Saints & Suspects

by Jordan McCollum

  “I didn’t ask him to come,” Lucy stated. “After I called you, he texted to invite me and Paul for dinner. So I told him, and he came over all by himself. So don’t go throwing me and Paul together as payback.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” They fell into silence for a moment, focusing on their food. “Did Paul come over, or did he call?”

  Lucy sighed yet again. “I couldn’t break up with him over the phone. That’s too . . .” She shuddered.

  Once again, guilt landed in Molly’s gut. Nate had to be at the airport, and he’d be gone all week. Lucy was right; breaking up over the phone was low. Practically cowardly.

  Lucy pressed on. “I can’t believe I fell for someone when I just knew it could never end well.” She took another bite. “Maybe I’ve been lying to myself this whole time, you know?”

  Molly nodded slowly.

  “I think the hardest part was when he said —” Emotion choked her off, and she tried again. “He said he understood I was putting God first, and he loved that.” She paused and sniffled. “He’d always loved that — but at the same time, it hurt so much. I just — I wanted to have both. Have my cheesecake and eat it too.” She speared another bite and popped it in her mouth. “Marry him and marry in the temple.”

  “Were you thinkin’ of gettin’ married?” Molly asked gently.

  Lucy shifted back and forth, arguing both sides with herself. “We never talked about it, but . . . I mean, we knew we wanted to get married in our churches, and the other one wouldn’t convert, so it wouldn’t have done us any good to talk about it.” She focused on her plate a long moment. “But I think we both wanted it, even if we couldn’t bring ourselves to say it. I kind of thought that’s why he gave me that ring, actually. Like we were playing pretend proposal.”

  Lucy held out her right hand, rubbing at that amethyst ring again. She didn’t take it off, though. Molly willed herself not to think of the gold ring Nate had given her, sitting on her counter. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. This is always hard.”

  “Um,” Lucy began, “not to change the subject, but taking break from the screaming agony of my life — why’s that Grace lady planning your wedding?” She checked Molly’s response with caution, as if anticipating bad news.

  Good heavens, was that what Lucy was getting at this morning? “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you engaged to Nate?”

  Molly took a bite to keep her expression neutral. “Grace is a work project.”

  “Good. No offense, but I so don’t want to hear about marriage. Maybe I should just give up and start collecting cats.”

  Molly laughed softly. “You’re not that bad yet.”

  “Yeah, I am. I don’t know how it is on the North Side, but do you remember what the prospects are like down here?”

  “There now — you’re doin’ better already if you’re thinkin’ in those terms.”

  Lucy shook her head. “Definitely not ready to think about moving on. I’m actually physically hurting.” She set down her fork and pushed her fingers against her sternum, as if direct pressure could relieve her pain.

  “But you know it’ll get better, don’t you?”

  Lucy took two deep breaths. “I guess. Just feels like I’ll never find someone like him — and even if I did, I wouldn’t want that guy because he wouldn’t be Paul.”

  Molly set aside their plates and hugged Lucy, who dissolved into sobs. Molly was careful not to let herself do the same, though she’d felt the same way seven months ago.

  And now.

  After a long day working to develop an asset, Molly had only intended to stop by the office long enough to write up notes. But then Kent spotted her, and one question had led to another. She was pretty much filling out his FD-302s and showing him which way to go with his case when their supervisor slowed to a stop at her desk.

  “Malone, can I talk to you?” Supervisory Special Agent Hernandez asked.

  Was this good? “Certainly, ma’am.”

  Hernandez laughed quietly and shook her head, as she did every time Molly called her that. Old habits.

  Molly followed Agent Hernandez to her office, trying to focus on Hernandez’s dark hair swept back into an elaborate bun rather than the nerves gathering in her stomach. They reached the office, and Agent Hernandez closed the door behind them. “Molly, thanks for working with Kent.”

  She gave a quick nod.

  “Got an interesting phone call today. Do you know ASAC Scott Chin in Phoenix?”

