by Kevin Fox
Kat and I drove in silence for quite a while, staring out at water and food trucks making emergency deliveries to the shelters on the island and watching old Italian men shovel the dirt and clay out of the street to keep the storm drains clear.
We were already on the expressway when I felt her hand patting my thigh. “It’s okay, you know,” she said softly.
“What’s okay?”
“Having someone use you. Lie to you. Make you feel special just to trick you. Rigan fucked you for her own gain. It happens.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Right.”
“Look, Kat. I can spot a liar. She really cared about me, even if—”
“Jesus Christ, do you hear yourself? You’re such a girl. No one can spot a liar when they’re psychotic. Psychos believe their own lies.”
“That’s assuming she’s psychotic. She didn’t seem it.”
“Neither did Ted Bundy to all those dead girls. That’s how he got to be Ted Bundy. You know psychos are the exception. They don’t have tells because they really believe the bullshit they’re slinging.”
I didn’t say anything. Mostly because Kat was right. Still, it felt like Rigan was being honest.
“So, who were you in her little fantasy? Some long-lost love, destined to be with her from the dawn of time?” Crap. She hit it so close to home.
“Something like that,” I admitted as I pulled to the curb in front of the rectory that held the records to Saint Peter’s Cemetery. I got out before she could lecture me. Two minutes and no words later, we were knocking on the door, but no one answered. After waiting an appropriate length of time, I knocked again, harder, glancing across the driveway to the old brick church, noticing that the basement was a hive of activity. It was obviously a makeshift shelter for those without power after the storm. I was about to go look for the priest over there when the door finally opened and Father Tim Finnerty smiled at me as if I was the prodigal child himself. He had to be almost eighty, but in my mind looked the same as he did when I was a kid, prematurely white-haired, with the papery skin of a man who secretly used too much moisturizer, never went out in the sun, and avoided sweating.
“Killian. Didn’t expect to see you here,” Father Finnerty said as he looked down at me from inside the doorway. I already felt guilty. They must give lessons in guilt induction before you’re allowed to wear that collar. Father Finnerty had a flair for it and did it with a slight tone of disappointed indulgence.
“It’s been awhile, I know,” I admitted. “‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,’” I admitted through gritted teeth. It gets them to stop every time.
“And Katherine. How is Mrs. Ryan?” he asked, turning his attention on Kat—but how did they know each other?
“She’s still in the sauce, but she promised me that she’d come to Mass this Sunday,” Kat answered casually, as if these two spoke often.
“Mrs. Ryan? How do you two know each other?”
“Mrs. Ryan is one of the seniors Katherine cares for. That’s a fine girl you have there, Killian. A real blessing. All the seniors love her.”
“She’s not my girl, Father.”
“That’s a shame. We do so many fewer weddings in the church these days.”
I started talking before he could go on. All I needed was to have him get Kat started. “I have a few questions, Father—and we’re in a bit of a rush.”
“Right. You didn’t show up for spiritual advice, did you? You never were interested in finding out about your own soul,” he said, distracted by a mud-encrusted box truck that was backing up toward the church. “Just give me a second. We’re trying to collect food and blankets for the families that lost their homes, and it looks as if Juan Carlos is back with another load,” Father Finnerty said as he started across the driveway to meet the truck and the four or five Hispanic men who had emerged from the church basement. I turned to look at Kat, who was watching the muscular young men take boxes off the truck.
“I don’t have time for this. If they find Rigan and the cash, they’ll kill her and the girls. We need to just go look,” I said, starting toward the cemetery.
“You’re pretty stupid for a smart guy, you know that? That cemetery is fifty acres. You won’t find shit,” she said calmly, pissing me off. “Wait ten seconds and save ten minutes.” She was right. I stopped. Not happy about it, frustrated with her.
“Fine. While I wait, what’s this about volunteer work?”
She shrugged without looking at me. “It was court-ordered. It’s all good.”
“You were arrested for something I don’t know about?”
“Will you relax? It was a misunderstanding. I copped a plea to keep it from getting sticky, that’s all.”
