One by One

by Sarah Cain

  “You kept this,” he said.

  “Well, you did make a nice couple at prom,” Rita said. “She was very happy that night.” She peeled a photograph out of the book. “Here, you take one. So you remember.”

  It gave him a peculiar jolt to see his younger self in his rented black tux. He was looking at a familiar stranger with a baby face and a shy smile. Would Conor have looked like that when he got older, or would he have developed his mother’s sharper features? Danny stared down at the photograph, his chest aching. Michelle had worn that white gown with gold beads to the prom that night, and she really had looked like an angel. If she’d hurt him, it didn’t matter. He had loved her, adored her, and it broke his heart all over again. He spent a few long hours with Rita until her sister arrived, and then he slipped away, promising to come to the funeral.

  Lights had stopped flickering in front of his eyes by the time he drove down the expressway, but his head felt like a kickball. He drove slowly, watching the taillights stream red in front of him, relieved that traffic was light. By the time he reached his house, he almost tripped on the envelope on the back steps. He tossed it on the kitchen table, threw the dead bolt, and grabbed a bottle of water.

  Danny wanted drugs. He popped a foil packet, knowing it was too late. The gremlins in his head were wielding pickaxes tonight. He grabbed two Valium and swallowed them. There was a bottle of something on the counter. He couldn’t make out the label, but he figured it was for pain. He swallowed three pills and pulled out an ice pack. He still had syringes of Imitrex, and he rooted through the kitchen cabinets, but he couldn’t find the cartridges. Danny wanted to ram his head through the refrigerator or lay it on the chopping board and hack it off.

  For a moment he had a brief vision of Smokes Winston strung out on heroin. Strung out but mostly pain free. He could use a speed ball right now. He had other painkillers upstairs, but his legs didn’t seem to be working. Danny stumbled into the living room and fell onto the sofa. He dropped the ice pack on the floor but couldn’t find it in the dark. It didn’t matter.

  Something was definitely wrong with him. His brain wasn’t working because his heart was broken beyond repair. He was everyone’s friend and nobody’s. Maybe when Conor died, he took the last spark of real feeling Danny had to give. Christ, maybe he needed to start drinking. A bottle of scotch with a morphine chaser.

  If Alex were around, he would have talked to her. He needed her, and that had to end. He wasn’t going to be responsible for breaking up her marriage and ruining her life. Maybe she’d already reached that conclusion on her own and had run away as fast as she could.

  Danny could still hear Rita crying, “My baby. My beautiful baby.” Or maybe he was the one who was crying as he curled into himself, lost on his own dark shore.

  The pain in his head began to recede in tiny increments, and a blanket of warmth spread over him. Somewhere close by Conor whispered, “I’m here, Dad. I’m here.”

  “Please,” Danny said. “Let me come with you.”

  Conor leaned close. “You will.”

  For those that love are sad. Someone wrote that, but he couldn’t remember who anymore. Danny let himself slip into the tide and wash away.

  38

  Alex headed out Route 30 West toward Lancaster. She’d thought about inviting Danny to join her, but Rachel Jeffords had asked her to come alone. Rachel had said she felt more comfortable talking to another woman.

  Alex understood.

  She’d deliberately left the packet of information about Cromoca Partners on Danny’s doorstep last night without bothering to knock, and she’d left at eight this morning because she knew Danny was not an early riser. She’d stopped at Nudie’s for breakfast and indulged. Usually it was coffee and yogurt, but today Alex had devoured a short stack of gingerbread pancakes with a side of bacon. She’d just finished her last bite when she remembered she’d given up bacon a year ago.

  She’d eaten Danny’s favorite breakfast item. What the hell was wrong with her?

  Danny and she had always gotten along, but that was friendship. Okay, maybe they did understand each other well enough to complete each other’s thoughts, but only sometimes. He did have those blue eyes. Sad eyes, like they’d seen a lot and understood pain. He had a way of looking at you like you like your story was essential to him, which was, of course, why people liked talking to him. But hell, who didn’t like a man who wanted to listen?

