Black Irish (17 page)

“Oh God, have
mercy!
” he yelled, and he saw a pair of crows lift from the top of a nearby tree.

In the silence that followed, a voice answered.

Marty Collins looked around at the gloom surrounding him. There was a figure in the snow eight or ten feet away, its back against a curtain of black brambles. It wore a green-and-black-checked wool coat and a black ski mask, and it was sitting on its haunches, watching Marty.

“What did you say?”

“No merthy.”

The voice was like nothing he’d ever heard. It was like a kid with
a speech impediment. Marty Collins had the uncanny feeling that he was speaking to an evil child.

“Help me, please. I was hit by a car and—”

He pushed his chest forward to get clear of the trees, but something was holding him back. He jerked his right shoulder forward, but there was a cord tied to his upper arm and anchored somewhere behind him. He tried taking a step, but the tiny pressure he placed on the broken leg sent a jagged explosion of pain up through his pelvis and gut. It took him minutes to regain the power of speech.

“Just help me,” he moaned. “Just please go get help.”

The figure said something.

“What—”

“Aythe driving huckar.”

Marty tried to block out the sickening pain to decipher what the thing had said.

“AYTHE drivin huckar.”

“You were driving the car?
You?
”

“Yes.”

Marty Collins stared at the black eyes, and his bowels slowly went cold. A thought slipped through the agony in his brain, disappeared, then returned, more insistent.

“You killed Jimmy Ryan, didn’t you?” he said.

The figure just stared.

“Listen, listen. Just get me out of here and you don’t have to see me again. I will tell them nothing, do you understand me?”

The man in the ski mask reached behind him and took out a large knife. It flashed silver in the darkness, reflecting the glow of the moonlight and the snow. The man’s eyes, black through the slits of the ski mask, regarded him.

“Why didn’t you run when Jimmy Ryan was found?”

Whyn’t you run-n Himminyryne wuzfound?

It sounded like one long moan but Marty Collins got the sense of it.

“Why should I?!” Marty yelled, his face reddening. “I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

The knife sounded along the hard ground like it was scraping flint.

Then the lisping voice again. Was it disguising its true voice? Marty hung his head as he deciphered what the thing had said:

“Each one chooses one. Jimmy chose you.”

Marty Collins swept his head left and right, filled with hatred for that drug-dealing scum Jimmy Ryan. He had never wanted him on the rolls of the Gael. It was a sacred institution, and Jimmy was a useless con artist who was beneath the Clan’s history, its illustrious and unfulfilled calling. But the others had outvoted him. They needed Jimmy, they said. They had to have him.

The scraping of the knife on the ground brought him back to the park. He looked up at the killer. If it was who he thought it was, he was as good as dead.

“Is this how you repay us, traitor?” Marty said slowly. Hot indignation temporarily blocked the grinding pain from his leg. “We
saved
you.”

The figure laughed, a booming sound that seemed to return from the trees filled with steel.

“You have no idea what we did for you,” Marty sputtered. “You have
no
idea.”

The figure stood up. It reached up and began to unzip the green-and-black-checked jacket. Marty Collins dipped his head.

“Cut me down from here.
Cut me down, you animal!
”

When Marty looked up again, the jacket was off, and the thing had turned its back to him. Marty heard the sound of a zipper, and the thing began to take the sweatshirt off. The bare right shoulder came into view.

Marty Collins stared despite himself. His eyes widened.

After a few seconds of complete bafflement, he understood. A gasp escaped his lips. He tried to speak but the words were just a grunt of steam into the air.

He’d been wrong. In his mind, the face of the man he’d thought was behind the mask dissolved, replaced by a different and more terrible one, the killer’s true face. Marty Collins understood now who
the man standing before him was, and he knew that Jimmy Ryan had understood at the end, too. He realized why Jimmy had spilled his guts so quickly, and for a moment he had a flash of empathy for Jimmy that seemed to warm his shivering body. And the feeling was for himself, too, for the mutilated thing he would soon become.

The figure advanced toward him, the black ski mask still on, the knife at his waist. When he reached Marty Collins, the figure breathed for a moment, willing Marty to raise his eyes. When he didn’t, the knife point pricked into Marty’s chin and lifted it.

