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7 IN THE BLOOD NADINE MARCUS, Jimmy and Annabeth's younger daughter, received the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion for the first time on Sunday morning at Saint Cecilia's in the East Bucky Flats. Her hands pressed together from the base of her palms to the tips of her fingers, white veil and white dress making her look like a baby bride or snow angel, she walked up the aisle in procession with forty other children, gliding, where the other kids stutter-stepped. Or at least that's how it seemed to Jimmy, and while he might have been the first to admit that, yeah, he was biased in favor of his kids, he was also pretty sure he was right. Other kids these days spoke or yelled whenever they felt like it, cussed in front of their parents, demanded this and demanded that, showed absolutely no respect for adults, and had the slightly dazed, slightly feverish eyes of addicts who spent too much time in front of a TV, a computer screen, or both. They reminded Jimmy of silver pinballs?sluggish one moment, banging off everything in sight the next, clanging bells and careening from side to side. They asked for something, they usually got it. If they didn't, they asked louder. If the answer was still a tentative no, they screamed. And their parents?pussies one and all, as far as Jimmy was concerned?usually caved. Jimmy and Annabeth doted on their girls. They worked hard to keep them happy and entertained and aware that they were loved. But there was a fine line between that and taking shit from them, and Jimmy made sure the girls all knew exactly where the line was.

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Like these two little pricks now, coming up beside Jimmy's pew in the processional?two boys, shoving each other, laughing out loud, ignoring the shushes of the nuns, starting to play to the crowd, and some of the adults actually smiling back. Jesus. Back in Jimmy's time, the parents would have stepped out of the crowd, yanked the two off the ground by their hair, swatted their asses, and whispered promises for more into their ears before dropping them back down. Jimmy, who'd hated his old man, knew the old ways sucked, too, no question, but, damn, there had to be an in- between solution somewhere that the majority of people seemed to be overlooking. A middle ground where a kid knew the parents loved him but were still the boss, rules existed for a reason, no really meant no, and just because you were cute didn't mean you were cool. Of course, you could pass all that on, raise a good kid, and they still put you through misery. Like Katie today. Not only had she never showed up for work, but now it looked like she was blowing off her younger half sister's First Communion. What the hell was going through her mind? Nothing, probably, which was the issue. Turning back to watch Nadine advance up the aisle, Jimmy was so proud he felt his anger (and, yeah, some worry, a minor but persistent niggle of it) at Katie subside a bit, though he knew it would come back. First Communion was an event in a Catholic child's life?a day to dress up and be adored and fawned over and taken to Chuck E. Cheese's afterward?and Jimmy believed in marking events in his children's lives, making them bright and memorable. Which was why Katie not showing up pissed him off so much. She was nineteen, okay, so the world of her younger half sisters probably couldn't compare to guys and clothes and sneaking into bars that had a lax ID policy. Jimmy understood this, so he usually gave Katie a wide berth, but skipping an event, particularly after all Jimmy had done when Katie was younger to mark the events in her life, was fucking lame. He felt the anger rising again, knew as soon as he saw her, they'd have another of their "debates," as Annabeth called them, a frequent occurrence the last couple of years. Whatever. Fuck it. Because here came Nadine now, almost abreast with Jimmy's pew. Annabeth had made Nadine promise she wouldn't look at her father as she passed him and spoil the seriousness of the sacrament with something girlish and giddy, but Nadine stole a glance anyway?a small one, just enough to let Jimmy know she was risking the wrath of her mother to show love to her father. She didn't preen for her grandfather, Theo, and six uncles who filled the pew behind Jimmy, and Jimmy respected that: she was edging near the line, not over it. Her left eye snuck toward its corner, Jimmy tracking it through the veil, and he gave her a small three-finger wave from belt- buckle level and mouthed a huge, silent "Hi!" Nadine's smile burst whiter than anything her veil or dress or shoes could match, and Jimmy felt it blow through his heart and his eyes and his knees. The women in his life?Annabeth, Katie, Nadine, and her sister Sara?could do that to him at the drop of a hat, buckle his knees with a smile or a glance, leave him weak. Nadine dropped her eyes and clenched her small face to cover the smile, but Annabeth had caught it anyway. She dug an elbow into the space between Jimmy's ribs and his left hip. He turned to her, feeling his face going red, and said, "What?"

