All the Dead Fathers

by David J. Walker

  Kleeman grabbed her arm as she started back to the Impala. “Gives me five hundred cash to show him where you are,” he said. “I knew you found this place, ’cause I drove out that day and saw you. Hah! You see my red pickup? I was—”

  “Shut up!” She yanked her arm away. “Dugan!” She tossed the phone to him in the backseat. “Call nine-one-one!” She reached in across the steering wheel and snatched the ignition key and dropped it in her pocket. “You wait here.” No way he could follow her on those bloody feet, and if Debra took her out, the cops would be there before Debra could get to him. She hoped.

  With her pistol in her hand, she broke into a run. Cuffs had already gotten to the house. He’d seen the chain, because he was stopped at the driveway and out of the Jeep, obviously looking for a good place to take it across the ditch.

  As she ran, she screamed, “Cuffs, look!”

  He looked up, first at her and then toward where she was pointing. Silhouetted in the bright moonlight, three figures were headed across the yard away from the house, toward the shed out back by the evergreen trees. One of them, Debra, had a small duffel bag in one hand and the rifle in the other. Carlo walked in front of her, limping. The handcuffs were off him and he was dragging a smaller man—it had to be Michael—by the arm. Michael stumbled and fell to his knees. Carlo looked at Debra, then grabbed Michael and hoisted him up and over his shoulder, and kept going.

  Kirsten stopped running long enough to draw breath and yell. “She has an airplane, Cuffs. She’ll get away!” Then she ran again.

  To her surprise, instead of jumping across the ditch and running after Debra, Cuffs got back in the Jeep. He tore off eastward, then suddenly swerved off the road and tried to take the ditch at a diagonal.

  The shed with the plane was far behind the house, maybe a hundred yards from the road, so it made sense to use the Jeep to get there … if he got it across the ditch. But he didn’t. Kirsten stopped running and stood, horrified, as his left front wheel dropped down and caught. The rear end rose into the air, and the vehicle flipped, rear over front. Cuffs was thrown out of the open vehicle and went tumbling like a doll into the field. The Jeep landed upside down, wheels spinning. Cuffs didn’t get up.

  Kirsten ran again, leaving the road to cut across the field toward the plane. She jumped and made it easily over the ditch, but her foot landed in a little hole in the ground. Her ankle twisted the wrong way, hard. She went sprawling face-first into the dirt, and the gun flew out of her hand.

  When she got to her feet her ankle hurt terribly, but she couldn’t stop now. She used up valuable seconds scrambing around for her weapon, found it, and took off again. By the time she got close to the house Debra and Carlo and Michael were all out of sight.

  She kept going until finally she could see into the shed, still fifty yards off. She saw only Debra, her rifle in her hand and obviously about to climb up and into the plane. Kirsten stopped and raised the Colt with two hands and fired, once.

  She was too far away, though, and the shot did nothing but alert Debra, who turned and raised the rifle and fired back. Kirsten dove to the ground and rolled, then got up and ran—as well as she could run with that grinding, screaming pain in her ankle. She made it to the shade trees near the house, then suddenly heard two shotgun blasts.

  She crouched behind a large oak, peered around, and saw Cuffs, in the field east of the house, heading toward the shed. He was crabwalking on one leg and one arm, dragging one useless leg with him. He tripped and fell to the ground, got himself into a sitting position, and fired again. Two more shots, but so clearly wild that he might as well have been shooting at the full moon.

  She turned back toward the shed and saw Debra again, now aiming her rifle at Cuffs. Debra fired once, then again, and Cuffs gave a roar like an angry lion, and fell backward into the dirt.

  Kirsten yelled, too, and fired off another useless pistol round, and Debra swung around to face her. Kirsten, screaming now from anger and from the fearful pain shooting through her ankle, ran in a crouch, zigzagging, stumbling, and tripping her way across the uneven ground. But always toward Debra. Firing an occasional round, not stopping to take better aim, not wanting to make a better target.

  Even when she saw Debra fall backward, hard, against the wall of the shed, and the rifle fly out of her hand, Kirsten kept going. Then she saw Debra slide down into a sitting position, and suddenly realized she was standing still, aiming at Debra from ten feet away, squeezing off round after round … except that her gun was long empty.

  Debra wasn’t dead. She sat there moaning and rocking forward and then back against the wall, her hand pressed to her left shoulder, blood oozing out between her fingers. Kirsten picked up the rifle and flipped it, end over end, as far as she could out into the field. Her whole leg throbbed now, keeping time with the beat of her heart, as she turned to go do what she could for Cuffs.

  “Hold it!” It was Carlo. “Drop the fucking gun,” he said, “or—”

  “Jesus,” Debra yelled, “her gun’s empty, you idiot.” Kirsten turned to see Carlo standing by Debra. He had a pistol in his hand, a nine millimeter. “Shoot her,” Debra said. “Just shoot her. Do as I say, dammit.”

