Fall Guy (20 page)

After Brody left, I let the cold water out of the tub and ran another bath. Soaking in the hot water, I closed my eyes and must have fallen asleep because when I opened them again, the water was as cold as the water I'd let out of the tub what seemed like moments before. I opened the drain and turned on the hot water, sinking back into the tub as it got hot again, thinking about Brody, about the warmth of his hand against my face, the taste of his mouth. But just as quickly as that image came, it disappeared. Now I was thinking about someone else in a bathtub, the hot water running.

Only that time it was the shower running.

And that time the drain had been obstructed.

I was thinking about Timothy O'Fallon falling into the tub, the gun dropping from his hand, the washcloth and his foot stopping up enough of the drain so that the tub begins to fill. I thought about the gun lying on the bottom of the tub, soaking, as I was, in hot soapy water, and then I opened my eyes and looked at my hands, the fingertips puffy
and wrinkled from being in the water so long, not even looking like my own hands anymore.

What would have happened to the trace evidence on O'Fallon's hand?

Gone.

And the prints on the gun?

Also gone.

Parker had messed with the scene as well, turning off the water, letting the tub drain. And there'd been that rookie cop who threw up in the bathroom, then scoured it in an attempt to cover up his weakness.

The scene was a mess. Had it all been an accident, the work of a bumbling fool and a raw beginner? Or not?

Suddenly, lying in all that hot, soapy water, I was no longer tired. I was wide-awake. I was feeling the cold stab of truth.

What if the washcloth hadn't stopped up the drain by accident? What if O'Fallon's foot had landed somewhere else, to the side of the drain, for example, or in front of it? What if the drain had been stopped up on purpose, to destroy the trace evidence? What if someone knew O'Fallon's patterns, his habits, the way a dog knows his master's? What if that person had waited for Tim to take his morning shower, waited, in fact, for him to be shampooing his hair, his eyes closed? What if he had picked that exact time to ease the shower curtain aside, place the gun against O'Fallon's temple and pull the trigger?

What if?

Timothy O'Fallon had been a survivor. That was why he'd gone to the post-traumatic-stress
group where I'd met him. My guess is he had been doing things like that for much of his life, any support group in a storm, including that one, including AA, anything he could find that would help him live with his own history, not die because of it. Because if that was what he was going to do, die because of it, he would have done it decades earlier, after he'd pushed his brother to his death or seen his cousin tumble so far into depression that he killed himself, or after the suicide of his father. Not all these years later. Not when he'd spent his life atoning for that one terrible mistake.

Timothy O'Fallon hadn't killed himself. Someone had committed an almost perfect murder, someone who had been studying O'Fallon for a long time. Had he shot him and then left the house, gone to meet someone who inconveniently never showed? Had he started a conversation with someone else in order to have an alibi?

If not for that alibi, if not for that one thing, everything pointed to Parker. But he did have one. Jin Mei, out in the garden, near the bathroom window, had heard Tim crying. And that was during the time that Parker was seen waiting for a friend, then settling for a stranger, quintessential Parker.

Of course, Parker didn't really need an alibi, did he? There had been more than enough reason for the cops to close the case quickly: O'Fallon's grief at his mother's death, the stress of the job, the photograph on his desk, not to mention the lack of trace evidence to prove otherwise. The photograph. A
nice touch. A flair for the dramatic. That sounded like Parker.

The real evidence, the hard evidence, that which would nail it one way or another, all washed away. But more than enough of the circumstantial kind.

That
was what was getting to me, eating away at me just beneath the surface of my consciousness. There was too much evidence, too many fingers pointing at Parker. The one thing that didn't fit, the one thing that stood out like a sore thumb was that alibi.

But suppose he didn't have one.

Jin Mei knew Tim had been to his mother's wake the day before. Standing in the garden near his closed bathroom window, she
thought
she heard him crying. But Jin Mei was hard of hearing. Perhaps what she'd really heard had been the shower running, nothing more.

