19 WHO THEY'D PLANNED TO BE WHEN SEAN got back up to the apartment, he found Jimmy in the hallway, talking on a cordless phone. Jimmy said, "Yeah, I'll remember the photographs. Thank you," and hung up. He looked at Sean. "Reed's Funeral Home," he said. "They picked up her body from the medical examiner's office, said I can come down with her effects." He shrugged. "You know, finalize the service details, that sort of thing." Sean nodded. "You get your report pad?"
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Sean patted his pocket. "Right here." Jimmy tapped the cordless against his thigh several times. "So, I guess I better get down to Reed's." "You look like you could use some sleep, man." "No, I'm all right." "Okay." As Sean went to pass him, Jimmy said, "I was wondering if I could ask you a favor." Sean stopped. "Sure." "Dave'll probably be leaving soon to take Michael home. I don't know what your schedule's like, but I was kind of hoping maybe you'd keep Annabeth company for a bit. Just so she's not alone, you know? Celeste will probably be back, so it won't be long. I mean, Val and his brothers took the girls out to a movie, so there's no one in the house, and I know Annabeth doesn't want to come down to the funeral home yet, so I just, I dunno, I figured? Sean said, "I don't think it'll be a problem. I gotta check with my sarge, but our official shift was over a couple hours ago. Let me talk to him. Okay?" "I appreciate it." "Sure." Sean started walking back toward the kitchen and then he stopped, looked back at Jimmy. "Actually, Jim, I need to ask you something." "Go ahead," Jimmy said, getting that wary con's look of his. Sean came back down the hallway. "We got a couple of reports that you had a problem with that kid you mentioned this morning, that Brendan Harris." Jimmy shrugged. "Not problems, really. I just don't care for the kid." "Why?" "I don't know." Jimmy put the cordless in his front pocket. "Some people just rub you wrong. You know?" Sean stepped in close, put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "He was dating Katie, Jim. They were planning to elope." "Bullshit," Jimmy said, his eyes on the floor. "We found brochures for Vegas in her backpack, Jim. We made a few calls and found reservations under both their names with TWA. Brendan Harris confirmed it." Jimmy shrugged off Sean's hand. "He kill my daughter?"
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"No." "You're a hundred percent positive." "Close to it. He passed a poly with flying colors, man. Plus, the boy don't strike me as the type. He seemed like he really loved your daughter." "Fuck," Jimmy said. Sean leaned against the wall and waited, giving Jimmy time to take it all in. "Elope?" Jimmy said after a while. "Yeah. Jim, according to Brendan Harris and both of Katie's girlfriends, you were dead set against them ever dating. What I don't understand is why. Kid didn't strike me as a problem kid. You know? Maybe a bit dim, I dunno. But he seemed decent, nice really. I'm confused." "You're confused?" Jimmy chuckled. "I just found out my daughter?who is, you know, dead?was planning to elope, Sean." "I know," Sean said, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper in hopes Jimmy would follow suit, the man about as agitated as Sean had seen him since yesterday afternoon by the drive-in screen. "I'm just curious, man?why were you so adamant that your daughter never see the kid?" Jimmy leaned against the wall beside Sean and took a few long breaths, let them out slow. "I knew his father. They called him 'Just Ray.'" "What, he was a judge?" Jimmy shook his head. "There were so many guys named Ray around at the time?you know, Crazy Ray Bucheck and Psycho Ray Dorian and Ray the Woodchuck Lane?that Ray Harris got stuck with 'Just Ray' because all the cool nicknames had been taken." He shrugged. "Anyway, I never liked the guy much and then he cut out on his wife when she was pregnant with that mute kid she's got now and Brendan only six, so I dunno, I just thought, 'The acorn don't fall far from the tree' and shit, and I didn't want him seeing my daughter." Sean nodded, though he didn't buy it. Something about the way Jimmy had said he'd never liked the guy much? there was a small hitch in his voice, and Sean had heard enough bullshit stories in his time to recognize one no matter how logical it may have sounded. "That's it, huh?" Sean said. "That's the only reason?" "That's it," Jimmy said, and pushed himself off the wall, started back up the hallway.
