by Steven Gore
He couldn’t determine from the paper alone whether the source of the money for the down payment was marijuana profits or the stash from Artie and Robert’s armored car robbery. He imagined Trudy pulling up a floorboard or digging in the backyard, withdrawing stacks of money from her private bank, and slipping it to a seller happy to receive cash he wouldn’t have to report to the IRS.
Donnally laid out the purchase agreement, the payment records, and the refinancing papers side by side. The numbers were equal. Money in, money out.
A ledger of expenditures was in a folder of its own. Food, clothing, medicine, cash. Organized by dates, separated into years, with initials alone to identify the recipients. He matched them to Anna’s tax returns. She had taken just the standard deduction. None for mortgage interest or property taxes or charity, even though she had receipts from homeless shelters and the Salvation Army. Donnally guessed that she had forgone the deductions because they would’ve been a way of getting back the dirty money that she’d been trying to give away.
As he reached for the next stack, Donnally alerted to a break in the pattern of cars passing on the street. He then noticed a low rumble of an idling motor. He peeked between the curtains and spotted Deputy Pipkins parked in front of the house, blocking the driveway, the driver’s window open, his bandaged wrist exposed and looking like the result of a failed suicide.
Pipkins’s face wasn’t visible, but Donnally imagined him scanning the windows, either checking to see whether Donnally was inside or maybe hoping for eye contact in order to make a point Donnally couldn’t yet fathom.
Donnally heard his phone ring downstairs. He suspected it was Pipkins checking whether he was home. He let it go, then called the cafe on his cell and told Will that if Pipkins called asking for him to say that he was busy taking an order from a customer.
A minute after the ringing stopped, Pipkins climbed out of his patrol car and walked down the driveway carrying a KFC take-out bag.
Donnally smiled to himself. Whatever Pipkins was up to, he’d decided to do it in daylight. No way would he chance reaching into another spring-loaded trap.
Donnally’s cell phone vibrated after he’d walked to the rear dormer and was looking down into his backyard. It was Will reporting that a man sounding like Pipkins had called asking for him.
Ten seconds later, Pipkins came into view from the side of the house. Donnally raised his cell phone and videotaped the deputy as he walked toward the five-hundred-gallon propane tank that supplied fuel for heating and cooking. Pipkins pulled a crescent wrench out of his bag and kneeled down next to the copper fittings at the front.
Donnally raced down the stairs, arriving at the kitchen window in time to video Pipkins backing away down the driveway and snapping off the cover of a road flare. He struck it against the igniter button and then disappeared from view. Moments later, the burning flare came flying from along the side of the house and rolled to a stop five feet from the tank. Donnally stepped onto the back porch, ready to run over and grab the flare before it ignited the gas. He looked up at the pines bordering the yard. They were motionless in the calm air. He found himself rolling the dice again, this time with his own life, as he waited for Pipkins to drive off.
The rising whine of Pipkins’s engine sent Donnally running toward the flare. He dived and rolled, then drove the lit end into the dirt and covered it with his body. He felt the last of the smoldering chemicals eat through his shirt and singe his skin, but the smell of propane now surrounding him made him keep his body tight to the ground.
A few minutes later a gust cleared the gas for a moment and Donnally ran to the garage, retrieved a wrench, and retightened the fitting.
D espite the pain, Donnally felt a kind of relief standing in front of his bedroom mirror five minutes later, inspecting the craterlike wound on his stomach. Not just because his house hadn’t blown up, not just because he had evidence that would end Pipkins’s grab at Mauricio’s land, but because unlike the delusions of Charles Brown and Trudy and Sonny, unlike what awaited him in the attic, unlike the reconstructed life of Anna Keenan that seemed more fiction than fact, the burn was real and would remain real as a scar, as a piece of reality, that tied the crimes of a generation to this single day in his life.
As Donnally finished cleaning and taping the wound, he heard a car slow in front of his house, and then accelerate away.
