Killing Down the Roman Line

by McGregor, Tim

  Headlights pierced the rainfall. An SUV rolling to a stop. Jim swung out from under the wheel, hollering to the other driver, asking if they were okay. Squinting against the raindrops, he recognized the black Toyota FJ. Corrigan was already marching across the puddles.

  “Corrigan?” Jim didn’t understand. “What the hell happened?”

  Corrigan hit him full freight, slamming him back against the truck. Shaking him by the collar, like his dad used to when drunk. “Where is it?” Hot whiskey breath on his face. “Where is the fucking confession?”

  This wasn’t an accident. The crazy son of a bitch had run him off the road. He shoved him off but Corrigan would not let go. They tussled and shoved and punched in the rainfall, slipping in the puddles. Cursing one other to hell. Jim felt his knee buckle and Corrigan dove after him, swinging to box his ears. He ducked and Corrigan slipped, his own momentum sprawling him to the road.

  Jim hobbled away, wanting enough room to swing. “Are you outta your fucking mind?!”

  Corrigan kicked out and hobbled the bad knee. Timber. A heartbeat and they had reversed positions. Jim scrambled to get up but the vertigo rushed back, spinning his head. Which way was up?

  Corrigan towered over him, bellowing through the rain. “The old drunk told me everything. The confessions of the guilty men. The proof! Where is it?” The man’s eyes bansheed with murder, teeth snapping like a wild dog.

  Jim held up a hand. Time-out. “I don’t have it.”

  “Where is it?”

  His knee on fire, Jim cried uncle. “Help me up for Christ’s sakes.”

  Corrigan didn’t move, steam smoking up around him. He cursed and then gripped the proffered hand, pivoting back to pull his neighbour to his feet.

  Jim swung for all he was worth, a haymaker to the jaw. His knuckles screamed in pain but Corrigan went down on his ass.

  “That—” Jim’s turn to holler like a mad dog. “That is for giving my son brass knuckles!” He limped back, snapping his hand to whisk away the sting. “You stupid son of a bitch.”

  Fortunes flipped, Corrigan sat in the wet road and laughed. “Feel better?”

  “Stay away from my family.”

  Corrigan kneaded his jaw. “Enjoy the moment, Jimmy. You won’t get another.” Now he extended a hand. “Help me up.”

  Jim backed up. Was he supposed to fall for that?

  The rain had stopped. Maybe it had stopped all along, Jim didn’t know. Corrigan pushed himself up, shook the muck from his hands. “You should have come to me,” he said. “You should have brought those confessions to me.”

  Jim kept his distance.

  “What does it say? Those papers.”

  Jim teetered on his heels. Seasick. “You were right. About all of it. The men in town marched up to that house and killed everyone inside. All the people you named.” Jim told himself to shut up but it all just spilled out. Burning his throat as he purged. “Mine too. The man who led the mob was a Hawkshaw.”

  “Blood libel,” Corrigan said. The grin stretching across his face was smug and victorious. “Where is this confession?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Jim staggered sideways. “It’s out of my hands.”

  “Don’t be part of the lie, Jim. They all need to know. They need to see it.” He took a step forward, fingers balling into fists. “Oh they’ll deny, they’ll call it a hoax. But they’ll know. Deep down, they’ll know that their whole shit-stained world was built on murder and lies.”

  “And then what? You think somebody’s gonna apologize to you? All it will do is make them hate you more.”

  Corrigan laughed. “Poor me.”

  “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it? You’ve pissed off everyone and now they want to hurt you. You need to leave. Now. You proved your point.”

  “The locals are going to get violent? How unusual!”

  Jim was wasting his time, the man deaf to reason. Still. “Get the hell out of town, Corrigan. Because if you don’t, history is going to repeat itself.”

  “Of course history is going to repeat itself! It always does. It has to.” Spit flew from Corrigan’s gnashing teeth. “You don’t think anyone learns from history, do you? Tell me you’re not that naive? We all keep making the same mistakes, no matter how many cautionary tales we’re told. How could it be otherwise?”

  “Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore of your craziness.”

  “We don’t repeat history, Jimbo. It repeats us.”