  “I don’t know.” Carlo shook his head. “I just got out, and I don’t wanna go back again.” So he had been paying attention to her, Kirsten thought. But he kept the pistol pointed at her.

  She let her own gun fall to the ground and raised her hands. “You’re right, Carlo,” she said. “She’ll buy you a return ticket to—”

  “You told me that already,” he rasped. “So shut up.”

  “That’s a good boy,” Debra said. “You get me up into this fucking plane before the cops get here and I can fly it into Canada, to a place I know. But first you have to shoot her and—”

  “You shut up, too,” he said. “I’m trying to fucking think here.”

  “Carlo!” Debra’s voice was harsh and Carlo jumped as though she’d slapped him. “Don’t ever talk to me like that. Now you stand up straight.” He did, as though yanked up by a chain, and pulled his shoulders back. “That’s a good boy.” Debra spoke soothingly now, a mother to her son. “Look, Carlo honey, you don’t have to think. I’m the one who thinks.” She struggled to her feet, using the wall as support. “I’m the one who takes care of you. I’m the one who loves you. Now … do what I say … and shoot that fucking bitch.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but I don’t wanna go back—”

  “But nothing!” Her face was strained and flushed. “Listen to me. Shoot her!” A mother enraged now. “Shoot, you stupid little shit. Do as I say, right now, or else.”

  And Carlo turned … and shot his sister, twice, in the face. He stood there a moment, staring down at the gun in his hand, then heaved it out into the darkness.

  * * *

  When Kirsten got to Cuffs he was on his back, his left leg twisted out at a grotesque, sickening angle. She crouched down and reached to close his raincoat to keep him warm, and discovered blood soaking through the left side of his sweatshirt. He was staring up at the sky, eyes wide open … but he was breathing, although in harsh, rapid gasps.

  She heard sirens in the distance, and then heard her name being called. She looked around and saw Dugan maybe seventy-five yards away, hobbling toward her, with George Kleeman helping him. She waved, to show that she was okay, and Dugan stopped immediately and sat down right where he was. She was sweating and felt very cold, and was afraid she’d pass out from the throbbing pain in her ankle and leg. So she sat down, too, in the dirt beside Cuffs.

  “You’ll be okay,” she told him. “The paramedics are coming. Can you hear the sirens?” He gave one barely perceptible nod, and tears filled her eyes. “Thank you, Cuffs,” she said. “Thanks for coming to help us.”

  His eyes widened even farther at that, and he was trying to say something. She leaned close to his mouth to hear him. “… can skip the bullshit,” he was saying. “She’s mine, dammit.”

  58. />
  Dugan’s feet were healing “remarkably well” according to the doctor, and although Kirsten’s ankle required surgery to set it properly, she was up and around right away on crutches. So they were both able to go and help with the arrangements a few days later when Cuffs was airlifted from the hospital in Saginaw, Michigan, to one in Chicago.

  Kirsten would never forget the looks on the faces of the hospital staff when Cuffs left. “An interesting patient,” one of the nurses said. But clearly, even sedated and bedridden, he was nobody’s favorite.

  * * *

  Michael told Kirsten he’d missed several weeks of AA meetings before falling off the wagon that night in the janitor’s room, and he realized how much he still depended on those meetings. Then, shaken by the deaths of Habi and Anthony Ernest, he felt guilty and more frightened than ever. He developed a craving for alcohol stronger than he’d felt in years, and insisted on going to his meeting that Monday night. One of Cuffs’s hand-picked men drove, saw him to the door, and said he’d be waiting just outside.

  But Debra obviously knew about the AA meetings, too, and when Michael came out it was Debra who met him. She bound and gagged him and laid him in her van beside the coffinlike box she was keeping Dugan in. She drove all night to her place in Michigan, obviously thinking she’d set up an encounter with Kirsten on her own terms. Cuffs’s man was found in the morning, dead of a single gunshot wound to the head.

  Of course, Michael blamed himself for that death, too. Cuffs, though, once he’d gotten off the heavy meds and was somewhat lucid, brushed Michael’s guilt aside. He said it was clearly “my man’s screwup.” He insisted it was never the fault of the “protectee,” who was assumed from the start to be “a dumb shit who doesn’t know his or her ass from a crack in the plaster.” Kirsten appreciated the gender-inclusive language, but thought Cuffs seemed more upset about it being his man who made the mistake than about the man’s being dead.

  Regarding Debra’s death, Carlo had a lawyer and was keeping his mouth shut. Kirsten kept her own version of that particular part a little vague and, it appearing that Debra had been the crazed priest killer, no charges were contemplated. And Polly Morelli? Though deprived of his chance at Debra, he seemed satisfied with the outcome and granted amnesty to Kirsten and—so far at least—to Carlo, too. Kirsten had a feeling, though, that her name had been added to Polly’s Rolodex.

