A Study in Sin (9 page)

“And this, boys, is where I leave you. But, before I go,” a devious look stretching across her face, “please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Mr. Aiden Clery, the man responsible for the murders of Finton Cormack and James McKeague.”

All of us froze for a moment, suspended in time. I watched Remy grab the cab driver’s arm in some ridiculous attempt to commandeer him. I can recall the man looking down at Remy, and then his eyes meeting mine, a sudden look of pure and maniacal evil set upon his features. He shrugged her off with ease and sent her sprawling onto the curb. That was all it took for me to snap back to reality and I instinctively dove on to the man’s back. Lambert and Arruda weren’t far behind, and it was good thing, because this specific cab driver fought with a ferociousness I had never experienced before in my life. I’m no small guy, but I’m fairly convinced that, if it weren't for the help of the two detectives, I might not have emerged from that scrap. The four of us rolled around on the ground in a heap of limbs, the cabbie throwing me off over and over again in fits of superhuman rage. What actually took a matter of seconds seemed to drag on to no end. Eventually, the other officers at the scene ran to our aid and Arruda finally planted his entire weight on the man’s back, holding him down as Lambert cuffed him.

After being restrained, our suspect in custody let out a roar that would have rivaled any from the animal kingdom. But his yell quickly degraded into a cry of defeat, and his head sunk to his chest. The sound of it sent chills down my spine.

“Yell all you want, buddy, not going to help you now,” Arruda said, inches from the man’s face, spit sprinkling his cheek. It elicited no response.

Remy was wiping off the grass and dirt that stuck to her from being thrown to the ground.

“You both owe me a hundred dollars,” she said stone-faced. “Now, are there any questions?”

Part 2

The Land of Saints and Scholars

The night sky burned a bright red-orange as flickering embers floated above the dark tree line. Aiden Clery ran towards the glow in the sky, forgetting the fire in his lungs, focusing on the flames that lay ahead. Deep within his seared and black thoughts was what he knew to be the truth, what he fought not to acknowledge; that he was running towards death, towards destruction, and towards the inevitability that, with every step, his grip on goodness would loosen more and more, until there was nothing left for him to grasp.

Chapter 1
Spring, 1985

A wise man can find beauty in the most desolate views. Show him a rocky wasteland, and he’ll marvel at the age of the stones, how the wind and water have changed them over millions of years. Show him a sulfur spewing volcanic landscape, and he’ll smile at the beauty of the Earth’s engine, churning away, out in the open for all to see. Show him a barren desert, and he’ll see the life that keeps it going; he’ll see solitude and space, a place where the mind can be free of its confinement.

Now show these things to an ignorant man, and he’ll see only the ugliness and the death.

But even an ignorant man who can’t see the magnificence of time when it’s staring back at him, even he can look out onto the Irish countryside on a clear, bright morning and see it for all its brilliance. The rolling expanses of green spotted with cold, clear lakes; the grass and wildflowers as they bend and sway in the winds that come down over the rocky hillsides; the deep valleys and the lapping streams that split them in half; the smell of dew and sweet wetness that hangs in the air.

No man is blind enough to ignore the perfection of such a place.

Jim Ryan stood on his front porch, taking in the splendor of the vastness that lay before him. He looked at his land, at what he owned, and he wondered to himself if the thought of a man claiming to “own” such beauty wasn’t a completely ridiculous premise.

He sniffed the air and decided it was good; better than good.

The farm-land that stretched out in front of him was his. He had given the land his name, much in the same way he had given it to his only child eight years ago. He had chosen the land amongst many options because it felt more like home than anything he had ever seen.

When he first laid eyes on it, thoughts of his wife had sprung to life in him in a way he would have thought impossible. At that point, all that was left to do was sign the deed.

His daughter Claire loved the land too. It was the mother she had never known.

