by Tom Bouman
“You hurt?” I said.
“No.”
“Come here, then.”
At my direction, Ryan removed Ceallaigh’s shoelaces and tied his wrists back. We found a slab of shale to sit on and I took a hard look at my wound and the blood coming out of it.
“You need to wrap that up,” Ryan said.
“Cut away his shirt. Something soft.”
Ryan did so, and helped me tie the cloth around my midsection. He put the .38 into my bloody hand. “Can you walk?” he said.
“Let’s listen.”
We sat and took in the quiet that had overtaken the guns. There was a hint of smoke on the wind, but no fire I could see. The next hill over, a whistle like part of a bobolink’s call. Then footsteps coming toward us from below.
It was only at the last instant that I didn’t fire on Mike Stiobhard, who shambled up the hill, revealing a limp that I had not noticed before.
“We made it,” he said. His clothes were smeared with blood.
“Help me take him down,” I said, nodding in the direction of Terry Ceallaigh.
“I’m not doing that,” Mike said. “I’m old. Get off your ass and come help your father.” As we walked down the hill, I felt Ryan and the old man babying me, holding me back. I pulled against them. Mike said, “Slow down.”
I felt a bit fainter with every step. Father was not by the house, which was dark and empty with the oil fires put out. No sign of Nicky. We found Father’s path through the brush, a line of broken branches and disturbed, bloody ground.
By a small crescent of swamp lit only by stars, we found him sitting alone. His legs were soaked to the crotch and he was shivering.
“Time to go,” he said. He’d been crying, which I’d never seen before. He’d stopped, but you could hear it and see it.
“Father,” I said.
Slowly, in stages, he stood. As he did, he revealed a face and clothes splashed with blood from head to where the swamp had washed him. He saw my face and said, “Don’t worry.”
“Where is he?”
In answer, Father swung his arm out over the small piece of swamp before us, not big or wild enough to hide a body long. I imagined the corpse leaking blood into the filthy, living water, and got so tired.
“What’d you do that for?”
Father didn’t answer. Mike looked at me with real confusion. “I told him to. What else is he going to do?” Mike lit a cigarette and kindly blew the smoke away from our party. “It was Nate Hancock, if you care to know.”
Terry Ceallaigh came staggering toward us, shivering. His eyes saw but did not understand. I sat him down on the ground and I kept a weapon pointed in his direction.
Mike said, “Where’s Alan?” When nobody answered, he walked toward the house.
LIZ BRENNAN stitched up my chest as I lay there in a hospital bed, mooning at her in a light opioid stupor, telling her I loved her and trying to explain. She ignored me. I ignored myself. I sang “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” to distract from the pull of the needle through my skin—didn’t hurt, just strange, I was drugged—and fell silent once again until Julie showed up, first taking a glance at Liz’s work to clean and sew the six-inch scar across my ribs, then flipping up the gauze taped to my cheek to see the gouge there.
“I love you, too!” I said to Julie.
“All right, buddy.”
“I love you,” I said to Julie again. “From now on, I’m just going to sit home.”
“Quiet, you,” said Liz. “Be still.” To Julie she said, “He’s going to be fine.”
Sewing up the hole beneath my eye was less pleasant. Even though I told her I didn’t care, Liz was determined to make many small stitches and leave me as light a scar as possible. I could see a lot more of it, with the needle wiggling under my eye. I cursed her and her family, but then it was over and I slept.
SHERIFF DALLY’S PEOPLE took Terry Ceallaigh into custody and combed the swamp in waders until they found Nate Hancock there, weighed down by his rifle, the ammunition on his person, and a piece of shale stuffed into his pants. Alan, they didn’t find.
The morning after, commonwealth techs swarmed the abandoned house, prying evidence out of its walls. Elsewhere, PSP techs, detectives, and Sheriff Dally gathered with a warrant to search the places where Hancock had lived and worked. Probably they’d sent a social worker out to Ryan, and if so, I wished them luck. Me, I had been sent home to the cottage on Walker Lake, where I let the pain pills fade away, leaving a sensation on my midriff that was all things at once—itching to burning, a dull ache along my ribs, a feeling of coming apart at the seams.
