The Last Victim (4 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

BOOK: The Last Victim
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Bridget was about to tell him to go to hell. But she swallowed hard and turned toward the window. Her brother was asking for her help, and she’d let him down. “I can go back and change,” she started to say.
“Forget it,” he grumbled. “We’re running late as it is.”
Then the car phone rang, and Brad got online with someone from his campaign. Bridget didn’t talk to him until they pulled into a VIP parking area behind some Winnebagos and trailers. Once he was off the phone, she started pointing to people walking toward the grounds. “See her? Cutoffs and a T-shirt . . . another one in a T-shirt . . . another T-shirt. It’s hot out there. Do you see
one
woman in a dress or suit? Do you see
one
man in a tie?”
Brad glared at her, then sighed and loosened his tie. “You’re right. I’m a horse’s ass.”
Ten minutes later, when Brad Corrigan took the stage, he wasn’t wearing a tie or a suit coat, and his sleeves were rolled up.
While Bridget translated in Spanish for him, she spoke passionately and often prefaced Brad’s remarks by saying: “My brother wants you to know . . .” or “My brother is concerned about . . .”
It made all the difference in the world. From years of teaching, Bridget knew how to work a crowd, and her Spanish was excellent. Each time Brad paused after saying something, he got a polite spattering of applause; but Bridget’s translation of the same comments drew enthusiastic cheers, whistling, and clapping. The crowd obviously loved her.
The TV stations and newspapers not controlled by Jim Foley reported that Brad Corrigan had unveiled a new secret weapon in his campaign: his twin sister. Bridget started making more and more appearances with him, advising him, and editing his speeches for him. Soon, she was on the campaign payroll, earning twice as much as she’d made teaching.
By late August, Brad was neck and neck with Jim Foley at the polls. And Janice Corrigan was pregnant. Ordinarily, that might have helped win votes. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt them if Brad’s beautiful, blond, pregnant wife was at his side throughout the campaign. But Janice had endured a difficult pregnancy with their only child, four-year-old Emma, so the doctor had ordered her to rest. No active campaigning for Janice.
Bridget had become Janice’s stand-in for dozens of dinners, fund-raisers, and personal appearances. And she was amazingly good at it.
The irony and strangeness of the situation didn’t escape her. She’d become sort of a surrogate wife for her twin brother, and he’d become something of a substitute dad to her sons.
“C’mon, guys, turn off the movie,” she heard Brad saying over
The Magnificent Seven
theme music.
Bridget remained outside the house—by the warmth of the grill. She listened to them in the kitchen. She heard her younger son, Eric, excitedly telling his uncle about part of the movie: “. . . and he threw the knife faster than the other guy could draw his gun, and it stuck him right in the chest. You shoulda’ seen it, Uncle Brad.”
“I’ve seen it—about a dozen times, sport. Hey, let’s go find out what Grandpa wants to drink. C’mon, pardner. Later on, you’re gonna help me with the cake, aren’t you? Seventy-seven candles. We’ll need the fire department here. . . .”
A terrible sadness swept over Bridget as she listened to them. Her brother sounded so happy, yet she knew he carried around the same pain and anguish that she did. He’d carried it around for twenty years. Like her, he’d been haunted by a crime they’d committed back in high school. Even with all the good he intended to do for people, it wouldn’t wash away that sin. That stain wouldn’t go away.
Bridget took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. She carefully picked the vegetable skewers off the grill and stacked them on a plate. Then she put on a smile and carried the plate inside.