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"I THINK IT'S a good idea," Whitey said as he stood outside the house with Sean. "Stick close to the family for a bit, see if you can pick up any more. What'd you say to Boyle's wife, by the way?" "I told her she looked scared." "She vouch for his alibi?" Sean shook his head. "Said she was asleep." "But you think she was afraid?" Sean looked back up at the windows fronting the street. He gestured to Whitey and tilted his head up the street, and Whitey followed him to the corner. "She heard us talking about the car." "Fuck," Whitey said. "She tells the husband, he might skip." "And go where? He's an only child, mother deceased, low income, and he ain't got much in the way of friends. Ain't like he's going to blow the country, try living in Uruguay." "Doesn't mean he's not a flight risk." "Sarge," Sean said, "we got nothing to charge him with." Whitey took a step back, looked at Sean in the glow of the street lamp above them. "You going native on me, Supercop?" "I just don't see him for this, man. Lack of motive, for one." "His alibi's shit, Devine. His stories are so full of holes, they were a boat, they'd be sitting on the ocean floor. You said the wife was scared. Not annoyed. Scared." "Okay, yeah. She was definitely holding something back." "So, you think she really was asleep when he came home?" Sean saw Dave when they were little kids, getting in that car, weeping. He saw him dark and far away in the backseat as the car turned the corner. He wanted to bang his head against the wall behind him and knock the images right the fuck out. "No. I think she knows when he came home. And now that she overheard us, she knows he was at the Last Drop that night. So, maybe, she had all these things in her head about that night that didn't jibe, and now she's putting all the pieces together." "And those pieces are scaring the shit out of her?"
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"Maybe. I dunno." Sean kicked at a piece of loose stone at the base of a building. "I feel like? "What?" "I feel like we got all these parts banging around near each other, but they don't fit. I feel like we're missing something." "You really don't think Boyle did it?" "I'm not ruling him out. I'm not. I'd buy him for it, if for one second I could imagine a motive." Whitey stepped back and lifted his heel, rested it against the light pole. He looked at Sean the way Sean had seen him look at a witness he wasn't sure would hold up in court. "Okay," he said, "lack of motive's bothering me, too. But not much, Sean. Not much. I think there's something out there that could tie him to this. Otherwise, why the fuck's he lying to us?" "Come on," Sean said. "That's the job. People lie to us for no other reason but to see what it feels like. That block surrounding the Last Drop? There's some serious street trade there at night?you got regular hookers, transvestites, friggin' kids all working that circuit. Maybe Dave was just getting a hummer in his car, doesn't want the wife to find out. Maybe he has a lady on the side. Who knows? But nothing, so far, connects him to within a mile of murdering Katherine Marcus." "Nothing but a bunch of his lies and my feeling the guy's dirty." "Your feeling," Sean said. "Sean," Whitey said, and started ticking off points on his fingers, "the guy lied to us about when he left McGills. He lied to us about when he got home. He was parked outside the Last Drop when the victim left. He was at two of the same bars as she was, yet he's trying to cover that up. He's got a badly bruised fist and a bullshit story about how it got that way. He knew the victim, which as we've already agreed, our suspect did, too. He fits the profile?to a fucking T?of your average thrill killer; he's white, mid-thirties, marginally employed, and, guessing by what you told me yesterday, he was sexually abused as a kid. You kidding me? On paper, this guy should be in jail already." "You just said it yourself, though?he's a past victim of sexual abuse, and yet Katherine Marcus wasn't sexually assaulted. That don't make sense, Sarge." "Maybe he just whacked off over her." "There was no semen at the scene." "It rained." "Not where her body was found. In the random thrill kill, sexual emission is part of the equation, like, ninety- nine-point-nine percent of the time. Where is it in this case?"
