‘You do,’ she said. ‘It’s different for boys than it is for girls, you know. Boys get bigger. They might lose a little hair. But that which made them look like they did when they were ten or so remains. My father looked like a big boy until the day he died.’
Byrne couldn’t see it, but who was he to argue with someone who said he still looked young?
‘I remember Ronan,’ she continued. ‘He was always walking around with a baseball bat or a ball of some sort. Either that or he was running somewhere. I recall being envious of his energy.’
It was true. Ronan always played with the big kids. He was on the varsity squads in baseball and football at school in his freshman year.
‘So many years have passed,’ she said. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask how he is these days.’
Byrne remembered exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard of Ronan’s death. He considered that there was no need to add this sorrow to Anjelica Daugherty’s already weighted heart.
He shrugged. ‘I’m afraid we lost touch.’
As Anjelica looked out the window, Byrne studied her profile. He recalled seeing her in the park that terrible night, the way she opened her mouth to scream but no sound emerged, not for the longest time. Perhaps the real scream had been trapped inside her. Perhaps it still was.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Did you marry?’
Byrne nodded. ‘I did.’
‘Are you two still together?’
‘That one’s a little tougher to answer,’ he said. ‘We divorced years ago, but last year we started seeing each other again. It’s too soon to tell, but I think we’re doing okay. She’s in New York now on business.’
Anjelica smiled. ‘That’s a good story. I like a story like that.’
Byrne took out his wallet, retrieved the photograph of Colleen, taken just a month or so ago on the campus of Gallaudet University. He showed Anjelica. ‘My daughter.’
‘My God,’ she said. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Favors her mother.’
As Byrne took back the photo and put it away, his phone rang. It was Josh Bontrager.
‘Yeah, Josh.’
‘Perimeter is in place,’ Bontrager said. ‘Two detectives from the DA’s homicide unit are coordinating. They need to see you.’
‘I’ll be right out.’
He glanced out the window, saw Jessica pulling up.
‘ADA Balzano is back. She’s going to sit with you.’
Anjelica stood up. Before Byrne knew what was happening, she pulled him into an embrace.
44
‘I saw it on the news,’ Anjelica said. ‘I can’t believe that is little Mick Farren.’
Jessica said nothing.
‘And the father. Danny Farren. He looked so… old is what I guess I want to say. I imagine we all do.’
‘Now that the news has broadcast this, it will only be a matter of time,’ Jessica said. ‘There’s nowhere for Michael Farren to go. We have his place of residence covered. Every cop in five counties is looking for him.
‘I’m going to stay the night,’ she continued. ‘In the morning, the city will send an armored car for us and we’ll go down to the courthouse together.’
‘It seems like a lot,’ Anjelica said. ‘For Michael Farren.’
‘He’s a very bad man, Anjelica. There really is no telling what he will do.’
Out of the corner of her eye Jessica saw the K-9 Unit arrive. She recognized the officer and the dog, had worked with them both.
‘There’s a very good chance that Michael Farren will be apprehended soon,’ she said.
‘Then we can stop all this?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘We don’t know the full extent of the threat. He may be working with other people.’
Because of the Farren family’s history with pipe bombs, the K-9 officer was sweeping the grounds for explosives. Another pair of officers from K-9 were en route. These dogs would search for Farren, based on the scent of some clothing they had collected at The Stone.
‘I thought I was done with all this,’ Anjelica said. ‘Back when my Catriona was taken.’
‘It will all be over soon.’
Jessica’s phone rang. It was Byrne.
‘Perimeter is locked,’ he said.
‘Is it quiet?’ Jessica asked.
‘It’s quiet,’ he said. ‘I’m coming in.’
A few seconds later, Jessica opened the door. Byrne entered.
Anjelica stood, walked over to the sideboard, where a pot of tea sat in a cozy. She turned to Byrne. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks,’ Byrne said. ‘I’m fine.’
Anjelica stood looking at the old, chipped tea service. ‘I just remembered. I bought this set at a house sale. From Máire Farren, of all people.’
‘Who is that?’ Jessica asked.
‘Danny’s mother,’ Byrne said. ‘Michael’s grandmother.’
‘She was a rummager, that one,’ Anjelica said. ‘A scrounger and a thief. Once a year she would set up a yard sale behind that bar she owned, sell all kinds of things. What people didn’t realize was that they were buying things stolen from each other’s houses.’
Jessica and Byrne just listened.
‘After Desmond died, she moved into that house at the end of the lane. Just a few blocks from here, near the avenue. The blue one with the shutters. Do you remember it, Kevin?’
‘You’re saying the Farrens owned that house?’ Byrne asked.
‘I’m sure they did. They were not a family to be beholden to anyone, especially a bank or any manner of landlord.’
Byrne got on to dispatch. If the Farrens owned that house, Michael Farren might be holed up there.
‘I’m going down there,’ he said. Jessica saw him adjust the Kevlar vest, tucking in the flaps.
‘Who’s out back?’ she asked.
‘Two officers from the 17th. They’re both experienced men.’
Byrne moved to the front door, peered through the blinds. He turned to Jessica, held up his rover. ‘I’ll be on channel.’