“Copped a plea to what?” I asked. I knew she was trying to avoid telling me, but now that she could see I wasn’t going to let it go, Kat got defensive.
“This dirty old bastard was harassing some poor high school girl at the train station.”
“And?”
“And I might have hip-checked him.”
“You don’t get community service for a hip check. Not in Staten Island.”
“He lost his balance. Ended up falling on the tracks…” Her voice trailed off and I stared at her, waiting for the rest. “All right, fine. He was also a lawyer. And old, and he fractured his hip, but the train was still like a mile away. It wasn’t like I meant to throw him in front of it.”
“So now you have to do community service with old people.”
“Exactly. No biggie,” she said, downplaying it. I kept looking at her, wondering how everyone could possibly look at her and keep seeing a girl I should be lucky to have. “Don’t look at me like that, all right?” Kat went on. “The guy’s old enough to fracture a hip, he shouldn’t be sexually harassing young girls. He called her a little slut.”
“Was she?”
“All she did was kiss her girlfriend good-bye. Then ye olde douchebag tells her she needs to get straight, learn what it’s like to get a good schtupping from a real man. That’s when he smacked her ass.”
“What’s with the schtupping? That’s the second time in the last twenty-four hours.”
“It’s a good word, isn’t it? I love Yiddish. Everything sounds exactly like it means—putz, schmuck, mensch, schlock—what’s that called? An onomatopoeia?”
“How do you know these things?” I asked, trying to reconcile Kat’s personality with all this random knowledge.
“I’m an autodidact,” Kat said, and must have seen my blank stare. “Look it up.”
I ignored her, still trying to figure out what had happened and why. “Was the guy you assaulted drunk?”
“Maybe. But I was just standing my ground.”
“You can’t claim that. He wasn’t assaulting you.”
“Okay, I was standing that girl’s ground for her. I was a ground holder by proxy. What’s the diff? He deserved it.”
“And she did confess,” chimed in Father Finnerty as he made his way back from the truck. “She even called an ambulance for him.”
“I’m almost a saint,” Kat grinned.
“Well, anyone can be redeemed. Even you, Killian,” Father Finnerty rubbed it in. “You had questions?”
“Yes, and I need them fast. Do you recognize this?” I handed him the sheet of paper from my father’s office and the priest glanced at Kat, as if looking for a hint as to what this was about. The paper had clearly struck a chord with him, even though he played it off in a millisecond.
“This is the location of a gravesite, in the cemetery, straight up the entrance road three hundred yards, a left on the second cross road and down the hill. It’s the one your parents bought in nineteen eighty-five if I’m not mistaken… Look, Killian, why don’t we go inside, where it’s warm and dry? I remember things better when I’m not distracted by the dampness in my bones.”
Father Finnerty opened the door and stepped inside, into the past, before I could stop him. The re
ctory smelled the same as it did when I was a child, a mixture of sharp, stale odors that included vague hints of mothballs, incense, and bacon, with a tinge of lemon-scented cleaning solutions and alcohol. The furniture looked like it was from the sixties and, in my admittedly poor memory, seemed to have been in the same positions since the Reagan administration.
“Father, right now I only care about that gravesite. Don’t mess with me or give me the runaround,” I said, in full-on interrogation mode. I had good reason. Time was against us. If Rigan turned on that GPS tracker, or found the cash, we might already be too late.
“For chrissakes, Kill—sorry, Father, didn’t mean to take the Lord’s name in vain—just ask the questions,” Kat said, coming to his defense.
“It’s okay, Katherine. I know what he wants,” Father Finnerty reluctantly admitted.
“You do?”
“Yes. She was already here. Rigan Kelly. She was also asking about the gravesite. The family plot. I didn’t tell her anything. It wasn’t her family’s plot. I didn’t think she had a right to ask, even if she did think something was hidden in those graves. I’m not sure she’s completely sane.”
“You’re not the only one. If you knew what she did last night…” Kat muttered.