  Molly combed her memory. She’d only spent a little while in the main Arizona office before she’d ended up in a tiny town hours away, working on the Navajo reservation. “Don’t recall him.”

  “Well, he knows you. He mentioned your work on a cold case on the rez.”

  Now, that she remembered.

  “He wanted you to know your arrest led directly to the arrest of Roberto Salinas Favera a week ago.”

  She remembered him, too — hard to forget a name and a face she’d studied every day on her tiny field office’s old school “Arizona’s Most Wanted” board. “Really?”

  Hernandez grinned. “Yep. He wants to get you back to Phoenix as soon as your special assignment here is over.”

  “As in the Phoenix office?” A big step up from the resident agency she’d been at.

  Hernandez’s grin doubled. “Obviously, I want you here, but I know Chicago in March is a hard sell compared to Phoenix.”

  Molly laughed along with her boss. ASAC Chin wanted her back that badly? Putting away a long-wanted criminal and being recognized for her efforts felt almost too good to be true.

  “He would’ve called you directly,” Agent Hernandez continued, “but he wanted to make sure you weren’t absolutely vital here — which you are, of course, but, like I told Chin, I could never stand in the way of another woman’s career.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ve got time to think, depending on how your current assignment goes, but I thought you should know.”

  Molly turned over the possibilities. Her parents lived here, sure, but when she was assigned to Arizona, they’d talked of moving west to be with her and her sister in California. The weather was certainly better there in March. July wouldn’t be pleasant either place.

  And Zachary was here. The man she still loved. The man who was still headed in a different direction.

  “Well,” Hernandez broke into Molly’s thoughts. Molly pulled herself to the present, finding her gaze focused on a shelf with a photograph. Agent Hernandez with a Hispanic man and two teenage boys trying to look cool, posing together in the snow.

  “I don’t mean to keep you.” Hernandez opened her office door again, dismissing Molly.

  “Thank you. I’ll definitely think about that.”

  Agent Hernandez gave her elbow a squeeze as Molly passed.

  What should she do?

  Close the Canavans’ case.

  How? Molly slowed to a stop. Time to circle back to the beginning. Within an hour, Molly was in her parents’ kitchen, settling across the dark wood table from them. Mum’s gaze had drifted to the window’s lace ruffles, wistful. Da frowned over his coffee and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.

  “C’mere to me,” she began, starting with a familiar Irish common ground. “I’ve rung the Police Service and the Gardaí. They’ve got nothin’. The longer I spend gettin’ to know the Canavans, the longer they have to find out the truth.”

  Mum nodded. “I’m sorry, love. We want to help, but —”

  “We know they’re plannin’ somethin’. I can’t let another Omagh happen. Another Maura Monaghan.”

  They both flinched at the slain toddler’s name.

  “We don’t know anythin’ about what they’re doin’.” Mum shifted her coffee mug to her other hand.

  “I know, but anythin’ might help.”

  “We really didn’t work together long.”

  “Oh?” Molly suppressed a scoff. “They seem to think you were fast frie
nds.”

  Mum rolled her eyes, sipping her coffee. “They’ve always thought we were closer than we really were because they had sons the same age as you girls. We sometimes joked you two would marry their two.”

  “Grace never mentioned any children.” Her parents protecting her sister made sense, but why would Grace hide her sons?

  “Donal and Pearse,” Da spoke up. “Donal’s a year older than Bridie and Pearse is about the same to you.”

  “Where are they?”

  Mum shrugged. “Perhaps still in Ireland. I’m honestly surprised Ed and Grace are here, even without immigration issues.”

  Da took his mug to the sink. “Maybe they got asylum, like your man —”

  “You didn’t work with them long?” Molly cut off the subject change.

  “Different battalions. Knew each other more socially.”

  Da thought a moment, leaning against the counter. “After we left, I think they ended up with a splinter group. Whichever one was the most radical and violent. Maybe INLA — the socialist one.”

  She’d learned about the socialist one at Garda College . . . “Oh, the ones that kidnapped your man and cut off his fingers — and the shootouts with the Gardaí?”