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Whitey lowered his head and drummed the sides of the light pole with his palms. "You were friends with the victim's father and a potential suspect when you were?" "Oh, come on." "?kids. That compromises you. Don't tell me it don't. You're a fucking liability here." "I'm a??" Sean lowered his voice and brought his hand back down from his chest. "Look," he said, "I'm just in disagreement with you over the profile of the suspect. I'm not saying that if we zero in on Dave Boyle for more than just a few inconsistencies, I won't be right there with you to bust him. You know I will be. But if you go to the DA right now with what you got, what's he going to do?" Whitey's palms drummed a little harder against the pole. "Really," Sean said. "What's he going to do?" Whitey raised his arms above his head and let out a shuddering yawn. He met Sean's eyes and gave him a weary frown. "Point taken. But"?he held up a finger?"but, you clubhouse fucking lawyer, you, I'm going to find the stick she was beat with, or the gun, or some bloody clothes. I don't know what exactly, but I'm going to find something. And when I find it, I'm going to drop your friend." "He ain't my friend," Sean said. "Turns out you're right? I'll have my cuffs off my hip faster than yours." Whitey came off the pole and stepped up to Sean. "Don't compromise yourself on this, Devine. You do that, you'll compromise me, and I'll bury you. I'm talking a transfer to the goddamn Berkshires, pulling radar-gun details from a fucking snowmobile." Sean ran both hands up his face and through his hair, trying to rub the weariness out of him. "Ballistics should be back by now," he said. Whitey stepped back from him. "Yeah, that's where I'm going. Lab work on the prints should be in the computer, too. I'm going to run them, hope we get lucky. You got your cell?" Sean patted his pocket. "Yeah." "I'll call you later." Whitey turned away from Sean and headed down Crescent for the cruiser, Sean feeling washed in the man's disappointment, that probationary period suddenly seeming a lot more real than it had this morning. He headed back up Buckingham toward Jimmy's as Dave walked down the front steps with Michael. "Heading home?" Dave stopped. "Yeah. I can't believe Celeste never came back with the car." "I'm sure she's fine," Sean said.
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"Oh, yeah," Dave said. "I just gotta walk is all." Sean laughed. "What's it, five blocks?" Dave smiled. "Almost six, man, you look at it close." "Better get going," Sean said, "while there's still a little light left. Take it easy, Mike." "Bye," Michael said. "Take care," Dave said, and they left Sean by the stairs, Dave's steps just a bit spongy from the beers he'd been knocking back in Jimmy's place, Sean thinking, If you did do it, Dave, you better cut that shit out right away. You're going to need every brain cell you got if Whitey and I come gunning for you. Every goddamn one. THE PEN CHANNEL was silver at this time of night, the sun set but some light still left in the sky. The treetops in the park had turned black, though, and the drive-in screen was just a hard shadow from over here. Celeste sat in her car on the Shawmut side, looking down at the channel and the park and then East Bucky rising like landfill behind it. The Flats was almost completely obscured by the park except for stray steeples and the taller rooftops. The homes in the Point, though, rose above the Flats and looked down on it all from paved and rolling hills. Celeste couldn't even remember driving over here. She'd dropped off the dress with one of Bruce Reed's sons, the kid decked out in funereal black, but his cheeks so clean-shaven and his eyes so young that he looked more like he was heading out for the prom. She'd left the funeral home and the next thing she knew she was pulling into the back of the long-closed Isaak Ironworks, driving past the empty shells of hangar-sized buildings and pulling to the end of the lot, her bumper touching the rotted pilings and her eyes following the sluggish current of the Pen as it lapped toward the harbor locks. Ever since she'd overheard the two policemen talking about Dave's car?their car, the one she sat in right now? she'd felt drunk. But not a good drunk, all loose and easy with a soft buzz. No, she felt like she'd been drinking the cheap stuff all night, had come home and passed out, then woken up, still fuzzy-brained and thick-tongued, but rancid with the poison now, dull and dense and incapable of concentration. "You're scared," the cop had said, cutting to the core of her so completely that her only response was pure, belligerent denial. "No, I'm not." As if she were a child. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. I know you are, but what am I? Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. She was scared. She was terrified. She felt turned to pudding by the fear. She'd talk to him, she told herself. He was still Dave, after all. A good father. A man who'd never raised a hand to her or shown a propensity for violence in all the years she'd known him. Never so much as kicked a door or punched a wall. She was sure she could still talk to him. She'd say, Dave, whose blood did I wash off your clothes?