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Annabeth tossed him a look that said his ass was slung when they got back home. Then she looked straight ahead, her lips tight, but jerking a bit at the corners. Jimmy knew all he'd have to say was "Problem?" in that innocent-boy voice of his and Annabeth would start cracking up in spite of herself, because something about a church just gave you a need to giggle, and that had always been one of Jimmy's big gifts: he could make the ladies laugh, no matter what. He didn't look at Annabeth for a while after that, though, just followed the mass and then the sacramental rites as each child in turn took that wafer in cupped hands for the first time. He'd rolled up the program booklet, and it turned damp with heat in his palm as he drummed it against his thigh and watched Nadine lift the wafer from her palm and place it to her tongue, then bless herself, head down, and Annabeth leaned into him and whispered in his ear: "Our baby. My God, Jimmy, our baby." Jimmy put his arm around her, pulled her tight, wishing you could freeze moments in your life like snapshots, just stay in them, suspended, until you were ready to come out again, however many hours or days that might take. He turned his head and kissed Annabeth's cheek, and she leaned into him a little more, both of their eyes locked on their daughter, their floating angel of a baby girl. THE GUY with the samurai sword stood at the edge of the park, his back to the Pen Channel, one foot raised up off the ground as he pivoted slowly with the other, the sword held at an odd angle behind the crown of his head. Sean, Whitey, Souza, and Connolly approached slowly, giving one another "What the fuck?" looks. The guy continued his slow pivot, oblivious to the four men approaching him in a loose line along the grass. He raised the sword over his head and began to bring it down in front of his chest. They were about twenty feet away now, the guy having pivoted 180 degrees so that his back was to them, and Sean saw Connolly put his hand to his right hip, unsnap the buckle of his holster, and leave the hand resting on the butt of his Glock. Before this got any nuttier and someone got shot or the guy went all hara-kiri on them, Sean cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me, sir. Sir? Excuse me." The guy's head cocked slightly as if he'd heard Sean, but he continued that deliberate pivot, revolving in increments toward them. "Sir, we need you to lay your weapon on the grass." The guy's foot dropped back to the ground and he turned to face them, his eyes widening and then clicking on each of them?one, two, three, four guns?and he held out the sword, either pointing it at them or trying to hand it to them, Sean couldn't tell which. Connolly said, "The fuck?you deaf? On the ground." Sean said, "Sssh," and stopped moving, ten feet from the guy now, thinking about the blood drops they'd found along the jogging path about sixty yards back, all four of them knowing what the drops meant, and then looking up to see Bruce Lee over here brandishing a sword the length of a small plane. Except Bruce Lee had been Asian

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and this guy was definitely white, youngish, maybe twenty-five, with curly black hair and shaven cheeks, white T-shirt tucked into gray sweats. He was frozen now, and Sean was pretty sure it was fear that kept that sword pointed at them, the brain seizing up and unable to command the body. "Sir," Sean said, sharp enough for the guy to look directly at him. "Do me a favor, okay? Put the sword down on the ground. Just open your fingers and let it drop." "Who the hell are you guys?" "We're police officers." Whitey Powers flashed his badge. "See? So, trust me here, sir, and drop that sword." "Uh, sure," the guy said, and just like that it fell from his fingers, hit the grass with a damp thud. Sean felt Connolly starting to move on his left, ready to rush the guy, and he put out his hand, kept the guy's eyes locked with his, and said, "What's your name?" "Huh? Kent." "Kent, how you doing? I'm State Trooper Devine. I need you to just take a couple of steps back from the weapon." "The weapon?" "The sword, Kent. Take a couple of steps back. What's your last name, Kent?" "Brewer," he said, and backed up, his palms held up and out now like he was sure they were going to draw their Glocks all at once and unload. Sean smiled and threw a nod at Whitey. "Hey, Kent, what was that you were doing out here? Looked like some kind of ballet to me." He shrugged. "With a sword, sure, but? Kent watched Whitey bend by the sword and pick it up gently by the hilt with a handkerchief. "Kendo." "What's that, Kent?" "Kendo," Kent said. "It's a martial art. I take it Tuesdays and Thursdays and practice in the mornings. I was just practicing. That's all." Connolly sighed. Souza looked at Connolly. "You're dicking me, right?"

