Desolate Angel

by Chaz McGee

  My god, had Danny and I really joked about that one? Danny had said to me in the car afterward, “If you’re a kid, that’s the way to go. It’s like me getting hit by an Old Crow delivery truck!” And I had actually laughed.

  How had I been so lost?

  Maggie sat in the front seat of her car for a moment after we reached the house, collecting the odds and ends of her life that were strewn about and storing them in her backpack. Lights blinked on inside the home, the porch light revealing an overgrown lawn and neglected flower beds.

  Perhaps this was not a lover’s house after all. It seemed oddly dated, as if it belonged to a simpler time when marriages were rock solid, public schools were safe, and mosquito trucks crawled down the streets at dusk, leaving clouds of insecticide in their wake for the children of the neighborhood to romp in.

  I had grown up on a block just like it.

  An old man in a wheelchair opened the door before Maggie could knock, greeting her with a hug that lingered—he knew what she had been through.

  “The lawn needs mowing,” Maggie told him. “I can do it this weekend.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” the old man said as he made room for Maggie to enter. “Come in and tell me all about it.”

  “It’s bad, Dad,” she said as they entered a small living room. Maggie threw herself down on the overstuffed couch as her father positioned himself a few feet away. It was a ritual they had performed many times, I could tell. This was Maggie’s home. He was her family.

  She led him through the events of the night and he listened with the wary attention of a former cop, seldom interrupting, usually a step ahead, understanding the implications of every development.

  “The daughter doesn’t know where Hayes is going when he disappears at night?” he asked when Maggie was done explaining about the search of the Hayes home and what they had found.

  Maggie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as she shook her head. “She has no idea. It could be anywhere. And I think that’s where he took the girls he killed.” She looked up at her father. “Where he is taking them.”

  “You’ll get him,” her father said firmly. “If anyone can get him, you will. Just don’t move too soon, my Maggie May. Make sure you have him locked down tight before you bring him in.”

  “I know. I know. Patience and thoroughness. It’s worth it in the end.”

  “That and ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ ”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve already used that one tonight, thank you very much.”

  They smiled at each other, not needing to say aloud the things that passed between them. Theirs was a lifelong bond. I could feel the tension in Maggie lifting, I could feel her faith in life being renewed. But I also felt a shared sadness between them, a painful memory they both worked to block out. The father had come to terms with it more than Maggie. He carried the sadness inside him with grace and dignity. But for her, the wound was still raw and insurmountable, so deep she could not confront it even in memory. I did not know what it was, but I knew it was part of what made Maggie so aloof when it came to other people.

  She told her father about the rest of the evening and he was not surprised to hear what had happened to Bobby Daniels at the Double Deuce. But he didn’t want to believe Danny was working with Hayes.

  “A lot of the guys don’t take kindly to being second-guessed,” he told Maggie. “They can do crazy things when they are. You remember what happened to Frankie Z back in ’76? They let those two rapists out of prison because of a new witness and he went to his grave swearing everyone had been suckered but him. It was all he could talk about for twenty-three more years. Maybe Bonaventura had nothing to do with the slashing. Maybe he just went too far trying to prove he was right about Daniels. And you don’t know it’s the same yellow sundress Alissa Hayes was wearing when she died. It could just be a copy. A clumsy attempt to make Daniels look guilty.”

  Maggie was shaking her head. She didn’t buy it. “You know he’s dirty, Dad. He was there with Hayes. He has to be working with him.”

  Her father sighed. “He may be dirty. He probably is dirty, Maggie. I always had a feeling about him. And I know some other fellows in IA looked into Bonaventura and his partner more than once.”

  They had? I had never known, or even suspected, it.

  “What did they find?” Maggie asked, sounding more interested in what her father had to say.

  “Nothing. They came up empty-handed.”

  “So Fahey was a good cop?” she asked. It thrilled me to hear my name coming from her lips.

  “I don’t know that I’d say he was a good cop.”

  Ouch.

  “I think he was a clean cop, though,” the old man conceded.

  “What was he like?” Maggie asked her father. “Tell me about him.”

  “What’s Fahey got to do with anything?” her father demanded. “He’s dead, Maggie. Stick to the living.”

  I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about me.

  “He’s got nothing to do with it,” Maggie admitted. “I can’t explain it. Peggy showed me his photo. I just felt . . . I don’t know. Connected to him. Like he would have wanted me to find out the truth.” She looked up at her father. “Kind of pathetic when you have to turn to dead guys for moral support, I guess.”

  I beg your pardon, I thought. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner than me.

  “You have plenty of people who love and support you, Maggie,” her father said. “You just need to reach out to them. They’ll be there if you do.”

  I was angry at him for steering the conversation away from me. I wanted to hear more about what Maggie thought of me. But her mind was back on Danny.

  “If Bonaventura wasn’t working with Hayes to kill Daniels, what the hell was he doing at the Double Deuce?” she asked her father. “He could have planted that evidence on Daniels a lot more easily somewhere else.”

