Great Kills

by Kevin Fox

  “Who is it that you think I am, Mister Collins?”

  My father didn’t answer. He just kept looking at her as his eyes welled with tears. It made me uncomfortable. The last time I’d seen him cry was at a dedication to fallen law enforcement officers when I was fifteen. As he heard Uncle Joe’s name read, one tear fell and then no more. None fell this time, but it was a close thing. When he finally spoke, his voice was strong and sure.

  “…I know who you are. You’re the one we lost…” His voice drifted off as he tried to catch Rigan’s eye, attempting to explain something only he understood. “…We tried. You know we tried, right? We didn’t leave you. We never would have left you.”

  “Really? What’s her name, Jimmy?” My mother asked, stepping between them. “Do you even know her name?”

  My father said nothing, but I saw what the question did to him. It broke his confidence. He didn’t know.

  “I don’t think I ever knew it. She never told us. She never spoke the whole time she was here. But you know me, don’t you, girl?”

  Rigan looked back up at him, composed now. “Mister Collins, I’m Morrigan Kelly. Do you recognize my name?” It was clear that he didn’t, but it was also clear that Rigan hadn’t answered his question. It didn’t matter. He was lost to us, the confusion dragging him down.

  “I don’t,” he said, turning to my mother, agitated and bewildered as he lost his grip on this moment in time. “Why is she here, Theresa? Did something happen?”

  “Nothing, Jimmy. It’s just a friend of Killian’s. Come with me. We’ll go back to bed.” My father nodded meekly, trying to act as if he knew what was going on around him.

  “Sure. Well… it was nice to meet you all. I’m sorry if I thought… Well, I… I’m sorry… Goodnight,” he muttered, then turned and shuffled quickly off toward his bedroom, once again the bewildered old man I’d gotten used to over the past few years. That’s when she punched me with a closed fist, knuckles digging into my shoulder. Mom could hit hard when she was angry, and at the moment she was furious.

  “Jesus Christ, Killian. Didn’t I warn you? Look at him. He won’t sleep all night, and for weeks he’s going to obsess about some old missing girl case. It’s a wonder if I don’t find him out searching the woods for a body that’s been rotted and gone for thirty years.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “Get them out. You can stay tonight, but in the morning I want you all gone,” she warned, walking after my father. She stopped in the doorway, turning back, unable to help herself.

  “…And keep the conversation to a dull roar. There are sheets and towels in the linen closet. The spare bedroom is made up, there’s the futon in your father’s office, and the couch. Try not to drink all the milk.”

  And then she was gone.

  “I don’t know what your problem is with her, Kill. I love your mom,” Kat said quietly. I turned on her, not finding her amusing at the moment. My glare shut her up. Then I turned to Rigan, who avoided looking at me.

  “So. What the hell was that?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Right now, Dariya needs sleep and I’d rather not upset your mother again,” she said firmly.

  “I’m not letting you off the hook.”

  “I promise. I’ll tell you, but not now,” she said, glancing toward Dariya, whose eyes were still teary. “You should get to work tracking down that GPS anyway. Does your father have a computer in his office?”

  “The one I gave him last Christmas, before he took the turn.”

  “Good. I’ll help you after everyone else is settled.”

  “Tonight. You’ll tell me everything,” I demanded, as if I had any control over her.

  Rigan just nodded… and I believed her.

  Before we left, I peered out around the curtains at the rain. The bridge was still dark, and I felt like I had a moment to breathe… but then something moved near the street. A man, walking in the rain, alone. It was too dark to really see, but one side of his face looked misshapen…

  He was gone before I could react, so I checked my pistol and went to get the others settled.

  Dariya looked like the child she was as she huddled under the covers in the spare bedroom in an oversized shirt of my father’s that my mother had dragged out along with half a dozen other pajama options. Her back was to the headboard and both hands gripped Rigan’s arm, not letting go.

  “Please, Rigan. I don’t want to be alone. What if they come?”