Suppose there was no alibi. Suppose instead of rushing to close the case, the police had investigated further, suspecting that Tim's death had not been a suicide. In that case, there might as well be a neon sign pointing to Parker. Discounting his fingerprints, because he had been living there, there was still ample reason to look at Parker. He'd had a fight with Tim the day before and Tim had kicked him out of the apartment. He'd been stealing from Tim, lying to him. Suppose all these things had finally caught up with him. Suppose Tim wasn't just throwing him out, but threatening to send him to jail.

And then Parker's aunt goes missing, just when he needs her to. He moves into her apart
ment, fills the closets with his things, gets rid of everything of hers he can't use. He claims there was a note inviting him to stay, but he doesn't save it, a document, as far as the cops were concerned, that would be considered more valuable than a lease.

But there was that cell phone message, the one that told him he couldn't live at his aunt's house, not then, not ever again. There was Elizabeth Bowles, an actress's actress, disappearing in the middle of the run of a play. Then found dead.

Who, if not Parker, had a motive? It had to be Parker. Anyone would have come to that conclusion.

And then Dennis turns up dead, the keys to the place where Parker is living, his aunt's apartment, found lying next to the body. Who could have dropped them there but Parker? Who might have left the little purse, his aunt's purse, hidden in Parker's closet. Who indeed? There was no end of evidence against Parker.

All his life he'd been a liar, a thief, a con artist. Why not assume he'd finally escalated to murder? I went over the list again—evidence everywhere, nothing ambiguous. A rookie could make the case against Parker.

That's when I sat bolt upright. Nobody could be that careless. Not even Parker. Especially not Parker.

Parker wasn't a careless man. He was thoughtful, meticulous in the way he figured out exactly how to reinvent himself whenever he had the need. His survival depended on his skill. No way was it Parker who killed the O'Fallon brothers
and his aunt, leaving enough clues around that anyone at all, hearing the so-called facts, would finger him as the killer.

The keys next to the body. That was the last straw. I know it happened sometimes, a killer would drop his keys, even his wallet, at the crime scene. But not Parker. He made mistakes, for sure. But not that many of them. Not with something so important, so dangerous. Because like Tim, Parker was a survivor.

Someone else had dropped the keys near Dennis, left them there on purpose. Someone else had left the beaded purse in Parker's closet. Someone wanted to be sure that if the cops figured out that O'Fallon's death had not been a suicide, there'd be someone lined up to take the fall. There'd be a Freddy Baker in the wings. Only this time the bushy-haired stranger was a real person. This time his name was Parker Bowling.

I didn't think I'd sleep, but I did. Sometime before dawn, thinking about the O'Fallon family with all their secrets, Dashiell lying tight against me on the office daybed, using my legs as a pillow, I fell asleep and stayed that way until I heard Maggie in the hall, coming back from the bathroom. The office door was open and I saw she'd put her slacks back on, that she'd covered her legs.

“Why?” I asked her. “After all these years, why tell
me
that ridiculous story about the kid from Nyack whose legs got burned?”

She came into the office and sat on the end of the daybed, not looking at me. “I was that ashamed,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“That you let them tie you up?”

She shook her head. “No. Not that.”

“Then what?”

She sat on the very edge of the bed, as far away from me as she could get. “When I look at my legs, I think: There it is, Mary Margaret, there's the proof.”

“Of what?” I sat up, leaning toward her, too tired to be patient or diplomatic, just fed up and wanting to know. “The proof of what?” I said when she hesitated.

Maggie turned to look at me then. “That God doesn't love me.”

“Oh, Maggie.”