  Da nodded. “And the disco in Ballykelly.”

  “No, no, no,” Mum said. “The kidnappin’ was by an INLA dissident. The Canavans were RIRA.”

  Da acknowledged Mum’s point with a touché gesture. “Right. Omagh, and —”

  “Those British soldiers,” Molly finished. A few months after their family had moved to Chicago, the “Real” IRA claimed responsibility for killing two soldiers in the North. Technically, it hadn’t even happened in her country, and yet it’d been torture for her, newly minted as an ex-Garda. She was supposed to protect people, and she’d ended up half a world away when violence struck.

  What had that been like for her parents?

  Her mum answered her unspoken question in a low tone, fixed on the damask tablecloth. “After the other murder that week, it seemed everythin’ was startin’ again. I wanted to be there to stop it — and I was so glad we got out when we did.”

  “But other than those murders,” Da said, “they’ve mostly kept to minor injuries and failed bombs.”

  “Don’t forget their turn to vigilante justice. Murderin’ child molesters, drug dealers and gang bangers.” Mum offered a grim smirk and took a draught of her coffee.

  Molly had never imagined her parents showing such sang-froid in discussing violent murders, high crimes and the rest of the Troubles. They were supposed to cluck and shake their heads and frown. They were supposed to lament the lives lost. They were supposed to wish for a united Ireland but condemn violence, as everyone else did, as they had all their lives.

  But they were probably quite used to putting on a front when it came to Irish republicanism.

  Now it was Molly’s turn to take up the family tradition. “So what did the Canavans do? You’ve told me Ed’s good with munitions, and Grace’s a planner, and Omagh — but that doesn’t tell me where we should be lookin’ for them to act now. I want to close this case as fast as I can.” So she could take the job in Phoenix. And never have to face the man who didn’t love her back.

  Mum raised her eyebrows in Da’s direction, shooting him a silent, coded message.

  “I have somethin’ for you,” he announced. “It’ll take a minute to find it.” He left for the bedrooms. What was that about?

  “Molly,” Mum began. “I’ve been wantin’ to talk to you.”

  Why did this sound like an intervention?

  “How are things with your Nate?”

  Molly sighed, letting her shoulders drop. Was she that transparent? “Terrible. He wants to get married.” And he thought she felt the same.

  Mum set aside her coffee. “That’s terrible?”

  “I have a lot to do before I get married. You know that.”

  Mum gave her a thoughtful frown, and even to Molly’s ears, the standard excuse was wearing thin. “How do you feel when you’re with him?” Mum asked.

  She remembered the disdain in his face when she’d “confessed” to watching R-rated movies. Part of her life, her past — not a character flaw. Romantic dates and heirloom jewelry couldn’t compensate for the pity and contempt under that perfect veneer.

  Mum perched on the arm of Molly’s chair and threw her arms around her. “All this time I’ve been worryin’ about protectin’ your heart at work, and you should’ve been defendin’ yourself on the other front.”

  Molly leaned against her mum’s arm. “I’ve had enough assault-proposals to last a lifetime.”

  Mum startled and nearly fell off the arm of the chair. “Proposals? He’s already asked you?”

  “He hasn’t. Zachary and I are havin’ Grace plan our weddin’. To build a relationship of trust.”

  “Clever, that is.” Mum’s gaze grew distant and she smiled, but her smile faded. “But I didn’t mean defendin’ yourself from a proposal. If that’s how you look just thinkin’ of how you feel when you’re together, you’ve no business datin’ Nate.”

  For the millionth time, Mum was right, and Molly knew it.

  “Molly,” she began again, but before she could continue, Da returned, carrying a book. Mum stood, and Da passed the book to Molly. The cover featured an armed man in a balaclava in front of a map of Ireland, with the northern counties splashed with blood. The Blood-Dimmed Tide by someone writing under the pseudonym Seán Martin.

  “The characters are composites, accordin’ to the author’s note, but some of it sounds familiar,” Mum said.