  “I just need to talk to Killian. I’ll be right across the hall,” Rigan told her, standing up. Dariya was breathing faster, as if she was on the edge of a panic attack. Kat must have recognized it, because she stepped in, trying to help.

  “I’ll stay with her.”

  “No!” Dariya shouted, and then caught herself, trying to act like the adult she almost was. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I can’t. I don’t know her…” Dariya’s voice trailed off, embarrassed at her outburst.

  She shouldn’t have been. Most people think that they can handle death and violence, having seen it so many times in movies and on television. The truth is that when you see it in person, with all the added benefits of warm brain splatter and the smells of cordite and blood, you react differently. At least if you have any shred of humanity you do. It was good to see that Dariya hadn’t lost that, even if she was the one who had killed four of the Russians on the Chistota.

  “I’ll stay with her until she falls asleep, then I’ll be in to talk,” Rigan promised. I nodded and then stepped out into the hall, followed by Kat, who closed the door behind her.

  “She doesn’t trust me. All I tried to do was help and now she’s scared of me because of that prick I killed,” she said, confused and disappointed.

  “Looks that way,” I told her, moving down the hall, worried that we’d wake up my parents again. Kat followed me, feeling the need to defend herself for some reason. It was probably the delayed guilt – the Catholic reflex all of us raised in that faith have – the need to confess to doing something we knew was right because some guy in a collar might judge us for it.

  “I’m glad I killed him.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t hold it against me?” I turned to look at her, so she could see my eyes and know that I meant what I was about to say.

  “Kat, any man that kidnaps kids or burns a boy to death – deserves to die, and die slow. You were merciful to him. I pray I find the guys he was with and I get to take my time with them.” Kat smiled a genuine smile now that she felt secure I wasn’t judging her.

  “Amen,” she said, reflexively doing the sign of the cross. “That’s my prayer for the night. Give me a gun and an opportunity and I’ll take out Markov too.”

  “No guns for you. I don’t need to explain another body.”

  “That’s not fair. You get to shoot people, but I don’t?”

  “I have a badge. Training.”

  “I have Army training and natural talent.”

  “But no badge,” I reminder her, stopping in the living room. My mother had put a pillow, sheets, and blankets on the couch and I started making it up as I answered her.

  “Besides, your talent is debatable, and with my badge a judge and jury will give me the benefit of the doubt. They’ll hang you. You’re not in the Army anymore.”

  “But what if I have to defend you again? I need something.”

  “You can have something. The couch. Good night, Kat.” I threw the pillow at her, half expecting her to beat me with it, but she’d given up. I heard her sigh and flop down on the deep cushions as I went back toward my father’s office.

  It took me twenty minutes on my dad’s MacBook Pro to figure out that the GPS in the bracelet was technology issued by the Russian government. That meant it’d be untraceable without a Federal warrant and some help from the NSA.

  Yeah. Those pricks.

  They were a greedy bunch of math and computer geeks who never shared and knew jack shit about real crime – all
they cared about was listening in on people’s phone sex with sweaty palms and access to their webcams. I put the battery and the GPS in pieces on the desk, and went back to work on the internet, doing more research – this time trying to find Mangy Goatee Guy, who I knew had been locked up with his partner, the Toothless Giant, AKA Vincent Morocco. It didn’t take long to find that Mangy Mustache Guy, otherwise known as Peter Coohill, had been paroled five years ago. That would explain why he was out and in the woods with Markov.

  He’d be a bitch to track down, but his partner, Morocco – he was still locked up. Sort of. According to the New York State Department of Corrections, Morocco had been granted a conditional transfer for compassionate reasons – whatever that meant. If I could find out where he was transferred to, maybe I could get something out of him. But that would have to wait. I wasn’t going to find him tonight, and if he was upstate, I was screwed. The bridges were still closed.