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Dave, she'd say, what really happened Saturday night? You can tell me. I'm your wife. You can say anything. That's what she'd do. She'd talk to him. She had no reason to fear him. He was Dave. She loved him and he loved her and all of this would somehow work out. She was sure of it. And yet she stayed there, on the far side of the Pen, dwarfed by an abandoned ironworks that had recently been purchased by a developer who supposedly planned to turn it into a parking lot if the stadium deal went through on the other side of the river. She stared across at the park where Katie Marcus had been murdered. She waited for someone to tell her how to move again. JIMMY SAT WITH Bruce Reed's son Ambrose in his father's office, going over the details, wishing he was dealing with Bruce himself instead of this kid who looked straight out of college. You could see him playing Frisbee a lot easier than hoisting a casket, and Jimmy couldn't imagine those smooth, unlined hands down in the embalming room, touching the dead. He'd given Ambrose Katie's date of birth and social security number, the kid filling it in with a gold pen on a form attached to a clipboard, and then saying in a velvet voice that was a younger version of his father's, "Good, good. Now, Mr. Marcus, will this be a traditional Catholic ceremony? A wake, a mass?" "Yeah." "I'd suggest we hold the wake on Wednesday, then." Jimmy nodded. "The church has already been reserved for Thursday morning at nine." "Nine o'clock," the boy said, and wrote that down. "Have you thought of a time for the wake?" Jimmy said, "We'll do two. One between three and five. The other seven to nine." "Seven to nine," the boy repeated as he wrote it down. "I see you brought photographs. Good, good." Jimmy looked at the stack of framed photos on his lap: Katie at her graduation. Katie and her sisters on the beach. Katie and him at the opening of Cottage Market when she was eight. Katie with Eve and Diane. Katie, Annabeth, Jimmy, Nadine, and Sara at Six Flags. Katie's sixteenth birthday. He put the stack on the chair beside him, felt a minor burning in his throat that went away when he swallowed. "Have you thought about flowers?" Ambrose Reed said. "I placed an order with Knopfler's this afternoon," he said. "And the notice?"
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Jimmy met the kid's eyes for the first time. "The notice?" "Yes," the kid said, and looked down at his clipboard. "How the notice should read in the paper. We can take care of it if you'll just give me the basic information on how you'd like it to read. If you'd prefer donations in lieu of flowers, things like that." Jimmy turned away from the kid's comforting eyes and looked down at the floor. Below them, somewhere in the basement of this white Victorian, Katie lay in the embalming room. She'd be naked before Bruce Reed and this boy and his two brothers as they went to work on her, cleaning her, touching her up, preserving her. Their cool, manicured hands would run over her body. They'd lift parts of it. They'd take her chin between thumb and index finger and turn it. They'd run combs through her hair. He thought of his child naked and exposed with the color drained from her flesh as she waited to be touched one last time by these strangers?with care, possibly, but a callous care, a clinical one. And then satin cushions would be propped behind her head in the casket, and she'd be wheeled into the viewing room with a doll's frozen face and her favorite blue dress. She'd be peered at and prayed over and commented on and grieved, and then, ultimately, she'd be entombed. She would descend into a hole dug by men who hadn't known her either, and Jimmy could hear the dirt thudding distantly as if he were on the inside of the coffin with her. And she would lie in the dark with the earth packed above her for six feet until it gave way to grass and open air she'd never see or feel or smell or sense. She would lie there for a thousand years, unable to hear the footfalls of the people who came to visit her headstone, unable to hear anything of the world she'd left because all that dirt was packed in between. I'm going to kill him, Katie. Somehow, I'm going to find him before the police do, and I'm going to kill him. I'm going to put him in a hole a lot worse than the one you're going into. I'm going to leave them nothing to embalm. Nothing to mourn. I'm going to make him vanish as if he'd never lived, as if his name and everything he was, or thinks he is right now, was just a dream that passed through someone's mind in a blip and was forgotten before they woke up. I'm going to find the man who put you on that table downstairs, and I'm going to erase him. And his loved ones? if he has any?will feel more anguish than yours do, Katie. Because they'll never have the certainty of knowing what happened to him. And don't you worry whether I'm up to it, baby. Daddy's up to it. You never knew this, but Daddy's killed before. Daddy's done what needed to be done. And he can do it again. He turned back to Bruce's son, who was still new enough at this to be unnerved by long pauses. Jimmy said, "I'd like it to read 'Marcus, Katherine Juanita, dearly beloved daughter of James and Marita, deceased, stepdaughter of Annabeth, and sister to Sara and Nadine?"