When Byrne left, Jessica deadbolted the door, slid over the security chain, pulled on the handle. It was redundant, but redundancy saved lives.
‘What is it?’ Anjelica asked.
‘There’s no cause for alarm. We just need to take a few extra precautions.’
Anjelica pointed at the television, which was on but had the sound muted. Jessica glanced over. It was a news alert. A picture of Michael Farren was splashed across the screen.
‘Michael Farren,’ Anjelica said. ‘Little Michael.’
45
Byrne remembered the house from when he was younger. It had been pretty beat up back then, had always been in need of a coat of paint. He didn’t recall who had lived there, but he remembered well seeing it the other day.
It was the lone dilapidated row house in the middle of the block being rehabbed by Greene Towne LLC.
Four patrol officers established a perimeter at the corners of the house. Bình Ngô took the rear, while Byrne mounted the steps to the front door. He looked through the window. He saw no movement.
He drew his weapon, knocked on the door. No answer. He tried again with the same result. He raised Bình Ngô on his twoway.
‘Any movement back there?’
‘Nothing,’ Bình said.
Byrne had to make a decision. There was no time to wait for a search warrant. They did not know for certain that this property still had anything to do with the Farrens. A call to Licenses and Inspections had not been returned.
‘I’m coming back there.’
By the time Byrne reached the rear of the property he’d made the decision. He shouldered open the back door with ease.
They cleared the scene in minutes.
The house was unoccupied.
As Byrne walked through the old house, it felt as if he were stepping back in time to his own grandmother’s house. Everywhere he looked was another bridge to the past. Th
e old furniture, the ancient drapes, the threadbare area rugs, the double bed with the depression on one side, the ceramic bowl and pitcher on the dresser.
In the parlor there was no television, but rather an old console radio. Dozens of books on faeries and Irish folk legends. One of them was written by Francesca Esperanza Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s mother. There were a handful of books on the ban sidhe.
And everywhere there were framed pictures. Pictures of Liam Farren in uniform, pictures of Danny and Patrick, pictures of Michael and Sean, pictures of more than fifty years of customers at The Stone.
On the wall over the antique sofa was a large picture of corn stooks. Seeing it gave Byrne a chill. At the bottom was written Where the faeries live in a childlike scrawl.
Room after room was a museum to antiquity.
Before leaving, Byrne found a door at the back of a closet. He opened it, clicked on his Maglite, descended a narrow staircase. At the bottom was a small stone room.
There, chiseled into the wall, as large as the wall itself, were five words that made Byrne’s heart race.
The entire wall was a Sator Square.
In a ring around the square were thirty or so framed photographs. Michael and his grandmother when he was an infant. Michael and his grandmother when he was a toddler, a young boy, a pre-teen. One was of Michael in a hospital bed, his eyes closed. In this photograph his grandmother held a white rosary.
It was the last picture that gave Byrne pause, one that answered a question that had circled him since he interviewed Perry Kershaw outside Edwin Channing’s house.
In the final picture, the adult Michael Farren stood with a wizened, white-haired woman on a street corner in Grays Ferry. In the background was a billboard advertising a movie. The movie was American Sniper.
My God, Byrne thought. She’s still alive.
Máire Farren was the old woman.
She was the one singing the death songs.
46
Jessica moved through the living room, down the short hallway to the kitchen. She poured herself a few inches of coffee, tried the back door for the tenth time. It was an old habit, and died accordingly.
She’d gotten a call from Byrne telling her that the house in the Pocket was clear. There was no sign of Michael Farren. Byrne and Bình Ngô were on the way back.
She stepped into the small bathroom, closed the door. She splashed some cold water on her face, toweled off. Then she walked back down the short hallway leading to the front room.
At first she thought it was some kind of mannequin, a tailor’s model perhaps. The figure was petite almost to the point of being childlike. Her face was deeply lined, but her skin was clear, almost translucent. She wore a white gauze dress that draped off her slight shoulders.
But the shock of seeing this stranger in this house–a house with which Jessica had become quite familiar in the past few hours, even to the point of moving furniture to create clear paths to the doors and windows–nearly paled in comparison to the sight of the woman’s hair. It was long and surprisingly silken for a woman who had to be in her eighties.
Jessica knew that she had just encountered a threat. She knew this as deeply and completely as she had ever sensed a threat on the street, both in her time in uniform and as a detective.
But still she did not draw her weapon.
Just as the spell was broken and Jessica reached for her Beretta, the woman began to sing. At first it was a low, keening sound that quickly grew to a melodious song. It only stopped Jessica for a few seconds, but a few seconds was long enough.
‘I’ll have that,’ came the low voice.
Before she could turn around, ADA Jessica Balzano felt the cold steel barrel of the Makarov touch the side of her head.
IV
Billy the Wolf
47
Standing in front of Anjelica Leary’s house, Byrne checked and rechecked the action on his weapon, then chided himself for the redundancy. He walked the perimeter of the block, around the side of the row houses, through the back alley, every so often testing doors, windows.