“Last week Father Jack told me it's not true, but I don't believe it. How could He love me?” she asked, tears tracking their way silently down her pale, swollen cheeks. When I reached for her, she put up one hand to stop me. “Father Jack says God loves us all, that he loved my harsh, unloving father, my timid, alcoholic mother, my brother Dennis, who worked such long hours that there was no time left for his wife, his children, his mother, his brother or his sister. He said that God loved Timothy, even though he murdered his kid brother.” She was sobbing now, and talking too loud. “And that he loves me, who instead of honoring my parents, my flawed, human parents, dishonored them with a lifetime of lies. That's why I told you that a boy named Freddy Baker got burned, because I didn't want you to know. I didn't want you to hate me, too. You've been so kind. I didn't want…” She stopped, one hand momentarily in the air, then falling to her lap.

“But you did want me to know.”

“What do you mean?” Eyes as round as a child's.

“Maggie, you took your slacks off.”

Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

“You've carried the secrets long enough, haven't you?”

Maggie nodded. “I have. Too long. But it's all I know.” She got up and took the box of tissues off the desk, sat on the bed again, blew her nose. “When I look in the mirror, Rachel, there's no one there. There is no Maggie O'Fallon. She doesn't exist.”

“Like Freddie Baker?”

“Worse than that. He never had the chance. He wasn't real. But I was. And I've let a pack of lies destroy my life and keep me from the people I loved.”

“In the story you told your parents about that day…”

“Freddy Baker was the boy who set the fire. We didn't call him by name in front of our parents, of course. That was just for ourselves. Somehow that was supposed to make it less tragic, that we were fooling them. In front of them, he was ‘that boy.' And when my father pressed us, we said his name was Freddy, Freddy something, that he'd never said his last name. But among ourselves, he was always Freddy Baker. We joked about him all that year. For the five months my legs were healing, they'd come and tell me Freddy Baker stories, how he ‘borrowed' Tim's bike and got it stolen, how he took ten dollars from my mother's purse or a bottle of gin from the liquor cabinet, then how he got drunk in the woods, how he let the air out of old Mrs. Wilderson's tires, whatever mischief any of them made, they'd tell me Freddy Baker had done it. Until Joey died. That was the end of it, of joking, of just about everything.”

“No more good times?”

She shook her head. “Not a one.” She wiped
her eyes with her fingers and stood. “And it only got worse.”

“Liam?”

She nodded.

“And then your father?”

“Yes.”

“Was that right after Liam's death?”

“No. It was about two months afterward.”

“And what happened during those two months, Maggie? Did he seem depressed? What was it like at home?”

“I was just a kid,” she said.

“And like any other kid, a sharp observer of your parents.”

She hung her head, not speaking.

“Was he sullen, angry? Was it more difficult to talk to him?”

Maggie looked up and laughed. But it wasn't a funny laugh. Not at all.

“Talk to him? Did you have a father you could talk to, Rachel? I never did. Everything was the same. It was the same, do you understand? It was as if Joey had never lived, as if Liam had never lived. It wasn't the same for us, for the kids. But when my father came home from work, he still expected to hear good news about school and about friends and about everything. You couldn't say…”

She stopped and covered her face with both hands.

“That you were grieving?”

Maggie nodded. Then she put her hands back into her lap. “You couldn't say you missed your brother or your cousin. You couldn't say that you were scared. Not that you thought…”

“What did you think?”

“That I'd be next. That I deserved to be next. Even when I'd wake up screaming, and my mother would come to my room, even then. I'd say, ‘Bad dream.' She'd say, ‘Don't be silly. There's nothing to be afraid of. You're safe at home.' I remember how the light made her face shine, all that cream she'd slather on every night and the rollers in her hair, everything about appearances, nothing about…”

“Feelings?”

“She never asked what the dream had been about. She never wanted to know. That's how they were, both of them.”

Dashiell turned around and put his head on Maggie's lap. For a while, she held her hands up, then gently lay one on his neck, the other on his broad, warm back.

“She never sat on the bed, but sometimes she'd sit on the rocking chair. She'd shut off the light and I'd see her face again just for a second when she lit her cigarette. I'd see the shine of that night cream, the kerchief on her head to cover the rollers. Then I'd smell her cigarette and long after she had left, thinking I was asleep, or not thinking about me at all, I'd smell the ashes in the ashtray, a kind of cold comfort telling me my mother had been there, not exactly there, but there in a way.”

