Sympathy between humans (5 page)

 

 

Several days passed.
Comfortable now with Aidan’s presence in the Hennessy home, I spent less time there, and my nights at home.

 

 

There, late at night, I found myself restless, surfing late-night TV. Occasionally, pausing on one of the educational channels, I’d see a show on forensics: techs observing the glow of Leuco Crystal Violet stains or peering at fibers under a microscope. I’d switch away quickly. Other than that, I kept my mind off Gray Diaz. Likewise Cicero Ruiz. My aborted letter to Shiloh remained buried under newspapers and unpaid bills. Work, in general, was uneventful.

 

 

One such workday ended with an errand out toward the lake country, reinterviewing a witness in an old case with leads sputtering out. On my way back, I passed a bus stop and a very familiar figure waiting there: Aidan Hennessy. I pulled over; he recognized my car and came to meet me.

 

 

“What’s up?â€

 

 

Dr. Leventhal,
the department psychologist, was an approximately ninety-nine pound woman with lovely iron-gray curls and a very faint British accent long eroded by life in America. I’d never had the chance— or rather, the requirement— to work with her. So I was mildly surprised that she knew my name when I stuck my head in her door.

 

 

“Detective Pribek,â€

 

 

At the cemetery
where the Hennessy children’s mother was buried, a marble angel stood guard over the headstone, either serenely reflecting or grieving. Below, the stone read,
Elisabeth Hannelore Hennessy, Beloved Wife and Mother
.

 

 

It was a bright Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting at the graveyard’s highest point, a mausoleum with a half flight of stone stairs leading up to it. Two pine trees offered shade from the western sun, and it was here that I’d staked out a spot to watch Elisabeth’s grave and wait for the visitor I hoped was coming on the anniversary of her birth.

 

 

For the past two days, I’d tried to put the Hennessys out of my mind. Early on, when Marlinchen had come to visit me, asking for help I’d thought I couldn’t provide, all I’d wanted was to be shed of these people. Now Marlinchen, the official head of her household, had given me leave to forget about them, and I couldn’t. I was maddened by a contradiction that I couldn’t resolve.

 

 

Dr. Leventhal had supported the idea that a young child’s mind could be so malleable that it would fabricate a memory, even a visual one. But the detail in Aidan’s story was so realistic:
the finger was just barely attached . . . blood was dripping off it.
From the little individual tooth mark he’d seen, filling up with blood, to the fact that his finger hadn’t quite been severed— it was
You Are There,
documentary realism.

 

 

Somehow, I didn’t think Aidan would be able to conjure such a detailed, lurid image of his injured hand. He didn’t seem that imaginative to me. It was one of the things I liked about him, that he was simple and straightforward. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of hidden depths. Shiloh had plenty of them, and they’d ended up ruining his life.

 

 

Besides, to fabricate a memory was one thing, but a fear? Aidan was truly afraid of dogs. That indicated my theory, about the study and the loaded pistol, was wrong. I could deal with that. I’m semipro at being wrong; it’s a correctable situation. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Marlinchen and her memory of what she thought was a lightning strike, but sounded to me like an accidental shooting in the house. A memory Aidan didn’t share. Either Marlinchen was mistaken, or Aidan himself was, and yet they both seemed convincing when they told their stories.

 

 

Then there was the old BMW. Hugh had locked it away for fourteen years. It fit in the same time frame as the carpet replacement in the study and Aidan and Marlinchen’s mismatched early memories. It was one more thing that occupied that fourteen-years-ago plateau. The threshold, as Dr. Leventhal had called it.

 

 

My first idea was that Hugh had put the car away because Aidan had bled copiously in it, and unlike the study, Hugh couldn’t get it properly cleaned up. But if Aidan shot himself in the hand, the universal first instinct would be to wrap the hand in a towel and keep pressure on it. Certainly it would have bled, but I couldn’t see it bleeding so much that Hugh couldn’t clean it up. And had he believed that someday someone would examine his car, looking for evidence that his son’s accident didn’t happen the way Hugh had said it happened? I’d seen some paranoia in my day, but that seemed outlandish.

 

 

It wasn’t impossible, though. The problem was that I knew so little of Hugh’s character. I couldn’t talk with him, and there were limits to what his children could explain.

 

 

What I really needed was the memories of an adult who’d been close to the Hennessys early in their marriage. One who’d known Hugh and Elisabeth well during that time of their lives. One who, like Aidan, had been banished from the Hennessy home. Whose banishment, like everything else, had happened on that fourteen-years-ago threshold.

 

 

It was two hours later when he came, a tall, thin man heading up the path, toward Elisabeth Hennessy’s grave, holding a small bunch of white narcissus in his hands. Time had changed J. D. Campion little. His black hair was still long enough to be caught back in a small ponytail on his neck, and he still wore a beard. There was no gray in either. The flowers he slipped into the recessed holder were wrapped in the clear cellophane that florists provide.

 

 

Campion had good hearing. He turned to watch me coming while I was still ten feet off.

 

 

“Mr. Campion,â€

 

 

At eight-thirty Monday morning,
I was waiting outside Christian Kilander’s office. It was my day off, and I’d dressed for it, in old Levi’s and a loose cream-colored shirt that belonged to Shiloh. Seeing me at his door so early, Kilander arched an eyebrow. “To what do I owe this honor?â€

 

 

Marlinchen,
already no stranger to adult responsibilities, learned a new set that day, the kind many people don’t have to deal with until their thirties or forties. I guided her through the process of releasing a body to a funeral home, making the necessary choices. I advised her to have all the kids, even Donal, look at Jacob’s body.

 

 

“It makes it real,â€

 

 

The familiar smell of cyanoacrylate glue
brought me to my senses, but this wasn’t the lingering scent of old fumes. It was sharp and fresh. My eyes were closed, but I felt someone touching my forehead with gentle fingers.

 

 

“I should own stock in the superglue business,â€

 

 

At home,
I slept for five hours and woke to the ringing of my cell phone; I was needed to come in and help with the matter of Hugh Hennessy’s untimely death by fire. I went downtown and gave a lengthy statement, explaining my involvement with the Hennessys and describing the events of the night before.

 

 

I learned a few details, too. What Colm had told me last night had been correct, if sketchy: Donal had been smoking in the basement. Under sensitive questioning by a veteran fire investigator, the youngest Hennessy explained that he couldn’t sleep and had gotten up in the night to sneak one of his oldest brother’s cigarettes. He had seen Aidan smoking when upset about Colm’s blowup at the dinner table, and thought that cigarettes must help in times of stress. While hidden in the basement, Donal heard movement upstairs and thought someone was looking for him. In his haste, he threw his half-finished cigarette into a trash can and slipped back upstairs. He hadn’t realized the danger of what he’d done, nor that the basement was filled with flammable materials: old furniture, a foam mattress. The fire investigator told me that he was only surprised the old wooden house hadn’t gone up faster than it did.