I ignored her. “You need to show us the plot.” I told Father Finnerty, taking him by the arm to escort him toward the door.
He pulled back. “You don’t want to go out there, Killian.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing there for you to see.” The priest looked down, folding his hands in an unconscious imitation of prayer.
“Except the kids from the plane?”
“You know about the plane crash?” he asked, shocked. As I nodded, he went on. “Your father wanted them to have a proper burial. They had no family, the city wouldn’t pay, and no one was claiming them... It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You said four graves. Weren’t there more kids on the plane?”
“Some survived. We… well, I guess, I got them baptismal certificates. In the names of other children who had died.”
“You did what?”
“It was easier in nineteen eighty-five than it is now. I had to. There were men looking for them. Men with a grudge. We did what we had to do—to protect the other five. You have to understand, we just wanted the ones that lived to have a chance at life. They were being hunted down.”
“Damn, Padre. That’s all kinds of illegal,” Kat muttered, disappointed in him.
“It was for the right reasons. We found them families.”
“Did you actually see the kids in the coffins? Or could they be filled with something else?”
“You think that’s what your father did? He’s a better man than that. He never did anything except try to protect those kids.”
“Maybe he hid it to protect them, or maybe Joe Corrigan did, who knows? But we need to get to that gravesite. Now. Rigan’s out there. My bet is she thinks the money is in the grave and she’s going to turn on that GPS to call in Markov and trade it for Alina,” I told them both as I headed for the front door.
“That’s idiotic. They could just shoot her.”
“Exactly my point,” I said as I walked out. The only thing that would slow Rigan down was digging up the bodies, but all she’d need to do it would be a backhoe.
I hoped we were in time.
The backhoe was already at the gravesite. Someone had the same idea I did. I saw it as I sped up the narrow road that circled through the granite headstones, but it wasn’t moving. It looked like it had sunk a foot or two into the muck and mud left after the storm.
“We’re too late,” Kat said, giving voice to what I was thinking. She had joined me, but Father Finnerty stayed behind, trying to convince us both not to head down this particular highway to hell. He had stood on the stoop of the rectory shouting after us that disturbing the dead was its own curse and that he wasn’t responsible for what we’d find.
Screw him. Besides, as a former and recovering Catholic, I knew that even if I completely screwed this up, I could always confess my sins later and he’d have to forgive me. Right now my major concern was that the backhoe was where the gravesite should be and that the engine was running, but the operator wasn’t.
He was dead.
The evidence I saw added up pretty neatly—the windshield of the backhoe’s cab was splintered and sprayed with something red, the Hispanic operator was slumped over with a dark hole in his temple, and Rigan had her back to the treads of the backhoe, facing down a weaselly-looking bald guy with a mangy goatee, bad teeth, and a nine-millimeter pistol pointed at her chest. Two other pasty-looking, acne-scarred assholes were standing in the open graves. Russians.
I took in the rest of the scene as I sped closer. Two cars were parked ten feet away from the backhoe. The first was my mother’s Toyota Camry, and the second was a black Cadillac Escalade. Damn. Why is it always a black Escalade?
“Take the wheel and steer straight at the Escalade,” I told Kat, reaching for my gun. If I could get close enough to get a shot off at Mangy Goatee Guy, I could keep him from getting Rigan to his car at the very least. Then I could deal with the other two.
“What are you doing?” Kat asked as I rolled down the window. I had started to lean out the window when the sound of my car alerted Mangy Goatee Guy and he beat me to the punch. I saw his hand kick back and the briefest of muzzle flashes, hearing the shot a half-second later. He missed. I got a shot off back at him, but Kat was having a hard time steering with her left hand, especially since the stress had made me tense up, forcing my foot down on the gas pedal. Mangy Goatee Guy stayed cool, leveled his pistol—
—And fired again, shattering my windshield in a spider web pattern.
That pissed me off, since I knew exactly how much overtime it was going to cost to replace the windshield. I let go two more rounds in anger. Unfortunately, Kat also let go of the wheel when the window shattered, screaming and taking cover under the dashboard. That left the car to find its own way through the graveyard at sixty miles an hour.