“Did your parents show any emotion about the death of your brother or your cousin?”

“My mother cried at the funerals.”

“But not at home?”

“Not that I saw.”

“And your father?”

“If anything, he became harder than he'd been before, more closed, more demanding.”

“Do you remember right before he died?”

She nodded. “Locked up in his den all day long.”

“He'd been home that day?”

She nodded, then stood. “I'd like to take a bath before we finish up at Tim's, if that's okay, Rachel.”

“Of course it is.”

I went to put up coffee while Maggie took a bath, thinking about Freddy Baker all the while. Freddy Baker, the fictitious bad guy. I wondered if Maggie's father had tried to find him, a boy without a last name, a boy who didn't exist.

I could hear the water running again, Maggie rinsing her hair. I opened the door and walked outside, sitting on the steps where, last night, I had kissed Detective Brody. Last night. It seemed so long ago.

The phone rang. It was Brody.

“Don't you ever go home?” I asked him.

“Once in a while. Is Maggie awake?”

“She's taking a bath.”

“I want to pick her up and drive her uptown, for the identification. Have you mentioned it to her?”

“Not yet. But I will. Can you give us forty-five minutes?”

“Sure. That's fine.”

“And, Michael?”

“Yes?”

“When you bring her back, would you bring her to Tim's apartment? That's where I'll be, get
ting the things she wants packed up so that she can go home.”

He didn't say anything else. Neither did I. I held the phone a moment too long, waiting for him to hang up, then I hung up first.

I wondered what I should be doing next. I wondered if I should be telling Brody the things I'd learned. And the things I'd surmised. But then I thought, if O'Fallon had wanted Brody to know his family's secrets, he would have made
him
his executor instead of me. He hadn't done that. He'd chosen me. He must have known I wouldn't stop until I'd dug up everything. He must have wanted that, to shield Maggie. He didn't know what she knew. She hadn't told anyone. He wanted to keep things from Dennis, too. And to keep the truth from Brody. I could understand that. It wasn't pretty, what I'd heard.

But why me? What did he want me to do with what I'd found out? Because if I was right and he hadn't killed himself, it had nothing to do with his murder, his death. It had to do with his life.

Maggie came downstairs dressed, her hair still damp. She accepted a mug of coffee, but she said she didn't want any food. I didn't think what I had to tell her would increase her appetite either. We sat outside at the table. I told her that Brody would come for her in half an hour, that he'd drop her off at Tim's. I said I'd pick up boxes on my way there and pack up the rest of the things she was taking.

She reached for my hand.

“I can see why my brother liked you so much,” she said.

I didn't have the heart to tell her again that I hadn't known her brother, that we'd been strangers. Besides, Dashiell was barking and running toward the gate. It was time for her to go.

I sat in the garden for a while longer after Brody and Maggie left, thinking about Timothy O'Fallon, wondering if I'd ever have the answers I was looking for. I thought back to the beginning, to that day at Breyer's Landing—Joey standing on top of the rocks, the cruel faces of his brothers and his cousins below. But the goading hadn't been enough. Suddenly, from behind, his big brother gave him the push that sent him from this world down into the next, a pitch-black world of ice-cold water and unforgiving rocks. And then the other boys waited, jeering and laughing. And then they waited quietly. They waited for Joey to come up from where he'd gone down, his fair skin blue from the cold. But the water was still where it had closed around Joey, closed as fast as it had opened to accept him.

How long had it taken for the panic to set in? How long before the horrible realization? How long to make up the story, the story that would become part of their family history?

At day's end, only one truth is known: that Joey is dead. And even when his limp body is brought out of that cold, black place, none of them break. No one confesses. And so they are believed. There is no punishment from without. But the punishment from within is relentless. Not only for Tim, for every last one of them.