“They should have done a survey on this back in the fifties,” Bradley Corrigan Sr. said. He sat—slightly hunched over—at the head of the table. He erratically cut into his steak as he talked. He was still a handsome man—with his lean build, blue eyes, and a head of wavy white hair. “Back in fifty-five, if someone sideswiped a car late at night with no one around, I’ll bet you seven out of ten people would stop and leave a note or call the cops or take some kind of responsibility for their actions. But nowadays . . .” Bridget and Brad’s father dropped his fork to raise his hand and point a finger. He stabbed at the air. “Nowadays, you can bet your hindquarters that only three out of ten would even bother to stop. People have no accountability nowadays. If they can get away with it, they figure they didn’t do anything wrong. They rationalize, and say the other guy’s insurance will pay for everything. Or maybe they just consider it a ‘close call,’ because no one was around to see what they did. Everyone’s morals have gone down the porcelain convenience. You can get away with murder and still consider yourself a good person—so long as you don’t get caught. People just don’t give a damn about personal integrity anymore. It’s like they have a made-to-order filter for their consciences.”
“Jesus, Pop,” Brad said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “Who put a coin in you?”
“Dad, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true,” Bridget said. She sat near the other end of the table. “I think what you’re saying applies more to politicians than regular people—”
“Well, I for one totally agree with you, Dad,” Janice piped in. She got up from the table and took her plate. Brad’s pretty, blond wife was only in her first trimester, but she wore an oversized blouse that made her appear more pregnant than she was. “I think that’s the kind of thing you should use in some of your speeches, Brad.”
Bridget helped Janice clear off the table. Then they prepared the birthday cake, settling for two rows of seven candles. Bridget imagined her father having a stroke as he tried to blow out seventy-seven candles.
In fact, she’d noticed that he looked rather frail tonight. Maybe he was showing signs of stress from the campaign. He’d made only a few personal appearances, but he took each new poll result, every commercial for Foley, and every little upset so seriously. It had long been his dream to see his only son become a senator.
He’d been such a powerful force in their lives. Their mother had been kind of a cold fish. So their dad was the one Bridget and Brad used to run to for encouragement or whenever they were in trouble. He was the one who always forgave them when they screwed up. And he never hesitated to kiss them or give them a hardy hug.
Their father had taught them to chase after their dreams. He instilled in them—especially Brad—a fierce sense of competition. Brad became an outstanding athlete, and Mr. Corrigan rarely missed one of his games when he was in town. If he seemed more wrapped up in Brad’s every move than in Bridget’s, she didn’t really mind. There was less pressure for perfection in Brad’s shadow. Her father’s expectations weren’t as high for her. But Bridget never for one minute thought her dad loved her any less than he loved Brad.
Their father was a very handsome and robust man. He’d started out with nothing, and become a millionaire by his thirtieth birthday. One of his investments was ownership of a lumber and recycling mill outside McLaren. He often traveled to New York to meet with investors—and to Washington, D.C., to talk with environmental lobbyists. Whenever he came back home from these long trips, young Bridget and Brad painted and posted
WELCOME HOME
signs on the lawn of their large Tudor home. Sometimes, they even posted the placards up and down the block.
Now the posters and banners in their neighborhood were for his son, the candidate for senator.
As Janice brought the cake into the dining room, Bridget looked at her father, seated at the end of the table, his grandsons on either side of him. He had that slightly startled expression elderly people sometimes get. Bridget noticed some food stains down the front of his gray cardigan, and remembered he used to be an impeccable dresser. In lieu of a napkin, he had a dish towel in his lap. It too was food-stained.
She thought about how she used to throw her arms around him and hold him tightly. If she tried that now, he’d probably break.
Still, he managed to blow out all his candles. He cracked some jokes with her boys, fawned over Emma, and flirted with his pregnant daughter-in-law. He ate his birthday cake, then nodded off five minutes after returning to
The Magnificent Seven.
Bridget shared the sofa with her dad and David, who sat between them. With his eyes closed, his face drawn and slightly ashen, her father almost looked dead. David kept nudging him every few minutes. “Hey, Grandpa, you’re missing it,” he’d say. Then Bradley Senior would awaken with that feeble, startled look, and he’d nod off again within moments.
“David, let him sleep, for God’s sake,” Janice hissed from her easy chair across from them—after David’s third attempt to wake up his grandfather. “You’re annoying
everyone.
