Great Kills

by Kevin Fox

  She was giving him the decision. Literally putting it in his hands. In her mind it was probably a kindness, an opportunity to end his misery

  “I called your name. You didn’t hear me,” I told him, keeping my hands where he could see them, reminding myself to swipe the gun at the first opportunity.

  “You’ve got a soft voice. Always have. If you didn’t you’d be in charge by now,” he said quietly. I assumed he thought I was someone else, because I never had a soft voice and was nowhere close to ever being the guy in charge.

  “You know me,” I told him, trying to plant an idea in his head. His eyes narrowed and I could see the confusion in them.

  “’Course I do,” he lied. “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

  “I came to talk to you about that plane crash,” I tried.

  “Dammit, Joe. Theresa’s in the other room. I don’t want to talk about this. You know how she feels about keeping them here this long,” he answered. It had worked – he thought I was Uncle Joe. I glanced at Kat, hating that it was her idea. To her credit she was only slightly smug.

  “Sure. We’ll keep it quiet,” I told him, playing along. “But we need to figure out what’s going on. Tell me what you’ve got so far.”

  Dad sighed and nodded, but then noticed Kat behind me. His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Who’s the piece of ass?” I turned to Kat, who was suppressing a grin.

  “Kat, you mind waiting outside?” Kat blew me a kiss and then walked out, smirking. My father watched her go, enjoying it until Kat was out of sight.

  “A little young for you, but you could bounce quarters off that,” he said with a gleam in his eye. It was always strange when my father treated me like one of his old buddies, especially when he got raunchy.

  “She’s just a friend.”

  “Yeah. Like the last three.”

  “She’s gone now. We need to talk about the plane.” I tried to redirect him. I felt badly, lying to him, but my father was the one that taught me to do anything to solve a case. A lie was just one tool in a detective’s arsenal.

  “No shit. Damn right we need to talk about that plane. It’s been three days. Theresa’s getting nervous about havin’ them here,” My father got up, with more nervous energy than he’d had in years. He went to the windows and pulled aside a shade, peering out into the backyard, as if looking for someone in the trees behind the house. The gun was still in his hand, his finger on the trigger. “Maybe you can take them for a couple of nights until we can find the guys who are looking for them.”

  “Take who?”

  “Don’t be a smart ass. You know who. That plane was full when it hit the ground and they think we took the cargo.”

  “What cargo?” I asked, but he was too wound up to answer directly.

  “I’m tellin’ you, Joe. We never should have taken it, even if they ended up getting it. Now all of it is missing and the guys who are going to come looking for already proved they’ll kill anyone who messes with their business.”

  “If we know where it is, it’s safe. Right?” I asked, just to keep him talking. The story was starting to become more clear every time he spoke. It revolved around the plane crash and whatever was on it, and somebody who needed to be saved. It was starting to sound damn familiar.

  No coincidences. That’s what Burke had said.

  “We don’t know shit. You hid it while I took them kids out of there,” my father muttered. “Now they’re looking for it and anyone who might know where it went – they’re killing people to get their stuff back. They want them kids. They’re going to figure out we took the kids in, and they’re going to think we have the rest. …That’s what Theresa is afraid of. Guys with guns showing up at our door.”

  “You think they’d come after cops?”

  “I think guys willing to deal kids to the highest bidder are willing to do anything. We should’ve called the task force in…”

  “You know why I didn’t do that,” I told him, trying to keep him talking.

  “Yeah. Because someone on the fuckin’ squad is dirty. Probably the same one that killed Tompkins and Germanario,” he said, obviously agitated.

  Damn. That came out of nowhere.

  Tompkins and Germanario were two New York City cops found shot, execution style, on a pier in Brooklyn after a buy and bust apparently went bad. The general consensus was that they were good cops, and after Internal Affairs admitted Tompkins had called them to ask for a meeting hours before his death, suspicions ran rampant that it was an inside job – that they’d been killed by dirty cops. The case was still technically open, although no one pursued it after a group of Columbians who were in possession of the murder weapon were killed during a raid in East New York. Everyone seemed to agree that it was better public relations to blame the Columbians than to investigate the elite Narcotics Task Force.

