Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (47 page)

She coughed to clear her throat and buy some time. "Chrissy has always wanted to be a mother. It's a huge tragedy that she can't have children. I thought she'd come to terms with it, but wanting to adopt isn't unreasonable. If she has to choose between you and them, Joe, she's got to go for them. They're helpless. Vulnerable. Without any family. And she can give them those things. Not that you don't need her, too. But you've had a mother, and a childhood."

Another pause. He put on the light but didn't get out of bed. He was still hoping for more sleep. "And now, out of the sky," she said, "out of the blue, you're getting the one thing she wants. A child. A child of your own. And you?" She said it both sadly and matter-of-factly. "You don't want it. So you can't blame her for leaving. She needs some time to think this over."

They both did.

For days now, he hadn't had a moment to think. He'd just been responding. Responding and being a cop. No time to think about Maggie's letter or the child she said was his son. Too much sad, ugly time to think about other parents and children and how the whole thing could get so twisted up. Parents like Claire, who loved so much, and in so many wrong ways, that she created a monster. Parents like Mercer, whose life was so filled with the gray murk of making money that he had no space for the simple black and white of parent and child. Parents loved their children. That was their job. Their calling. It was supposed to be one of the major considerations that influenced their choices and decisions.

Burgess knew far too much about parents who put themselves first. His father had been a prime example. A tyrant who beat his wife and his children, drank up the grocery money, whose footsteps inspired terror in the house. He knew the need to protect others weaker than himself, like his mother and sister, influenced his decision to become a cop. While Mercer's choice for his daughter, Amanda? To ignore her needs completely. And tell her she needed to toughen up.

What crap! And the wife was no better. When Melia delivered the news of her husband's death—Burgess wasn't showing up on her doorstep with her husband's blood on his shoe—she went into a screaming frenzy. She claimed that Melia was lying, that her husband didn't own a gun, couldn't have shot at a cop, and was an innocent victim of a police shooting. That they would be hearing from her lawyers. Then, according to Melia, she had smoothed her hair, straightened her jacket, and walked away without a word to her daughter, who had been right beside her, leaving Amanda standing in the hall in tears.

A policeman's lot is not a happy one.

Now he lay in bed, flattened by the case, exhausted by playing through the pain, listening to Doro and not knowing how to respond. "Look... tell Nina..." But there was nothing to tell.

"Take some time to think, Joe. You sound much too tired for that now."

Like her daughter, Dorothy was kind and caring, and had the same knack for going straight to the heart of things. Dully, he said he would, and put down the phone. He shut off the light and lay back down, but sleep had become elusive. Several times, he brought himself right to the edge, but he couldn't crawl over.

If he couldn't sleep, he might as well work. He made it as far as the kitchen, and got tripped up by Maggie's letter. He opened it and took out the photograph. No way this child wasn't his. "Congratulations, Detective. It's a boy."

What the fuck did he know about raising a kid? He knew a heck of a lot more about arresting a kid that age. He was limping toward the door when the phone rang again. Irritated, he snatched it and snapped, "Burgess."

"It's Judge... uh... Maggie's husband, Detective Burgess. Is this a good time?"

There would never be a good time. There would never be a better time. "It's fine."

"You got the letter?"

"I did."

"I'm sorry to be pushy. I guess... I know... you need more time with this. It's only that Dylan keeps asking have I heard from you yet... and I don't..." There was a long silence. Burgess pictured a man overwhelmed by children and death. "I don't know what to tell him."

Another silence. The man wasn't making this easy. And Burgess had no idea what to say. He hadn't had a second to think about this since he'd opened the letter.

"What should I tell him? Do you think you'd like to meet him? Are you still thinking about it?" The Judge had recovered himself and was doing the judicial thing. Pressing for a result. "If you don't want to... if you already know that, I'd just like to go ahead and tell him."

The words might be brief, but the subtext was volumes. How odd to be talking to Maggie's husband as images of their times together skittered through his brain. So many years, so much life, a few other women. So much sadness and loss and emptiness and regret. He could smell the herbal scent of her hair, feel the slender strength of her body. Remembered talking in bed, the intimacy of voices in the dark.

"I'd like to meet him," he said. Before the words were out, he'd had no idea he was going to say them.

"Veteran's Day weekend?" The man spoke in a rush, as though he feared Burgess might change his mind. "That would give you a few days."

It seemed too soon, but otherwise, he could put it off forever. "I could do that."

"I'll make arrangements and let you know. Is this the best number?"

"Let me give you my cell." He dictated, heard the man writing it down.

"He might like to call you... between now and then... would that—?"

"It would be fine. Just so he understands, I'm really busy right now. We're wrapping up a big case. If I can't talk, it's not about him."

"Okay. So I'll make the arrangements and I'll call you. I..." Whatever he was going to say, he reconsidered. "I'll be in touch."

Burgess put down the phone and reread what Maggie had written. He spent a long while staring at his son. Then he picked up the phone again.

"Doro? It's Joe. Is Chris there?"

Chris came on before he knew what he was going to say. He really didn't have anything to say. He just wanted to hear her voice. "Joe," she said. "You called."

