Black Irish (25 page)

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 everything 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.”

Abbie smiled, trying to hold back tears.

“Dad, the picture.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head gently.

“Come here, my girl.”

She stood up and went to his side, tears in her eyes.

“Dad—”

“Shhh.”

He reached up and stroked her hair, which she’d forgotten to pull back in a ponytail.

“Black as Cromwell’s heart, that’s what they used to say about your hair.”

She nodded. “I know. I heard it enough.”

“But not me. I always thought it was handsome.”

She gave him an accusing look. “You mean ‘pretty.’ And I never heard you say that.”

“You’ve forgotten! Of course I did.”

“Maybe in the shower you whispered it.”

He laughed. “I knew that Easter that you’d join the Department. I could see it in your eyes, standing there with the egg and the hundred-dollar bill.”

Abbie took a deep breath and let it out.

“I wanted you to see me, Daddy.”

“I did. Course I did. And I knew that you’d be as good as I was. Because you saw what lay behind things. And that frightened me to death.”

“Why?”

“I made a mistake, Abbie.”

The look—fear, guilt?—came to his eyes and stayed put. He shook his head and looked away from her.

“What mistake, Daddy? Tell me. Why is someone hunting the Clan?”

From over her shoulder, she heard the door open and felt a rush of disinfectant-smelling air spill into the room. She didn’t take her eyes from her father’s, but he only smiled.

“Mr. Kearney!” a voice said.

Abbie turned to see a thick-bodied nurse with curly dirty-blond hair spilling over her white uniform.

“You’re awake.”

“Shouldn’t he be?” Abbie said.

The nurse looked at her. “It’s time for his shot.”

Abbie watched the nurse as she walked to John Kearney’s side and began to pull open a syringe from its paper casing. She took the clear bottle and held it up at eye level, then dropped it to her waist and placed the needle tip on the rubber lid.

Abbie walked around the foot of the bed and came close to her father from the other side.

“Dad—” she said, softly.

Her father nodded. He was still smiling, but the energy had drained from his face.

“Soon, Abbie. Tomorrow we’ll talk all about it.”

Abbie watched the nurse give him the shot, and waited until his eyes fluttered shut again.

When she left the hospital, clouds were beginning to cover the sun. Sleep was impossible. Driving always helped her think, so she got in the car. She replayed every word of the conversation in her head as she drove, first through the County, up Abbott and down McKinley and over to South Park. She found she couldn’t focus on the case, only on her father’s words. Was it the drugs doing the talking? He hadn’t been that sweet to her since … Well, since forever.

Well, if it was the drugs, she didn’t care. She remembered every word he said.

She decided to drive to the Lucky Clover motel in Niagara Falls, where it had all begun. Maybe visiting the scene would spark something in her, help her assemble the jumble of puzzle pieces in her head.

Clouds fully obscured the sun as she drove over the Peace Bridge and into Niagara Falls. She drove to the Lucky Clover’s parking lot and turned off the engine. Her angle gave her a clear view of the action. The Clover was busy today, mostly with transients and prostitutes. She watched the alkies stumble out of their rooms and the businessmen johns hurrying out of their company cars for a quick session before going home to dinner and the kids. When they left, the whores hung by the open doors of the rooms and gossiped awhile before collecting their things and heading back toward Niagara Falls Boulevard.

She needed to eat something. A headache was gathering at the base of her neck, sending exploratory waves of blackness behind her eyes.

Was Kane the killer or the next victim? Was the Clan out to kill him or to protect him? If he was the killer, could they really mean to
cover for him, to keep him out of her grasp and let the murders of two of their own people go? What could he possibly have on the County Irish to hold that kind of power?

Or had Kane already been taken care of, marched out of his house, taken to a farmer’s field, shot in the back of the head and buried? Nobody would think twice about a gunshot out in Eden. Hunting was a way of life out there. Like the mountain man who scavenged the roadkill, people didn’t involve the authorities unless it was absolutely necessary. If he was in a fresh grave in some cornfield, she’d never know about it.

She began to nod off in the parking lot, feeling spacy. The mist from the Falls was running down the Saab’s sloping hood in thick streams.

Abbie woke up, freezing, curled in the front seat of the Saab. She could hear water. She was still in the parking lot, but the motel was lifeless now, the doors closed and the only light coming from the office.

Everything was dank and gray. A freezing rain was lashing down from a sky roiling with black-edged clouds. It was a storm coming in from over the lake, and from the looks of it the rain was going to get a lot worse.