  The leer on Corrigan’s face was telling. A devil’s perverse grin. It chilled his blood but popped something in his brain. Some twisted puzzle piece clicking into place. “You want this to get violent, don’t you? You want this to happen again.”

  “I want justice. Retribution—”

  “Drop the martyr act, for one minute.” Jim cut him off, felt himself coming unglued. “You want justice, you’re gonna have to pay for it.”

  “Don’t play me. You don’t have the stomach for it and you will get burned.” His voice dropping octaves. “Where are the confessions?”

  A line drawn in the sand. Jim pictured it in his mind. Tread carefully here. “I’ll give them to you on one condition.” He watched Corrigan’s grin drop away, then he pushed his chips forward. “You have to leave town and never come back.”

  Corrigan scrutinized him with a cold eye, like he’d misjudged his neighbour all along. “That’s hardly fair. I was just starting to like it here.”

  Wrong answer. Jim turned and limped to his truck without a word. “Go to hell.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  Jim stopped, one boot on the runner. Expecting to be tricked or trapped.

  “I’ll do it, goddamnit,” Corrigan said. “Where are these papers?”

  “They’re with someone safe.” Jim left the door open, a warning he’d walk away if Corrigan tried to play him again. “This is how it’s going to work. I’ll give you half of the documents now. The rest I’ll courier to whatever rock you crawl back under.”

  The man was already shaking his head, chipping at some leverage. “Jim, you can’t—”

  “Yes or no. That’s all you get.”

  Corrigan grunted to the affirmative. Then he grinned, still looking to drive a wedge in. “And you’ll buy me out at your offer?”

  Jim stifled a shudder looking at that perverse grin. It was like looking eye to eye with a coiled snake. “Agreed.”

  No handshake, no gentlemen’s agreement. Jim slid back into his pickup and fired it up.

  Corrigan shielded his eyes from the headlights. “Who else knows about this?”

  There was no reply. The truck gunned up out of the ditch and rumbled away.

  ~

  Thirty minutes ago, Kate could have fallen asleep standing up but now any thought of rest was gone. Back inside the stillness of her office, she gazed into the stone fireplace and cursed Jim Hawkshaw for being such a goddamn busybody. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone?

  She lifted her eyes to the portraits over the hearth. The founding fathers and heroes. Once, she had taken inspiration from these stern faced men ringing the walls of her office, no small sense of pride and tradition. Duty even. Now she just felt dirty and no amount of single malt would scour it away.

  After Jim had stormed out, she had taken the smelly folio to her office and laid it on her desk. Go home, she’d told herself. Leave it till the morning. But who could resist? The foul thing beckoned to be opened, like some forbidden grimoire in a storybook. If Pandora couldn’t resist, how could she?

  It was worse than she could have imagined, all of it there in arch script. Page after page, each man describing their part, their actions, their sins. Each confession ended with a plea for clemency from the magistrate and a prayer of mercy from God Almighty. Repugnant details of the murders. How the mother, Johanna Corrigan, begged for a moment to pray before being bludgeoned with her own shillelagh. How the patriarch was run through with a pitchfork and
clubbed so many times his skull was shattered flat into the snow. The girl killed in the loft with a knife, raped before and after.

  Kate turned the rest of the pages, unable to stomach the narrative any longer. The last page in the cracked leather was a letter from Judge Charlton Gallagher, magistrate in charge of the inquest into the Corrigan incident. Judge Gallagher explained how he had forced the confessions from the guilty men but scuttled the laws of Middlesex County and buried the truth. The conviction, imprisonment and eventual hanging of nineteen community leaders would be a devastating blow to their small village. Judge Gallagher declared that the Corrigans had brought their fate upon themselves and the town would be a better place without them. In a clandestine ceremony, the magistrate swore the conspirators to secrecy and bartered their freedom in exchange for a tithe from each, to be paid annually on the anniversary of the crime. The monies from these tithes would be put to public works. Digging roads and erecting a proper town hall. A public library and the town square. The guilty men would police themselves in the keeping of the secret tithe, the judge forewarning that if but one defaulted or lapsed in his obligation, all would be exposed and hanged. Judge Gallagher’s letter ended the same as the confessions did, with a plea for mercy from the Almighty.

