FIFTEEN
FINCH WASN’T RELIGIOUS, but as he pulled into the Detroit International Airport the band of tension around his diaphragm loosened. He piloted the Lincoln Town Car into the short term parking garage and turned off the engine. He glanced at his watch. Still about a half hour before the Father’s flight got in. He settled back, the leather creaking, enveloping. He put his palms on this thighs then pulled them back, leaving a couple of dark prints in the fabric. He’d damn near wept with relief when Mr. Mason ordered him to pick up the priest.
Finch found himself in tears so often these days that he was beginning to worry. In his thirty-four years, he had been on the receiving end of more than his fair share of violence, but nothing like what the kid had done. They’d only found Sinclair a couple of days ago, but already Finch was having trouble remembering everything that had happened. That was supposed to be a sign of serious trauma, or post trauma, or some shrinky-dinky shit like that.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, glancing in the rear view mirror at the red blur of another car slipping past.
The worst thing wasn’t the memory loss, it was the trouble with his tool. Since that thing with the kid…when he’d spit Sinclair’s… Jesus, he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it. Since the trouble, he couldn’t get it up. It’d only been a couple of days, sure, and every guy went through this kind of thing at least once in his life, but still. Before, he’d have a hard-on like an MX missile every morning, like it was just waiting for him to wake up. Mornin’ pal, how’d you sleep? Me? I’ve been up all night. Matter of fact, he couldn’t keep track of all the ladies in his sexual history who’d said, “Again? We’ve already done it four times!” or some variation thereof. But now, it just hung there, limp and empty, like it would be if it didn’t have a blood supply at all, like it would be if someone had cut it off. Like it would be if someone bit it off and left it lying on the floor in a pool of vomit.
Finch’s mind flashed images of Sinclair tied to the chair with his own guts. It made Finch think of some of the shit the Viet Cong would pull to freak out the American grunts. He’d been too young to go himself, but he’d seen Platoon, he knew. At first, Finch couldn’t believe that a kid could have done it. When he’d found Sinclair dead and alone in the room, his first thought had been that someone had broken into the house, whacked Sinclair and kidnapped the brat. He just couldn’t get his mind around the possibility that it could have been Jeremy, crazy or not.
Except Jeremy wasn’t crazy. Finch knew it. Horton knew it. Mason knew it. Probably the only one in the house with access to the kid who didn’t know it was the nurse, Emma. She was okay, for a heavy chick, tough and smart. Finch liked tough women, respected them. Well, as much as he respected any woman. But how she could still believe that Jeremy was suffering from some kind of mental imbalance was beyond him. To be honest, Finch had also thought the kid had a tumor or whatever up until he’d found Sinclair. Maybe that was why Emma still thought it was medical, because she hadn’t seen… And she never would.
As Far as Emma Grouwe was concerned, Sinclair had been fired for smoking cigars in the boy’s room while on night watch. She’d been listening to Mason explain the new staffing situation, as she bent over a seemingly comatose boy, adjusting his sustagen tube, while Finch was in the basement dealing with Sinclair’s remains. He hadn’t been aware of weeping as he’d dismembered the corpse, but when he had finished his face had been cool and salty, streaked.
A flicker of motion in Finch’s peripheral vision dragged his eyes to a dark spot on his shirt. Another appeared and bloomed. He reached up and touched wet eyes. “Dammit,” he said, voice quavering. Listen to that, voice all high-pitched and tight like some scared little bitch. Finch had always thought of himself as The Statue, the big guy who stood behind the boss and scared the shit out of people just by staring and keeping still as stone. What the fuck was wrong with him? But he knew. Deep down, it was there waiting, the knowledge of why he couldn’t get it up, why he seemed to start crying for no reason and couldn’t stop. He stared through the windshield at nothing.
“A demon kissed me,” he whispered and scrabbled for the door handle as the bile rose. Finch got the door open and his face clear just in time.
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Sins of the Fathers Page 31