  I was running out of time, was too tired to do much more and needed sleep. The ticking clock in the hall wasn’t helping my mood as I tried to think all of this through – tried to remember anything. After a while I realized that I was touching the scar on my thigh, wondering why I would have been so stupid to burn myself that way for the millionth time. I was becoming unfocused. I saved the web address and turned off the computer. I needed sleep to think straight, so I stretched out on the futon and stripped off my still-damp pants to boxers and got under the blankets. The warm, dry room felt good, and even the hum of the furnace, which made the futon vibrate slightly, was more soothing than distracting. The sound of it was steady and low…

  …Until I heard the sound deepen and rumble, like a car downshifting. Gradually the white noise of rain intruded, keeping complex rhythm, accompanying the harmonies of the engine and wheels on wet pavement.

  This time I knew, on some level, that I was back in Uncle Joe’s Volkswagen Beetle, but I couldn’t see anything to confirm that, since I was in complete darkness, covered by the musty wool blanket that had the vague odor of mold and motor oil.

  I’d never dreamt about this specific moment before. I tried to focus, dreaming lucidly, not even sure if I was awake or asleep, focusing on the tactile parts of the dream – the rough wool against my face, the sounds of the rain, the oppressive heat in the car, and the smell of the upholstery cleaner wafting up from the car’s rugs and back seat. It was claustrophobic and the blanket dampened the sound of the road and the rain, but as I listened closely, I could tell that we’d pulled off onto the gravel shoulder. The loose stones crunched under the tires and somewhere nearby, three car doors slammed.

  “You kids stay under that blanket. No matter what happens. Understood?” I heard, knowing that it was Uncle Joe’s voice.

  “Okay…” came a soft voice from next to me. For the first time I realized that I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see the girl who spoke, but I could feel the warmth of her breath under the blanket and felt the cold tension in her grip as she reached out to grab my forearm. I touched her hand with my own, listening, trying to figure out what was going on.

  I heard Uncle Joe roll down the window, using the manual handle that squeaked and clunked at the top of its arc. The sounds from outside grew louder: A murmur of voices, footsteps, the creak of wet leather – and then someone was leaning in the window.

  “Going kind of fast, Joe.” I heard a man’s deep and raspy voice say. He had a Bronx accent, the kind that sounds almost Bostonian on the vowels.

  “Give me a break. Why’d you stop me?”

  “Because you’re on this stretch of road. Why don’t you tell us why you’re here so late?”

  There was a micro-hesitation that, as an adult, I would recognize as an evasion before Uncle Joe answered with: “I’m headed home.”

  “From Jimmy Collins’ house? Home’s the other way, Joe.”

  I shifted under the blanket, trying to hear better, but as soon as I moved, the girl dug her fingers into my arm, scared that they’d notice us. I stopped for a moment, but then started moving again, more slowly this time.

  “Look, Joe. Let’s cut the games,” a second man’s voice said. I could tell that he was further away from the car, behind the first man. “…We know what you took from that plane. We want it, you have it.”

  “So, you’re admitting guilt?”

  I had the blanket up now and could peer between the seats, but all I could see was Uncle Joe’s profile and the barrel of a .38 special inches away from his face – a face made to look pale and white in the flashing lights of a police car, red, blue, and white.

  It was never a lightning strike that I half-remembered, it was the lights…

  “Hell no – not at all,” answered the man with the gun. “…But look in the mirror. You’re not much better. You filed a false report about what was on that plane. You’re as guilty as we are. That’s why you’re out here, isn’t it? To collect what you hid?”

  “You want it? That’s easy. I’ll tell you where it is.”

  “It’s too easy. We want everything. The witnesses too. The kids. This one goes way beyond us, Joe. Corruption at the highest levels – some bullshit political game with the IRA, bent FBI Agents in Boston and confidential informants. You gonna fuck with that?”

  “They’re kids,” Uncle Joe answered, and I noticed his hand moving next to the seat. An inch from his fingertips, I saw his gun. He was going for it.

