One by One

by Sarah Cain

  Danny saluted him. “Good to see you too, Kev. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to chat with Jean. She invited me to dinner.”

  Kevin nodded to his wife, slung his blazer over the back of a chair, and slumped down. Before he could answer, Jean had sprung to her feet, kissed his head, and fetched a bottle of Yuengling. She set it on the wood table, and Kevin cringed a little at the sight of Danny’s bemused smile. Of course, Danny’s wife wouldn’t have given you a goddamn sliver of bread if you were starving. Kevin never understood what Danny had seen in that stuck-up piece of work.

  He almost blessed himself. Ma always said not to speak ill of the dearly departed.

  “What I meant was, you didn’t mention you were coming by. You okay?”

  “Yeah. I was in South Philly today. I stopped at the Shamrock.”

  “Jesus Christ, why?” Just the mention of the Shamrock was enough to ruin Kevin’s evening. That fucking bar. Pop’s watering hole. He’d get himself tuned up real good there and then come home to play whack-a-mole with Danny’s head.

  “I was meeting someone,” Danny said. “Do you recall Greg Moss? He went to Furness. He was in my class.”

  Kevin frowned. Who wanted to remember high school? “Should I?”

  “He played football. Quarterback.”

  “Not when I was on the team.” Kevin took a swig of beer and closed his eyes. High school. His final shining moments. When he opened his eyes, Danny was watching him intently, head tilted. Kevin could never tell whether it was real concern or something he put on, but Danny had that ability to look like he gave a shit, with the sympathetic eyes, the way he softened his voice and tilted his head. It was a skill.

  Jean was puttering around the kitchen, checking whatever was baking in the oven, and Kevin wanted to tell her to sit down. Why the hell couldn’t she just sit like a normal person, like she did with Danny? They’d been talking about some stupid thing or another when he walked in. She’d been laughing.

  “Sit down, Jean,” he said.

  She patted his shoulder as if he were one of the kids. “I have to get dinner ready, sweetheart. You know that. Don’t mind me.”

  Kevin frowned. “So uh, this Moss character? Who was he?”

  “Greg Moss was quarterback my senior year,” Danny said. “He was one of the Awesome Eleven. I know you graduated before they played but—”

  “Oh, yeah, Greg Moss. Now I remember him. He was a backup my senior year. So what?”

  “He thinks he’s being stalked.”

  “He should call the police. That’s what we’re here for.”

  Danny shrugged. “That’s what I told him, but he’s involved in some big development deal and doesn’t want the publicity.”

  Kevin frowned. He knew where this was heading. “You buy that?”

  “No. There’s definitely something bizarre about Greg Moss and his land deal, but according to him, three other members of the Awesome Eleven have died.”

  “Recently?” Kevin sat up straight and set down his beer. “Three in your class?”

  “That’s what he says. He asked me to look into it.”

  “And you’re here because?”

  Danny gave him a sheepish smile. “Maybe you could check out the murders? See if there’s any connection? He says he’s been getting text messages. Bible quotes. Maybe the other victims were, too.”

  “Do you have names?”

  Danny handed him a paper with three names: Ricky Farnasi, Chris Soldano, and Nate Pulaski.

  Kevin could have lectured Danny about getting involved in what seemed to be a bullshit case where a potential victim clearly wasn’t telling everything he knew, but it wasn’t worth it. He suspected Danny already knew this Greg Moss character had told him only a third of the story. It was easier to go along.

  It wasn’t that he minded helping Danny. This probably involved little more than a few phone calls. Though when Danny was involved, things had a way of mushrooming.

  Kevin glanced at his wife, who was slicing tomatoes for a salad. Jean insisted on trying to force him to eat green shit when all he wanted was his steak and mashed potatoes. When Danny showed up, it was worse. She always tried to prove they were healthy eaters because Beth had always been such a food snob, with her seaweed-wrapped shitballs and wheatgrass crapola. Jean didn’t understand that Danny was actually a human garbage pit.

  “Where are the kids?” Kevin asked Jean.

