The Good Boy (48 page)

“But I’m the one who started it. I’m the one who took him to Zack Fowler’s.”

“You’re also the one who rescued him.”

“You did that, Dad.”

“We did that.” He secures the catheter with tape. “I told you, you were my backup. I told Osorio the same. I couldn’t have done it without you.” He hands Joel the gauze. “Wrap it up.” He hooks the IV bag to the partition and uses a baby wipe to clean his hands again. “This should do, until we get home.”

“Is he going to be in trouble? When we get home?”

“Butch? No.”

“This wasn’t his fault,” Joel says, unrolling the gauze. “He knows a bad guy when he sees one and he can’t help it—he can’t let a bad guy go.”

“Neither can I,” his dad says, sitting back, finishing the open bottle of water in big gulps, like he does with beer sometimes. “It’s a joke, really. It’s not funny, but.” He stops there, and puts the cap back on the bottle, sealing it up.

“Are you going to be in trouble?” Joel asks. “When we get home?”

Pete looks at Butch. Says, “I want to tell you something, because I think you’ll understand. Because I think, Joel, that we’re a lot alike. We want to protect people—the ones we love. And we can really screw things up, trying to do that.”

“Are you talking about Ja’Kobe White?”

He looks up. “Ja’Kobe? Yes, I guess I am talking about him. And Zack Fowler, and Agapito Garcia. And Osorio. Bob Schnapper, even.”

“You’re talking about bad guys.”

“Bad guys, yes.”

“Like the Redbone with the gold fangs who said he was going to youthnize Butchie.”

“Gold fangs,” he says, as though he knows the boy. “Yes.”

“And Elgin Poole.”

His dad takes a quick breath, the
yes
catching in his throat. He says, “I’m sorry, Joel.”

“You can’t be sorry. You told
me
not to be sorry. You told me to be smarter.” Joel pets Butch’s head. He says, “Anyway, heroes do what they have to do.”

“I’m not…” his dad starts to say, and he’s shaking his head, but that’s all he says.

“I wanted to be a hero,” Joel says. “I wanted Zack Fowler to pay for what he did. For what I saw.”

His dad opens the other bottle of water.

“You mean the cat.”

“You knew?”

“Kitty—uh, Judge Crawford told me.”

“Kitty,” Joel says, and he thinks it’s kind of funny, saying her name like that, or more like sad-funny, because of Felis Catus, but his dad doesn’t say anything, which means it probably isn’t funny at all. So they sit there and they look at Butchie, whose breath is shallow and steady, more steady than either of theirs.

A car pulls in beside them and his dad gets up like he’s going to get out but then he stays and says, “The thing about doing something wrong—something bad like what Zack did? It’s worse, if you get away with it.” He takes a sip of water and then he says, “You don’t really get away with anything. Because
you
know the truth, and so you’ll always be expecting it to catch up with you.”

“Or else for somebody like you to come along, right?” Joel thinks of Whedon Scott, White Fang’s hero.

“Somebody,” his dad says, but not like he means himself. “I don’t want you to worry about Zack Fowler anymore, okay? The truth is catching up with him already.”

“But,” Joel says, “it doesn’t really seem like the truth matters. Even in the newspaper—”

“The news is not necessarily the truth. You should know that by now.” He offers Joel the open bottle and they pass it back and forth and when the water is gone he says, “The thing I want you to know, Joel, that I guess I still don’t understand sometimes, is that we shouldn’t fight them all. All the bad guys. No matter the truth. Because you can always fight. What you have to decide is whether or not the fight is worth it.”

“Worth what?”

Butchie opens his eyes and looks at Joel.

And his dad says, “Exactly.”

33

They’re crawling on the Kennedy, Monday-afternoon traffic stopping everything up past the tollbooths, when Pete realizes Joel has fallen asleep. The boy spent most of the drive whispering to Mr. O’Hare, and when he figured out they were driving by the airport, he asked Pete about the real lieutenant commander.

Joel already knew the story—he’s the one who picked Edward “Butch” O’Hare’s name. When Joel was younger, he’d been fascinated with airplanes, and so Pete fulfilled countless bedtime requests telling him about the Irish flying ace who piloted his F6F Hellcat into a Japanese firefight and was never seen again.