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SEAN SAT on the back porch with Annabeth Marcus as she took tiny sips from a glass of white wine and smoked her cigarettes no more than halfway before she'd extinguish them, her face lit by the exposed bulb above them. It was a strong face, never pretty probably, but always striking. She was not unused to being stared at, Sean guessed, and yet she was probably oblivious as to why she was worth the trouble. She reminded Sean a bit of Jimmy's mother but without the air of resignation and defeat, and she reminded Sean of his own mother in her complete and effortless self-possession, reminded him of Jimmy, actually, in that way, as well. He could see Annabeth Marcus as being a fun woman, but never a frivolous one. "So," she said to Sean as he lit a cigarette for her, "what are you doing with your evening after you're released from comforting me?" "I'm not?" She waved it away. "I appreciate it. So what're you doing?" "Going to see my mother." "Really?" He nodded. "It's her birthday. Go celebrate it with her and the old man." "Uh-huh," she said. "And how long have you been divorced?" "It shows?" "You wear it like a suit." "Ah. Separated, actually, for a bit over a year." "She live here?" "Not anymore. She travels." "You said that with acid. 'Travels.'" "Did I?" He shrugged. She held up a hand. "I hate to keep doing this to you?getting my mind off Katie at your expense. So you don't have to answer any of my questions. I'm just nosy, and you're an interesting guy." He smiled. "No, I'm not. I'm actually very boring, Mrs. Marcus. You take away my job, and I disappear." "Annabeth," she said. "Call me that, would you?" "Sure." "I find it hard to believe, Trooper Devine, that you're boring. You know what's odd, though?"
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"What's that?" She turned in her chair and looked at him. "You don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd give someone phantom tickets." "Why's that?" "It seems childish," she said. "You don't seem like a childish man." Sean shrugged. In his experience, everyone was childish at one time or another. It's what you reverted to, particularly when the shit piled up. In more than a year, he'd never spoken to anyone about Lauren?not his parents, his few stray friends, not even the police psychologist the commander had made a brief and pointed mention of once Lauren's moving out had become common knowledge around the barracks. But here was Annabeth, a stranger who'd suffered a loss, and he could feel her probing for his loss, needing to see it or share it or something along those lines, needing to know, Sean figured, that she wasn't being singled out. "My wife's a stage manager," he said quietly. "For road shows, you know? Lord of the Dance toured the country last year?my wife stage-managed. That sort of thing. She's doing one now?Annie Get Your Gun, maybe. I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Whatever they're recycling this year. We were a weird couple. I mean, our jobs, right, how further apart can you get?" "But you loved her," Annabeth said. He nodded. "Yeah. Still do." He took a breath, leaning back in his chair and sucking it down. "So the guy I gave the tickets to, he was? Sean's mouth went dry and he shook his head, had the sudden urge to just get the hell off this porch and out of this house. "He was a rival?" Annabeth said, her voice delicate. Sean took a cigarette from the pack and lit one, nodding. "That's a nice word for it. Yeah, we'll say that. A rival. And my wife and I, we were going through some shit for a while. Neither of us was around much, and so on. And this, uh, rival?he moved in on her." "And you reacted badly," Annabeth said. A statement, not a question. Sean rolled his eyes in her direction. "You know anyone who reacts well?" Annabeth gave him a hard look, one that seemed to suggest that sarcasm was below him, or maybe just something she wasn't fan of in general. "You still love her, though." "Sure. Hell, I think she still loves me." He stubbed out his cigarette. "She calls me all the time. Calls me and doesn't talk."