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Whitey held out the sword blade for Sean to see. It was oiled and shiny and so clean it could have just come off the press. "Look." Whitey slid the blade across his open palm. "I've had sharper spoons." "It's never been sharpened," Kent said. Sean felt that bird in his skull again, screeching. "Ah, Kent, how long you been here?" Kent looked at the parking lot a hundred yards behind them. "Fifteen minutes? Tops. What's this about?" His voice was gaining confidence now, a shade of indignation. "It's not illegal to practice kendo in a public park, Officer, is it?" "We're working on it, though," Whitey said. "And that's 'Sergeant,' Kent." "You account for your whereabouts late last night, early this morning?" Sean asked. Kent looked nervous again, racking his brain, holding in a breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, then let out the breath. "Yes, yes. I was, I was at a party last night with friends. I went home with my girlfriend. We got to sleep about three. I had coffee with her this morning and then I came here." Sean pinched the top of his nose and nodded. "We're going to impound the sword, Kent, and we wouldn't mind if you dropped over to the barracks with one of the troopers, answered a few questions." "The barracks?" "The police station," Sean said. "We just got a different name for it." "Why?" "Kent, could you just agree to go with one of the troopers?" "Uh, sure." Sean looked at Whitey and Whitey grimaced. They knew Kent was too scared to be telling anything but the truth, and they knew the sword would come back from Forensics clean, but they had to play out every string and file a follow-up report till the paperwork looked like parade floats atop their desks. "I'm getting my black belt," Kent said. They turned back and looked at him. "Huh?" "On Saturday," Kent said, his face bright under beads of perspiration. "Took me three years, but, ah, that's why I was down here this morning, making sure my form was tight." "Uh-huh," Sean said.

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to come, igniting. Val had worked for Jimmy's crew back in the days when Jimmy had a crew, and he was grateful to Jimmy for taking a hard two-year fall and another three suspended on behalf of the whole crew when everyone knew Jimmy could have dimed them all out and skated. Val, tiny-limbed and tiny-brained, would have probably idolized Jimmy outright if Jimmy hadn't married a Puerto Rican chick, and one from outside the neighborhood, too. After Marita died, the neighborhood whispers said, Well, there you go, don't you? That's what happens when you go against the way of things. That Katie, though, she'll be a real looker; half-breeds always are. When Jimmy had gotten out of Deer Island, the offers rolled in. Jimmy was a pro, one of the best second-story guys to ever come out of a neighborhood that had a Hall of Fame roster's worth of second-story guys. And even when Jimmy said no, thanks, he was going straight, for the kid, you know, people nodded and smiled and knew he'd come back to it the first time things got tough and he had to choose between a car payment and Katie's Christmas present. Didn't happen, though. Jimmy Marcus, B & E genius and a guy who'd run his own crew before he was old enough to legally drink, the man behind the Keldar Technics heist and a ton of other shit, stayed so straight it got to where people thought he was taunting them. Hell, rumor was Jimmy had even been discussing buying out Al DeMarco's corner store, letting the old man retire as owner-in-name with a chunk of the money Jimmy'd allegedly stashed away from the Keldar job. Jimmy as shopkeeper, wearing an apron?okay, sure, they said. At Val and Terese's reception at the K of C on Dunboy, Jimmy asked Annabeth to dance, and folks there saw it right away?the curve of them as they leaned into the music, the tilt of their heads as they looked right at each other, bold as bulls, the way his palm lightly caressed the small of her back and she leaned back into it. They'd known each other as kids, someone said, though he'd been a few years ahead of her. Maybe it had always been there, waiting for the Puerto Rican to pack up, or God to pack up for her. It had been a Rickie Lee Jones song they'd danced to, a few lines in the song that always got