The 8th Circle

by Sarah Cain

  He found himself walking to the garage and pulling the door open. In the dim light, he could see boxes pulled from shelves, his old college yearbooks scattered amid the tools and odd bits of Christmas decorations. Beowulf lay in the middle of the floor, still as if he were asleep, but a pool of blood encircled his shattered head.

  *

  Cops swarmed through his house, taking pictures of the destruction, pawing through the downstairs, upstairs, his bedroom, and Conor’s room. They questioned Danny about his substantial cache of prescription drugs, each bottle untouched. They made him account for his time over and over, like maybe he’d trashed his own house and killed his own dog in some kind of psychotic break with reality.

  Danny leaned against the kitchen door and gripped Beowulf’s tags until the metal dug into the skin of his palm. The pain kept him focused. Kept the surge at bay.

  Let go and feel, Danny. Pain is good. It’s a first step.

  His right hand was bleeding.

  By the time the cops left, it was after eight. Only Novell remained.

  Danny turned to him. “Did you forget something?”

  “Thought I’d help you bury your dog,” Novell said, his voice mild.

  “Forget it.”

  “No. He’s big.”

  “Thank you.”

  Danny couldn’t stand to look at Novell, not with tears burning his eyes. Christ, his old man would have a good laugh if he could see him now.

  The phone rang, and Danny tripped over a pile of silverware lying on the kitchen floor. He kicked at it and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?”

  “Danny Boy, you sound out of breath.” The voice was little more than a whisper but full of malice.

  “Who is this?”

  “You got our message. That’s good.”

  The phone slipped against his bloody palm. “What do you want?”

  “This was a warning. You understand? Keep out of what don’t concern you. Be smart. Give us the package and walk away.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The package Michael Cohen brought you.”

  Danny looked at the crap on the floor. Michael had a package? But he didn’t. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. “Look, asshole, I don’t have any goddamn package—”

  “Wrong answer.”

  The phone clicked.

  12

  Novell watched Ryan stand at the kitchen sink and run water over his hands. His shirt and the front of his suit jacket were stiff with blood, and if Novell hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have thought Ryan had it in him to heft that dog and stagger with him down to an area near the duck pond surrounded by willow trees. They buried him there, neither of them speaking. It wasn’t until they got back to the house that Novell realized how ripped up Ryan’s hands were.

  His first thought was soft city boy, nothing like his old man. His second was maybe strength came in different packages.

  “Would you like a drink, Detective?”

  “Sure, I could use one.” Novell wanted to forget burying that dog. He wanted to forget a lot of things.

  Ryan wiped his hands on a towel and turned to face Novell. Silver lines of tears cut through the dirt on Ryan’s face, and Novell thought of the book of martyrs again.

  “You’re a scotch man,” Ryan said.

  “Good guess.”

  “My father was a scotch man.” Ryan pointed to a doorway. “I don’t think they completely trashed the bar.”

  Novell followed him out of the kitchen into the family room and stepped over a couple of shattered crystal vases. Expensive. Was there anything in this house that didn’t cost a fortune? Books were scattered across the floor, and someone had pitched the family photographs throughout the room like Frisbees. Novell wanted to straighten the oil portrait that hung at a crazy angle from the wall. The perfect family—young, attractive, too good to be true. Novell turned away and surveyed the room.

  It was three times the size of his condo—new construction made to look old with its exposed beams, high windows with leaded glass, and cathedral ceiling. The fancy furniture was all earthy greens, deep reds, and rich golds with matching pillows, now tossed helter-skelter. A mahogany bar stood in the corner. It appeared intact.

  “Whoever was here left with all the beer and most of the vodka.” Ryan held up a fifth of Chivas. “This okay or are you a single malt man? I’ve got a case of Glenfiddich.”

  “Chivas is fine.”

  “Straight okay?”

  Novell nodded. “You don’t drink?”