  “They’re not our kids, Joe.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  The barrel of the gun bounced off Uncle Joe’s temple hard as the man reacted, pistol-whipping him. Uncle Joe’s head snapped to one side, and I saw him wipe blood away from his eye. I almost yelled then, but held it back as the girl next to me moved closer, trying to see what was going on. She was warm to the touch, the soft skin on her thigh heating us up under the blanket where it touched mine.

  “You really want to swallow a bullet for some Irish trash?”

  “They’re kids and you’d sell them out? Why?”

  “Twenty-five grand and a recovery fee for the cash you took off that plane. You saw what these people did to Tompkins and Germanario – you think I want to end up like them? Besides, what they do with those kids once I hand them over isn’t on me. Now, I’m done waiting. You got ten seconds to talk or I blow your balls off, then your kneecaps. I’ll keep going until I get what I need.”

  I saw the man pull the hammer back on the old-style revolver and watched the cylinder spin. I held my breath and felt the girl lean forward to see what made me tense up. For a moment I saw her face, her hazel eyes, and the freckles across the bridge of her nose, all illuminated by the revolving light from the car that was somewhere out there.

  When she saw the gun, she inhaled sharply. Her sharp breath wasn’t loud. Not at all.

  But it was enough.

  I saw the gun move, the barrel swinging toward the back seat for a brief second before Uncle Joe slammed it upward with one arm while grabbing his own gun with the other, yelling – “Run!”

  I hesitated. She didn’t. By the time I turned to get out, she was off into the darkness, barefoot. The long grass and stickers were already whipping her lithe white legs as the door was bouncing back into my face. I dove through it, into the brightness of the flashing red, white, and blue lights as a painful, deafening sound exploded in the night air.

  I knew now that it wasn’t thunder.

  It was a gunshot.

  I never looked back to see what or who it hit. I was running as fast as I could to the false safety of the weeds, sticker bushes, and the woods beyond them. I’d just gotten caught by the stinging whip of branches pulling at me and slowing me down when there was another deafening shockwave of sound and I fell face first, feeling as if someone had just hit me behind the ear with a sledgehammer.

  I was trying to get up even as I hit the ground, my legs pumping, propelling me headfirst into bushes that hooked their barbs into my face and arms. I barely felt it. The throbbing in my head and the warmth of blood
running down my face was the strongest visceral pain that I had.

  There was room for only one thought in my head – keep running. Even though I was breathing so hard that just inhaling the raw, cold air made me taste the coppery sting of my own blood in my throat, I had to get away from that car. If I didn’t find somewhere to hide, they’d kill me.

  I scrambled forward, but the ground beneath me was waterlogged and soft, gripping my feet as I ran, tripping me with uneven roots and rocks. Something to one side of me was snapping twigs and crashing through the underbrush, so I glanced to see what it was – and that’s when I saw her.

  She was running in her denim shorts and t-shirt, barefoot, with mud caked on her calves, legs scratched and bleeding above the mud line as she ran flat out, long auburn hair catching on the branches, but not slowing her down. I thought for sure she would get away –

  —But then she stopped between two trees, and turned back to look at me. I wanted to scream at her to keep running. They were going to catch her… but she didn’t go this time, the way she had every other time I dreamt this.

  Instead she spoke, looking right at me.

  “I left you. I’m sorry… I’ve been sorry every moment since…”

  I wanted to scream at her, but something was wrong with my head. I couldn’t form the words to tell her to run, so I tried to move toward her, but the world shifted, tilting as –

  Chapter Nineteen

  —I sat up, suddenly awake.

  “RUUUNN…” I screamed, waking in time to hear it diminish to a throaty whisper. I tried to focus and get my bearings. That’s when I saw her again. This time she wasn’t between two trees, she was in the doorway of my father’s study, watching me with empathic eyes.

  “…I’m sorry. I saw them shoot and I just ran. I was scared,” Rigan said quietly from where she stood. She was in an old dress shirt of my father’s, backlit from the light in the hallway, making the fabric too sheer for my comfort. I looked away, not because I didn’t enjoy the view, but because maybe she didn’t know that she was backlit...