If a car slowed down near the Leary house, he would slip his hand onto the grip of his weapon until the vehicle passed.
It was on his second perimeter check that the call came over the radio.
He clicked his handset. ‘Byrne.’
‘Kevin, it’s Josh. K-9 has a hit. I’m in the building next to Mrs. Leary’s house.’
Byrne felt his skin go damp.
‘Explosives?’
‘No,’ Bontrager said. ‘The search dogs. They hit for Farren’s clothing.’
When Byrne rounded the corner, Josh Bontrager was standing next to a K-9 officer named Brad Summers. At his feet was a two-year-old male German Shepherd named Calhoun.
They stood at the entry to the corner unit next to the Leary house. It was a shuttered store. An old sign over the door read Tully’s.
‘Officer Summers,’ Byrne said. ‘What do we have?’
‘Calhoun was working his way around the second floor and alerted me to the stairs leading to the attic. We went up the stairs and he sat in front of this half-door built into the adjoining wall.’
‘That’s how he alerts you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And he is alerting to Michael Farren?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Show me.’
With Calhoun anxiously taking the lead, they walked to the second floor, then took the stairway to the attic. The ceiling was low and sloped, so Byrne had to bend over. The room was crowded with boxes and old furniture.
The dog sat in front of a half-door built into the adjoining wall. Byrne slipped on a glove, reached out, gently pushed on the door. It gave only an inch or so before touching something. Because of the Farren family’s history with explosive ordnance, Byrne decided not to push it any further.
‘Kevin,’ Bontrager said in a loud whisper. Byrne looked over. Josh had his Maglite pointed at a piece of paper next to the door, a handwritten note.
The note read:
There is a motion detector alarm in the room on the other side of this door. You will not disarm it before I hear it. If I hear it, everyone will die.
Byrne recalled what Emily Carson had said to him:
He told me he bought a motion detector.
‘Can you see anything?’ he whispered.
Bontrager got on his knees, slowly edged his face toward the opening. It was only a half-inch or so. Byrne could make out dim light.
‘I see it,’ Bontrager said. ‘It’s one of those portable battery-operated types. I’ve seen this model. You can’t get anywhere near it without triggering it, and they are loud as heck.’
‘Are there any lights on it?’
Bontrager got in a better position. ‘There is one. A red light in the center. It’s armed.’
Michael Farren was inside Anjelica Leary’s house.
And so was Jessica.
48
Jessica sat on a dining room chair in the middle of the living room. To her right sat Anjelica Leary.
Michael Farren stood near the front door. Being this close to him, she marveled not for the first time just how ordinary people could appear, especially those you knew to have committed monstrous acts of cruelty.
Although he appeared ragged, and in need of sleep, he was an average-looking man in his thirties–slender but muscular, with long, unkempt hair to his shoulders. He wore a black leather coat, black T-shirt, muddy jeans, black work boots. The pistol in his hand was immaculate, pristinely maintained.
Jessica’s Beretta was now stuck into the waistband of Michael Farren’s jeans.
On the wall next to the front door were pinned about a dozen photographs. One was clearly of the older woman, perhaps taken when she was in her fifties. Set off to the right was a picture of Anjelica Leary.
In front of the fireplace were stacked five birth certificates, with Anjelica Leary’s on top.
The curtains over the front window were sheer. Ther
e were no other drapes. Even with the low light–the television was the only light in the room; it was tuned to a news channel showing a live shot from the block, alternating between street level and helicopter footage–Jessica knew that SWAT, with their sophisticated weaponry and scopes, could see anyone and anything that passed in front of the window.
When the house phone rang, Jessica looked at Michael Farren. He nodded, tapped one of his ears. She knew what he meant. She slowly got to her feet, crossed over to the phone, which was on a small table at the foot of the stairs. She pressed the speakerphone button.
‘This is Jessica Balzano.’
‘Jess, are you on speaker?’
It was Byrne.
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone okay in there?’
She again looked at Farren, who nodded. She kept her eyes on the man as she said:
‘Yes. All four of us are okay.’
Farren didn’t react. It was a risk, but Byrne had to know there were four people inside. She couldn’t yet think of a way to tell him that the fourth person was an old woman. Plus, it was a way to let him know that there were at least four people. Jessica really didn’t know if there was anyone else in the house.
‘Billy? I just want you to know that nothing bad is going to happen,’ Byrne said. ‘There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt.’
Farren crossed the room.
‘Call back later,’ he said. ‘We have business.’
He hit the button, ending the call. He pointed at the empty chair.
Jessica sat down again.
Finally Anjelica Leary spoke.
‘How many years has it been, Mrs Farren?’
The old woman raised a delicate hand, as if to brush away a spider web. ‘It’s been so many years that you needn’t call me that any longer. It’s Máire.’ She spoke with a deep Irish accent.
‘Mrs Farren will suit, thank you,’ Anjelica said.
The old woman nodded, said: ‘It was a grand time, wasn’t it? Back then?’
‘For some,’ Anjelica said. ‘Not for all.’
‘I’ve buried my husband, two of my three boys,’ Máire said. ‘One of my grandsons.’
Shutter Man Page 29
