Meghan Chisholm; Meghan Greene; Hank Chambliss; Tim and Paul Flores; Robby Symons; Ricky Todd; Brian Aldrich; Mike Ashman; Cheryl Sokol; Sandra Broach; Lisa Morales; Mary Lynch; Mary Bridges and her niece, who was her age, and her friend; Mikey Hughes’s father and uncle; two great-uncles we rarely see. Our cousin Tracy. Our cousin Shannon. Our mother. Our mother. Our mother. All of them children, all of them gone. People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed souls.

  NOW

  Some days, I spend hours on my laptop, visiting online memorials for those who’ve died. They’re all still there: Facebook pages, funeral home websites, blogs. The deceased are digital ghosts, the last posts they ever made buried beneath a tidal wave of grief, of commands to Rest In Peace, of in-fighting between friends and enemies who claim that half the people on the page are fake, whatever that means. Their girlfriends still posting happy birthday baby two years after they’re gone, as if the Internet were a crystal ball, a Ouija board, a portal to the afterlife. In a way, I suppose, it is.

  It’s become a habit of mine to look at these pages, and at the pages of the friends and family members of the deceased, first thing in the morning. How is the mother holding up, I wonder. And I check. How is the best friend? The boyfriend? (Usually, it is the boyfriends who move on first: down come the profile pictures of the happy couple, posing in a mirror; up goes a picture he has taken of himself; next will come the new woman in his life.) Sometimes, friends are bitter. u promised kyle. i swear if one more person dies. why kyle. rip. People in the throes of addiction are hardest on others like them. THA WHOLE NTHEAST IS FULLA FUKN JUNKIES, one of them rants, and I know I’ve pulled him in before for dealing. In his pictures he’s glazed and dreamy.

  * * *

  —

  When I think about Kacey, when I wonder whether she will find the strength and luck and perseverance to get and stay clean, it is these souls I think of first. How few ever seem to make it out. I think of the Piper, the whole town of Hamelin, shocked in his wake, abandoned and condemned.

  But then I look at Kacey—who comes to visit most Sundays now, who at this moment is sitting on my couch, who on this day has 189 days clean—and think, maybe she’ll be one of the few. The veteran of some war, wounded but alive. Maybe Kacey will outlive us all, will live to be a hundred and five. Maybe Kacey will be all right.

  * * *

  —

  Letting hope back in feels right and wrong all at once. Like letting Thomas sleep in my bed when he really should sleep in his.

  Like letting him
meet the woman who brought him into the world.

  Like breaking an oath of loyalty when you know a secret needs telling.

  I turned in my uniform. Thomas was happy to see it go. The day I did, I worked up some courage and called Truman Dawes, holding my breath until he answered.

  —It’s Mickey, I said.

  —I know who it is, he said.

  —I just wanted to tell you I quit, I said. I quit the force.

  Truman paused for a while. Congratulations, he said finally.

  —And I’m sorry, I said, closing my eyes. I’m so sorry for the way I treated you this year. You deserve better.

  I could hear him breathing. I appreciate that, he said. But then he told me he had to go tend to his mother, and in his voice I heard that he was through, that I had lost him forever.

  This happens, I tell myself. Sometimes, this happens.

  * * *

  —

  The PPD, nationally embarrassed, is denying that they have a widespread problem. But I know differently, and Kacey knows differently, and the women of Kensington know differently. So I called Lauren Spright, and told her that I wanted to give her some information on condition of anonymity. The story was on public radio the next day. Police sexual assault is not uncommon in Kensington, the reporter began, and I turned the radio off. I didn’t want to hear.

  Some days, I still wake up with the sick feeling that I’ve done something terribly wrong. I worry I’ve sold out the people who’ve protected me all these years, who’ve always had my back—sometimes literally.

  I think of the many honorable people who work for the organization. Truman was in the PPD. Mike DiPaolo still is. Davis Nguyen. Gloria Peters. Even Denise Chambers, who recently phoned me personally to apologize.

  Then there are the Laffertys, the evil ones. They’re few and far between, but everybody’s met one.

  The hardest cases, I think—perhaps the most dangerous ones—are the friends of the Laffertys’. People like Sergeant Ahearn, who has possibly known for years about what goes on in Kensington. Maybe he even participates himself—who knows. And he’ll never be fired, never be questioned, never even be disciplined. He’ll go on with his daily routine, showing up for work, casually abusing his power in ways that will have lasting effects on individuals and communities, on the whole city of Philadelphia, for years.