She would wake up early in the morning and yawn and pull on her shoes. Still half-asleep, she’d stumble down the stairs and pass Jim on her way out the front door. She would wander in her pajamas through the grass until she was completely awake, the early day sun gently kissing her young skin. Jim would follow her out into the morning and watch her from the porch he had built. He watched as his baby girl would lie down on the side of a hill and stare up at the sky above her. He would look out on the life he helped create, the life he helped nurture. And he would smile.

As the years had passed, it became easier for Jim Ryan to smile. An action once so foreign was becoming commonplace.

One day, much like every other in the spring of 1985, Jim was working on his land, his boots muddy and his hands callused.  He pulled hay from the back of his truck and piled it in the barn. He tended to his goats, shaved two of his sheep, and looked over the small little apple orchard he had planted near the back of the house.

The sun was warm that day, and sweat built up on his brow as he worked.

He walked through the row of trees, and looked out across his fields, spotting his daughter Claire, now eight years old, sprawled out on the side of a hill, her arms stretched out away from her as she read one of his books.

Jim made his way across the field, feeling the dampness of the soil, each footstep lightly sinking into the grass and dirt beneath him. As he approached, Claire shifted her position on the hill, and for a moment, Jim saw his wife laying there with a book in her hands. She looked so much like her mother that sometimes he had to catch himself from calling her Fiona, letting his wife’s name live for a second on the tip of his tongue before it fell away.  

Jim had tried late one night to figure out who he loved more, his wife or his daughter. He sat in front of the fire with a whiskey by his side and tried to imagine what he would do if he’d been forced to choose. Sometimes when men have lived longer than they ever thought possible, and they find themselves all alone on a cold winter night, their minds wander to dark places. So he allowed himself to think about unthinkable things. He thought of kidnappings and assaults, of murder and rape – of sickness and disease. His expression never changed as he stared into the fire. In the end, though, it was just an exercise; a morbid, unnecessary exercise. He was never given a chance to decide; the choice had been made without his consent.

He walked up to Claire and smiled down at her, waiting to be noticed. She tossed the book onto the grass beside her and returned his smile with a giant grin.

“Which one are you reading today?” he said.

“To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little serious? It’s about racism and…” Jim trailed off instead of finishing his sentence. “Wouldn’t you rather read those Nancy Drew’s I bought you?”

“No, I don’t like Nancy Drew. They’re so boring. And I don’t think it’s too serious. I like reading about serious things.”

Jim wondered to himself why he ever tried to tell Claire what to do; it never worked.

“And it reminds me of us. I’m Scout and you’re Atticus,” she said, proud of her analogy.

“I’m no Atticus,” Jim said.

“Yes you are. Atticus is strong, just like you. Plus, he thinks he’s funny and he really isn’t.”

Jim laughed. “You know, you need to make some friends. You spend too much time out here with your face buried in those books.”

“I like being with you,” she said.

Why do I try
? he thought to himself; exactly like her mother.

Claire must have sensed her father’s mind wandering.

“Will you sit with me for a few minutes?”

Jim lowered himself to the soft earth as Claire shifted to be closer to him. She reached over and put her little hand in his and the two sat in silence for a while.

Claire laid back and pulled Jim down with her. She stared up at the thick gray clouds that passed by overhead, smiling.

“I like to look at the clouds,” she said. “I like to pick one out and watch it move across the sky and see what it will look like. Sometimes it will look like a goat, then it will blow apart and look like our truck; then it won’t look like anything at all.”

Jim said nothing, but he let himself stare up at the passing clouds.

“I bet mom liked clouds,” she said.

“Why do you think that?”

“I just know she would have. If I like clouds, then she had to like clouds too.”

Again, Jim said nothing.

“I think about her a lot,” Claire continued.

“You didn’t know her,” Jim blurted out, surprised by her comment. Claire turned and scowled at him. He didn’t know why he had said that. “I think about her a lot too.”

Claire started to say something, but paused. Her mouth sort of hung open in an odd frozen look as her young mind raced. Jim knew she couldn’t hold back, so he waited patiently for her to say whatever she was thinking.

“I don’t think I had to know Mom to know what she was like,” she said a second later. “I mean, I am her. So whatever I’m like, she must have been like that too.”