Abbie turned the key and the Saab revved up. Cold air blasted out of the heater vents, and her portable police radio, charging in the cigarette lighter, switched on. Several big yawns creaked her jaw open and she shivered in the cold.

The hoped-for epiphany hadn’t come. The pieces of the case were still unconnected in her mind. No flash of insight. She turned the heater to full hot and thought of calling Z.

She heard dispatchers sending out calls on her portable radio. Her mind tuned in, but it was all chatter: kids stealing beer from a 7-Eleven, a domestic off of McKinley. She checked her cell phone—no messages from Z or anyone else.

She decided to get something to eat.

Abbie was reaching to turn on the car radio when she heard the dispatcher’s voice rise an octave.

“Unit Six, Unit Six, report of an EDP on the Peace Bridge, American side. Car parked in the right lane.”

Abbie’s hand paused on the radio knob, then dropped back to her lap.

A voice answered the call: “Dispatch, this is Unit Six. ETA is twelve minutes. Got anyone else?”

“That’s a negative.”

“All right, then. Unit Six responding.”

Abbie’s brow creased. An emotionally disturbed person on the bridge? It wasn’t known for suicides, like the Golden Gate in San Francisco. In fact, she’d never heard of anyone jumping off the Peace Bridge. Especially in the middle of winter.

Abbie shifted into drive and eased the Saab out of the parking lot. She’d take the back streets back to the U.S., to avoid the casino traffic. She looked for signs to the bridge.

Something veered into her thoughts. The killer crossed the bridge to murder George Decatur in the motel. Jimmy Ryan came over it to escort an IRA man back to America. Marty Collins took the case.

The bridge was part of every single killing, if only in a small way. It was the thing that linked them together.

Abbie saw a sign saying “Peace Bridge—U.S.A.” and merged into a three-lane street, traffic moving fast. The turbo kicked in and the opposing traffic on her left whipped by in blurs of color.

Abbie saw the arc of the Peace Bridge approaching ahead, black against a gray-black sky. An arrowhead of bright yellow crash barrels flashed through the windshield of a slow-moving Impala ahead of her.

“Unit Six, status?” the dispatcher called on the radio. “EDP no longer in sight. May have jumped.”

No one jumps from the bridge into that freezing river
, Abbie thought.
Not willingly
.

Abbie jerked the wheel right, accelerating as she went, blew past
the Impala and got back in the left lane. She shot into the bridge lane and the road inclined up. Traffic was bunched at the entrance ramp, with a gap to the left next to the collision barrels.

Abbie slammed on the gas. The Saab slid on the freezing road and began to fishtail. The collision barrels flared up in her side window at ten feet and closing, and she swore, then punched the gas hard. Her wheels sent a terrifying thump up through the floor of the car as they passed over the warning bumps. The car groaned as it came out of the skid and jumped a curb, then shot up the ramp, the bridge’s superstructure looming in the twilight.

The traffic was thicker here and she began weaving through cars, hitting sixty miles per hour, laying on the horn furiously. Ahead were the bridge tollbooths, with red lights winking as cars waited to pay their way into the U.S.A. Abbie touched the brake and rolled her window down, then punched the gas and barreled toward a lane with a red X blinking above it. As she swept through, she had the image of the toll collector’s pale white face on her right.

A startled Canadian cop, standing just in front of the custom official’s booth, turned, his hand reaching toward his gun.

“Buffalo PD,” Abbie shouted, slowing to flash her ID. He nodded and waved her on up the incline. She shot past the customs booth and pressed the accelerator.

The rain whipped down in sheets and Abbie heard thunder rolling in from the American side. As she gunned the engine, all that was visible ahead was the flick of an occasional brake light. The river to her right was high and thrashing against the boulders in the river. All she could see ahead was steel-gray darkness and the occasional flash of light along a black strut.

Traffic on the bridge was backed up near the crest of the bridge. Abbie skidded to a stop behind the last car and pushed open the driver’s-side door. A gust of wind exploded into the car. As Abbie put her foot down, rivulets of water pouring down from the crest splashed up her ankle. She stood up and the wind bucked against her. She slammed the door shut, immediately turned her back to the wind, unzipped the hood of her jacket from its compartment around
her neck, and pulled it free. The wind tore at it and a drumming noise filled her ears, but she finally managed to yank it over her head and cinch the cords tight.