In the afternoon, Lee Hillendale showed up in a German SUV to take me to the State Police barracks in Dunmore. I was not turning myself in, exactly.
Miss Julie had been by my side; I doubted she’d slept at all, and now that Lee stood in the door and I was headed out into the world again, she had opinions.
“Don’t go. You don’t have to. Wait until you’re stronger.”
“I don’t need to be strong to sit in a chair and answer questions,” I said. “I just need to be awake.”
“These things do go wrong for innocent people,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“I’ll be there,” Lee said.
“I’m coming too,” Julie said. “It’s not safe. You may need help.”
“They’ll help me if I need it,” I said. I looked in Miss Julie’s eyes; after everything, there was something she held back from me. I didn’t blame her. Rather than seek that thing out, I draped a jacket over my shoulders and left. There would be time to fix what could be fixed.
On the road outside, I saw Sheriff Dally’s patrol car parked, and approached him. He rolled down his window.
“Afternoon,” I said. “You been here all day?”
“All night, too,” he said. “One or the other of us. Got something for you to give to the detectives. I faxed it, but who knows if they got it. Anyway, thought you’d be interested.” Dally handed me a stapled document. I flipped to the end and found Father’s signature there. A sworn statement about the events of the night before.
“Is Ceallaigh talking yet?”
“Could be. I wouldn’t know. PSP took him this morning. Given everything, just as well.”
As we pulled away from the cottage, I said to Lee, “I need to see some things first.”
On the quiet bend of Red Pine Road between the Moores and the Ceallaighs, the hieroglyphics of melted rubber were fading day by day. I can’t tell you what exactly happened to Carl, and neither can he. But I could guess certain things: When he died, Carl had been on his motorcycle, an aging vigilante following an empty young man with a lot of toys and a wicked secret. And I could guess that Terry knew what Carl was about. Carl probably confronted him again. I read those black marks on the road as a sign of death.
I had Lee drive us up the hill to the Ceallaighs’ place, where a lonely state trooper was parked to preserve evidence and discourage the press. Carrianne’s vehicle was nowhere to be found, but Terry’s truck was there. Before the trooper could object, I was out of Lee’s car and lowering myself to the ground. There were scrapes on the bottom of the rear bumper of Terry Ceallaigh’s truck, scrapes that had been scrubbed down to bare steel except for one that Terry had missed. A streak of blue paint on a bumper and some black lines on a country road, and you almost have a sentence. I took a photo. What I believe is, Carl and Carl’s machine had rounded a bend, struck Terry’s stopped-dead pickup, and gone under. That almost comports with what Terry has always maintained from his prison cell: that he was drunk, got into an accident, and lost his mind. He had no idea who Carl Dentry even was. Except that can’t be all.
From there, Terry goes up the driveway to his home, whistling Dixie, waiting for Carl to die. Except he can’t take the wait. But by the time Terry gets back to the road on foot, Carl is gone, crawled up the Moores’ driveway for help that never comes. This part is borne out by bloodwork done on
the Moores’ front door; it was Carl Dentry’s. Terry and some other beasts of the forest did the rest of the work down at the Freefall. The trouble Terry must’ve gone to—hauling up Carl’s dead weight on a line over a tree growing out of the ravine’s slope, dropping him to make it look like a fall, then deciding after all that to cut him up and make him disappear. The butchery had not been as simple as that. In the desperate half-light of a coming dawn, Terry would have placed a call to a guy he thought could help him make all of this disappear. Knowing what we do now, I guessed Terry had had a foot in the drug trade, working for Nate Hancock. Easy enough for Terry to give Nate his movements throughout the night, so Nate could help with a cover story. But Nate had demanded a price. In the end, Terry could not pay it other than in kind.