  How could anyone sleep after reading that? Kate downed the rest of the scotch but it did nothing to settle her. She had made a decision and would simply have to live with it now. Like those men all those years ago.

  See what tomorrow brings.

  Searching for her damn keys, she heard the doors out in the lobby scrape open. She had forgotten to lock it when Jim left.

  “Hello?”

  No answer, just the click of footfalls on the marble floor. Kate called out again, thinking it must be Jim coming back for more indignation.

  A shadow darkened the doorway and within it appeared William Corrigan.

  Kate Farrell had seen plenty of scary movies in her time, enough that the word ‘ghost’ flittered across her brain as the man seemed to vapour up out of nothing like some stageshow devil. The man knew how to make an entrance.

  Kate held her poker face steady and plucked her keys from her bag. “We’re closed, Mister Corrigan. Any ridiculous complaint you’re here to file will have to wait until Monday.”

  Mister Corrigan strode forward, eyes casting crazily about the room. When they settled on her, she saw how bloodshot his eyes were. Drunk. “Where is it?”

  “It’s late, Mister Corrigan. And I’m leaving.” She motioned towards the door. “Please don’t make me call security.”

  “Jimmy Hawkshaw uncovered the confessions of the men who killed my family,” Corrigan said. He sidestepped the desk. Blocked her path. “He said they were left somewhere safe. That means you.”

  “Get out of my office.” Kate lowered her own voice to equal his menace. “Now. Before I call the police.”

  Corrigan snatched the phone from its cradle. “Let’s call them. Maybe they can find the evidence you’re hiding.”

  She backed up, one hand digging for her cell. “Get the hell out.”

  “All I want are the documents.” He scanned the room again. “Where are they?”

  What was the number for the pub? It was just around the corner and Kate knew that Puddycombe would be here in seconds if she called. A hell of a lot faster than the OPP office or even Ray Bauer, who was still on duty here in town. Keefe, Hitchens or anyone else in the pub would come running if she called. Even Berryhill.

  He sighed. “Don’t play hard to get with me, Kate. It’s unseemly in a woman of your… experience.”

  She stalled for time, remembering only half of the pub’s phone number. What the hell was the rest?

  “What is that smell?” Corrigan’s nostrils flared. Like a hound, his nose tracked to the fireplace. The thing resting in the old grate, coiled up and blackened to a brittle crisp.

  The hearth was limestone, four feet wide as it was tall. The last time she had lit a fire, the place smoked out because the flue was blocked with a bird’s nest. It had been cleared since but it didn’t matter. All she needed to burn this time was a little paper and cracked leather.

  Corrigan knelt on the flagstone and reached into the grate. The carbonized paper fell away under his fingertips, blowing through the air like black snowflakes. All of it disintegrated save for the charred leather spine.

  He roared and Kate winced at the awful sound. All black rage and venom. She crept back and made for the door while his back was turned.

  He spun around. “You evil fucking witch!”

  The look in his eyes. Not human. She ran for the exit.

  Corrigan ran faster.

  25

  CLICK.

  The shotgun locked shut with a firm snap. Solid and heavy in his hands. Travis seated the stock into his shoulder and brought the barrels up. Cheek flat against the grain and one eye lined down the sight, he swung the gun over the room and drew aim at the door, the window, the desk. Puffing out a gunshot sound with his teeth, pretending to shoot up the room. The gun slung huge in his hands, sleek and intoxicating, but it grew heavy and he couldn’t hold the aim any longer.

  He pushed the lever and broke it at the breech. The barrels empty. He had looked for the shells but couldn’t find where Mr. Corrigan had hidden them. He slid the gun back onto the mantelpiece just as he’d found it.

  Already bored but he didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to deal with his mom. She’d just insist they talk about what had happened. She’d ask him about his ‘feelings’. Wanting him to cry just so she could feel useful. Any little bruise and she was all over him like a wet blanket. Treating him like a baby, smothering him. It was enough to make you puke.

  No doubt his old man was in the pub drinking with his loser friends. Probably bragging about how he’d given his boy a good backhand. With any luck, Travis thought, the stupid prick would ditch his truck and snap his motherfucking neck.