And just like all those bedtimes, this time when Pete finished telling about Butch, Joel wanted to know one more. This one about O’Hare’s father, Edward J., the man who went undercover with the government to take down Al Capone.

Pete obliged, of course; Joel always liked hearing about how Easy Eddie worked with Capone and against him at the same time. Pete was just getting to the part where Eddie left the dog track he ran in Cicero with a gun he never carried—paranoid, and rightly so—when he checked the rearview and found both Joel and Butch asleep. He stopped the story there, Edward J. still alive, this time. And still a hero, though not the type to name an airport after.

He wonders when Joel will realize his own dad is no type of hero at all.

When Pete reaches the Lawrence exit toward home, he turns on his phone.

He ignores the voice mails—he can guess who’s looking for him—and calls St. Catherine’s.

“I’m looking for a patient who was admitted last night,” he says to the operator. “Elgin Poole.”

“One moment.” During the silence, Pete wonders if she’s putting him through to the room, and if a cop will answer on Elgin’s behalf. He wonders what Elexus will say when she gets the chance.

When the line clicks on again it’s the operator and she says, “Sir? Mr. Poole left without discharge.”

“Left,” Pete says.

“I’m sorry, sir, but if a patient refuses treatment—”

“I know,” Pete says. “He can go.”

So Elgin has gone. And he will come back around again. On the underside.

*   *   *

When Pete turns on Balmoral, a block from the house, he parks behind another squad and wakes Joel. He says, “Get Butch inside.”

Joel looks at him through the rearview, eyes glassy. “We’re home?” he asks, confused, as if he’s still dreaming.

“We are home.”

There are tears at the corners of his eyes as he smiles.

“Go on, Joel. Take Butch. I’ll be right there.”

Joel coaxes Butch from the back and up to the house and Pete watches, his son’s staggered steps, the hurry, the story he’s got to tell.

Of course, it’ll be the truth, though nobody will hear it. Sarah will take him in her arms and shut her eyes against tears and tell herself she will do things differently now—whatever those things are that need to be done to make sure nothing like this happens ever again. McKenna will welcome her brother as she curses herself for whatever unforgivable part she thinks she’s played. Bo Colton will fill in the blanks and be on his way, happy to close the book on this case as another opens, and another.

When Joel and Butch disappear inside, Pete scrolls through his phone to find the number. When cued by her voice mail, he says, “Ann Marie Byers? This is Pete Murphy. Let’s end this.”

Because if the truth doesn’t matter, what his son believes does.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to these beneficent professionals: Andy Perostianis, Tara Parembo, Kelly Given, Dave DeMarais, Gary Bolt, Catherine Crawford, David Johnston, Larry McKinney, Joe Shanahan, Susan Lambert, Megan Abbott, Scott Phillips, David Hale Smith, Kristan Palmer, and Kelley Ragland.

Thanks also to some very smart kids: Ms. Lambert’s Wheat Ridge High School 2011–12 AP Spanish Class and Carson Plant.

Thanks—always—to those who always give more than they get: Kevin Adkins, Heather Harper, Katie Kennicott, Patti Parrillo, Maddee James, Jamie Lavish, Dan Judson, Sande Skinner, and my parents.

A special thank-you to April Schwegel, for digging up mental dirt.

And finally, to the dogs who inspired me: Wynne, Wiley, and CPD K9 Brix.

ALSO BY THERESA SCHWEGEL

Last Known Address

Person of Interest

Probable Cause

Officer Down

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THERESA SCHWEGEL was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. A Loyola University graduate, she received an MFA in screenwriting at Chapman University. She is the author of four novels; her debut,
Officer Down
, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Anthony Award.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE GOOD BOY.
Copyright © 2013 by Theresa Schwegel. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Cover photographs: boy with dog © Media Bakery;

city © Jill Battaglia/Arcangel Images

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Schwegel, Theresa.

    The good boy / Theresa Schwegel.—First edition.

            Pages cm

    ISBN 978-1-250-00179-5 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-250-02243-1 (e-book)

  1.  Police—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction.   2.  Police dogs—Fiction.   3.  Race relations—Fiction.   4.  Vendetta—Fiction.   5.  Domestic fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3619.C4925G66 2013

    813'.6—dc23

2013025314

eISBN 9781250022431

First Edition: November 2013