Mystic River (38 page)

“Fuck you,” Whitey said, and leaned his face into the kid’s. “Nobody cares about your tears but your mommy, little bitch. Get used to it.”

Sean snapped the cuffs on Johnny O’Shea and took him by the shirt, led him into the kitchen, and dropped him in a chair.

Whitey said, “Ray, you look like someone threw you from the back of a truck.”

Ray looked at his brother.

Brendan leaned against the oven and his body was sagging so bad, Sean figured he’d fall over in a light breeze.

“We know,” Sean said.

“What do you know?” Brendan whispered.

Sean looked at the kid sniffling in the chair and the other kid, mute, looking up at them like he hoped they’d leave soon so he could get back to playing Doom in the back bedroom. Sean was pretty sure once he got a sign language interpreter and a social worker and questioned them that they’d say they did it “because.” Because they had the gun. Because they were there on the street when she drove up it. Maybe because Ray had never really liked her. Because it seemed like a cool idea. Because they’d never killed anyone before. Because when you had your finger curled around a trigger, you just had to pull it or otherwise that finger would itch for weeks.

“What do you know?” Brendan repeated, his voice gone hoarse and wet.

Sean shrugged. He wished he had an answer for Brendan, but looking at these two kids, nothing came to mind. Nothing at all.

J
IMMY TOOK A BOTTLE
with him to Gannon Street. There was an assisted-living home for the elderly at the end of the street, a chunk of 1960s limestone and granite that was two stories tall and ran half a block down Heller Court, the street that began where Gannon ended. Jimmy sat on the white front steps and looked back down Gannon. He’d heard they were kicking the old people out of here, actually, the Point having grown so popular that the owner of the building was going to sell to a guy who specialized in starter condos for young couples. The Point was gone, really. It had always been the snobby sister of the Flats, but now it was like it wasn’t even in the same family. Pretty soon, they’d probably draw up a charter, get the name changed, carve it off the Buckingham map.

Jimmy took the pint from his jacket and sipped some bourbon, looked at the spot where they’d last seen Dave Boyle that day the men had taken him, his head looking back through the rear window, covered in shadow, gone soft with distance.

I wish it hadn’t been you, Dave. I really do.

He raised the pint to Katie. Daddy got him, honey. Daddy put him down.

“Talking to yourself?”

Jimmy looked over and saw Sean climbing out of his car. Sean had a roadie beer in his hand and he smiled at Jimmy’s pint. “What’s your excuse?”

“Tough night,” Jimmy said.

Sean nodded. “Me, too. Saw a bullet with my name on it.”

Jimmy slid to the side, and Sean sat down beside him. “How’d you know to look for me here?”

“Your wife said you might be here.”

“My wife?” Jimmy had never told her about his trips here. Christ, she was a real piece of work.

“Yeah. Jimmy, we made a bust today.”

Jimmy took a long pull from the bottle, his chest fluttering. “A bust.”

“Yeah. We got your daughter’s killers. Got ’em cold.”

“Killers?” Jimmy said. “Plural?”

Sean nodded. “Kids, actually. Thirteen years old. Ray Harris’s son, Ray junior, and a kid named Johnny O’Shea. They confessed half an hour ago.”

Jimmy felt a knife enter his brain through the ear and push toward the other side. A hot knife, slicing away through his skull.

“No question?” he said.

“None,” Sean said.

“Why?”

“Why’d they do it? They don’t even know. They were playing with a gun. They saw a car coming, and one of them lay down in the middle of the street. The car swerves, clutch kicks out, and O’Shea runs up to the car with the gun, says he just meant to scare her. Instead the gun went off. Katie hit him with the door, and the kids say they snapped. They chased her so she wouldn’t tell anyone they had a gun.”

“And the beating they gave her?” Jimmy said, and took another drink.

“Ray junior had a hockey stick. He wouldn’t answer any questions. He’s mute, you know? Just sat there. But O’Shea said that they beat her because she’d made them mad by running.” He shrugged as if the utter wastefulness of it surprised even him. “Little fucking kids,” he said. “Afraid they’d get grounded or something, so they killed her.”

Jimmy stood. He opened his mouth to gulp some air and his legs gave way and he found himself right back on the step. Sean put a hand on his elbow.