  “Never was much good at it.” Ryan poured a double shot of Chivas and handed it to Novell. He opened a bottle of club soda for himself. “Now I bet your partner McFarland’s an imported beer man. Heineken. Guinness. Or maybe Dos Equis with a wedge of lime.”

  “And you know this because?”

  Ryan gave him a half smile. “I grew up around cops and drunks. Haven’t you done your research on me?” He laughed when Novell didn’t answer. “Yeah, you have. You’re too thorough a cop not to have checked me out. What were you before this? Secret Service? DEA? FBI?”

  Novell swallowed his scotch and tried not to be impressed. “Door number three.”

  “Ah, big time. So why’d you leave?”

  Ryan’s quiet voice invited him to lean a little closer, assured him he was a sympathetic listener, and intimated it was safe to open up, but Novell wasn’t fooled. Ryan focused on his face, like he was trying to look inside, and Novell knew he wanted to take notes. Treacherous fuck. All reporters were the same.

  “I put in my twenty. It was time.” Novell shifted. He didn’t like the half smile that played on Ryan’s lips.

  “You don’t strike me as a guy who puts in his twenty and quits.”

  Novell set down his glass on the bar, and Ryan refilled it. It was a beautiful sight, that scotch, like liquid amber. He breathed it in. “You trying to get me drunk, Ryan?”

  “You drink too much, Detective?”

  “Your phone call. Tell me about it.”

  Ryan shrugged. “Nothing to tell. I’ve been asking some questions about Michael, and my visitors took offense.”

  “That was them on the phone?”

  “Sure.”

  “You weren’t gonna tell us? Didn’t it occur to you that that’s the sort of thing the police are for?”

  “To protect and serve? Not really.” Ryan gave him that half smile, his face white, fatigue pinching the corners of his mouth. But those dark blue eyes burned with a reckless determination. Novell knew that look. It usually led to some messy ending. Guys on missions were dangerous.

  Still, Novell was damned if he didn’t feel an odd kinship with him. Tommy Ryan’s kid was on a mission. The elder Ryan would get a grim laugh out of that.

  “Was Michael carrying anything that night?” Ryan said.

  “Like?”

  “Like a package.”

  Novell frowned. “No package.”

  “Still, maybe there’s something—”

  “This is a police investigation.”

  “You don’t seem to be making much progress.”

  Novell stiffened. “All right, smart guy. You said Michael wasn’t an investigative reporter. Why do you think he got killed?”

  Ryan’s expression remained bland. “Michael was doing a story on Philly nightlife. Maybe he stumbled upon something.”

  Novell could tell that Ryan chose his words carefully. Did he risk pulling him in for questioning and have him lawyer up? No. Not yet. Ryan was the best lead to Michael Cohen’s murder they had. If he wanted to dangle himself as bait, that was his choice. For now.

  “What would he stumble upon?” Novell asked. “Drugs?”

  Ryan shrugged. “As far as I know, Michael’s drug use was recreational. He did clubs too. Have you looked into that?”

  “We’ve made a list.”

  “Could I see it?”

  Novell almost choked. “Damn it. This isn’t the Hardy Boys. You don’t go running off
like you’re some kind of storybook detective.”

  “Christ, if you’re going to make me a detective, at least choose someone interesting.” Ryan grinned, and for the first time, he looked like the man whose face lit up the sides of all those buses. Then the grin disappeared, and his face turned distant. “I knew Michael. Let me see his notes. I can help.”

  “You looking to win another big writing prize?” When Ryan winced, Novell looked away. Michael Cohen might have been his friend, but for all he knew, Ryan was planning his comeback on this case.

  “You think winning a prize will make everything better?” Ryan’s voice sank to a hoarse rasp. “I don’t have anything left.”

  “And I can’t take responsibility for you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Losing that dog wasn’t enough? If you keep this up, maybe next time they’ll go after the rest of your family. I know you’ve got a brother. And a sister.”