  “We gotta do something, Joe, but who can we trust?” my father asked, clearly worried. “We either have to turn over what was on that plane and give up on finding the corrupt motherfucker who’s behind this – or find out who on your squad is dirty – and damn quick. Otherwise they’ll find us and those kids done like Tompkins and Germanario,” he said, popping open the cylinder of the revolver to check his load.

  It was full, and he was agitated. I couldn’t play around with him like this much longer without setting him off, but it was now pretty damn clear that there were two crimes, decades apart, connected by a cache of stolen art and smuggled kids. But how did I fit in? And why was I called to the scene? Did someone know that my father worked the original case? And what else did my father know that he wasn’t telling?

  “Let’s go back a bit. Maybe there’s something we missed. How did we find the plane?” I asked my father.

  “You. You brought me into it, Joe, you know that.”

  “I know. But maybe hearing it out loud will help me figure out if I missed anything.”

  “Fine… You told me you’d gotten a tip from your cousin in Ireland, Declan – the one on the Corrigan side. He told you how they were bringing the stuff in, doing some kind of triangle trade – cash for drugs, kids, and then guns to the IRA on the way back. Declan said the route out of Boston was compromised when Sean O’Callaghan turned informant and they intercepted the seven tons of weapons on the Marita Ann. To get the next shipment through they were going to try for a night landing at the old Miller Field, off load the payment and load up the guns… This is on you and your damn side investigations. I’m only in this because I did you a favor goin’ out there.”

  “Okay, blame it on me. What should I have done differently?”

  “Kept me out of it. You saw those kids. They know something – and the guys who took them know that they know. …You still meeting with that informant tonight?” He asked.

  I shrugged, unsure of what to say. What informant was Uncle Joe supposed to meet, and what night was he referring to?

  “I guess,” I finally answered. “What’s today?”

  “Thursday. The twenty-third. Why?” – The twenty-third. The night Uncle Joe died. Damn.

  “Yeah. I guess I should meet the informant. We gotta know what’s going on, right?”

  My father nodded, as if that was the right decision. I wished I could figure out a way to ask him who the informant was or what the informant might know without giving away the fact that I wasn’t really Joe, but he changed the subject before I could.

  “Maybe you can take them kids out of here before that,” he said, nodding toward the other room. “Theresa’s hanging on by her last shred of sanity, chain smoking like a fiend and standing out in the rain so she don’t need to be near them.”

  I had been trying to remember what kids he was talking about. Of course, I had no memory of any kids in my house before the accident, and my parents rarely spoke about that time except in the most general terms. I always thought they didn’t talk about that time because the death of Joe was so difficult, but there was obviously a lot more to it.

 
“What about Killian?” I asked, hoping to clarify how I ended up in the car that night.

  “Why do you think Theresa’s so freaked out? They remind her of him. It’s breaking her heart. They gotta go. We gotta keep them safe, then figure out who was behind this horror show.”

  “Of course. We’ll get them.”

  “Damn right we will. You saw those kids. You saw what somebody did to them. All tied and bound, shoved in like old luggage, abused,” he said, his voice trembling, eyes welling up. “…All them other kids dead. These ones’ll be dead too if they find ‘em.”

  My father turned away, wiping his eyes. I’d never seen him like this. As he looked out the window I saw him try to pull himself together, then look up at his reflection. I saw the confusion in his eyes as he saw his own face, decades older than he remembered being at the moment. He stared for a few moments, and then slowly turned around, suddenly coherent, in the present again.

  “Killian… What are you doing here?”

  “I came to visit. We were talking about Uncle Joe,” I told him. He touched his eyes again, as if that made sense of the tears he’d found there.