I laid this out for Lee on the drive south. Some of it turned out true. Terry Ceallaigh denies some of it to this day. Some of it I can never know, but still think it true enough.
“Yeah, you may be right,” he said. “But it’s not your concern anymore. Don’t do their jobs for them. Stick to your truths and I’m pretty sure you won’t go to prison.” Lee clued me in to some of the discussions he’d been having with the AG’s office, to wit, my obstruction of justice, obstruction of governmental operations, perversion of the administration of law, and so forth. I was more concerned about the deaths. We spent most of the car ride down defining and reinforcing my truths.
I didn’t kill Shelly Bray. I had no reason to hurt her. They knew that now. I was frantic over my nephew, and that was why I ran.
I didn’t kill Nate Hancock. Father did that in self-defense, and in defense of me and Ryan. I didn’t know why Nate Hancock would want to kill me or my nephew. Lee’s voice in my ear: Don’t guess. Don’t do their jobs for them.
Terry Ceallaigh and I had fought in the woods, and I subdued and restrained him. I had been seriously injured and was light-headed. I didn’t know why Terry Ceallaigh would want to kill me or my nephew.
I didn’t know where Nicole Simmonds was. She’d run out the door into the night and that was the last I knew of her.
I didn’t know where Alan Stiobhard was.
When the questions got tough, the theory was that I would be able to answer with one of those truths and not get lost.
Based on what PSP learned during my interview, they’d decide how to handle Father’s involvement, and where to look for answers next. I read and reread the statement Father had given. It was hard not to feel anxious. As Lee and I walked through the front door and were led through the barracks, uniformed state policemen stopped what they were doing and stared. We were dropped off in a little gray conference room.
Lee had ensured that Detectives Collyer and Garcia would not be part of the conversation. We sat waiting, not knowing exactly who would be coming to nail me to the wall.
“Your truths,” Lee told me. “Nothing more.”
The door opened and in walked Allie DeCosta with an older cop in a brown tweed jacket. They took seats opposite us at the table.
The man eyed me sternly, then his face softened, and he said, “Buddy, you stepped in some shit.”
I liked him right away.
“Section Commander Bernard Gill. You know DeCosta, AG’s office, OCS.”
“OCS,” I said. “Organized Crime?”
“That’s right,” she said.
I felt Lee Hillendale relax beside me, and saw a faint smile pass across his face. “Okay,” I said. “What can I tell you?”
“Where is Alan Stiobhard, how about that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out?”
“Why do you want him?” I asked. Bernie Gill chuckled at this, and Allie DeCosta rolled her eyes. “I mean,” I said, “what can he tell you that I can’t?”
Lee shifted in his seat. “Do you have anything further for Officer Farrell?”
DeCosta spoke. “What do you know about Ton L?”
As I thought about that, Lee said, “If I may: It’s a limited liability company registered in Pennsylvania. Its members, I believe, include an attorney named Andrew Swales out of Scranton. Locally, a retired attorney named Casey Noonan has done some work here and there on their behalf, but that may have been unwitting. Neither of them will return my calls.”
“Can I ask that you not contact them further?” DeCosta said. “What do you mean by ‘unwitting’?”
“I mean Noonan may not have known the true business of the company.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And what do you believe that business was?”
By this time, I had turned completely in my chair to watch my lawyer. Lee continued, “At first, real estate. They bought up land in Holebrook County and elsewhere in northeast Pennsylvania at the dawn of the Marcellus shale boom, diverting signing bonuses and royalty payments from leases to other endeavors, including ownership interest in gas station franchises, residential rental properties, and—I won’t say fronts—horse farms and the like.”
“At first,” DeCosta said.
“They were in drug trafficking, with some random criminality thrown into the mix. Murder for hire, mostly as needed by the drug trade. That could have been their most, ah, profitable piece of the business.” I thought of Alan. Lee left a pause, and DeCosta gave an eloquent silence. “Other members or associates, I believe but do not know for certain, include Nathan Hancock and Joshua Bray, possibly Michelle Bray. Ordinary people in plain sight. Unlikely though possible, Terrence Ceallaigh.” Lee paused, then added with reluctance, “And Alan Stiobhard.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Shelly? She’s a fuckin victim. If you think otherwise, you’re wrong. She didn’t know the half.”