to Jimmy for some reason he didn't understand?"Well, good-bye, boys/Oh my buddy boys/Oh my sad-eyed Sinatras? He lip-synced them to Annabeth as they swayed, feeling loose and at ease for the first time in years, lip-synced again at the chorus along with Rickie's mournful wisp of a voice, "So long, lone-ly ave-nue," smiling into Annabeth's crystal green eyes, and she'd smiled, too, in a soft, hidden way she had that cracked his heart, the two of them acting like this was their hundredth dance instead of their first. They were the last ones to leave?sitting outside on the wide entrance porch, drinking light beers and smoking cigarettes and nodding to the other guests as they walked to their cars. They stayed out there until the summer night had chilled, and Jimmy slid his coat around her shoulders and told her about prison and Katie, and Marita's dreams of orange curtains, and she told him about growing up the only female Savage in a house full of maniac brothers, of her one winter dancing in New York before she figured out she wasn't good enough, of nursing school. When the K of C management kicked them off the porch, they wandered over to the after-party in time for Val and Terese's first screaming match as a married couple. They clipped a six-pack from Val's fridge and left, walked off into the dark of Hurley's Drive-in and sat by the channel, listened to its sullen lapping. The drive-in

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had shut down four years before, and squat yellow diggers and dump trucks from Parks and Recreation and the D.O.T. convoyed onto the land every morning, turned the whole area along the Pen into an eruption of dirt and torn cement. Word was they were turning it into a park, but at that point it was just a mangled drive-in, the screen still looming white behind mountains of brown dirt and black-and-gray cakes of disgorged asphalt. "They say it's in your blood," Annabeth said. "What?" "Stealing, crime." She shrugged. "You know." Jimmy smiled at her around his beer bottle, took a sip. "Is it?" she said. "Maybe." It was his turn to shrug. "Lotta things are in my blood. Doesn't mean they have to come out." "I'm not judging you. Believe me." Her face unreadable, even her voice, Jimmy wondering what she wanted to hear from him?that he was still in the life? That he was out? That he'd make her rich? That he'd never commit a crime again? Annabeth had a calm, almost forgettable face from a distance, but when you got up close, you saw so many things in there that you didn't understand, a sense of a mind furiously at work, never sleeping. "I mean, dancing's in your blood, right?" "I dunno. I guess." "But now that you've been told you can't do it anymore, you've stopped, right? It might hurt, but you've faced it." "Okay? "Okay," he said, and slid a cigarette out of the pack that lay on the stone bench between them. "So, yeah, I was good at what I did. But I took a pinch and my wife died and that fucked my daughter up." He lit the cigarette and took a long exhale as he tried to put it exactly as he'd said it in his mind a hundred times. "I ain't fucking my daughter up again, Annabeth. You know? She can't go through another two years of me doing time. My mother? She ain't a well woman. She dies while I'm locked down? Then they take my daughter, make her a ward of the state, put her in some sort of Deer Island for tots. I couldn't take that shit. So that's it. In the blood, out of the blood, whatever the fuck, I'm staying straight." Jimmy held her gaze as she studied his face. He could tell she was searching for flaws in his explanation, a whiff of bullshit, and he hoped he'd somehow managed to make the speech fly. He'd been working on it long enough, preparing for a moment like this. And, fact was, what he'd said was mostly true. He'd only left out that one thing he'd sworn to himself he'd never tell another soul, no matter who that soul was. So he looked in Annabeth's eyes and waited for her to make her decision, and tried to ignore images from that night by the Mystic River?the guy

