Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  He needed her, dammit. He needed someone to tell him there were reasons for what had happened, that there was hope, even now, in these the darkest days of his life. That was why he’d brought Darren here, to Ireland, why he’d insisted on the mass and the prayers and the ceremony. You were never more Catholic than you were at times of death, Brian thought. But even the familiar words, and scents, even the hope the priest had handed out as righteously as communion wafers hadn’t eased the pain.

  He would never see Darren again, never hold him, never watch him grow. All that talk about everlasting life meant nothing when he couldn’t take his boy up in his arms.

  He wanted to be angry, but he was far too tired for that, or any kind of passion. So if there was no comfort, he thought as he poured another glass, he would learn to live with the grief.

  The kitchen smelled of spice cakes and good roasted meat. The scents hung on though his relatives had been gone for several hours. They had come—he wanted to be grateful for that. They had come to stand beside him, to cook the food that was somehow supposed to feed the soul. They had grieved for the loss of the boy most of them had never met.

  He had pulled away from his family, Brian admitted. Because he had had his own, had made his own. Now what was left of the family he’d made was sleeping upstairs. Darren was sleeping a few miles away, beneath the shadow of a hill, beside the grandmother he had never known.

  Brian drained his glass, and with oblivion on his mind, poured another.

  “Son?”

  Looking up, Brian saw his father hesitating in the doorway. He wanted to laugh. It was such a complete and ironic role reversal. He could remember, clear as a bell, creeping into the kitchen as a boy, while his father sat at the table getting unsteadily drunk.

  “Yeah.” Lifting the glass, Brian watched him over the rim.

  “You should try for sleep.”

  He saw his father’s eyes dart and linger on the bottle. Without a word, Brian pushed it toward him. He entered then, Liam McAvoy, an old man at fifty. His face was round and ruddy from the cross-stitches of broken capillaries under his skin. He had the blue, dreamy eyes that had been passed on to his son, and the pale blond hair now wiry with gray. He was gaunt, brittle-boned, no longer the big, powerful man he had seemed in Brian’s youth. When he reached for the bottle, Brian felt a jolt. His father’s hands might have been his own, long-fingered, graceful. Why had he never noticed before?

  “It was a fine funeral,” Liam said, groping. “Your mother’d be pleased you brought him here to lie with her.” He poured, then thirstily downed three fingers.

  Outside the soft rain of Ireland began.

  They’d never drunk together before, Brian realized. He poured more whiskey into both glasses. Perhaps, at last, they would find some common ground. With a bottle between them.

  “Here’s a farmer’s rain,” Liam said, soothed by the sound and the whiskey. “A nice soft soaker.”

  A farmer’s rain. His little boy had dreamed of being a farmer. Had he passed that much of Liam McAvoy into Darren?

  “I didn’t want him to be alone. I thought he should be back in Ireland, with family.”

  “It’s right. You done right.”

  Brian lit a cigarette, then pushed the pack toward his father. Had they ever talked before, the two of them? If they had Brian couldn’t remember. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “There’s a lot that happens in this world shouldn’t.” Liam lit the cigarette, then picked up his glass. “They’ll catch the bastards who did this, boy. They’ll catch them.”

  “It’s been a week.” It already seemed like years. “They’ve got nothing.”

  “They’ll catch them,” Liam insisted. “And the bloody bastards will rot in hell. Then the poor little lad’ll rest easy.”

  He didn’t want to think of vengeance now. He didn’t want to think of his sweet little boy resting easy in the ground. Time had passed, and was lost. There had to be reasons for it.

  “Why didn’t you ever come?” Brian leaned forward. “I sent you tickets, for the wedding, when Darren was born, for Emma’s birthday, for his. For God’s sake, you never saw him until his wake. Why didn’t you come?”

  “Running a farm’s busy work,” he said between swallows. Liam was a man filled with regrets so that one easily melded into another. “Can’t go larking off anytime you please.”

  “Not even once.” Suddenly, it seemed vital that he have an answer, a true one. “You could have sent Ma. Before she died, you could’ve let her come.”

  “A woman’s place is with her husband.” Liam tilted his glass toward Brian. “You’d do well to remember that, boy.”

  “You always were a selfish bastard.”

  Liam’s hand, surprisingly strong, clamped down on Brian’s. “Mind your tongue.”

  “I won’t run and hide this time, Da.” His eyes, his voice were steady. In both was an eagerness. He would have relished a battle, here, now.

  Slowly, Liam removed his hand, then picked up his glass. “I won’t butt heads with you today. Not the day my grandson’s been laid to rest.”