  “TJ’s next door. Mike and Sean should be here soon, and I have to pick up Kelly in a half hour,” she said.

  “If you want, I’ll get Kelly,” Danny said.

  Jean nodded. “That would be a big help.”

  Kevin ran his finger against the sweating bottle of beer. Sometimes he could feel his chest constrict at the sight of Danny’s face when he chatted with Kelly or roughhoused with the boys. For a long time, he hadn’t understood why his brother, who had a great deal more space of his own, wanted to crowd into this small twin house so often. Loneliness, certainly. But Danny was a young guy. He had the capacity to start over, if not the will.

  Jean always said Danny needed to heal in his own way. His life had been twice broken. “Be kind,” she’d say. “Healing takes time.”

  Kevin looked around the kitchen, at the battered oak cabinets with the dingy off-white paint next to the refrigerator that was covered with photographs of the kids. He sighed. Maybe Danny would never be whole again. He folded the paper with the three names and slipped it into his jacket.

  “I’ll check these out tomorrow,” he said.

  4

  Greg Moss lived in Bellmawr, just outside of Camden, and worked at Carson Realtors out of an office in Haddon Heights. He was in the Golden Club at Carson for ten years running, which meant he was a man with good connections in the community.

  The information on Cromoca Partners that Greg had sent Danny was useless. Just a puffy bit of public relations bullshit on the wonders of urban renewal Cromoca was proposing for the Camden–Philadelphia area. Danny found that the group had bought a good deal of land around Camden and South Jersey and was also busily scooping up parcels in Philadelphia. This new Camden–Philly initiative seemed to involve selling prime land to the cities at a fairly reduced price, which would be partially underwritten by state and federal grants. It also meant a decent commission for Greg Moss, which was interesting, though, on the surface, not illegal. So how did that tie in with three murders and Bible quotes?

  The federal forces driving the deal were Congressman George Crossman from New Jersey and Senator Robert Harlan of Pennsylvania. Christ. Big Bob Harlan, his ex-father-in-law. Danny had thought he was going to retire, but he should have known better. Bob Harlan held onto his office as if it were the key to life. Maybe for him it was. His power was a cloak of invincibility.

  Crossman was someone Danny only knew from his press kit. The congressman was the majority whip. He enjoyed the spotlight and, with his Hollywood face, made the most of it.

  Danny had been nosing around this business for a week and had nothing to show for it, though he had written a nice little piece on the Shamrock that the Sentinel bought as part of its “Lost Philadelphia” series. That was fitting. The Philadelphia Danny knew was disappearing. He wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing.

  Danny leaned back in his comfortable leather chair to observe the disorder in his office. Books crowded the built-in shelves, teetered in stacks on the burgundy leather sofa, and stood in piles on the floor. Unpacked boxes waited in the corner. He knew he should let Mrs. Kresinski in to clean this room next time she came, but that would require some attempt on his part to bring order to the disorder.

  He’d intended to move into the city. He’d wanted an apartment, not another suburban home on the Main Line, until he’d stumbled upon Mr. Rebus’s Rare Books. The store existed in a prerevolutionary stone house on two prime acres not far from the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair Grounds. Mr. Rebus, a gnome of a man with huge hairy ears, surrounded himself wit
h first editions of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and for a substantial fee could locate an exceptional volume of Blake or an extraordinary folio of Shakespeare. No questions asked.

  “The developers are waiting for me to put this property up for sale so they can sweep in and shoehorn some ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity onto the space. We’ve been selling rare books here for over one hundred fifty years,” the little man had said.

  After several more conversations, Danny had found himself striking a deal with Mr. Rebus to buy the house and not tear it down.

  “It’s only fitting that a writer buy this place,” Mr. Rebus had told him at the settlement. “I’ve left you something, if you’ve the wit to find it.”

  Danny hadn’t found the mystical “something.” He decided either he lacked the correct amount of wit or Mr. Rebus had been lying. For the first time in his life, however, Danny felt like he’d found his real home.

  Conor would have loved it.