Just about then the Russians opened fire and it all went to shit. Bullets punched holes through the car like it was a tin can, and for all Kat’s Army experience, her driving didn’t improve under fire.
It was a clusterfuck.
The first set of gravestones we hit only slowed us down, ripping up the undercarriage. The second set stopped us dead—not dead-dead but completely messed up. My ribs slammed against the doorframe and my head bounced off the windshield. Kat slammed into the dashboard, rolling off the seat and taking most of the impact to her shoulder.
Dizzy, with my head throbbing and my arm numb from where it had gotten pinched between my body weight and the car, I tried to climb out the window but couldn’t move. Then I realized that I still had my seatbelt on. I unbuckled and glanced at Kat, hoping that she was all right.
“You okay?”
“I’ve had worse rides at Six Flags.”
“Good, then let’s go. Get out your door and stay low, behind the headstones.”
“You don’t happen to have an extra gun, do—”
“Just get out and go. Run and keep running,” I ordered, opening my door. I took my own advice and stayed low. Good thing, since the second the door opened, a headstone in front of me splintered and threw up dust as a nine-millimeter round hit it.
“Killian, don’t! He doesn’t –” I heard Rigan scream, getting cut off by a second round hitting a gravestone nearby.
I dropped and rolled, looking for a way to flank Mangy Goatee and the Russians, but by the time I got some cover, I heard the Escalade start. They were in the car. I knew that I’d only have one chance, but as I stood to take it, I saw Rigan in the car with him—and Dariya in the back seat. At this distance I was just as likely to hit Rigan or Dariya as I was to hit Mangy Goatee or his friends.
I held my fire and wiped the warm, dripping blood from my eyebrow as the Escalade drove over the grassy hill
.
“Shoulda taken the shot,” Kat said from right behind me.
“I might have hit Rigan.”
“And your point is?”
“I thought I told you to run.”
“What? And leave you by yourself? Besides, I don’t like being alone in cemeteries. It’s creepy.”
“You’d rather be shot at?” I asked, walking toward my mother’s car—the one Rigan had arrived in, past the graves.
“I didn’t say it was logical. Aren’t you going after them?”
“I’m going to try, but my father’s car isn’t going anywhere after you drove it through a ton of granite—”
“After I drove it? You were in the driver’s seat.”
“We can take my mother’s car.”
“We’ll never be able to catch them.”
“Don’t need to,” I shrugged. “I know where they’re going.”
I reached the open graves and saw that the edges of the hole were water-soaked and had collapsed several times before it was big enough to get access to the caskets. I had to be careful as I approached, peering in, seeing that the four caskets were all open. In each was a cadaver, neatly dressed in early eighties era clothing, all well preserved. Against their translucent skin their auburn hair was vivid and bright. It almost made me understand the Greek belief that redheads became vampires after death. All four looked as if they might open their eyes and climb out.
“Kat, if the backhoe driver’s got a pulse, call an ambulance,” I told her as I jumped down into the grave.
“Screw that. If he’s got a pulse, he’s the living dead. Dude’s got a bullet in his temple. And what the fuck do you think you’re doin’?”
“Looking for any sign that there was anything else in here with them,” I told her, trying not to breathe in the smell coming off the bodies as I lifted their limbs. They were all familiar to me, so it was a little harder to deal with. These were the dead kids in the crime scene photos my father had shown me. Kat circled the rim of the grave as I did, glancing from me to the horizon, making sure Mangy Goatee didn’t come back. I could tell that she was getting paranoid, so I hurried—but there was nothing there. No cash. No hidden evidence. The next two bodies were the same, but the fourth body, a boy of about seven, was different. Not that he had any evidence on him, but he also didn’t look like he’d been through a plane crash. He was emaciated, his hair thin—as if he’d been gravely ill before he died. He also didn’t look familiar. He wasn’t in the crime scene photos my father had, for whatever reason.