He didn’t need to look out of the window to know that it had been Pipkins and what he had seen: the flare hanging by a fishing line from the porch roof and rocking in the wind.
Chapter 41
D onnally returned to examining Anna’s records, now trying to follow the trail of cash payments, looking first for a code sheet to match the initials of the recipients shown on her ledger and then for an explanation for why she chose to give money to those she did.
He pulled out her calendars and organized them by year, latest to earliest, then opened to March 1986, the month of her death, thinking that if there were any leads to be found, they’d show up near the end. He had expected to find shopping lists, birthdays, scheduled meetings, and plans for spring vacation. There were none. It was a diary, not of her life or of her introspections, but of the lives that impinged on hers.
The last entry was on the day of her death. Father Phil claims that the problem has been resolved. He’s been reassigned to Holy Names in San Francisco. I told him that it wasn’t over and he was deluding himself.
Donnally wondered what sort of problem brings a priest to a teacher’s doorstep. Had she become Catholic and gotten involved in church politics? Had he been her confidant? Or she, his?
The day before her death: A came by. He’s ready to go back to New Jersey and turn himself in, even if R doesn’t. I gave him the name of Mark Hamlin.
Donnally sat back and folded his arms across his chest. If A was Artie Trueblood and R was Robert Trueblood, then Mark Hamlin probably had known their true identities for decades.
Did Hamlin try to arrange Artie’s surrender? Did he try to convince Robert to go along? And who paid Hamlin’s fee? Anna? Trudy? Sonny?
Did Hamlin also know they were dead?
Two days before: Melvin came by crying. Confused. Heard that Father Phil has been assigned to Holy Names in San Francisco. Will go see him.
Who is Melvin? Another crazy homeless guy like Charles Brown? Did he want money to go see his priest? Or maybe it was Anna who was going to visit Father Phil.
Three days before: R came by looking for A. Said A had given him last week’s money like we agreed. I told him that he couldn’t keep living like he was. He was going to kill himself.
Suicide? Was Robert planning to kill himself? Then what was the point of killing Anna? If he was dead, she couldn’t have hurt him anymore. And if she was giving him money, there was no reason for him to rob her.
Four days before: A heard his mother died. Afraid to go to her funeral.
A killer who’s a mama’s boy? Nothing unusual in that, Donnally thought. Death row was lined with them.
A week before: Sherwyn showed up. Unannounced. Said I should stop interfering. I was damaging to his progress.
Whose progress? Sherwyn’s? In doing what?
Two weeks before: Dr. Sherwyn got my message. Came by. Acknowledged he was called Rabbit. Said he got caught in the middle of an internal conflict at New Sky and that everyone knows it. Asked him about the theory behind his treatment methods. RT. Referred me to a textbook. Said he had a contract with the church.
The notes mirrored what Brown and Trudy said they’d overheard, except the letters R2T2 were missing.
Donnally wondered whether what was said about R2T2 wasn’t important enough, or maybe too dangerous, to write down. Maybe that was why she wrote only the letters RT.
He reread the notes. Treatment methods? Treatment of whom? Melvin? Father Phil? Someone else?
Sixteen days before: A came by, gave him some more money. Looks bad. He will pass on R’s share. Thinking about surrendering.
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A guy thinking about turning himself in isn’t going to commit a murder. Suicide, maybe. Murder, no-unless something changed in the weeks leading up to it.
Donnally read back through the notes. Artie had later decided to turn himself in, Anna had hooked him up with Hamlin, and Robert had gotten his money. No motives there.
Eighteen days before: Melvin asked to talk to me after class. St. Mark’s. Father Phil. Twice. Sent for counseling. Called the church. Father Phil not available. Message left.
Melvin must have been a student, and whatever his problem was, he first got counseling with Father Phil. Maybe that’s why Anna wanted to talk to the priest, to check on Melvin’s progress.
Donnally then searched further back through the calendar looking for entries relating to Melvin, Sherwyn, and Father Phil. He found none. The few references to A and R seemed to relate only to handouts of money.