  “Joe? You sure? What’d I say?” he asked suspiciously, suddenly on guard.

  “You started talking about a plane crash.”

  “The fuck I did,” he snapped, angrily.

  “You did. It was what you and Uncle Joe were working on before he died, wasn’t it?”

  “Before he died, right… I don’t remember what you’re talking about,” he lied. He remembered twenty-five years ago better than he did twenty-five minutes ago.

  “You’re full of it.”

  “Now I’m full of it? You call me feeble-minded most days.”

  “Why won’t you talk about Uncle Joe? Or anything that happened before the accident?” I asked, putting the pressure on. It didn’t work. My father had the same sharp look he always used to have when he was interrogating me as a teen. He hesitated, but didn’t break, the slightest hint of a smile revealing itself at the corner of his mouth.

  “Accident, huh? That’s what we were talking about?” He asked, and I got the impression that he relaxed, as if I’d missed something, and whatever secret he was keeping was still safe.

  “I’m going to reopen that case.”

  “Don’t mess with shit you don’t understand, son. The last time you went messing around, the bastards broke my—” he stopped, cutting himself off.

  “The last time I went messing around with what?” I asked, but he shrugged, looking away. “Go ahead, Dad. Finish.”

  “Finish what? Don’t remember what I was going to say,” he lied again.

  “It was about the case Uncle Joe was working on when he died.”

  “Let the dead stay dead, Kill. That case needs to stay buried. Every time it comes up again, somebody gets hurt,” he said, going back to his recliner and sitting with the gun in his lap. He seemed to notice it for the first time, but wasn’t surprised that it was in his hand.

  “I found two girls on a yacht. Seven other kids dead in the hold and one boy that drowned trying to get off. Heroin on board. I can’t ignore that.”

  “Whose yacht?” He asked sharply, an edge in his tone.

  “Alik Markov’s. Why? Does it matter?”

  He turned to look at me then, genuine fear in his eyes. “Jesus… Kill, promise me. Don’t get involved. Not you. Hand it off. Get anyone else on it, just not you. It’s dangerous,” he said solemnly. It made no sense. I’d spoken with my father about dozens of cases. Dangerous cases, including murders and undercover organized crime cases. He was never scared for me before.

  “Why? Is it Markov? Is that what’s so special about this case? Why is it dangerous?”

  “No, it’s just… Because I said so. That’s reason enough.”

  “What are you afraid I’ll find?”

  Dad shook his head, looking out the window as if he were about to slip away again. “It’s raining, Kill. You can’t find anything in the rain.”

  “Can’t find what?”

  “What you’ve been looking for. The same thing they want. You can’t find it in the mud and the rain. It’s gone, buried. Better off forgotten. If you find it, they’ll—” my father suddenly stopped, looking at the reflection in the window. His eyes glazed over and he looked back at me with that confused look he’d perfected over that last few years.

  “Killian? Is that you?” he asked, feigning dementia.

  I knew what he’d seen, and I knew he was faking it. My mother was reflected in the window. He wasn’t going to talk with her listening. I turned to see her in the doorway, staring at me with disapproval.

  “Is everything all right, Jimmy?” My mother asked, her tone insinuating that I was the problem.

  “Everything’s fine, Ma.”

  “Leave him be, Kill, he’s not a suspect you can interrogate.” I ignored her, moving so I could look into my father’s glazed eyes as I spoke to him.

  “I’m not going to stop looking. You should know that someone broke into my house and tore through your old photo albums. They stole that old ring I found when I was lost in the woods.”

  I saw his eyes flick toward me for a split second and even thought I heard my mother catch her breath. They were both hiding something.

  “Does that mean anything to you, Dad?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It means nothing. That ring is just a piece of trash you found. I don’t even know why you held onto it. It’s not part of some Goddamn conspi—,” he muttered.

  “– James Collins,” my mother warned from the doorway, although whether she disapproved of his blasphemy or the fact that he was giving me information was impossible to tell.