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on his knees, saliva dripping down his chin, the screech of his begging?images that kept trying to push their way into his head like drill bits. Annabeth took a cigarette. He lit it for her, and she said, "I used to have the worst crush on you. You know that?" Jimmy kept his head steady, his gaze calm, even though the relief flooding through him was like a jet blast?he'd sold the half-truth. If things worked out with Annabeth, he'd never have to sell it again. "No shit? You on me?" She nodded. "When you'd come by the house to see Val? My God, I was, what, fourteen, fifteen? Jimmy, forget it. My skin would start to buzz just hearing your voice in the kitchen." "Damn." He touched her arm. "It ain't buzzing now." "Oh, sure it is, Jimmy. Sure it is." And Jimmy felt the Mystic roll far away again, dissolve into the dirty depths of the Pen, gone from him, rolling off into the distance where it belonged. BY THE TIME Sean got back to the jogging trail, the CSS woman was there. Whitey Powers radioed all units on-scene to do a sweep-and-detain of any vagrants in the park and squatted down beside Sean and the CSS woman. "The blood heads that way," the CSS woman said, pointing deeper into the park. The jogging path went over a small wooden bridge and then curled off and down into a heavily wooded section of the park, circling around the old drive-in screen down at the far end. "There's more over there." She pointed with her pen, and Sean and Whitey looked back over their shoulders, saw smaller blood spatters in the grass on the other side of the joggers' path by the small wooden bridge, the leaves of a tall maple having protected the spatters from last night's rain. "I think she ran for that ravine." Whitey's radio squawked and he put it to his lips. "Powers." "Sergeant, we need you over by the garden." "On my way." Sean watched Whitey trot onto the jogging path and then head for the garden co-op around the next bend, the hem of his son's hockey shirt flapping around his waist. Sean straightened from his squat and looked at the park, felt the sheer size of it, every bush, every knoll, all that water. He looked back at the small wooden bridge that led over a tiny ravine where the water was twice as dark and twice as polluted as the channel. Crusted with a permanent greasy film, it buzzed with mosquitoes in the

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summer. Sean noticed a spot of red in the thin, greening trees that sprouted along the bank of the ravine and he moved toward it, the CSS woman suddenly beside him, seeing it, too. "What's your name?" Sean said. "Karen," she said. "Karen Hughes." Sean shook her hand, the two of them focused on that spot of red as they crossed the joggers' path, not even hearing Whitey Powers until he was almost on top of them, trotting, short of breath. "We found a shoe," Whitey said. "Where?" Whitey pointed back down the joggers' path, past where it curved around the garden co-op. "In the garden. Woman's shoe. Size six." "Don't touch it," Karen Hughes said. "Duh," Whitey said, and got a look from her, Karen Hughes having one of those glacial looks that could shrink everything inside of you. "Excuse me. I meant?duh, ma'am." Sean turned back to the trees, and the spot of red was no longer a spot, it was a torn triangle of fabric, hanging from a thin branch about shoulder high. The three of them stood in front of it until Karen Hughes stepped back and snapped several photographs from four different angles, then dug in her bag for something. It was nylon, Sean was pretty sure, probably from a jacket, and slick with blood. Karen used a pair of tweezers to pull it from the branch and stared at it for a minute before dropping it into a plastic baggie. Sean bent at the waist and craned his head, looked down into the ravine. Then he looked across to the other side, saw what could have been a heel print dug into the soft soil. He nudged Whitey and pointed until Whitey saw it, too. Then Karen Hughes took a look and immediately snapped off a few shots from her department-issue Nikon. She straightened and crossed over the bridge, came down on the embankment, and took a few more photographs. Whitey dropped into a squat and peered under the bridge. "I'd say she might have hid here for a bit. Killer shows up, she bolts to the other side and takes off running again." Sean said, "Why's she keep going deeper into the park? I mean, her back's against the water here, Sarge. Why not cut back toward the entrance?" "Could be she was disoriented. It's dark, she's got a bullet in her."