  These days, he could think about his son and remember the good times without that gut-piercing stab of white-hot agony. Conor still came to him at night, but Danny could deal with that. He welcomed Conor’s ghost, especially since he was a benign spirit. It made up for those other nights. The uneasy ones. Those were the nights he appreciated insomnia.

  Better to type until four than to lie in bed and dream of the monsters lurking in his subconscious. It had given him the motivation to start the novel that had germinated in his mind and was now sprouting in unexpected directions. His draft had grown from twenty-thousand words to fifty to ninety, and he was still writing. The problem was he wasn’t sure where he was headed. He thought he was writing the fictionalized story of his life, but the more he wrote, the less he liked himself.

  Maybe his old editor, Andy Cohen, was right. His best work was 99 percent fury, and right now, he just wasn’t angry enough. He’d become comfortable, edging toward middle age. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up writing some sappy boyhood memories kind of thing, a golden-hued glimpse into a nostalgic never-never land. It would end in tragedy, of course. Hankies out, eyeballs watering. Christ, the thought made his teeth ache.

  Danny’s phone buzzed. He picked it up to read the text.

  Do you remember me?

  He dropped the phone.

  Kate. It had to be Kate. She’d come into his life almost two years ago, broken his heart, and disappeared for almost eighteen months now, but he knew she’d come back. He was sure of it.

  He didn’t recognize the number. When he called back, it rang twice and clicked. No message. Nothing.

  Danny set the phone down. He was an idiot. Kate was a memory, a wisp of lavender smoke. She’d worked for Bob Harlan when he’d met her almost a year after he’d lost Beth and Conor. He’d known her for too brief a time, but she’d rescued him, literally and figuratively. She’d been a flickering light in the darkness that had almost consumed him. When she’d gone, she’d left him with the fragile husk of his heart. Danny took a breath. He’d push her to the back of his mind, where she’d stay until those nights when he couldn’t sleep, and then he’d drive himself crazy remembering. The phone vibrated again.

  Do you remember me?

  What the hell was the matter with him? Kate wouldn’t send something like this. So who the hell would be texting him?

  He was supposed to meet Greg this afternoon and report on his progress or lack thereof. He didn’t need this shit.

  Kevin had learned that the other three victims had been shot with a nine-millimeter bullet. The only similarity was that all of them sustained a shot to the heart, though Ricky Farnasi had also been shot in the back and Chris Soldano had taken an additional hit in the throat. No mention of any text messages. All the shootings appeared to be random, and none had been solved.

  His phone vibrated. It was getting annoying.

  June 1992? Remember? Remember? Remember?

  5

  Alex Burton steered her green Mini past the Whole Foods shopping center and swung left toward Danny Ryan’s house. She’d been thrilled when he moved into the neighborhood. He was her only actual friend from the Sentinel (even if he didn’t work there anymore), someone who understood that she really did love her job and wasn’t pining for the joys of motherhood. At least not yet.

  She’d spent an hour this morning at Senator Robert Harlan’s press event. It wasn’t much of an event, but it was weird to see the old bastard walking, even with a cane. He was using the occasion to announce his return to health, his plans to run for another term, and his involvement in a big new economic development initiative that would bring jobs to the region. The last was yet to be unveiled. But it was coming. Soon. Like the Rapture.

  Over the past eighteen months, he’d made a miraculous recovery from the broken neck bestowed upon him when his wife clocked him with a wine bottle, and now he was walking. Danny was right. Robert Harlan was incapable of being destroyed. He’d stood smiling and nodding. His hair had turned paper white, but his eyebrows remained as black as his glittering eyes. He still had that sonorous baritone voice.

  It had been a waste of her time. He’d taken no questions from the press, just made his announcement and said he was flying to DC. No comment about his wife, whom he’d stashed in some mental rehab hospital. No comment about his ex-business associate Bruce Delhomme, who currently resided in a rehab facility trying to put together the shattered pieces of his mind and body while the FBI rubbed their collective hands together and waited for him to become lucid. Bruce Delhomme had been a peddler of underage sex and drugs, and the senator had been an investor in his businesses. Of course, he’d been shocked to discover their true nature, or so he’d said. Repeatedly. Alex knew better.