  And the man could kiss. It wasn’t the weed. Her toes curled when she thought about his mouth on hers. You could tell a lot by the way a man kissed—whether he shoved his tongue in or teased you or found that perfect combination. And damn, if someone hadn’t been there watching them—and maybe it was just some kid—she would have ended up in his bed. No doubt about that.

  Would she have regretted it? Well, hell, not the sex. That would have been great, but there were other considerations.

  She didn’t know if she was ready to throw away her life with Sam. Twelve years was a long time, and they were mostly good years. She liked to think that Sam was yin to her yang. If she was all flash and heat, he was cool and serene. She liked having that safe place with him. Didn’t she?

  Miami hung between them. Sam had been trying to save a man’s life and had been arrested for his efforts. She had a right to challenge the fat cop who dragged him out of the bathroom in cuffs. She had a right to scream at the cop who slid his hand between her legs, checking for weapons. Sam believed she’d made a bad situation worse. She believed he’d allowed himself to be bullied. Now they stewed in their unspoken anger. They directed it at each other. They couldn’t seem to find a middle ground.

  There was the baby issue, too. Sam wanted a son. She wasn’t ready, and she wasn’t sure she ever would be. She could barely manage herself, much less another human.

  “Daniel and his wife had a child, and they both maintained their careers,” Sam had said.

  “He had a column. It’s different. I’m just a reporter. And they had a nanny.”

  “So hire a nanny.”

  She still wasn’t ready.

  She and Sam lived like polite strangers, saying all the right things without speaking any truths and dancing around each other instead of moving in rhythm.

  Alex turned off a side road that ran along the Susquehanna River and pulled over to the shoulder to check her directions. Thick, dark woods spread out on both sides of the road, though she could see the glint of the water here and there. She shivered a little. The trees were tall enough to blot out most of the sun.

  She considered sending a text to Danny but figured she’d surprise him. After all, this might prove to be nothing, but if she found out something big, well, she just wanted to see his face. That smile. She shouldn’t have needed his approval so much, but approval came her way grudgingly these days. Alex continued down the road until she came to a mailbox shaped like a rooster. It had a large number four painted on it in green, and she made a right onto the long gravel driveway.

  The woods seemed to swallow her, and she stopped. Maybe she would send that text. She held up her phone. No service. That was stupid. She considered turning around, but shook off her unease. Rachel Jeffords was a sixty-year-old woman. How threatening could she be?

  At the end of the driveway, a dark-green ranch house squatted. A flagstone path decorated on each side with bright-red ceramic toadstools and little brown toads twisted from the driveway. Resin elves peeked out from behind a large pine tree, and plastic daisy pinwheels of bright-pink, yellow, and purple protruded from the ground and spun lazily in the slight breeze.

  Alex blinked. Rachel Jeffords’s home was peculiar but whimsical. Nothing she couldn’t handle. She pulled up in front of the house and parked. As she unbuckled her seat belt, she saw the curtains in the front room twitch. Alex paused as the hair on the back of her neck prickled. She turned off her cell phone and shoved it deep inside the cushions of the passenger’s seat. If something happened—and she didn’t expect anything would�
�the cops could trace her using the phone’s GPS. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it.

  She hesitated a moment longer. This was silly. There was nothing here but an older woman with a story to tell. Alex got out of the car and headed to the house.

  39

  Danny opened his left and then his right eye and then shut them against the brightness of the sun slanting through the windows. For a moment, he tried to remember where he was. His head felt detached from his body, and he reached up to make sure he was still in one piece. He started to push himself up and had to lie back when nausea seized him. Jesus, what the hell had he taken last night?

  He sat up more slowly this time and assessed. He’d been sleeping on the living room sofa wrapped in a throw. Danny retrieved an icepack from the floor and wandered into the kitchen, trying to determine what had happened last night beside the headache.

  It was a jumble of images, none of which made much sense. He’d dreamed of Conor, a more grown-up version of Conor. His mind tried to fill in a face, but he could only see a shadow hovering over him. A dream brought on by his night with Rita Perry, and Christ, it was a week from Conor’s birthday. The drugs pushed all those memories to the surface.

  Danny couldn’t remember what he had taken, except it was a lot. Maybe he was going to end up like Smokes Winston. He needed a shower and some coffee.

