Z grabbed the handle on the ceiling until the Saab straightened out on the empty highway, banks of dirty snow shooting past on either side, then turned to her.
“So you think Kane is next on the list?”
“The Clan thinks so. They’re looking for him.”
Z rubbed his eyes and then his hand moved up to his forehead.
“What do you know about him?” Abbie said.
“I walked the beat with him downtown. And the guy was like nothing I’d ever seen.”
Cops usually meant one thing when they said that.
“He was dirty?”
“Hell, he was filthy. He played football in college, a strong safety at Oswego State. Blew out his knee as a junior or he might have had a shot at the pros. He came back to Buffalo with a limp and a pissed-off attitude. The world had cheated him out of millions, so he was going to take it back bit by bit.”
“He doesn’t sound like a candidate for the Clan na Gael. Was he into Irish nationalism and all the rest?”
“Ohhhh yeah. You’d get into his squad car and he’d have all kinds of rebel music playing on the radio, klackety-klack, the landlord killed my father, then some hillbilly fiddles.”
“They’re not hillbilly.”
“What?”
“Hillbillies got their music from the Irish, not the other way around.”
“Same difference. His father was from the old country, and he had it bad. His family back there were a bunch of bomb-throwing radicals. And when they took football away from Kane, that’s what he turned to.”
“Billy said he got caught and did time.”
“Yeah, he shot a drug dealer on the East Side who he said pulled a gun on him. He was stupid. The prints on the gun were his, not the suspect’s, and they found half a kilo of coke stashed up inside the wheel well of his Impala. He’d been shaking the guy down for years and the first time he doesn’t have the money, he shoots him.”
“So he lost his badge?”
“Yeah.”
“And got sent away, I’m guessing. Attica?”
“Yep.”
Abbie saw the towering walls of the state prison in her mind.
“Let me ask you this. Was he put into protection there?”
“How would they do that? You know that place. It’s fucking medieval.”
“True,” she said. “They don’t have separate protection cells. Anyone taken out of general population for their own good goes into solitary. So he did time in the hole.”
She tapped her fingers on the wheel.
“You ever been to Attica, Z?”
“Nope. And I don’t want to.”
“It was built in the thirties, the same look and feel as Sing Sing or Alcatraz. Made completely out of stone. The cells are tiny.”
“Okay.”
“What does the undercroft at St. Teresa’s, where Jimmy Ryan was found, remind you of?”
“I don’t know, a really shitty place to die?”
“It’s tiny and it’s made of stone, just like cells at Attica.”
Z turned his head to watch the guardrails fly by.
“What if Kane’s angry about getting sent away?” Abbie said.
“So why isn’t he murdering cops then?”
“Maybe he thought the Clan could protect him. You know the Gaelic Club is practically a retirement home for Irish cops. And there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“Attica’s got an old steam-heating system that’s never been updated. The prisoners are always filing rights-violation suits on it. In winter, it’s cold as hell.”
Z turned to look at her.
“Marty Collins,” he said.
Abbie nodded.
“What if the killer is writing his autobiography in corpses?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EDEN WAS ONE OF THE TINY FARMING TOWNS THAT RINGED BUFFALO ON three sides. It took twenty minutes to get there. Abbie kept her window down to keep awake. When she started to smell horse manure, she knew they were close.
She jumped off the highway and nudged Z. He checked his service gun and stuck it back in the shoulder holster. Then he grunted, reached down for the Slammer near his ankle, popped the cylinder, spun it and stuck it back in the leather case.
The clock on her dashboard read 2:14 a.m. The streets of Eden were cloaked in mist, the fields of tall corn and wheat visible behind the small, widely spaced houses. The town center was two blocks long. A blue neon sign advertising pizza burned in the fog.
“What is he doing living out here?” Z said.
“Getting away from it all,” said Abbie. “Anyone who isn’t from around here will get reported real quick. Maybe it’s a kind of security system all by itself.”
“Right here,” Z said, looking at his map.
She made the turn.
“Ahead on the left.”
Abbie killed the lights and crept toward the house.
“Goddamn it,” she said, gunning the engine.
When they pulled up to the house, they saw three cars, one jack-knifed on the front lawn. The place was lit up from within, sending broad yellow beams into the foggy fields. Through the white-framed windows, Abbie saw men moving within, stepping slowly and studying the interiors of the rooms as they went.
The door had been kicked in or battered in, and the glass in the front window was missing a jagged section. Two men were conferring by the door.
They looked up as Abbie slanted the Saab to a stop.
“O’Halloran,” she said through gritted teeth.
Abbie got out and headed straight for the homicide detective, who was looking over a paper with a short, grim-faced cop in a trooper-style hat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said as she charged up.
“Investigating a case. You?”
O’Halloran handed the paper to the other man.
“You mean my case.”
O’Halloran glared at her, then nodded apologetically to the other cop. The trooper stared at Abbie and walked away.
“Are you trying to embarrass me, Kearney? I got a confidential tip and I decided to follow it through. Got that?”