  “Christ, give it up, Theresa. It’s all so long ago. It doesn’t matter. It can’t possibly be related to the case that took Joe from us,” he said.

  “It’s not? Then why did you react when I said it was Markov’s yacht? Why tell me to stay away? And why is your old friend Burke so interested in it?”

  “Burke…?” My father muttered, as if trying to place the name. “God, I haven’t seen him in a while. He was so broken up when Joe died… We all were.”

  “I don’t want you talking about this anymore,” Mom snapped, interrupting.

  “In a minute, Mom,” I told her sharply, sure now that they both knew something more than they were willing to share. “There was a woman at the yacht. She took me to the hospital. Five-nine, maybe five-ten, auburn hair, hazel eyes, about my age –”

  “About your age…?” My father looked concerned, shocked even.

  “Let it go, Killian,” my mother interrupted harshly.

  “She knew me from somewhere,” I went on before she could stop me. “She’s involved.”

  “The one that talked to Sean…” my father muttered, glancing at my mother. I swear they both looked worried. Before I could press further, my mother stepped between us, her hand on my chest, angry.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Killian. He’s sick.”

  “I am sick. You’re right…” The moment had passed, my father was looking out at the rain again. I’ve been sick since the night I let Joe go out there driving in that weather. We should never have gotten involved in that case,” he said quietly, and then looked up at me with clear eyes, holding out his revolver toward me. “Better take this. It’s yours now. Get it out. I’m a confused old man who’s a danger to himself and everyone else… You better go.”

  “What if I won’t?”

  “Suit yourself. It won’t matter. I’m done. I won’t give you anything more. It’d only encourage you to do something stupid.”

  “Like he needs encouragement,” Mom sniped from the doorway.

  “I’m not letting this go—” I warned them both.

  “Killian, it’s time. You’re upsetting him. Confusing his memories,” my mother said, motioning for the door. I looked between them. I wasn’t getting anywhere with them today, that much was clear. I started to go, but my f
ather stopped me again, grabbing the hand I held his gun in.

  “Kill. Come here,” he told me, waving me closer and opening up his arms. This was his way of dismissing me over the last few years. I was about thirty when he started to hug me good-bye, and now it had become his way of kicking me out.

  I leaned down and noticed that his eyes seemed to be on the verge of overflowing again. I couldn’t hold his gaze, and instead looked at my mother as I hugged him, watching her as she defiantly stood guard. That was when my father shocked me, whispering quietly enough so that Mom couldn’t hear.

  “Sean Corrigan. Ask him about Ireland. About Declan – and the woman who was looking for your Uncle Joe…” I squeezed his arm to let him know I understood, then strode out the door, brushing past my mother with a barely a wave.

  “That’s it? You’re going? Leaving me alone with him in the middle of a natural disaster without even a temp nurse?” Mom asked, calling after me.

  She might have said more, but I let the door slam and kept walking. I didn’t have time to argue with her. My father, in his addled way, had given me a lot more facts and a ton of information, but all the extra puzzle pieces just made a bigger mess to sort through – and I was no closer to finding Alina or Dariya.

  We were going on the twenty-four-hour mark and all I had was a brief understanding of an almost thirty-year-old case and a lead on a woman with hazel eyes that I couldn’t remember. It felt as if I was running out of time. The only hopeful note was that as I looked for the Outerbridge through the gloomy rain – I couldn’t see it. The lights were still out. There was no way off the island. For any of us…

  Chapter Eleven

  I stepped out into a gentle rain to find Kat leaning against the Nova. A soft dewy mist had settled over her, as if she hadn’t moved the entire time I was inside. She looked magical, her skin glistening, matching her eyes.

  “You know it’s still raining?”

  “It’s misting,” she said dismissively, still looking me in the eye.

  “It’s wet. That makes it rain. You could’ve waited inside,” I told her, dragging my eyes away from hers.