DeCosta said, “Do you really think that?”
“She came up here to tell me something, and it got her killed. May have gotten Dentry killed. What that was …” I looked to DeCosta. “You followed Shelly up here, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“You thought she was dirty,” I said. “Maybe you thought I was. Where were you when she died? A man was killed, and you didn’t lift a finger to keep her safe.”
“Henry,” Lee said.
DeCosta spoke. “You know the commonwealth has been fighting opioids tooth and nail. It’s never enough. A lot of what’s done is sensitive. What Shelly told me suggested we ought to work into Holebrook County. We didn’t want to come thundering in until we got the lay of the land.”
I pushed all that aside. “What is Ceallaigh saying?”
“We’re not answering that.”
“Josh Bray can answer for it, then,” I said, furious. I could feel Lee looking at me, and didn’t care.
Gill said soothingly, “You’re no longer a suspect. We could shout it to the hills, but think what that gets you, Henry.”
“So what’s your theory now?” I said.
Gill shook his head. “You don’t need to know.”
Lee cleared his throat. “We’ll be investigating these deaths, if you won’t share.”
“You won’t get anywhere,” said DeCosta. “You know that.”
Lee knocked on the tabletop with his knuckle. “Officer Farrell has served his community for years. His own nephew barely escaped with his life. If there’s a threat, Henry has earned the right to know everything. For his own peace of mind, and—”
“You can tell me what you know or not,” I told them. “Ceallaigh can hold his tongue or not. I know it was Bray. I’ll make him answer.”
DeCosta held up a hand. “You’ll never see him again.”
We all fell silent.
“If you must know,” said Gill with a sigh, “the man who we believe actually killed Ms. Bray is gone. I can’t tell you more than that.” That meant Hancock had done it, likely a self-protective move as the walls closed in on the Ton L crew. He hadn’t been at the High-Thyme that night, as far as I know. So who among the friendly faces there had seen Shelly Bray and known to call one of these boys about it? Yet, Gill had said the man was ‘gone,’ a
nd Hancock wasn’t the only one. There was also Alan; the thought made me low.
“Let’s change the subject,” said DeCosta. “How’s your father, Farrell?”
I had read and reread the statement Father had provided to the Holebrook County Sheriff’s Department the night of the incident. He’d also answered their questions, never changing his story once. I handed over a copy of the affidavit, which I was sure they already had. “He doesn’t have any involvement in this, other than he shows up to collect his grandson and there’s two men shooting into the house where his grandson’s supposed to be.”
“And then …” said Gill, reading, not looking up from the page.
“And then Hancock turns on him,” I said. This was a truth Lee and I had worked on; the soul of Father’s action was in defense of his family. “He saved his own life and all of ours,” I said.
“If all that’s true, and I’m not saying it’s not, why sink the guy in the swamp?”
“He had some bad advice. He was in shock.”
“Your father doesn’t own an AR-15-style rifle, does he?”
“What? No.”
“Does Michael Stiobhard? To the best of your knowledge.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so.”
“And neither of those men brought such a weapon to the encounter that night?”
“An AR-15. No. Nate Hancock had one.”
“Not exactly. What he had was a Remington R-15 set up to fire .223. You’re absolutely certain you fought only two men that night?”
I had not thought about a third attacker. There had been a lot of gunfire. “No, I’m not certain.”
“Well,” said Gill, “such a thing I have not seen in my many years. You’ve got to tell your father to stay put for the time being.”
With Lee behind the wheel and my car door closed, I told him to get me to the abandoned farmstead as fast as he could. While Lee drove us north, I first called Shaun Loughlin, then Dr. Mary Weaver, first on her cell, then at the lab. She picked up and asked me how I was.