Leaning back and rubbing his eyes, Donnally realized that he’d been talking to himself for the last two hours in the voices of people he’d never met, except Sherwyn’s. He took in a long breath, then read through the entries he’d highlighted, but this time in chronological order.
A was dead and R was dead.
What about Melvin?
And Father Phil?
Sherwyn was alive. But if Sonny was telling the truth about the doctor’s role in covering up the murders, Sherwyn wouldn’t be talking, at least to Donnally.
Chapter 42
D onnally hadn’t worn a suit since his grandmother’s funeral nine years earlier. He felt like a clown at a wake as he sat in the Holy Names Church library after services among the screaming Hispanic kids who’d been herded inside by their Sunday school teacher.
But it was worth the awkwardness.
The 1986 church directory he located on a shelf with others had a color photograph of Father Phil and a last name: McGrath. There wasn’t a picture of him in the directory for the year before or the year after.
Father Phil looked to Donnally more like a man who’d spent most of his fifty-five years sitting on a barstool drinking neat bourbons, rather than in a confessional, with his cheeks becoming more ruddy and his eyeglasses becoming less fashionable in the eternal semidarkness of a neighborhood bar.
Donnally wasn’t sure how he’d pry Melvin’s last name out of the priest when he tracked him down, but he hoped that with the passage of time, the demands of confidentiality would give way to an old man’s nostalgia.
The church secretary’s eyes turned to glass when Donnally spoke the father’s name. The beatific afterglow of the morning service that had greeted him when he walked through her office door vanished just as fast. It was replaced by a waxen face and a defensive stare.
“He’s no longer here,” she said, looking up at Donnally, her voice even. “He left many years ago.”
She didn’t use his name. Just “he,” spoken as if she’d used the word “it.”
“Do you know where he might be now?” Donnally asked, guessing that the answer would be some form of a snide for me to know and you to find out.
The secretary’s voice was not at all singsongy when she answered; it was shaky, as if she’d already used up her allotment of self-control.
“I… I don’t know where he is.”
“Don’t you have some sort of directory of priests?” he asked. “Or somebody I can call?”
She reached for a message pad and wrote out a telephone number.
“You can call the diocese. Maybe they’ll help you.”
Donnally accepted the slip of paper, then thanked her and turned away. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d said “maybe” rather than “can.” Even before he reached the threshold, he grasped that the answer from the diocese would be “won’t.”
Moments after the door closed behind him, he heard the secretary’s muffled voice.
“I’m sorry to bother you on Sunday, Mr. Pagaroli, but a man was just here asking about Father Phil… I didn’t give him your name or the name of your law firm… I’ll let the monsignor know… sure… I’ll do that.”
Donnally smiled like a former altar boy at two elderly women walking past him and down the hallway, their short, plump bodies shrouded in black. But he wasn’t smiling inside as he drove away, for he now understood that whatever Father Phil McGrath had done twenty years earlier lived on in the present like a cancer in remission.
A half hour after leaving the church, Donnally walked into Fort Miley and asked the receptionist to page Charles Brown. A few minutes later, Brown walked unescorted into the lobby. He was still clean shaven, his hair was trimmed, and he was wearing a brown sweater and black pants. His face aimed at an earnest expression, but his eyes betrayed him. Donnally followed Brown’s leer toward a young woman sitting alone along a wall, then he stepped in front of her, so she wouldn’t be forced to see herself in Brown’s predatory reflection.
Brown finally looked up and greeted Donnally, then led him to the visiting room, where they sat facing each other across a metal table.
It seemed to Donnally that the medications Janie had put Brown on were now working, or at least he was at a lucid mid-point between the extremes.
Donnally opened the church directory and pointed at the photo of Father Phil. Brown squinted at it, then nodded.
“He came to see Anna.” Brown grinned. “He was drunk and Anna made him go away. But he came back, even more drunk. He said that Anna was going to ruin him.”