  She wondered if the senator worried about the FBI. If he considered the possibility that Bruce Delhomme would recover. If he did worry about such matters, the senator didn’t show it. Today he’d seemed so vigorous. If it weren’t for the cane and slight limp, she would never have known he’d been through any trauma. The white hair only added to his strange appeal. Alex shivered.

  Danny would have some thoughts about it all—if she could pry them out of him. He preferred not to talk about the senator or those years after he lost Beth and Conor. She knew there had been a woman in that time period, someone who had lingered briefly and left him with another gaping wound. Alex wondered about Danny’s taste in women. It was a worry.

  That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to extract some insights from him.

  In any case, she liked his company. It was good to see her friend settled into something resembling a normal life, even if it was a bit secluded. She didn’t blame him for hiding out, but he needed a shove into the world now and then. Otherwise he’d bury himself under stacks of books and disappear.

  Her surgeon husband told her she was a nudge. So be it. She’d been called worse. Sam said Danny was still healing. He needed to stop punishing himself. Alex agreed. No matter how many guest columns he produced, Danny was still hiding. Eventually, he’d have to come back to the real world.

  She pulled into the curved driveway, parked behind Danny’s house, and gathered her shopping bags. She tried the back door, which was open, and walked in calling, “Yo, Ryan. It’s me. Lunch lady.”

  Alex heard a chair roll above her and floorboards squeal as she stood looking around the kitchen. It wasn’t huge, but it was large enough to eat in, and it had that wonderful fireplace with the bread oven. It also had a strangely large pantry that she would have remodeled, but Danny thought added charm. It would have been more charming if he actually used the damn thing.

  She did like the kitchen’s sage-green walls and the deep window seats with the burgundy pillows. It felt homey. It just needed a few little touches. Some flowers on the round copper-topped table. A few nice fat candles. A pot rack hanging over the island. Things a woman would notice.

  Danny needed someone to take care of him. Left to himself, he’d stand over the sink and eat PB and Js or some junk he grabbed on the run
. She didn’t know how he managed to stay so slim. Most people called him boyish, but he never looked boyish to her.

  He was like those beautiful, artsy guys who’d fascinated her in high school—the musicians and misfits who smoked too much dope and sported too many tattoos and piercings. Except Danny was one of the more conventional men she knew. He had no piercings and, as far as she knew, no tattoos. Of course, she’d never asked him to strip and bare all. Maybe she’d ask. She grinned.

  “Yo, Burton.”

  He looked wired, jittery. His deep-blue eyes were practically sending out sparks, and she would have thought he was high, except she knew better. Danny only took pain meds for his rotten headaches. That look meant something else—he was on to something.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” He took a breath, and she watched him try to force himself to relax. He held out his phone to her. “It’s stupid. Maybe a prank,” he said. “But it wasn’t a misdial. I’ve gotten a bunch.”

  She read the message. “You recognize the number?”

  “Nope.”

  Alex rocked back on her heels. “That’s weird.”

  “You think?” Danny gave her that half smile and tilted his head a little, kind of like a kid who’d made a super mud pie and was both pleased and sure he’d get in trouble. “I’ve been helping out this guy. Actually, I went to high school with him. He’s been getting texts, too. It’s a strange coincidence.”

  Alex nodded. It was more than strange. People didn’t just send you messages like that. “I usually get, ‘Go back to Africa, you tight-assed ho-bitch.’ Did you tell Kevin?” At least Kevin was a cop.

  “Kevin thinks I’m an idiot for having gotten involved in this whole thing.”

  “Well, yeah. So what’s the plan here?”

  “Well, I’m meeting this guy, Greg Moss, at two.”

  Alex sighed and thought about that lovely chicken she’d roasted just for Danny. She’d really been looking forward to this lunch, but no way was she letting him go alone. He had a weird knack for attracting trouble. “Okay. Forget lunch. I’m going with you.”