  * * *

  What with doctors and hospitals and police and FBI agents, she and Dugan had little time to think, let alone communicate. She finally let him talk her into going to Bermuda, thinking they’d lie on the beach and she’d tell him about Florida. But a tropical storm kept hanging around out there and finally, the day before they were scheduled to leave, they had to cancel.

  “Good,” Kirsten said, “because I have a new client who—”

  “Nope,” Dugan said, “Mollie set up a substitute trip.”

  So now they were on a plane—in first class, since how often did they go anywhere?—to Charlotte, North Carolina. From there they’d drive to Asheville and this resort hotel Dugan knew about, with a great pool. The flight attendant confiscated their unfinished martinis because they were about to take off. “Not bad, huh?” Dugan said. “I just wish it was a longer flight, because—”

  “I have something to tell you,” Kirsten said. They were in the last row of first class, and the seats right in front of them were empty. No one would hear. “It’s important and it can’t wait, because I’m scared.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.” As though he hadn’t really heard her.

  “I should have told you long ago. When I think how close we are, and yet there’s this one thing I haven’t shared with you and … I don’t know…”

  “Yeah, well, whatever.” The plane roared down the runway. He settled into the comfortable seat, leaned his head back, closed his eyes. “Go ahead,” he said. “Shoot.”

  “Dammit, Dugan, if you fall asleep I will kill you. And after that, I’ll divorce you. And … and I’m starting to cry.”

  Which didn’t exactly make sense, but Dugan seemed finally to get the picture, and he sat up and listened. And she told him about Florida.

  * * *

  “Well,” he said, when she finished. “Jesus.”

  By then they were well on their way to Charlotte, and Kirsten felt short of breath. She busied herself with folding over the corners of the little napkin that had come with her drink. “Tell me,” she said, “what are you thinking right now?”

  “Thinking? Well … three things, actually. One, I love you. Two…” He paused, then said, “Two, I always knew you’d tell me, sooner or later.”

  “You mean you knew? How could you have possibly known?”

  “Well, I didn’t know what it was, but I knew there was something. You’d start … and then never finish. Now I know how dumb I was not to have made you finish. Because obviously not telling just made it get bigger and more important than it was.” He stopped. “I mean, it was a big deal, you know, and I’m not trying to downplay it, but—”

  “It’s still a big deal,” she said. “The doctor’s not sure, but it could have something to do with why we’re not getting pregnant.”

  “Maybe.” He nodded. “Or it could be my sperm count is low. Which is, of course, completely beyond possibility.”

  “Right,” she said. “Completely. So what’s number three?”

  “Three? Oh … well, that goes back to when Michael admitted what he did. We were both disgusted and angry, but I never understood why you made such a big deal specifically about his never telling you about it.”

  “That’s because you didn’t know how I’d been taken advantage of by that creep in Florida. It just seemed so dishonest of Michael to hide from me the fact that he’d done something similar, to another young girl.”

  “Right, I get it now. But … what you hid from me—running off and getting involved, the pregnancy, the abortion—it was all … well … at least you had the excuse of being young and stupid. Or … I mean … naïve. And you weren’t able to tell me for all these years? So how the hell could Michael—a priest, for God’s sake—how could he tell you about the much more shameful thing he did? Ever.”

  “I guess … guess you’re right. He and I aren’t so different, really.” She nodded, and felt a little shift in her mind, or her heart … or somewhere. “I can forgive him for not telling me.” She closed her eyes, then opened them. “And as for what he did? No one could ever excuse it, but when you think about it, he’d been locked away in the seminary half his life. He must have been as immature as I was—even if he was older. And he was drinking, too, and got in way over his head. It was terribly wrong, but I think I can forgive him even that. Or almost. More than before, anyway.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dugan seemed unimpressed.

  “I will forgive him,” she said, “because I want to. I want my uncle back.”

  “Yeah? Well, not me,” Dugan said. “But that’s okay, too. It’ll have to be.” He pushed the button above his head. “And hey … maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you my own secret … the sordid details about how Debra got close enough to kidnap me.”

  “What? What are you—”

  “Maybe someday, when I’m ready.” He grinned. “But for now, I’m having another martini.”

  “You do that,” she said. “Maybe it’ll boost your sperm count.”

  ALSO BY DAVID J. WALKER

  MALACHY FOLEY MYSTERIES

  Fixed in His Folly

  Half the Truth

  Applaud the Hollow Ghost

  No Show of Remorse

  WILD ONION, LTD., MYSTERIES

  A Ticket to Die For

  A Beer at a Bawdy House

  The End of Emerald Woods

  ALL THE DEAD FATHERS. Copyright © 2005 by David J. Walker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles o
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  First Edition: April 2005

  eISBN 9781466872257

  First eBook edition: April 2014