  Evil thoughts. For sure he was going to Hell.

  The old house ticked and creaked around him. Something scuttled under the floorboards and something other chittered behind the walls. It was the house that did it, made you think evil thoughts. Jesus. How many people were murdered in this place? Six or seven? Ghosts lurking in the dryrot walls, floating in the rafters.

  A stab of light flashed in the window, blinding him. The headlights arced through the room and then cut out. The thump of the door closing. Travis felt a sudden itch to run. He couldn’t remember why he’d come here in the first place.

  The door flung open. Corrigan clomped into the house, breathing heavy as if he’d just run the whole way. He froze when he spotted Travis. Neither moved, two statues in the house.

  Corrigan teetered, his mouth souring. “What do you want?”

  Travis smelled the tang of booze roll across the room. He should have run when he had the chance. His shoulders jumped to his ears. “Needed to get away. So I came here.”

  “Get out.”

  “I didn’t touch nothing.” Travis felt his cheeks puff up. “Just had to go somewhere.”

  Corrigan teetered but said nothing. His face was marred by raw marks down his cheeks. Angry red lines. “Did you get cut?” Travis asked.

  “If you’ve come to cry on someone’s teat, you got the wrong house, boy.” Corrigan crossed the room right towards him. As if to wring his neck. Travis crabbed backwards but the man strode past him.

  Mr. Corrigan rummaged a can from the fridge and popped it. Wiped his mouth and looked at the boy standing in the doorway, watching him with little bird eyes. The boy nodded at the iron contraption on the workbench. “What is that stuff?”

  Corrigan flung the can at him. Travis ducked and the missile hit the wall, spraying him with foam. The man’s face twisted into something demonic. “Fucking little snoop.”

  “I wasn’t.” Travis stuttered, tripping on the consonants. Making him look the liar.

  “You filthy little spy. That’s why you keep coming round, isn’t it? Wh
o put you up to it? Your old man?”

  Travis denied it. Unconvincing even to himself.

  “I thought you were a friend.” He was quick, bunching the boy’s collar and pushing him into the wall. “You’re no better than the rest. You’ve betrayed me. Sold me out.”

  “I didn’t!”

  Travis felt himself lifted off the ground, shoes scuffing the floor and Corrigan’s knuckles digging into his collarbone. He screamed at him to let go.

  “Get out!” He flung the boy away, bowling him across the floor. Kicked his arse when he didn’t get up fast enough. “Get out of my house!”

  Bolting for the door, feet tripping on the sill. Travis went ass over tea kettle down the porch steps. The crazy drunk chasing him across the yard. “Go back to your worthless father! You’re all the fucking same, you! Bastards and liars!”

  Travis rabbitted over the crabgrass, fell and ran on. South into the dark of the fields, away from the road. He wanted the darkness, the nothingness of pitch black and no stars. To slip into a void and vanish.

  ~

  How do fix a whopper of a mistake like beating your own child? You don’t, and right enough.

  Jim wheeled aimlessly through town, drifting up Bleeker Street, down Chestnut. Nowhere to go except home but not wanting to go. Unwilling to face his sins. He turned back onto Galway and drifted to the curb, killed the engine. Leaned back against the bench seat and watched the dark street.

  He still couldn’t shake the look on his son’s face at being smacked. The image stung like a wasp trapped inside his ribcage, lashing out with its nettle.

  Travis would never forget it, of that he was sure. Just as he had never forgotten the lashings and the fists doled out by his own father. It was a legacy, a birthrigh from his father, now given to his son. A vicious little gene passed down the bloodline like haemophilia. A reverse philosopher’s stone, taking something golden and turning it to shit.

  The blow kept playing itself out in a never ending loop in his head. His hand against the boy’s face. Unable to shut it down, he forced his brain to focus on something else, anything, to cut the endless replay. Running numbers in his head, he calculated acres to yield for corn, then soy. No effect. He thought about sex. Emma peeling off her clothes before bed. Fucking in the grass one afternoon when Travis was at school. The way Emma looked on top of him, back straight and hips grinding. The saltiness of her neck.