“Go easy, Jim. Take a few breaths.”

Jimmy saw Dave sitting on the ground, fingering the slice
Jimmy had drawn from one end of his abdomen to the other. He heard his voice: Look at
me
, Jimmy. Look at me.

And Sean said, “I got a call from Celeste Boyle. She said Dave’s missing. She said she went a little crazy the last few days. She said you, Jim, might know where he is.”

Jimmy tried to speak. He opened his mouth, but his windpipe filled right up with what felt like damp cotton swabs.

Sean said, “No one else knows where Dave could be. And it’s important we talk to him, Jim, because he might know something about a guy who got killed outside the Last Drop the other night.”

“A guy?” Jimmy managed before his windpipe closed up again.

“Yeah,” Sean said, something hard finding his voice. “A pedophile with three priors. Real piece of shit. The theory at the barracks is that someone caught him in the act with a little kid and canceled his fucking ticket. So anyway,” Sean said, “we want to talk to Dave about it. You know where he is, Jim?”

Jimmy shook his head, having trouble seeing anything out of his peripheral vision now, a tunnel seeming to have formed in front of his eyes.

“No?” Sean said. “Celeste says she told you that Dave killed Katie. Seems to think you believed the same thing. She got the feeling you were going to do something about it.”

Jimmy stared through the tunnel at a sewer grate.

“You going to send five hundred a month to Celeste now, Jimmy?”

Jimmy looked up and each of them saw it at the same time in the other’s face—Sean could see what Jimmy had done, and Jimmy could see that knowledge appear in Sean.

“You fucking did it, didn’t you?” Sean said. “You killed him.”

Jimmy stood up, holding on to the banister. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You killed both of them—Ray Harris and Dave Boyle. Jesus, Jimmy, I came down here thinking the whole idea was
nuts, but I can see it in your face, man. You crazy, lunatic, fucking psycho piece of shit. You did it. You killed Dave. You killed Dave Boyle. Our friend, Jimmy.”

Jimmy snorted. “Our friend. Yeah, okay, Point Boy, he was your good buddy. Hung with him all the time, right?”

Sean stepped into his face. “He was our friend, Jimmy. Remember?”

Jimmy looked into Sean’s eyes, wondered if he was going to take a swing at him.

“Last time I saw Dave,” he said, “was at my house last night.” He pushed Sean aside and crossed the street onto Gannon. “That’s the last time I saw Dave.”

“You’re full of shit.”

He turned, arms wide as he looked back at Sean. “Then arrest me, you’re so sure.”

“I’ll get the evidence,” Sean said. “You know I will.”

“You’ll get shit,” Jimmy said. “Thanks for busting my daughter’s killers, Sean. Really. Maybe if you’d been a little faster, though?” Jimmy shrugged and turned his back on him, started walking down Gannon Street.

Sean watched him until he lost him to the darkness under a broken streetlight right in front of Sean’s old house.

You did it, Sean thought. You actually did it, you cold, cold-blooded animal. And the worst part of it is that I know how smart you are. You won’t have left us anything to go on. That’s not in your nature, because you’re a detail guy, Jimmy. You damn prick.

“You took his life,” Sean said aloud. “Didn’t you, my man?”

He tossed his beer can into the curb and walked to his car, called Lauren from his cell phone.

When she answered, he said, “It’s Sean.”

Silence.

He knew now what he hadn’t said that she’d needed to hear, the thing he’d refused to say in over a year. Anything, he’d told himself, I’ll say anything but that.

He said it now, though. He said it seeing that kid pointing
the gun at his chest, the kid reeking of nothing, and seeing, too, poor Dave that day Sean had offered to buy him a beer, the spark of desperate hope he’d seen in Dave’s face, the guy probably never believing, truly, that anyone would want to have a beer with him. And he said it because he felt it deep in his marrow, a need to say it, as much for Lauren as for himself.

He said, “I’m sorry.”

And Lauren spoke. “For what?”

“For putting it all on you.”

“Okay…”

“Hey—”

“Hey—”

“You go ahead,” he said.

“I…”

“What?”

“I…hell, Sean, I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Really.” He took a deep breath, sucking in the soiled, stale-sweat stench of his cruiser. “I want to see you. I want to see my daughter.”

And Lauren answered, “How do you know she’s yours?”