  “He was never yours. You never even saw him until he was dead,” Brian tossed back. “You never bothered, just cashed in the tickets I sent to buy more whiskey.”

  “And where were you these last years? Where were you when your mother died? Off somewhere playing your bloody music.”

  “That bloody music put a roof over your head.”

  “Da.” With the stuffed dog clutched in her arms, Emma stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and frightened, her lower lip trembling. She had heard the angry voices, smelled the hot odor of liquor before she stepped into the room.

  “Emma.” A bit unsteady, Brian walked over to pick her up, careful not to jar her arm with the cast. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I had a bad dream.” The snakes had come back, and the monsters. She could still hear the echo of Darren’s cries.

  “Hard to sleep in a strange bed.” Liam got to his feet. His hand was awkward, but it was gentle as he patted her head. “Your grandda will fix you some warm milk.”

  She sniffled as he took out an old, dented pan. “Can I stay with you?” she asked her father.

  “Sure.” He carried her to a chair and sat with her on his lap.

  “I woke up, and I couldn’t find you.”

  “I’m right here, Emma.” He stroked her hair, studying his father over her head. “I’ll always be here for you.”

  EVEN THERE, LOU thought. Even at such a time. He studied the grainy tabloid pictures of Darren McAvoy’s funeral. He’d seen the paper at the checkout of the supermarket when he’d picked up the whole wheat bread Marge had sent him out for. Like anything that had to do with the McAvoys, it had caught his interest, and his sympathy. He’d been more than a little embarrassed to have bought it, in public, from Sally the checker.

  In the privacy of his own home, he felt even more like a voyeur. For a few pieces of loose change he, and thousands of others, could witness the intimacy of grief. It was there on all the faces, though they were blurred. He could see the little girl, her arm in a cast and sling.

  He wondered how much she had seen, how much she would remember. The doctors he had consulted had all claimed that if she had witnessed anything, she had blocked it. She could remember tomorrow, five years from tomorrow, or never.

  DEVASTATION AT GRAVESITE

  There had been other headlines, dozens of others. Lou already had a drawerful.

  DID EMMA MCAVOY WITNESS HER BROTHER’S

  HORRIBLE DEATH?

  SON’S DEATH ROCKS DEVASTATION

  CHILD MURDERED DURING PARENTS’ ORGY

  RITUAL KILLING OF ROCKER’S BABY:

  ARE MANSON FOLLOWERS RESPONSIBLE?

  Garbage, Lou thought. It was all garbage. He wondered if Pete Page managed to shield the McAvoys from the worst of it. Frustrated, he rested his head in his hands and continued to stare at the picture.

  He couldn’t
pull himself away from the case. He was bringing his work home with him now, and bringing it home with a vengeance. Files, photos, notes littered his desk in the corner of Marge’s tidy living room. Though he had good men assigned with him, he double-checked all their work. He had personally interviewed everyone on the guest list he’d been given. He’d pored over the forensic reports, then had gone back again and again to comb through Darren’s room.

  More than two weeks after the murder, and Lou had absolutely nothing.

  For amateurs, they certainly covered their tracks, he thought. And they had been amateurs, he was certain. Professionals didn’t end up smothering a child that might have been worth a million in ransom, nor would they made such a poor attempt to give the illusion of a break-in.

  They had been in the house. They had walked right through the front door. That was something else Lou was sure of. That didn’t mean their names were on the list Page had managed to compile. Half of Southern California could have walked into the house that night—and been given a drink or a joint or whatever party drugs had been available.

  There hadn’t been any fingerprints in the boy’s room, not even on the hypodermic needle. There were only fingerprints of the McAvoys and their nanny. It seemed that Beverly McAvoy was an excellent housekeeper. The first floor had shown the disorder expected in the aftermath of a party, but the second floor, the family floor, had been clean and ordered. Marge would have approved, he thought as he imagined the rooms. No fingerprints, no dust, no signs of struggle.

  But there had been a struggle, a life-and-death struggle. Sometime during it a hand had clamped over Darren McAvoy’s mouth and, perhaps inadvertently, his nose.

  That struggle had occurred sometime between the time Emma had heard her brother cry—if indeed she had—and when Beverly McAvoy had gone up to check on her son.

  How long had it taken? Five minutes, ten. Certainly no longer. According to the coroner, Darren McAvoy had died between two and two-thirty A.M. The ambulance call for Emma had been logged in at two-seventeen.

  It didn’t help, Lou thought now. It didn’t help to have the times correlated, to have reams of notes and neatly labeled file folders. He needed to find just one thing out of place, one name that didn’t fit, one story that didn’t jibe.