It did what it always did. Hit something inside him. Something erotic and something grounded. "You taking the kids out trick-or-treating tomorrow?"

"You bet I am."

"Like some company?"

"I would. We all would." He thought he heard a smile in her voice. "Can you come around five? We were going to go out early."

"It's a date," he said.

He put the photo away, grabbed his coat and keys, and headed out. As he drove, he checked his messages. Melia had left a long one, bringing him up to date. Reggie's brother was doing okay. So was Joey Libby, and Joey was singing like a canary. He was sorry to miss it. Reminded himself that there were plenty of other competent cops around who could take statements, do interviews, write reports.

He thought about Joey, in the dark car, clutching his hand. "Am I going to die, Uncle Joe?" His reassurance that Joey would be okay. And then Joey's surprising sob. "I hope so. I don't want to die like this. Like the worthless piece of shit I've been. When I saw what Dugan was doing to Uncle Clay, it hit me what a fucked-up mess this all was. What a fucked-up mess I am. I tried to stop him. That's how I got stabbed." Joey's hand, tightening in his, Joey sobbing in the dark. "Oh, God. I hope he's okay."

Burgess stopped at the grocery store, bought a bottle of champagne, a bakery cake, a dozen of those candles that come in glass jars, and a bouquet of flowers. Then he parked outside Maura's apartment and rang the bell.

Once again, she let him in without question. He could have been a bad guy. A drunk or a druggie. Someone with a jones for one of the other residents. Her vulnerability terrified him, but worse was the knowledge he couldn't change it, couldn't fix it, couldn't do anything but try to keep tabs and check in, like he'd done for Reggie. He climbed the stairs, his knee reminding him he should have worn his brace and taken painkillers, and knocked on her door. Waiting, he heard the slow shuffle of her feet and the clumsy rattle of chains.

She smiled at the flowers. "Kind of you, Joe," she said. "But it's not my birthday." She was having a lucid day.

"We're holding a private memorial service for your husband," he said. "Just the two of us."

"I'm taking my meds," she said, acknowledging his unspoken question. "For Reggie." She stepped back so he could enter. "Did he tell you? He said he was going to. I liked having it be our secret, but he thought someone ought to know, just in case."

"He didn't need to tell me," he said. "I'm a detective, remember?"

She nodded. "Let me find something for those flowers."

As she shuffled toward the kitchen, she turned. "Claire and Joey had been pressuring him about the land, you know, and they wouldn't let up. They were even threatening to put pressure on Clay and he felt that he'd already asked enough of Clay. One day he says to me, 'Maura, I've given up everything and I've been as patient as a man can be, but all of this has got to stop.' And then he says, 'If we're married, Clay can be
your
trustee. I guess that lawyer who wrote the thing, the one who insisted I put in provisions for my spouse and other children, understood better than I did.'"

Maura smiled. She looked better today. Her hair and clothes were clean and the apartment was neat. "That was my Reggie, wasn't it? My husband Reggie." She gave the word "husband," all the gravity and love and importance the word could command.

Burgess felt tears starting.

She opened a cabinet and struggled to reach something on a high shelf. "Can you get this down for me?"

He reached past her and brought down a nice cut-glass vase. "Thanks," she said. "Reggie always used to do stuff like that for me. I don't know how I'm going to..." She faltered, then flung herself against his chest.

Still holding the vase, he closed his arms around her. "He couldn't stop thinking about other people, could he?"

"Not our Reggie," she said.

Maura put the flowers in the vase and set it on table. As the air filled with the scent of lilies, they put the candles he'd brought—those safer candles in their glass jars—around the wedding picture and lit them all. Then they opened the champagne and cut the cake.

From his circle of light, Reggie's purely happy, goofy smile beamed out at them. "He said he felt so normal that day." Maura smiled back and hummed. "Thanks for doing this, Joe," she said. "I can almost feel him in the room."

Burgess could, too, and something inside him started to unknot. Across the years came Reggie's voice, a little scared and shaky. They were nineteen. In the jungle and in the dark, and the world was full of danger. "You'll be here for me, Joe, and I'll be here for you."

The ends of the knot, Burgess's big, dark knot of hate and anger, unwound, lifting weight from his chest. He felt Kyle's steady hand on his shoulder and heard him whisper, "Breathe, Joe. Breathe."

He took a deep breath, drawing in lilies and hot wax, champagne bubbles and chocolate. He looked at the picture and thought of Reggie, however briefly, achieving the normal he'd been striving for. It was that image, not the brutal scene in a bathroom Dugan had described or the still, cold body on the dock, that he wanted to hold.

Reggie had shrugged off Claire and Joey's hold. Kept a secret. Tried to protect the ones he loved. Burgess thought Reggie the Can Man, who had spent so many years of his life going to the redemption center, had finally been redeemed. Now his spirit was reaching back.

"I'll be here for you, Joe."

And Burgess, who wore a large, ugly, plum-purple bruise on his chest as a reminder that he was not dead, was going to go on living. Striving, as he and Reggie had for so long, for some kind of "normal."

The End

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PLAYING GOD

A Joe Burgess Mystery

Book One