“Bullshit,” Abbie said, her breath blowing white. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Do you know the meaning of ‘confidential’? I didn’t want the news broadcast over half the state. Your cases seem to get out of control.”
“Where’s Kane?”
“Who gave you that name?”
“My confidential source. Where is he?”
O’Halloran stepped down the stairs. The grass was covered with dew and was silver-green in the light. He walked to the middle of the lawn and Abbie followed him. When they were out of earshot of the men coming through the front door, O’Halloran turned.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“No idea. He didn’t leave a note giving me his vacation plans.”
Abbie looked back at the house, studying the kicked-in door. She looked around. The neighbors’ houses were dark, weather vanes turning silently on the roofs.
“I’ll bet there hasn’t been this much excitement in this town in years.”
O’Halloran didn’t follow her eyes.
“What’s your point?”
“Why aren’t the neighbors out here asking what’s going on with their good friend Joseph Kane? Asking if there’s anything they can do to help? In most farm towns, you’d have half the population over here.”
“Maybe Kane wasn’t too friendly.”
“Maybe someone told them to keep themselves inside.”
O’Halloran smiled. “Go ahead and bang on some doors, Kearney. Knock yourself out.”
“Who’s your snitch?”
O’Halloran paused.
“I’m going to humor you. Last night, in a bar on South Park called the Golden Nugget, an addict told me Kane had shaken him down years ago, before he got shitcanned from the Department. When the skel threatened to go to Internal Affairs
, Kane bragged that he belonged to a secret society that protected him from prosecution. Total immunity. No one from it went to jail, because they were serving a higher cause and the hierarchy reached all the way up. Okay, Kearney? Now get off my fucking back.”
“So you decided to rush on over here in the middle of the night and roust him?”
“Exactly.”
“I see two possibilities here. Either you’re running some kind of parallel investigation for the Clan and its friends in the County, hoping to get the killer and do God knows what to him before I can catch him. Or you approve of the little murder spree Kane’s on and warned him I was coming, then stormed in here to cover your tracks, to make it look like we’re on the same team.”
O’Halloran’s eyes were gray and yellow in the glow of the house lights, but he said nothing.
“I’m going to check Kane’s phone records. If he got a warning call from inside the County, I’m going to have you up on so many charges you’ll have to use both hands to count them.”
“You know what? Your father’s name only goes so far, Kearney. Don’t try my patience.”
“This is a warning, O’Halloran. There won’t be a second one.”
O’Halloran smiled. “You talk to me again like that, I’ll turn that pretty little mouth of yours ugly.”
Abbie stepped toward him, her hand curling into a fist. Suddenly an arm slid across her midsection. Z stepped in between her and O’Halloran and began to push her back gently.
“Come on, Ab.”
O’Halloran was still smiling at her. She could actually picture cracking his teeth with the butt of her flashlight.
“Stay out of my case, O’Halloran.”
Z pulled her toward the Saab.
“I want all of them, Z,” she spit out. “The killer, the people protecting him, and O’Halloran’s crew.”
“We’ll get them. Just calm down.”
O’Halloran left five minutes later, squealing away with two civilian cars filled with pasty-faced white men glimpsed in flashes of headlights. Abbie and Z were already searching the ex-cop’s house. They stayed for three hours, just the two of them. But it had been picked clean. The computer was gone and the table on which she guessed it sat had been sprayed with furniture polish so you couldn’t even see the outlines in dust. There were fresh garbage bags in the cans out back, and in the can under the kitchen sink. Some of Kane’s clothes were still there, but it was hard to tell if what he’d taken was for warm or cold weather. The fridge still had food, although the milk had turned. The past-use date was two days before.
The neighbors reported that Kane had arrived four years ago, said he was a former Buffalo cop who’d had enough of the city, too dirty and chaotic, said he wanted country views. He’d kept to himself, shopped in town for food and gone to Buffalo to buy anything bigger. He didn’t have a girlfriend or relatives, at least any who came to visit him, he watched an occasional Sabres or Bills game in one of Eden’s two bars, and he favored the BBQ restaurant in town. They had two mantras. “He kept to himself.” And: “He worked all the time, we hardly saw him.”
Worked for who? Nobody knew. Did he have regular visitors at the house? Not that anyone could remember. Friends in town? Nothing came to mind.
“It’s like the County,” said Abbie. “But with overalls.”
When she and Z got on the highway at 5:30 a.m., she checked her mirrors every few miles. But there was no one there, just miles of gray asphalt and whipping curtains of snow squalls covering up the tracks she had made through the snow. Again she could hear the burring sound of snow crystals on the road.
Her neck tingled. She had the feeling of being watched over; maybe not physically followed, but watched over. Someone knew where’d she been and where she was going even before she did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ABBIE DROVE STRAIGHT TO MERCY HOSPITAL. SHE WAS MET IN THE ICU waiting room by Dr. Singh, tall, impossibly thin, with rimless glasses, careworn eyes, and silver hair, which contrasted with his bronze-colored skin. He shook her hand before sitting in the plastic chair next to her. From the way he sighed as he sat down, she knew the news wasn’t good.