  A manila envelope lay half open on the kitchen table. He glanced down at the papers spilling out of the envelope. Information on Cromoca. Had he opened it? He must have started to look at it and then given up. Now he saw there were site maps outlining properties acquired by Cromoca in the past fifteen years. The acquisitions were mainly in New Jersey, but there were a number in South Philadelphia, including the land where the Shamrock used to be located, a large parcel in his old neighborhood where a new townhouse development had been built, and several parcels in Northern Liberties.

  Was it significant? Possibly.

  He checked his phone. One text from Kevin: Call me. ASAP.

  Danny looked around on the kitchen counter as he dialed. What the hell had he taken? He just saw the usual. The Maxalt and Valium. He could have sworn he took something else, but his memory was wrapped in cotton. Maybe it was the pain. Maybe he was losing his mind.

  “Ryan,” Kevin said.

  “It’s me.”

  “Listen, I’m on my way out, but I want you to do me a favor and stay the hell home today.”

  “Somebody’s in a good mood.” Danny poured water into the coffeemaker.

  “I’m not shitting you, Danny. At least stay away from Ted Eliot.”

  “I wasn’t planning to hang out in Camden today, but okay. Will you tell me why?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, Kevin. Don’t make me guess.”

  Kevin sighed, and Danny could almost see him reaching for his Maalox. “Ted Eliot’s old man is Congressman George Crossman. And George Crossman is asshole buddies with—”

  “Robert Harlan.”

  “So maybe Greg Moss’s death had more to do with land deals than high school. I don’t know for sure, but for now, promise me you won’t go near Eliot on your own.”

  “You think he’s involved.”

  Kevin didn’t answer right away. At length, he said, “I think there’s a possibility he knows more than he’s saying.”

  “Okay. I’ll stay away from Ted Eliot.” It was an easy promise to make. For now. He had other leads to pursue. It was after nine, and he needed to get moving.

  *

  Danny drove up the Lincoln Drive, passing under the span of the Henry Avenue Bridge, its great Roman arches looming over the twisting road. In the bright sun, the bridge seemed more picturesque than threatening, but Danny could never drive under the suicide bridge without a chill passing through him. Today it was more like a deep shudder.

  He headed to photographer Al Frederick’s house in Mt. Airy, the middle-class section of Northwest Philly, known for its mixed-race, liberal population. Not as upper middle class as Chestnut Hill, its immediate neighbor to the north, nor as working poor as Germantown, its neighbor to the south, Mt. Airy struck just the right balance on paper, if not in fact.

  “Say it out loud, we’re liberal and proud,” Kevin would always say as he drove through Mt. Airy on his way home to the more working class Roxborough. These days, Danny didn’t comment. It seemed Kevin carried a heavy load of disdain for people of all political persuasions. He was happiest when he could throw himself into his lounge chair and retreat from the world. Middle age was hitting Kevin hard, and it wasn’t pretty to watch.

  Danny found Al Frederick’s large twin home not far from the Jewish Community Center. It was a slightly dilapidated, three-story affair surrounded by a wooden fence and overgrown shrubs. A pot of bleeding hearts hung from the porch, and the scent of lily of the valley filled the air. Danny rang the doorbell and waited.

  “Hold on. Hold on.”

  Danny heard the familiar raspy voice coming from the side of the house before Al appeared. A tall, thin fellow with a shock of white hair and sharp dark eyes that peered at him from under deep-gray brows, he walked with the rolling gait of a man who had spent his life in the saddle. As far as Danny knew, Al had been born and raised in the city, probably in this house, and had never come closer to a horse than an old western movie. Spook, hell. Al looked more like a goblin. He raised the Leica hanging around his neck to snap Danny’s picture.

  “Daniel Ryan. I can’t believe it,” he said. “I thought you’d moved on from these parts.”

  He held out a hand, and Danny shook it. “How are you, Al?”

  “Can’t complain. I take pictures of nature now. It’s a little quieter.” Al patted his camera. “Come on. Darkroom’s in the back. You want coffee? Soda?”

  “I’m fine,” Danny said.

  “You look like you could use a shot of bourbon.”