“Why would Anna want to ruin him?”
“Because of Melvin. He was Anna’s student. Melvin was unhappy with that man.” He pointed at the photograph. “That’s why Dr. Sherwyn came, because of him.”
“Was the father a patient of Dr. Sherwyn?”
“I thought so, but Anna didn’t say. She didn’t talk to me much.”
“When was the last time the father visited Anna?”
Brown shrugged. “I don’t remember. I get confused.”
Donnally heard the click of high heels pass behind him, then watched Brown’s eyes track the woman, left to right, below waist level, as if he could see her crotch through her skirt. Donnally now suspected that this was the real reason Brown played the role of Rover the Mascot. He could sit on the sidewalk and look up between the legs of women walking by. He wondered whether Anna’s endurance of this creature was a form of penitence, or maybe repentance in the old, biblical sense of returning to sorrow, returning to her own sexual abuse by her father.
“What about Artie and Robert?” Donnally asked.
“I don’t know,” Brown said, forcing himself to look back at Donnally. “Anna liked Artie, but didn’t trust Robert. I heard her tell Trudy that Artie felt guilty all the time and Robert used drugs. I didn’t understand what she meant. I thought it would be the other way around.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe Janie can explain it to me.”
“Do you know Melvin’s last name?”
Brown shook his head. “He was just Melvin.”
A s Donnally walked through Janie’s living room toward her office to run Internet searches on McGrath and Pagaroli, it struck him that she hadn’t made much progress in packing. The bookshelves were still half full and her photographs remained propped at their oblique angles, half looking at one another, half looking out into the room. The resignation to which he’d become accustomed lifted for a moment, then he realized that her preemptive boxing of books was more symbolic than pragmatic, since it would take her a month or two to find another house to rent.
Maybe that was the problem all along, he said to himself as he sat down at her desk. Somehow we started communicating only through symbolism.
He paused and looked around at the walls and windows and doors, and it struck him that the house, which could’ve been a home in some people’s lives, had devolved into just a way station in which both of them had gotten stranded.
Chapter 43
“I didn’t expect ever to see you again,” Margaret Perkins said to Donnally as she walked into the Schubert, Smith, and B
arton conference room. Her pressed slacks and steaming Starbucks cup gave her a fresh Monday morning look. She held up the records release signed by Charles Brown that Donnally had faxed over the night before. “And I sure as hell wasn’t expecting this.”
Donnally smiled and extended his hand. She slipped by it and gave him a hug.
“And I wasn’t expecting that,” he said.
Donnally turned and pointed at the Golden Gate Bridge framed by the floor-to-ceiling window.
“Nice view.”
Perkins shrugged. “Just one of life’s illusions. Most of the world is composed of trampled dirt. Not so pretty.”
She then pointed at a chair and they sat down next to each other at the table.
“I somehow thought we were on the same side from the beginning,” she said. “I wanted to know the truth, too. The problem is that court is rarely a place to discover it.”
Donnally smiled. “Maybe something should be done about that.”
“It won’t happen in our lifetimes.”
Perkins looked toward the glass wall separating the conference room from the reception area where two suited men waited, hands gripping briefcases as if afraid they’d spring open and confess to some uncharged crime.
“We spend most of our time around here trying to keep the facts and the truth from getting into court.”
“I guess that’s because your clients are usually the ones with something to hide.”
Perkins nodded. “You got that right. Charles Brown may turn out to be our single exception this year.” She smiled. “Of course, we didn’t think so at the time.”
She took a sip of coffee and then set down her cup.
“I ruined a paralegal’s Sunday evening and had him do some research on Lou Pagaroli and his firm, starting with what you discovered on the Internet. The child molesting case you found wasn’t the only one he’s done. The church has become his cash cow over the last ten years.”
Donnally raised his eyebrows. He had also researched Schubert, Smith and Barton’s clients. SSB represented the Vatican in litigation in U.S. courts.