“I suppose so,” Jim said, “But you’ve got some of me in there too; the stubborn part at least.” Claire smiled at that. “You
are
like her, though. A lot like her. I’m sure that she’s smiling down on us, and that she’s very proud of you.”

Claire made a sound that was half laughter, half just a puff of air.

“Mom’s not in Heaven. There is no Heaven,” she said.

“Claire, don’t say that.”

“But it’s true. There’s no Heaven just magically up in the sky. That’s ridiculous. There’s just space, and past that is more space. I mean, at least that’s what I think.”

Jim wanted to say something, anything. He wanted to be horrified at what he was hearing from his young daughter; instead, he found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the clouds overhead as they moved across the soft blue canvas above him.

“I think that when Mom died, she just died. Like sometimes when I go to sleep and I don’t have any dreams. I fall asleep and then I wake up. There’s nothing in the middle. I think that’s what happened to Mom.”

Claire waited for her Dad to tell her to stop talking, but he didn’t.

“I read in a book that everything is made up of everything else. We are made of the same water that dinosaurs drank. It said we are all made of the same stuff stars are made of. I like to think she’s a cloud or a blade of grass or a hundred other things, and that she just doesn’t know because she’s asleep. That’s way better than thinking that she’s watching down on us, waiting until we die. I like her much better as clouds and grass.”

In his head, Jim was screaming for Claire to shut up. He was trying to convince himself that she was just being a stupid child, but deep inside, he knew she was right. How many days had he wondered what happened to Fiona? How many hours had he wasted cursing unknown deities he believed he didn’t believe in?

“Read your book,” was all he said, squeezing her small hand.

Claire leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek, then picked up the book and dove back into the story of Atticus and Scout and Boo and Tom Robinson, like her musings on life and death had been nothing more than the brief rambling thoughts of an eight year old girl.

Jim sat with her a while longer as flashes of his wife raced through his mind.

In his younger years, he believed the only thing to learn from life was how to shoot before someone got the drop on you. But even after his wife was taken from him, he learned how to smile again. He learned to ease his mind. He learned to love the land that was his. And now he was learning so much more from Claire.

He rested in the cool spring grass with his far-too-wise eight year old next to him and, for the first time in almost ten years, he allowed himself to hope.

Chapter 2
Fall, 1995

For ten years, Jim Ryan dedicated all his effort and attention toward two things: his daughter and his farm. With his strong will and in his able hands, both flourished.

Where once he had only a few sheep, he now kept a massive flock that littered the green hillsides on the western part of the property. In the beginning, he had only a single goat; Claire had named him Allen. They treated him more like the family pet than anything else. Now he had fifteen. The largest transformation was in his once small apple orchard that sat behind the house. Over the course of ten years, his orchard had grown twenty fold and Ryan’s apples were talked about in town as the best in the county.

The one way in which Jim Ryan attracted unwanted attention was his refusal to even entertain the idea of finding a new mother for Claire. He saw his daughter as a capable young girl, free to be and do whatever she liked. In allowing her that freedom, Claire taught Jim more than he could ever teach her. Others didn’t see it that way. They saw a little girl who was raised like a boy, relegated to rough and difficult jobs that should have been done by a farmhand, not a farmer’s daughter. But Jim cared little for the opinions of others, choosing instead to live a life of solitude with the only person he ever needed.

And he had his reasons to adhere to seclusion.

So he went on, ignoring the questions about his daughter and turning away the advances of the women in town. He focused all his attention on his farm. In 1989, he tore up the old decrepit barn and rebuilt one in its place that was the most beautiful picturesque red barn anyone had ever seen. It took him weeks but he did all the work himself. Every board was cut and every nail was hammered with his own two hands. Occasionally, Claire would ask to help and Jim would find ways she could pitch in. He would have her measure pieces of wood and hold extra nails in a tool belt that she kept pulling up so it didn’t end up around her ankles. She would stand there, hour after hour, day after day, waiting for a command and a chance to do whatever her father asked.