  Danny followed Al around the side of the house to a back entrance and then down a set of cracked concrete stairs to the basement. The front half of it had been converted to a darkroom, but the back half was filled with glass cases containing Al’s beloved camera collection, which included a Leica I from 1927. That camera alone was probably worth millions, yet it sat in the basement of this run-down home in Mt. Airy next to a set of carefully labeled flat file drawers.

  Over the years, Al had photographed the faces the city preferred to forget: the junkies and homeless, the denizens of seedy bars and strip clubs, the beaten and abused. The murdered. The faces that brought Danny’s stories to life.

  On the walls hung a variety of photographs Danny stopped to examine. Some of them were all too familiar. Al had photographed the Sandman victims—or as much as the police would allow. The sites, the eerie aftermaths where the victims’ ghosts walked. A blossom of blood on the sidewalk where Jane Doe Five had been discovered. It glistened in the sun and trickled down to the gutter—beautiful and horrific.

  Al had a distinctive way of framing a shot. He’d snapped a series of photographs of Amy Johanson leaping to her death off the Henry Avenue Bridge, her fragile body arced like an acrobat against the cloudless sky all the way down to the crumpled heap of the girl lying broken in the rocky creek, her blood rushing away in the muddy water. Danny had never seen the whole series before, and he stared at the photographs in a sort of horrified fascination. Amy Johanson had been Danny’s first feature at the Sentinel, and Al’s last three shots were of him leaning over the bridge, his face contorted in a helpless cry of horror and despair. Al had used a zoom lens, and the photos should have been out of focus, but they weren’t. Danny looked away and clenched his fists. He had no desire to see more bodies.

  “Those bother you?” Al asked.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, like he didn’t mind Al stealing a bit of his soul.

  “It was an ugly scene. You did a nice piece. Front page, if I remember right.”

  “How do you know where to stand? How to frame it?”

  Al shrugged. “I d
on’t always. Sometimes I’m just in the right place. Most everyone was on the bridge that day. I went down below. If she hadn’t jumped, I wouldn’t have gotten those shots.”

  “So you got lucky.”

  “I generally guessed where to get the best shot right more than I guessed wrong.” Al held up a folder of photographs, and Danny wondered whether all those great shots ate a little of Al’s soul. “Here, take a look. Those pictures you wanted of the Jeffords house fire. These are the best of the bunch, but I have more.” He spread them out on a light table.

  Danny came over, and Al handed him a magnifying glass.

  “This is the best shot. I enlarged the crowds. I can go larger if you need me to, but we’re going to start to lose detail.”

  Danny looked over the photo in its normal view. In it, a firefighter consoled Mrs. Jeffords. Her head bowed down, and his arm curled around her. Her left hand clutched at her turquoise dress, but in the shot, it was slightly blurred. Too bad. He wanted to get a clearer view of her ring. It looked like a Claddagh ring. Danny wasn’t sure it mattered, but it was a detail.

  Behind the figures in the photograph, three homes burned, and a crowd was gathered on the sidewalk. Danny stared at Mrs. Jeffords. What was the worst thing in the world that could happen to a parent? Losing a child. No question there.

  Danny laid the enlarged crowd shots around the photograph. He wasn’t sure who or what he was looking for. Al took these photos in the time before Andy’s citizens with cellphones took over. People looked stunned, curious, and unfamiliar. Then he saw the face at the edge of the crowd.

  “Al, can you blow just this part up?” Danny held up the photo.

  Al looked at it and nodded. “The resolution is going to decrease as it gets larger, but I can play with it. You got something?”

  “Maybe.”

  The face in the crowd belonged to Frank Greer.

  40

  “Mrs. Jeffords, thank you so much for meeting me.” Alex reached out to grasp the pudgy hand of the woman before her. Short and round, Rachel Jeffords had the pale skin of a person who didn’t go out in the sun coupled with long dark hair and light-blue eyes. She was surprisingly youthful for a woman near sixty, but Alex figured if you avoided the sun and hid in your house, your skin probably would remain in decent shape. Rachel had squeezed herself into a bright-orange spandex top and white skirt about three sizes too small. Her body shivered like a Jell-O mold when she walked.