“Your father hasn’t regained consciousness. He responds to physical stimuli, knee tappings and so forth, but he hasn’t woken up. I don’t want to shock his system in any way, so I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude at the moment.”
“I thought you said he’s going to be okay!” she nearly shouted.
“I still believe that.”
“What do you think it is?”
“There’s a bruise to the right temple. He may have suffered a concussion when he fell. The brain could have bounced around, doing itself some injury, but there’s no sign of cerebral hemorrhage or bleeding. His eyes look good. But I need to run some more tests before I can go further with that diagnosis.”
“I want to see him.”
“Of course,” he said, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. “Come with me.”
Her father looked tiny in the bed, the skin drawn tight over his face, his bare arms laid straight down on the white sheet that covered him, violet-colored depressions where his veins used to be. She took his right hand and found it terrifyingly cold.
Abbie watched her father’s chest rise and fall, the deep lines of his face. She could hear the occasional PA announcement and a bell ringing insistently in another ward, but the hospital was peaceful. She checked her cell phone and called Z, asking for news of Kane. Nothing. He hadn’t been seen or heard from.
She slipped the phone into her bag and looked up suddenly. Her father’s hand had tightened on hers. His eyelids fluttered.
“Dad?” she said, standing.
He seemed to be emerging from a dream, trying to catch hold as it slipped away. His pupils contracted and the cobalt-blue eyes turned to her.
“It’s you, then, my darling?”
Abbie smiled, her eyebrows arching wistfully. He must be dreaming about his dead sister, she thought.
“Dad, it’s me, Absalom.”
“I know who it is,” he said in a clear voice. “Aren’t you my darling girl?”
“I … I—”
She was going to make a joke about checking which drugs they were giving him, and stockpiling boxes of it, but his words were too unexpected. She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes at him. The bones of his fingers pressed on her palm. He studied her, his old charmer’s smile curling the corner of one lip.
“You’re feeling better,” she said. “You gave me a scare.”
“It all went black. I was—”
“No need,” she said.
He nodded and his eyes traveled over her face. She felt suddenly self-conscious; she couldn’t remember him looking at her like that since she was a teenager.
“How goes the manhunt? Have you found your man?” He peered at her intently.
“No, not yet. I had a few questions for you, actually.”
His laughter echoed off the walls, and then suddenly he had a coughing fit. Abbie jumped up and poured the paper cup on the tray next to the bed half full of water. She held the cup to his lips and he drank slowly, the lips dry and chapped.
He settled back on the pillow.
“Water!” he cried. “I thought you would have brought your father some Jameson’s, at least.”
“Next time,” she said.
He nodded. “Now tell me this. Was it you who put Sean MacCullahy up to showing me that photo?”
Abbie smiled. “Well, I couldn’t ask you. You would have clammed up.”
“Indeed, indeed.”
His eyes twinkled mischievously.
“You’re a smart girl, Absalom. I would never have thought of putting that little scene together. Very nice. And you almost had me.”
“Dad, the picture—”
Something passed through his face—a tremor of fear, perhaps, but he quickly regained his composure.
“Soon I’ll tell you everyth
ing you need to know about that picture.”
She wanted to know now but you couldn’t rush John Kearney.
“Do you know when I realized you were going to be a detective, just like your old man?”
Abbie sighed and sat back down. She shook her head no.
“The Easter egg hunt.”
Abbie smiled. “You always loved that time of year.”
“My mother loved Easter,” he said, a trace of hoarseness in his voice, turning to the window that looked out over Abbott Road. After a moment, he turned back. “Do you remember the year I’m thinking of?”
“Of course. You told everyone that the egg had a hundred-dollar bill on it. You’re lucky the whole County didn’t show up.”
“I gave everyone a slip of paper with one clue, Abbie.” His eyes studied hers. “What was it?”
“Is this a test?”
He frowned, to say Of course it’s a test.
“I remember, Dad.”
“Everyone opened the paper and they ran to the mailbox on the front of the house, like a flock of geese who’d heard a gun go off. I looked down and there was only one kid still sitting there, as if she was meditating. You.”
“The clue was a trick.”
“Of course it was a trick. But you didn’t fall for it. You were studying my face, and your lips were whispering something. What was it?”
“I was thinking about what was written on the paper: ‘Look in the place where the man in blue puts the thing / he hides from you.’ ”
His eyes lit up. “Not bad, eh?”
“Corny.”
“Everyone else screamed, ‘The mailman!’ and went running for the mailbox. But not you.”
She shook her head. “Not me.”
“Because I’d written ‘hides from you.’ The mailman doesn’t hide the mail, he delivers it. And our postman, Mr. Croakley, was a drunk who couldn’t make it through the day without a sip of his juice.”
“I saw him lift a bottle of brandy out of the milk box one day when I was coming home from school. And that’s where the egg was.”
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