  “Fuck you, Novell.”

  “No. You’re the one who’s fucked.”

  Novell watched Ryan cradle inward to absorb the impact of his words. He swallowed the second scotch and poured himself a third.

  13

  Danny knelt on his office floor and combed through the debris. It was after three. Maybe he couldn’t face bed tonight.

  Danny shuddered. He salvaged his Pulitzer from its broken frame. He’d been twenty-four years old and got it for local beat reporting. The ongoing investigation of the Sandman. His father’s last case.

  The Sandman killings. Over a period of ten months, the cops had found twenty-two teenage girls strangled with red ribbons in the Northern Liberties section of the city, and the strangulation had been the kindest thing done to them. Tortured over days and partially skinned, none of the girls had ever been identified.

  The lost girls. Who wept for the lost?

  His life had changed after that case. He’d become a star in Andy Cohen’s universe, while his father had fallen into the abyss.

  His father had brought down the Sandman, a derelict named Paulie Ritter, and then resigned. He had walked away after forty-two years on the job without an explanation and had gone back to their house in South Philly.

  When Danny had tried to talk to him, the old man had told him to get lost.

  “Give it up, you fucking vulture. I’m done. I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “Don’t you want to tell your story?”

  The old man’s face had flushed crimson. “You don’t give a shit about my story. You want to make a name for yourself. This is how you get your pound of flesh.” Swaying from side to side, his father had stood in the middle of Third Street. He’d needed a shave, and his shirt was splotched with grease stains. “Stay away from me. Go suck up to that Jew and his cokehead friends you like so much. You make me sick just to look at you.”

  By then Danny had learned not to show weakness in front of his father. “So you’re going to go crawl into a bottle and die? That’s fitting.”

  The old man had spat in the street. “I am dead, boy. Can’t you hear the banshee wailing? Don’t come back.”

  Danny pressed his hands against his forehead. His right eye socket ached as if he’d been punched. Growing up, he’d learned how to take a punch. No choice there. He was the youngest, the runt of the litter.

  He pulled out the black-and-white card. It was clearly a membership to a club of some kind. Now he needed to find the club. He turned the card over and stared at the red teardrop. On closer examination, it could have been a flame.

  Under the Pulitzer was a broken frame with a picture of Conor staring out. Danny lifted it carefully and carried it back to his desk.

  Often at night while working, he’d look up to find Conor standing in the doorway, his left hand stuck in the front of his pajama bottoms and his right hand clutching his blue lightsaber.

  “There’s a monster in my closet, Daddy,” Conor would say. “I can’t go to sleep.”

  It didn’t matter how many nightlights he’d bought or how many times he’d checked the closet; Danny would end up lying on the bed that always seemed a little too narrow and holding Conor until they both drifted off to sleep. He’d wake up at three in the morning with Conor’s hands twisted in his shirt and a light saber jabbing his gut, and he’d wonder why the monster couldn’t take a night off.

  Danny ran his fingers over the edge of Conor’s picture. Now he had the king-size bed to himself and would give everything to feel the weight of his son’s head against his chest again, to untangle those palms from his shirt and breathe in the light sweat and shampoo smell that was Conor.

  He draped Beowulf’s tags over the picture.

  Before he had a wife and son, Danny had Beowulf. He’d rescued him from a dumpster, a mass of sores and cuts, and Wolf had repaid him with unquestioning love and devotion. Danny picked up a crystal paperweight Beth had given him and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the fireplace, showering chips of glass to the floor.

  Who wept for the lost? Weeping wasn’t enough. Someone needed to give a damn. Danny didn’t care who these people were. He’d expose them. He’d lied when he told Novell he had nothing left. There was the black Irish anger he’d inherited from his father. That was enough for now.