Just be quiet and watch the movie.”
If Brad were in the room, he might have said something or made a joke to cut the tension. But he was taking a phone call in his study. Bridget said nothing. She didn’t see any point in getting into a snit over it.
Wordlessly, she slid her arm around David. She felt his body stiffen up; then after a moment, he shifted away and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the movie.
“Honey, Aunt Janice didn’t mean to snap at you tonight,” she told him later, when they got home. She was carrying Eric, who had fallen asleep in the car. He was eight years old, and not a light load.
David hung up his jacket on one of the hooks on the wall by the kitchen door. “It’s okay,” he muttered.
With his thick brown hair, wiry build, and brooding good looks, he was a dead ringer for his uncle at that age. But there was still a slight, sweet gawkiness to him that reminded Bridget of herself at thirteen.
“Well, it’s not okay,” Bridget replied. “I think your feelings were hurt. But you know, when women get pregnant, their hormones go out of whack, and they can be awfully snippy—for no apparent reason. That’s what happened tonight with Aunt Janice.”
“It’s no big deal, Mom,” he mumbled.
Bridget struggled to take off Eric’s jacket while still holding him. David helped her. “You know Aunt Janice loves you,” she whispered.
David just rolled his eyes, then nodded. He hung up his brother’s jacket.
“God, he’s getting too big for this.” Bridget shifted Eric in her arms.
“I’ll take him, Mom,” David said. He tapped his brother. “C’mon, butt-face, I’m giving you a piggyback ride.”
“Piggyback,” Eric murmured, his eyes still closed. But he put his arms around David’s shoulders.
“You shouldn’t call your brother a butt-face,” Bridget said, hovering behind David as he carried Eric up the stairs.
“Ah, he likes it. Don’t you, butt-face?”
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Eric murmured sleepily.
You know, sometimes Aunt Janice is a real butt-face,
Bridget wanted to say. Yet she let the subject drop while David helped her get Eric ready for bed.
At first glance, Janice was pretty and poised, the dream wife of any man running for public office. But Brad’s wife had an icy, snippy side that Bridget knew too well. There had always been a bit of tension between Janice and her. Bridget chalked it up to jealousy. Janice once told her: “You’ll always be closer to Brad than any woman or man. Hell, you shared the womb with him.”
Perhaps to compensate for her perceived second-place status with her husband, Janice was disgustingly solicitous of Bradley Senior. She kept saying that she would be giving him a grandson, because
it felt like a boy
, and some idiot astrologer had told her she would have a son.
Bradley Robert Corrigan III.
Bridget’s dad lapped it up. Besides, he and Janice had something in common: a relentless determination to see Brad become senator. As far back as Brad and Janice’s engagement, Bridget remembered another family barbecue—at her father’s place. While Brad had been outside, grilling the dinner, his fiancée and father had sat in the kitchen, discussing his future life in politics. They’d had his career all mapped out for him.
Bridget had turned from the stove to stare at them. “Will you both still love Brad if he ends up managing a video store or something like that?”
Janice had given her a cool, condescending smile. “But he doesn’t want to manage a video store
or something like that
. He’s going into politics.”
And go into politics he did.
Bridget had never expected to be drafted into the political arena too. But now she was in it up to her neck. She had a long day ahead tomorrow—including some campaign-related breakfast at eight in the morning.
As she got ready for bed, Bridget paused in front of her dressing table mirror. A snapshot she kept lodged in the bottom corner of the mirror frame was missing. It was a recent photo of Eric and her. Bridget hadn’t gotten around to buying a frame for it yet.
She glanced behind the dresser to see if the photo had fallen back there. No sign of it. Yet the snapshot had been on the mirror this morning. She figured Eric or David must have come in and taken it for some reason.
Bridget continued to undress. She had no idea that neither one of her sons had set foot inside her bedroom all day.

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