Jessica knew what was coming next. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
‘I hit her, Jess. I meant to pull it, but I didn’t. She went down. A few seconds later I slipped the boyfriend’s ring back on his hand. I knew that CSU would be able to match the mark on her face with the ring, and that they would also find trace evidence of the girl’s skin on it. I also knew that I could spin the two rookies who responded if it came to that. There had been no pictures taken at that point. I’d get a bat into evidence.’
Jessica had a thousand questions, but she just listened. Byrne had to play this out.
‘By the time paramedics showed up, the girl had come around. As they were wheeling her out, she looked up, directly at me. The left side of her face was completely swollen. Our eyes met, and I couldn’t tell if she remembered what we talked about. If she didn’t remember, or she suddenly decided she still loved this dead fucker, she might bring charges against me. But when they wheeled her by me she reached out a finger, and ran it along the back of my hand. And I knew. I knew it was going to be all right. For her, anyway. I wasn’t so sure about me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Byrne looked up, out the window, at the traffic crawling up the street. A light snow had begun to fall. Byrne didn’t respond. Jessica waited a while, moved on.
‘What happened to Marcus?’ Jessica knew Marcus Haines was on the wall at the Roundhouse, so this story was not going to have a happy ending.
‘A month later Jimmy came back, and I didn’t work with Marcus again. Not on the line anyway. Marcus went to the Fugitive Squad. I ran into him one night at Bonk’s. He was hitting the Jameson hard. Told me the affair with the girl was over. Three weeks after that I got loaned out to Fugitive to serve a warrant on a couple of bad actors.
‘Marcus took the door — my door. He didn’t make it three feet before they opened up. He took the first two in the vest, but the third was a head shot. Clean hit. Died on his feet. Never got off a single shot.’ Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. ‘Those rounds were meant for me, Jess.’
Jessica gave the gravity of the moment a respectful pause. ‘What about the young woman?’
‘She gave her statement, the DA looked it over, never brought charges. Went down as a justifiable.’
Byrne ran his finger over the surface of the photograph.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Jessica asked.
Byrne said nothing for a few seconds. ‘What I did was wrong.’
‘No, what you did was right. At that moment, it wasn’t about procedure. It was about right and wrong. We all have to make those calls.’
‘I know. But when I hit her, I really hit her. It all came out of me. I hit her hard because she was stupid, because she was on the pipe, because she hooked up with loser after loser, because she was beautiful, because I can’t change a fucking thing about this city, no matter how hard I try.’
Jessica knew she had to say something. She couldn’t just leave it like this. She tried to bring the conversation around to the present.
‘We’ll get this guy, Kevin. We’ll get him off the streets, and it will make a difference.’
Byrne reached into his pocket, took out a single key. ‘Here.’
Jessica took the key from him. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s the key to this apartment. It occurred to me that the only other person with a key is Colleen, and she doesn’t even live in this city anymore. I want you to have it.’
Jessica was more than a little moved by this. She hoped it didn’t show. ‘I promise not to drop it in any high-crime areas.’
‘I appreciate it.’
Jessica slipped the new key onto her key chain, pulled on her coat, opened the door, turned. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Top of the world.’
‘Right,’ Jessica said. ‘How come all Irish cops quote Jimmy Cagney?’
Byrne smiled, but it was sad.
‘Call me if you need me,’ Jessica said.
Byrne didn’t respond. Jessica hadn’t expected him to.
When she stepped through the doorway, she turned one last time. Byrne was still at the window, the old photograph in hand, looking out at the silent, snow-covered street.
TWENTY-ONE
The old man stands at the back of the auditorium. It is a large, rectangular room, decorated with bright streamers and multicolored bunting, with folding chairs aligned row by row, eighty in all. There is a small stage with risers at the front. The event is a chorale of first-and second-grade children singing songs that welcome spring, which is just a month or so away.
In the audience are scores of proud parents and grandparents, flip cameras in hand. Onstage thirty or so children are singing: ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It.’
She watches the man from the other side of the room — his eyes, his hands, the cant of his shoulders. He has the countenance of a kindly uncle, but she knows better. She knows what he is.
At the end of the song she walks across the room, sidles up next to him. He does not notice her.
‘Hi,’ she says.
The man turns to her, a bit startled. He quickly looks her up and down, tiny predator’s eyes assessing threat. He finds none. He fashions a smile. ‘Hello.’
She gestures toward the stage. ‘They are so precious when they are this age, aren’t they?’
The old man smiles again. ‘That they are.’ He looks more closely at her, this time with a flicker of remembrance. ‘Have we met before?’
They always ask. She shakes her head. ‘Where you’ve been I cannot go.’
The man looks at her quizzically. Before he can respond, she continues.
‘Is one of them your grandchild?’
The hesitation says so much. It says the truth.
‘No. I just come here to watch them. It makes me feel young again.’
‘You do more than watch though, don’t you?’
The man slowly closes his eyes. A moment later, when he opens them, he looks at her, and knows.
They are silent for a long time, the joyous singing of the children a backdrop to their transaction, one this man has awaited with dread for years.
‘I knew this day would come,’ the man says. ‘He is real after all.’
‘Oh, he is real,’ she echoes. ‘Did you doubt him?’
‘One lives in hope. Ever since I was a child, not much older than these children, I have believed in him, have known he walks with me.’
She points out the window, to the old church across the street. ‘He is waiting for you.’
‘In the church?’
‘Yes. And now is the time.’
The man glances back at the stage, knowing that this will be the last time. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘There will be no more negotiations.’
He turns to face her fully. ‘Is this the only way?’
The pedophile knows the answer to this. There is no need to respond. She does not.
A few minutes later they leave the auditorium. They cross the street, walk down the alley next to the church. The door is already open for them. They enter, descend the stairs into the basement.
‘I feel him,’ the man says.
She gestures to a small room, directly beneath the sacristy. ‘Remove your clothing.’
The man looks up, his eyes no longer those of the predator, but rather that of cornered prey. ‘This is something I must do?’
‘Is it not how you came into the world?’