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Whitey shrugged and used his radio to call Dispatch. "This is Sergeant Powers. We're leaning toward a possible one-eighty-seven, Dispatch. We're going to need every available officer for a sweep of Pen Park. See if you can scare up some divers, maybe." "Divers?" "Affirmative. We need Detective Lieutenant Friel and someone from the DA on-scene ASAP." "The detective lieutenant is en route. DA's office has been notified. Over?" "Affirmative. Out, Dispatch." Sean looked across at the heel mark in the soil, and he noticed some scratches to the left of it, the victim digging her fingers in as she'd scrambled up and over the embankment. "Feel like taking a guess what the fuck happened here last night, Sarge?" "Ain't even going to try," Whitey said. STANDING ATOP the church steps, Jimmy could just make out the Penitentiary Channel. It was a stripe of dull purple on the far side of the expressway overpass, the park that abutted it serving as the only evidence of green on this side of the channel. Jimmy spied the white sliver top of the drive-in movie screen in the center of the park peeking just above the overpass. It still stood, long after the state had grabbed the land for short money at the Chapter Eleven auction and turned it over to the Parks and Recreation Service. Parks and Recreation spent the next decade beautifying the place, ripping up the poles that supported the car speakers, leveling and greening the land, cutting bike paths and jogging paths along the water, erecting a fenced-in garden co-op, even building a boathouse and ramp for canoers who couldn't get very far before they were turned back at either end by the harbor locks. The screen stayed, though, ended up sprouting from the edge of a cul-de-sac they'd created by planting a stand of already-formed trees shipped in from Northern California. Summers, a local theater group performed Shakespeare in front of the screen, painting medieval backdrops on it and skipping back and forth across the stage with tinfoil swords, saying "Hark" and "Forsooth" and shit like that all the time. Jimmy had gone there with Annabeth and the girls two summers back, and Annabeth, Nadine, and Sara had all nodded off before the end of the first act. But Katie had stayed awake, leaning forward on the blanket, elbow on her knee, chin on the heel of her hand, so Jimmy had too. They did The Taming of the Shrew that night, and Jimmy couldn't follow most of it?something about a guy slapping his fianc 閑 into line until she became an acceptable servant wife, Jimmy failing to see the art in that but figuring he was losing a lot in the translation. Katie, though, was all over it. She laughed a bunch of times, went dead silent and rapt a few more, told Jimmy afterward it was "magic." Jimmy didn't know what the hell she meant, and Katie couldn't explain it. She just said she'd felt it "transport" her, and for the next six months she kept talking about moving to Italy after graduation.

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Jimmy, looking out at the edge of the East Bucky Flats from the church steps, thought: Italy. You bet. "Daddy, Daddy!" Nadine broke away from a group of friends and ran toward Jimmy as he reached the bottom step, slammed into Jimmy's legs full-force, still saying it: "Daddy, Daddy." Jimmy picked her up, got a sharp whiff of starch from her dress, and kissed her cheek. "Baby, baby." With the same motion her mother used to push hair out of her eyes, Nadine used the backs of two fingers to push her veil out of her face. "This dress itches." "It's itching me," Jimmy said, "and I'm not even wearing it." "You'd look funny in a dress, Daddy." "Not if it fit just so." Nadine rolled her eyes and then scraped the underside of his chin with the stiff crown of her veil. "Does that tickle?" Jimmy looked over Nadine's head at Annabeth and Sara, felt all three of them blow through his chest, fill him up, and turn him to dust at the same time. A spray of bullets could hit his back right now, this second, and it would be okay. It would be all right. He was happy. Happy as you could get. Well, almost. He scanned the crowd for Katie, hoping maybe she'd pulled up at the last moment. He saw a state police cruiser instead as it slammed around the corner of Buckingham Avenue, went wide into the left lane of Roseclair, rear tire slapping the median strip, the bleat-beep and sharp squawk of its siren slicing the morning air. Jimmy watched the driver floor it, heard the big engine rev as the cruiser shot down Roseclair toward the Pen Channel. A black unmarked followed a few seconds later, its sirens mute but no mistaking it for anything else, the driver cutting the hard ninety-degree turn onto Roseclair at forty miles an hour, engine humming. And as Jimmy lowered Nadine back to the ground, he could feel it in his blood, a sudden, mean certainty, a sense of things falling miserably into place. He watched the two cop cars zip under the overpass and turn hard right onto the entrance road of Pen Park, and he felt Katie in his blood now along with that humming engine and slapping tires, the floating capillaries and cells. Katie, he almost said aloud. Sweet Jesus. Katie.