  14

  Carrie Norton parked her Volvo in front of the mailbox and reached in to collect her grandmother’s mail. She didn’t know why Gram didn’t just stop the mail when she went to Florida, but she insisted the postal service would let news of her vacation slip out, and then hordes of robbers would descend on the house.

  The box was nearly full. Carrie stacked the pile of cards and catalogues on the passenger seat and then ran across the road to empty the second mailbox. It was technically for their tenant in the little white house overlooking the fields, but Gram hadn’t had a real tenant in a year. She was planning to leave the land to the County Green Spaces Preserve—her way of thumbing her nose at the developers—but she hadn’t gotten around to finishing the paperwork. Occasionally Carrie would find a stray piece of Gram’s mail or a flyer tucked inside, but today she saw a whole package, and it was addressed to Danny Ryan.

  Wasn’t that peculiar? It hadn’t been mailed. It was just stuck in there. Something was written very faintly in the left corner. Michael something. The last name was smudged with a brown stain.

  Carrie ran her fingers over the package. She knew Reverend Gray called Danny Ryan an advocate of sin and Satan, but Carrie thought Danny was just confused because he hadn’t found the healing love of Jesus. That didn’t make him a bad man. He needed to come into the light.

  He always was so kind to Gram, who was shameless about getting him to fix little things around her house. It was a disgrace the way Gram would ask him to change her floodlights just so she could watch him climb up the ladder.

  “Good butt,” Gram would say.

  Carrie’s face grew a little warm, and she glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Her hair looked good. She reached into her purse for lipstick and applied a fresh coat. She knew she was indulging in vanity, but she couldn’t help herself. She wished she had a tray of cookies or maybe a pamphlet from church.

  Carrie pulled into Danny Ryan’s driveway and parked by the back door. The stone farmhouse was beautiful, the kind of home that should be filled with children. She just loved that big, old weeping cherry tree in the front yard and the pink, red, and salmon roses that climbed against the fieldstone wall near the pool. Of course, it was dormant now, but by spring, the garden would be like paradise itself. Carrie took a deep breath, knocked at the back door, and waited.

  No answer.

  She could leave the package on the porch for him, but there was probably some more of his mail mixed in with Gram’s. It always happened, especially at this time of year. Maybe she’d just take it with her and bring it back with cookies. The poor man was alone, and it was Christmas.

  The Lord had tested Danny Ryan with a great tribulation last year. Carrie understood that finding t
his package was a sign that she had been chosen to help him find a way to heal. In any case, it would give her a good reason to return when she was sure he was home.

  15

  Danny hated church. As a kid, he would play train with his rosary on the edge of the pew until his mother would take it away from him and still his hands. After his mother died, his grandmother would drag him to daily mass and hit him on the side of the head with her boney knuckle when he’d fidget. God didn’t like disrespectful little boys, she’d say. Danny would look up at the sad-eyed Jesus hanging on the big wooden cross and figure he’d probably rather play train as well.

  Now Danny parked outside of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Roxborough and waited for services to let out.

  He’d driven Beth’s Mercedes today and could feel her all around him. He fingered the tiny gouge in the wood trim on the dash, the gouge made by her high heel when they’d fucked in the car.

  It had started as another of those endless parties she dragged him to, the ones he hated. He’d be dressed in a designer tuxedo and still feel like he should be hanging in the kitchen with the caterers.

  “You do clean up well,” she’d said when they walked toward the senior partner’s mansion in Gladwyne. “Please don’t talk about Dad, Ken.”

  She’d taken to calling him “Ken” after one of their acquaintances had remarked that they were a perfect “Ken and Barbie.”

  “Come on, Barbie, let’s go party.” He’d watched the corners of her mouth twitch in an effort not to laugh.

  Since the place was the size of a small museum, Danny had planned to escape to the many side parlors to avoid the inevitable political debates. He’d hold his own against them, but it always led to after-party unpleasantness.

  “You can’t call my father the standard bearer for toxic waste in Pennsylvania,” Beth had said after one gathering.