  “If Hayes is as smart as you say, maybe he’s using Bonaventura.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Hayes wanted people to know Bonaventura planted the evidence. Maybe that’s why he proposed such a clumsy approach. Maybe the real person Hayes planned to kill and take the fall for the murder was Bonaventura.”

  Good man, I thought to myself. I could see where Maggie got her abilities as a cop. Age had only made the old man smarter.

  Maggie was staring at her father intently.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Sometimes you scare me, Dad,” she said. She kissed him on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re one of the good guys.”

  He patted his wheelchair. “No chance of switching sides now.”

  “How are you doing anyway?” Maggie asked. “I didn’t get a chance to call you much this week.”

  He shrugged. “You know how it is. A little of this. A little of that. I’m drowning in casseroles from that Fitzpat rick woman.”

  Maggie laughed. “I’m telling you, she wants to marry you.”

  Her father looked disgusted. “Your mother’s not been in her grave a year. Do you really think I want to hook up with someone new?”

  “Hook up?” Maggie started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t think ‘hook up’ means what it used to mean,” Maggie patted his knee. “But whatever you decide to do, it’s okay with me.”

  “I could say the same to you.” Her father chided as he wheeled to a cabinet nearby and poured them both glasses of whiskey. He handed one to Maggie and they clicked their glasses in an automatic salute.

  “I don’t have time for being involved,” Maggie said. “You may as well give up that dream of grandchildren.”

  “That’s not what Mrs. Millard says,” her father teased her.

  “Mrs. Millard?” Maggie stared at her old man. I could feel her hackles rising. “You said you were going to tell her to stop spying on me. I mean, really, Dad—come on. I got enough troubles without that woman watching eve
ry move I make. When I’m home, I like my privacy. She needs to mind her own business.”

  “Don’t go poppin’ your cork, Maggie May. I just asked her to keep an eye on you. I haven’t trusted that partner of yours in days, since before he showed up at the Double Deuce. I figure he’s going to come after you and make you look bad, maybe plant something in your apartment or locker. I want you to keep your eyes open. You don’t understand how resentful the old-timers can get when a woman comes in and makes them look bad. Even when the woman is you. And Bonaventura is old school.”

  “What exactly did Mrs. Millard see?” Maggie asked skeptically.

  “She saw your boyfriend leaving your house at a time of night when respectable men do not leave their girlfriends’ houses.”

  Maggie stiffened. “Are you sure?”

  Her father’s voice faltered. He knew that something was wrong. “Yes, I’m sure. She called me this morning. It was last night about this time. Two A.M.”

  “I wasn’t home, Dad. I was working. What exactly did she see?”

  “I don’t know. A guy leaving your house. She said he seemed to have a key. He locked the door behind him.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Millard think it was odd my car wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t think she looked for it. It’s not like she’s trained in surveillance.” Her father’s voice took on an edge. “What’s going on, Maggie?”

  “I have to go,” Maggie said abruptly.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” her father answered in a tone of surprising authority. “Sit down.”

  Maggie sat. I was astonished.

  “This is bad, Dad. It could be him. It could be Alan Hayes. In my home.”

  “It could be anyone. It could be Internal Affairs. It could be that scumbag ex of yours. It could be Bonaventura, trying to find out what you have on him or trying to plant something on you. We just need to think it through.”

  “What do I do?” Maggie asked, her voice faltering.

  “Nothing tonight,” her father said firmly. “You’re staying right where you are and getting some rest. I’ll get the blankets. You look exhausted and you’re not going back to your house alone in the dark. Both of us are smarter than that.”

  “I didn’t even notice,” Maggie said, horrified. “I spent a couple hours there this morning and didn’t notice anything different.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the daylight,” her father told her.

  Maggie lay down on the couch, weariness overtaking her, unable to resist the comfort and safety of her childhood home. I think she was asleep before her father had even wheeled out of the room. He returned in a few minutes with a blanket and placed it lovingly over his daughter, tucking the ends in around her shoulders with the tenderness of a lifetime.

  And then he did something extraordinary.

  As his daughter slept through the remaining hours of the night, he sat in the front hallway, staring out a side window at the dark streets of his neighborhood, a gun across his lap, his attention never wavering unless it was to look over and check that his daughter was safe.

  The night wore on, the hours wore on. And still the old man did not break his vigil. He kept watch while Maggie slept. And I kept watch beside him.

  Chapter 27

  I needed to know who had been in Maggie’s house. It was all I could do to help the old man keep watch, and if not for my fear that Hayes had followed her to her father’s house, I would have rushed off at once to see what I could find. Instead I waited until dawn. It finally came, bathing the world in a reassuring light, chasing away night fears and lulling Maggie’s father into long-delayed sleep. He was snoring gently, gun still in his lap, when she tiptoed past him and slipped out the front door. I followed, knowing she was headed home. Her determination radiated off her: she would find evidence of whoever had been in her home.

  Me? I’d find evidence of a different sort.

  She stopped by a local cafe for coffee and I breathed in its aroma as she sipped it in her car. What joy it gave me, that simple pleasure coupled with the remembrance of what she had said the night before: we were connected.