The man stared into Marty’s eyes as he dropped the knife to his stomach, just below the belly button. Then he whispered something into Marty’s ear and gave the blade a hard cutting flick.

Abbie sat in her cubicle, a can of Diet Coke hanging listlessly in her hand. It was 10 p.m., and there was no one in the cubicles around her.

Her mind went over and over the events of the night. After leaving Collins’s house, followed by his bodyguards, she’d driven up and down the park road three, four, five times. There was no sign of Marty Collins. Then she and Z had gotten out on foot and walked the road in the dying light, looking for footsteps leading away from the path he’d been running. There were only two that were fresh. One had led to the side door of a single-story house on the edge of the park. Inside they’d found the homeowner, Joseph Maclin, forty-six and a plumber, having a beer at his kitchen table. He’d told them his car had broken down on Abbott, so he’d come through the park road and cut over to shorten the trip home. His boots matched the tracks in the snow. And unless he’d carried Collins on his shoulders, there was no way he’d been anything other than alone.

The other track consisted of two pairs of footsteps that led to the old brick custodian’s hut looking out over the Bowl. There they’d found two teenagers, one male and one female, with two 52-ounce bottles of malt liquor, curled up for warmth like sleeping kittens. The lock was broken and the teenagers had thrown some files around, smashed a computer screen before settling in for a nap. Runaways.

They’d seen nothing. No cars, no runners, no blood, no suspicious ski-masked strangers lurking on the park road. They’d been sent to their families in the rich suburb of Orchard Park in the back of a squad car, half-blitzed and bitter.

Which meant one of three things. Either Marty Collins had taken a different running route for the first time in years, or he’d made it to the Seneca Street end of the park and disappeared there. Or the killer had caught him on the park road and got him into his car. Which meant he could be anywhere right now.

She listened to her voice mails. Detective Mills from Niagara Falls PD had called to ask her out on another date. She smiled wanly and made a mental note to call him. But no dates yet. Not until she had the killer.
One man at a time
, she thought.

T
HE FIRST CALL TO THE
B
UFFALO
F
IRE
D
EPARTMENT CAME IN AT
6:40
A.M
. The second thirty seconds later. A brush fire in Cazenovia Park. The squad on Abbott Road, used to the calls for fires raging in one of the abandoned two-family homes that dotted the County, finished their coffee before walking leisurely to their open lockers and slinging on their coats and boots. Five men climbed aboard the gleaming red engine before hitting the siren and heading down Abbott to Cazenovia Park Road. By then they could see the black wisps of smoke rising from the middle of the park. They sighed. They knew the snow was deep and breaking trail to the fire with sixty pounds of equipment would leave them drenched in sweat after just a few minutes.

The first to reach the site was Captain Edward Burns. He followed the creek, followed by three men. He could hear the sound of wood splintering in intense heat before he saw the red flames after a dogleg turn in the creek bed. When he turned and found the fire before him, it was consuming a stand of small oaks surrounding a tall elm tree. At the foot of it stood a thick bramble of black scrub, so tightly interwoven it looked like a mesh of wrought iron. To get hoses directly on the fire, they would have to go through it. But first he had to have a look.

Burns, breathing heavily, powered his legs through the last of
the ice-rimed snow and dropped down to a little path that had been stamped into the snow at the entrance to the bramble. He held a large axe in his right hand, and he broke the ice ahead of him as he lurched forward.

“The little fucks have been back here,” he called to the man behind him, Mulcahy. “Tell Dispatch to call PD and see if they can find any punks walking through the park with matches or a lighter.”

“If I catch ’em,” said Mulcahy, out of breath, “I’ll put ’em under the ice myself.” He stopped and began to relay the message while Burns staggered on toward the circle of bushes.

Burns took a deep breath and broke through the last crust of ice and stumbled into the entrance to the bramble. The light disappeared. It was strange. The branches ahead of him were so perfectly laced together they seemed to have been arranged that way. He could hear the crackling of the dry timber ahead of him, but once he was in the dark brush, only tiny shoots of sun lit up the gloomy interior. He took four steps, ducking down to avoid the brambles that came down like a low roof over his head. The sound of his men tramping behind him faded as he entered the bush.