  “Like the time the author’s dragged out and beaten by RUCs.” Bitterness tinged Da’s tone. “Hard to be abused by the people you’re riskin’ your life to protect.” Had that happened to him?

  Could he be Seán Martin?

  Mum patted the cover. “We’ve highlighted the passages that sound like the Canavans to us.”

  “This is the most complete profile we could give you.” Da placed one hand on Mum’s shoulder and the other on Molly’s. “Sorry it took us so long.”

  “Also, I’ve a friend whose husband was with the Independent Monitorin’ Commission. I’ve finally found his email.” Mum patted Molly’s arm. “We know this is difficult — we’ve been there. But you can do it.”

  Certainly her parents’ assignment had been at least as hard as hers. But they’d had each other, instead of trying to constantly fight through old feelings and old wounds.

  Hopefully this book and Mum’s commissioner friend would bring them closer to the end of this case and her involvement with Zachary.

  Grace glanced at the clock on the range Tuesday evening. Fifteen minutes until the end of business. The last chance to ring them today. Every day that Ed waited, someone else might take that vacancy she’d worked so hard to create. Only eleven days left.

  She poked Ed’s elbow. “Do it.”

  He frowned at her — as usual — and hit the Call button, then put it on speaker phone.

  “DontRain Parade Floats. Can I help you?”

  “Yes, are you hiring?” Ed put on an impressive American accent. When had he picked that up?

  “No, we’re fully staffed.” A muffled sound came from the background. “Hang on,” said the secretary.

  The modulated hold music blared with heavy distortion. “Where’d you learn an American accent?” Grace asked.

  “Telly.”

  So that was what he’d done with himself the last few months. Would explain why the skiver hadn’t got a job yet. “Plannin’ on usin’ that if you get hired on?”

  “I am.”

  The hold music cut off. “You still there?”

  “I am,” Ed repeated, back to the American accent.

  “Seems one of our seasonal workers broke his arm this week. How soon can you interview?”

  He cast Grace a triumphant smirk. “I’m ready when you are.”

  The last roadblock was crumbling.

  Za
ch was happy for Molly and Nate. Yep. So happy he’d thought long and hard about the many ways the US government could make life difficult for Nate O’Shaughnessy.

  Zach caught himself plotting again Tuesday afternoon and shook off the thought. He refreshed his email, and a new message popped up. From Molly.

  Yeah, that’d help.

  He braced himself and clicked.

  Talked to Mum and Da yesterday. They said the Canavans are in The Blood-Dimmed Tide. Gave me a highlighted copy. You should see this.

  Work. Zach blew out the breath he’d been holding. That was safe.

  He had to face her sometime. Work was fine, right? He headed for the elevators.

  When Zach reached Molly’s desk, she was on a phone call that seemed important, judging by the way she clenched her cell, her free hand pressed to her forehead. “Sorry,” she said, tension making her voice taut. “But I can’t be doin’ that for you. You need to step up. I won’t pull your weight anymore.”

  Yikes. Zach didn’t let himself hope Nate was on the other end.

  Okay, he kind of did.

  “Grand. It’ll be here waitin’ for you.” Molly hung up and tossed her cell onto her desk.

  “Hey,” Zach said. Molly jumped and looked up at him. “Trouble?”

  “Only with my fan club.”

  She said that to Kent? Go, Molly. She shook off that issue and focused on him. “Did you get my emails, so?”

  “That’s why I’m here — wait, more than one?”

  “The second one said my mum knows the wife of a commissioner that used to monitor paramilitary activities. She sent me his email this mornin’, and I’ve written him.”

  “Nice.”

  Molly downplayed the compliment with a shrug. “Somewhere to start. But the commission disbanded years ago. They may not know anythin’ about the Canavans now.”

  Zach frowned and scratched the back of his neck. What if the Canavans weren’t a threat at all?

  Yeah, right.

  Zach’s phone rang, but he didn’t recognize the number. He sent the call to voicemail.

  “And this.” Molly brought out a hardback copy of The Blood-Dimmed Tide.