  How I longed to be sitting beside her as her real partner, sipping my own cup of coffee, getting ready for the morning with her. If only Danny had died instead of me, what a partner I could have made for Maggie. Oh, how she would have redeemed me and given me the strength to turn my life around before it was too late. And wasn’t that what love was all about? The belief that another person could fix you, make you whole, fill in the missing pieces of your life? An illusion, perhaps, but one impossible to resist.

  In return, I would have kept her safe. I wanted to do that now, even though the futility of my vigilance was obvious. I scrutinized every car we passed on the road—there were few this early—keeping an eye out for a black SUV or Danny’s clunker. I saw nothing but ordinary people leading ordinary lives on an ordinary morning in an ordinary town.

  And yet, a killer thrived among them.

  We reached her house. It was a nondescript condo, chosen, I was sure, because it freed her from responsibility for yard work or maintenance. She shared the building with another unit, but its occupants were still asleep. And no wonder. The sun had barely started its climb into the sky. The newness of the day was filled with such promise.

  Maggie’s thoughts were darker. She examined the brass around the locks on her front door and ran her fingers over tiny chips in the doorjamb’s paint. Unlocking the door slowly, with barely a sound, she drew her gun and held it out in the defensive position, then slowly eased the front door open with her foot. She entered, gun drawn, moving quickly from room to room, ready to fire. I don’t think she took a breath for two minutes. After checking each of the six rooms and all of her closets, she double-checked that the front door had been bolted behind her and, finally, relaxed. Stripping down to her jeans and a pale blue bra, she began a more thorough search of her house, checking drawers, running her hands over bookcases, hoping to find a clue that might tell her who had broken in or what was missing. A spot on the top shelf of a cabinet in the dining area interested her. There, a small dust-free rectangle of oak gleamed where something had once stood. She ran her fingers over it, looked perplexed, then continued her search.

  Me? I did not need to search to know who had been there. It was Danny. His odors lingered, no more real than memories to the living, but discernible by me: stale sweat, stale alcohol, and a dark emotion that snaked through the air in pencil-thin currents. It wasn’t evil, like the essence poisoning the Hayes house, but something sadder, something that weighed even more heavily on my soul.

  I crossed a patch of it and it came to me: fear so persistent it had taken on a life of its own. Danny had come here out of an overwhelming, desperate fear.

  What was he so afraid of?

  As Maggie scrutinized every surface in her house—it was as Spartan as a hotel room, devoid of distractions and excess possessions—I followed close behind her, running my hands over pillows, touching chairs, the couch, tables, doorknobs, anything I could reach as I tried to decipher Danny’s intentions.

  Why was he so frightened of Maggie? What could she do to him? What did he fear she might find out? I focused my memory on the original investigation into the murder of Alissa Hayes, searching for some action by Danny that had been out of character. I could remember nothing out of the ordinary, just that he had been deep in the throes of an alcoholic haze by then and growing angrier at the world by the moment.

  In the end, neither Maggie nor I had any luck with our search. All I knew was that Danny had been there. All Maggie knew was that her home was not safe.

  As she showered, bathroom door wide open and her gun within reach on a counter nearby, I waited in her living room, trying to figure out a way to let her know that it was Danny who had been in her house. Not Hayes, but Danny.

  The only thing I could think of was to activate thoughts of Danny in her mind. I concentrated on recent memories: Danny at dinner with her, Dan
ny standing too close to her desk, Danny looking over her shoulder to see what she was reading. I was trying to inspire some spark of intuition on her part.

  It worked. She was barely dry from her shower and still wrapped in a towel—her amazing biceps on magnificent display—when she abruptly stopped brushing her hair to call a colleague in records and ask for Danny’s current home address. She jotted it down on a pad by the telephone and I scrutinized it while I waited for her to dress.

  My god, Danny really was going down in the world. If that really was his latest address, he’d moved into the warehouse district where the local whores openly plied their trade. That was not a good sign at all. You only lived in that neighborhood if you had to—or if you were trying to prove to yourself that you didn’t deserve anything better.

  I could have been there in minutes, but I waited to ride along with Maggie. I wanted to pretend to be her partner for a little while longer. I had such few indulgences left. I could feel her resolve wavering as she drove down the wide, deserted block of Danny’s neighborhood, gray and grimy in the bright morning light. Her detective’s eyes missed nothing. The sidewalk was littered with used condoms, cigarette butts, and blobs of spit hocked up the night before. Oddly enough, they quivered and glittered in the new sunlight like beautiful jewels scattered across the bleak concrete.

  It was a Sunday morning, so the block was empty and businesses shut down. There was no sign of Danny’s old Bel Air parked anywhere, but I knew his habits. He could easily have been dumped out on the sidewalk in the wee hours of the night by a Good Samaritan fellow alcoholic who’d held it together enough to give him a lift home. He could be here somewhere.

  Danny’s address matched a ratty first-floor apartment crammed in between a warehouse and discount tire store. I don’t think Maggie believed he lived there. She figured it must be a fake address. She sat in her car, frowning at the front door, unwilling to believe that even Danny might settle for such a place.