Finally, he saw the white of the snow and the red of flames through the dark branches ahead. He gripped the axe, ready to clear the brush away from the base of the tall trees that could light up and send sparks to the dead oaks that studded the park grounds. His kids played in Cazenovia Park during the summers, and it would be a shame to lose more of its trees. One of the brambles caught at his shoulders and threatened to hold him fast. He jerked forward, a tremor of claustrophobia shooting through him.

“Fucking punks,” he said.

He ducked his head down to avoid one last branch, but his helmet caught it and it snapped with a pistol-like sound. He closed his eyes to avoid the thorns and sharp twigs, then fell to his knees and began to shuffle forward. Finally, head down, drops of icy water falling onto his bare neck, he broke through into the center, exhausted. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the burning trees were actually farther away than he thought, twenty or so yards at least. He was now
inside a nest of black branches, around ten feet in diameter. His eyes began to adjust to the gloom.

With a grunt, Burns jerked off the ground and back to his feet. The red he’d seen through the branches wasn’t flame. It was the snow itself, turned scarlet with … what the fuck was that? Blood. The snow was saturated with it, dark scarlet blood splashed around the interior.

“Jesus, Mary, and Jo—”

Burns snapped the axe into the air frantically, his eyes searching the bramble for something ready to spring at him. His other hand grasped for the radio that had been strapped to his shoulder, but the branches had torn it free and now it dangled somewhere around his knees. He was too petrified to drop his eyes from the woven mesh around him.

He thought of animal sacrifices, the rumors of dog killers and Satan worshippers in the woods at night coming true right in front of his eyes.

Muffled voices answered his call, but the words were blunted by the thick branches. Burns hefted his axe in his hand, feeling he’d been drawn into a trap, and that a knife was poised, waiting to split his scalp.

As he turned slowly to the left, axe heavy in his right hand, out of the corner of his eye he saw the pale thing, and he instantly dashed for the entrance.

“Mulcahy!”
he screamed.
“MULCAHY, WHERE ARE YOU?”

The voices grew closer. Burns ran to the passageway and crouched there, hunched on his knees, his hand groping for the radio swinging against his thigh. Finally, with a grunt, he found it and brought it to his lips.

“Dispatch, Dispatch, this is Burns 2-1.”

“Go ah—”

“Get Buffalo PD on the scene. We got some kind of animal sacrifice and blood all … all over the ground.”

The sound of crashing came clearly through the passageway.

Burns looked up to see the wide eyes of Mulcahy approaching in the gloom. He was crawling on his knees.

“Cap, what is it?”

“It’s a—it’s a—”

“Take it easy.”

“
Don’t tell me to take it fucking easy
. The sickos have been killing dogs in there.”

Mulcahy’s eyes tried to peer around him into the center of the brambles.

“Guys, hold on,” he called back. “We got something for PD.”

He looked directly at Burns.

“Cap, go around me, I’ll take a look and then we’ll know what to tell the cops when they get here.”

Burns nodded. He wiped his mouth with his hand, then began to squeeze by Mulcahy on the right.

“Don’t touch nothin’,” he said.

“Believe me, I won’t.”

Burns felt the adrenaline drain away as he saw the sunlight grow closer. Finally he was out into the open and he stood up to relieve the cramping in his back and to let the sunlight play on his face.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the other two firefighters looking at him strangely.

“You okay?” said the first one.

“No, I’m not fuckin’ okay. The devil freaks’ve been at work back there. Goddamn delinquents. I’d like to—”

The eyes of the second man shifted off his face to over his right shoulder and Burns heard movement behind him. He turned quickly, the axe bobbing in the air.

Mulcahy emerged from the black brambles, his face ashen. He took a gulp of fresh air and looked around, his eyes unfocused.

“Did you see it?” Burns said.

Mulcahy dropped down to his haunches, then sat back on the snow. He brushed a shaking hand through his ginger hair.