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"Wait, she?" "I know," he said. "?calls you up and doesn't say a word?" "Yup. Been going on for about eight months now." Annabeth laughed. "No offense, but that's the weirdest thing I've heard in a while." "No argument." He watched a fly dart in and away from the bare lightbulb. "One of these days, I figure, she's gotta talk. That's what I'm holding out for." He heard his half-assed chuckle die in the night and the echo of it embarrassed him. So they sat in silence for a bit, smoking, listening to the buzz of the fly as it made its crazy darts toward the light. "What's her name?" Annabeth asked. "This whole time, you've never once said her name." "Lauren," he said. "Her name's Lauren." Her name hung in the air for a bit like the loose strand of a cobweb. "And you loved her since you were kids?" "Freshman year of college," he said. "Yeah, I guess we were kids." He could remember a November rainstorm, the two of them kissing for the first time in a doorway, the feel of goose bumps on her flesh, both of them shaking. "Maybe that's the problem," Annabeth said. Sean looked at her. "That we're not kids anymore?" "One of you, at least," she said. Sean didn't ask which one. "Jimmy told me you said Katie was planning to elope with Brendan Harris." Sean nodded. "Well, that's just it, isn't it?" He turned in his chair. "What?" She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. "These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going to make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden
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have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would hit them sooner or later?life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work?at everything?because that's what growing older is." "Annabeth," Sean said, "anyone ever tell you that you're a hard woman?" She turned her head to him, her eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face. "All the time." BRENDAN HARRIS went into his room that night and faced the suitcase under his bed. He'd packed it tightly with shorts and Hawaiian shirts, one sportcoat and two pairs of jeans, but no sweaters or wool pants. He'd packed what he'd expected they wore in Las Vegas, no winter clothes, because he and Katie had agreed that they never wanted to face another windchill or thermal-sock sale at Kmart or windshield crusted with ice. So when he opened the suitcase, what stared back up at him was a bright array of pastels and floral patterns, an explosion of summer. This was who they'd planned to be. Tanned and loose, their bodies not weighted down by boots or coats or someone else's expectations. They would have drunk drinks with goofy names from daiquiri glasses and spent afternoons in the hotel swimming pool and their skin would have smelled of sunblock and chlorine. They would have made love in a room iced by the air conditioner, yet warmed where the sun cut through the blinds, and when the night cooled everything off, they would have dressed in the better of their clothes and walked the Strip. He could see the two of them doing that as if from far away, looking down from several stories at the two lovers as they strolled through the neon wash, and those lights swept the black tar with watery reds and yellows and blues. And there they were?Brendan and Katie?walking lazily down the middle of the wide boulevard, dwarfed by the buildings, the chatter-and-ching of the casinos rattling out through the doors. Which one you want to go to tonight, honey? You pick. No, you pick. No, come on, you pick. Okay. How about that one? Looks good. That one it is, then. I love you, Brendan.
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I love you, too, Katie. And they would have walked up the carpeted stairs between the white columns and into the clamor of the smoky, clanging palace. They would have done this as man and wife, starting their lives together, still kids really, and East Buckingham would have been a million miles behind them and receding a million more with every step they took. That's what it would have been like. Brendan sat down on the floor. He just needed to sit for a second. Just a second or two. He sat and pulled the soles of his high-tops together and gripped his ankles like a little boy. He rocked a bit, dropping his chin to his chest and closing his eyes, and he felt the pain soften for an instant. He felt a calm in the dark and in his rocking. And then it passed, and the horror of Katie's removal from the earth?the total lack of her?swam back through his blood and he felt pulverized by it. There was a gun in the house. It had belonged to his father, and his mother had left it behind the removable ceiling slat above the butler's pantry where his father had always kept it. You could sit on the counter of the butler's pantry and reach under the lip of the curved wooden cornice, and touch the three slats there until you felt the weight of the gun. Then all you had to do was push up, reach in, and curl your fingers around it. It had been there since Brendan could remember, and one of his first memories was of stumbling out of the bathroom late one night and watching as his father withdrew his hand from underneath the cornice. Brendan had even taken the gun out and shown it to his friend Jerry Diventa when they were thirteen, Jerry looking at it with wide eyes and saying, "Put it back, put it back." It was covered in dust and quite possibly had never been fired, but Brendan knew it was just a matter of cleaning it. He could take the gun out tonight. He could walk down to Caf?Society, where Roman Fallow hung out, or over to Atlantic Auto Glass, which Bobby O'Donnell owned and