“She’s mine.”

“But the blood test—”

“She’s mine,” he said. “I don’t need a blood test. Will you come home, Lauren? Will you?”

Somewhere on the silent street, he could hear the hum of a generator.

“Nora,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s your daughter’s name, Sean.”

“Nora,” he said, the word wet in his throat.

W
HEN
J
IMMY GOT HOME
, Annabeth was waiting up for him in the kitchen. He sat in the chair at the table across from her and she gave him that small, secret smile he loved, the one that seemed to know him so well he’d never have to
open his mouth for the rest of his life and she’d still know what he meant to say. Jimmy took her hand and ran his thumb along hers and tried to find strength in the image of himself that he could see in her face.

The baby monitor sat on the table between them. They’d used it last month when Nadine had come down with a bad case of strep, listening to her gurgle as she’d slept, Jimmy picturing his baby drowning, waiting for the sound of a cough so ground in glass he’d have to leap from bed and scoop her up, rush her to the emergency room wearing only boxers and a T-shirt. She’d healed quickly, though, but Annabeth didn’t return the monitor to its box in the dining room closet. She’d turn it on at night, listen to Nadine and Sara sleep.

They weren’t sleeping now. Jimmy could hear them through the small speaker, whispering, giggling, and it horrified him to picture them and think of his sins at the same time.

I killed a man. The wrong man
.

It burned in him, that knowledge, that shame.

I killed Dave Boyle
.

It dripped, still burning, down into his belly. It drizzled through him.

I murdered. I murdered an innocent man
.

“Oh, honey,” Annabeth said, searching his face. “Oh, baby, what’s wrong? Is it Katie? Baby, you look like you’re dying.”

She came around the table, a fearsome mix of worry and love in her eyes. She straddled Jimmy and took his face in her hands and made him look in her eyes.

“Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Jimmy wanted to hide from her. Her love hurt too much right now. He wanted to dissolve from her warm hands and find someplace dark and cavelike where no love or light could reach and he could curl into a ball and moan his grief and self-hatred into the black.

“Jimmy,” she whispered. She kissed his eyelids. “Jimmy, talk to me. Please.”

She pressed the heels of her hands against his temples, and her fingers dug through his hair and against his skull and she kissed him. Her tongue slid into his mouth and probed him, searching deep for the source of his pain, sucking at it, capable of turning into a scalpel if necessary and cutting away his cancers, sucking them back out of him.

“Tell me. Please, Jimmy. Tell me.”

And he knew, looking into her love, that he had to tell her everything or he’d be lost. He wasn’t sure she’d be able to save him, but he was positive that if he didn’t open himself to her now, he would definitely die.

So he told her.

He told her everything. He told her about Just Ray Harris and he told her about the sadness he’d felt anchored inside of him since he was eleven and he told her that loving Katie had been the sole admirable accomplishment of his otherwise useless existence, that Katie at five—that daughter-stranger who’d needed and mistrusted him at the same time—was the scariest thing he’d ever faced and the only chore he’d never run from. He told his wife that loving Katie and protecting Katie were the core of him, and when she had been taken, so had he.

“And so,” he told her with the kitchen gone small and tight around them, “I killed Dave.

“I killed him and buried him in the Mystic and now I’ve discovered, as if that crime weren’t bad enough, that he was innocent.

“These are the things I’ve done, Anna. And I can’t undo them. I think I should go to jail. I should confess to Dave’s murder and go back into jail, because I think I belong there. No, honey, I do. I’m not fit for out here. I can’t be trusted.”

His voice sounded like someone else’s. It sounded so far from the one he usually heard leaving his lips that he won
dered if Annabeth saw a stranger before her, a carbon Jimmy, a Jimmy vanishing into the ether.

Her face was dry and composed, though, so still she could have been posing for a painting. Chin tilted up, eyes clear and unreadable.

Jimmy could hear the girls on the monitor again, whispering, the sound like a soft rustle of wind.

Annabeth reached down and began unbuttoning his shirt, and Jimmy watched her deft fingers, his body numb. She opened the shirt and pushed it halfway off his shoulders and then she placed her cheek to it, her ear over the center of his chest.

He said, “I just—”

“Ssshh,” she whispered. “I want to hear your heart.”