  He needed to find Darren McAvoy’s killers. If he didn’t, he knew he would forever be haunted by the boy’s face, and his young sister’s tearful question.

  Was it my fault?

  “Dad?”

  Lou jolted, then turned to see his son standing behind him, tossing a football from hand to hand.

  “Michael, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “I didn’t.” Michael rolled his eyes when his father turned around again. If he slammed doors and walked through the house like a normal person, he was being too noisy. If he tried to be quiet, he was sneaking. A guy couldn’t win.

  “Dad,” he said again.

  “Hmmm?”

  “You said you’d pass me a few this afternoon.”

  “When I’m finished, Michael.”

  Michael shifted from foot to foot in his scruffy black sneakers. In the past few weeks “When I’m finished” had been his father’s standard answer. “When will you be finished?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll be finished faster if you don’t bother me.”

  Hell, Michael thought, wisely keeping the oath in his mind. Nobody had time for anything anymore. His best friend was at his stupid grandmother’s, and his second best friend was sick with the dumb flu or something. What good was a Saturday if you didn’t get to fool around?

  He tried, really, to take his father’s advice. There was the Christmas tree to look at, and all the presents stacked beneath it. Michael picked up one with his name on it, the one wrapped in the paper with goofy elves dancing all over it. He shook it, carefully. The rattle was only slight but brought tremendous satisfaction.

  He wanted a remote-controlled plane. It had been first on his Christmas list and written in capital letters, then underlined three times. Just so his mom and dad knew he was serious. He was sure, dead sure, it was inside that box.

  He set it down again. It would be days before he could unwrap it, days before he could take it outside and make it do loops and dives.

  He needed something to do now,

  There were baking smells in the kitchen, which pleased him. But he knew if he wandered in there, his mother would rope him into rolling out cookie dough or decorating gingerbread men. Girl stuff.

  How was he ever supposed to play wide receiver for the L.A. Rams if nobody passed him the stupid football, for crying out loud?

  And what was so interesting about a bunch of dopey papers and pictures anyway? Wandering back toward the desk, he ran his tongue over the tooth he’d chipped the week before while practicing wheelies on his three-speed. He liked the fact that his dad was a cop, and bragged about it all the time. Of course, when he bragged he had his dad shooting from the hip and locking up crazies like Charlie Manson for life. It would be a sad state of affairs if he had to tell the gang that his father typed out forms and studied files. Might as well be a librarian.

  Tucking the football under his arm, he leaned over his father’s shoulder. He had an idea that if he made a pest of himself, his father would push the papers aside and come outside. Then his gaze fell on the picture of Darren McAvoy.

  “Jeez. Is that a dead kid?”

  “Michael!” Lou turned, but the lecture dried on his tongue as he looked into his son’s shocked and fascinated eyes. Going with instinct, he put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Yes.”

  “Wow. What happened? “Did he get sick or something?”

  “No.” He wondered if he should feel guilty for using the tragedy of one child as a lesson to another. “He was murdered.”

  “He’s just a little kid. People aren’t supposed to murder little kids.”

  “No. But sometimes they do.”

  Staring at the police photo, Michael faced his own mortality for the first time in his whirlwind eleven years. “Why?”

  Lou remembered telling Emma that there were no monsters. The longer he looked at what had been done to Darren, the more certain he was that there were. “I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. That’s my job, to find out.”

  Having a cop for a father had never stopped Michael from embracing the television image of justice at work.

  “How do you find out?”

  “By talking to people, studying the evidence. Thinking a lot.”

  “Sounds boring.” But he couldn’t take his eyes off the picture.

  “It is, mostly.”’

  Michael was glad he’d decided to be an astronaut. He looked away from the picture and spotted the tabloid his father had just brought home. He had a sharp mind, and put it together quickly. “That’s Brian McAvoy’s little boy. Somebody tried to kidnap him or something but he died instead. All the kids’re talking about it.”

  “That’s right.” Lou slipped the picture of Darren back into a folder.

  “Wow. Wow! You’re working on that case. Did you get to meet Brian McAvoy and everything?”

  “I met him.”

  His father had met Brian McAvoy. Michael could only stare in a kind of dazed awe. “That’s boss, really boss. Did you meet the rest of the group? Did you talk to them?”

  Lou shook his head as he began to tidy his papers. How simple life was when you were eleven. And how simple it should be, he added as he ruffled Michael’s dark, untidy hair. “Yes, I talked to them. They seem very nice.”

  “Nice?” Michael goggled. “They’re the best. The very best. Wait