where, according to Katie, he conducted most of his business from the back office. He could go to either of those places?or better yet, both?and point his father's gun in each of their faces and pull the fucking trigger, over and over and over, until it clicked on an empty chamber and Roman and Bobby never killed another woman again. He could do that. Couldn't he? They did it in the movies. Bruce Willis, man, if someone killed the woman he loved, he wouldn't be sitting on the floor, holding his ankles, rocking like a Sped case. He'd be loading up. Right? Brendan pictured Bobby's fleshy face in his sights, the man begging. No, please, Brendan! No, please! And Brendan saying something cool like, "Please this, motherfucker. Please this all the way to hell." He started crying then, still rocking, still holding his ankles, because he knew that he wasn't Bruce Willis, and Bobby O'Donnell was a real person, not something out of a movie, and the gun would need cleaning, serious cleaning, and he didn't even know if it had bullets because he wasn't even sure how to open the thing, and when you got right down to it, wouldn't his hand shake? Wouldn't it shake and jump the way his fist used to when he was a kid and knew there was no way out, he was going to get into a fight? Life wasn't a fucking movie, man, it
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was 協ucking life. It didn't play out like it did where the good guy had to win in two hours so you knew he would win. Brendan didn't know much about himself in the hero sense; he was nineteen and he'd never been challenged in that way. But he wasn't sure he could walk into a guy's place of business?that is if the doors weren't locked and there weren't all these other guys hanging around?and shoot the guy in the face. He just wasn't sure. But he missed her. He missed her so badly, and the pain of her not being around?and not ever going to be around again?made his teeth ache until he felt he had to do something, anything, if only so he'd stop feeling like this for one fucking second of this newly miserable life. Okay, he decided. Okay. I'll clean the gun tomorrow. I'll just clean it and make sure it has bullets. I'll do that much. I'll clean the gun. Ray came into the room then, still wearing his Rollerblades, using his new hockey stick as a walking staff as he seesawed on wobbly ankles over to his bed. Brendan stood up quick, wiped the tears from his cheeks. Ray took off his Rollerblades, watching his brother, and then he signed, "You okay?" Brendan said, "No." Ray signed, "Anything I can do?" Brendan said, "It's all right, Ray. No, you can't. But don't worry about it." "Ma says you are better off." Brendan said, "What?" Ray repeated it. "Yeah?" Brendan said. "How's she figure?" Ray's hands went flying. "If you left, Ma would have bummed." "She'd have gotten over it." "Maybe, maybe not." Brendan looked at his brother sitting on the bed, staring up into his face. "Don't piss me off now, Ray. Okay?" He leaned in close, thinking about that gun. "I loved her." Ray gazed back, his face as empty as a rubber mask. "You know what that's like, Ray?" Ray shook his head.
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"It's like knowing all the answers on a test the minute you sit down at your desk. It's like knowing everything's going to be okay for the rest of your life. You're going to ace. You're going to be fine. You'll walk around forever, feeling relieved, because you won." He turned away from his brother. "That's what it's like." Ray tapped the bedpost so he'd look at him, and then he signed, "You will feel it again." Brendan dropped to his knees and shoved his face into Ray's. "No, I won't. Fucking get that? No." Ray pulled his feet up onto the bed and backed up, and Brendan felt ashamed, but still angry, because that was the thing about those who were mute?they could make you feel stupid for talking. Everything Ray said came out succinctly, just as he'd intended. He didn't know what it was like to fumble for words or trip over them because his speech was going faster than his brain. Brendan wanted to spill, he wanted the words to come out of his mouth in a gush of passionate, fucked-up, not entirely sensible, but completely honest testament to Katie and what she'd meant to him and how it had felt to press his nose against her neck in this bed and hook one of his fingers around one of hers and wipe ice cream off her chin and sit beside her in a car and watch her eyes dart as she came to intersections and hear her talk and sleep and snore and?br> He wanted to go on for hours. He wanted someone to listen to him and to understand that speech wasn't just about communicating ideas or opinions. Sometimes, it was about trying to convey whole human lives. And while you knew even before you opened your mouth that you'd fail, somehow the trying was what mattered. The trying was all you had. Ray, though, no way he could grasp that. Words for Ray were flicks of the fingers, deft droppings and raisings and sweepings of the hand. Words were not wasted with Ray. Communication was not relative to him. You said exactly what you meant, and then you were done with it. To unload his grief and over-emote in front of his blank-faced brother would have merely shamed Brendan. It wouldn't have helped. He looked down at his scared little brother, backed up on the bed and staring at him with bug eyes, and he held out his hand. "I'm sorry," he said, and heard his voice crack. "I'm sorry, Ray. Okay? I didn't mean to blast you." Ray took the hand and stood. "So, it's okay?" he signed, his eyes on Brendan as if he was ready to dive out the window at the next outburst. "It's okay," Brendan signed back. "I guess it's all right."