Angel Interrupted (39 page)

The little boy disappeared.

He turned as translucent as smoke, and then he was a ripple of light pulsing through the air, and then he was gone.

I knew he would not be coming back. I understood at last what he was. I knew why he did not seem like me, why he had not been able to leave Bobby D’Amato alone.

He wasn’t some victim Bobby had tortured. He wasn’t some child the colonel had killed. He
was
Bobby D’Amato. He was the little boy who had died that morning sixteen years ago when a man had held out his hand to a trusting four-year-old trying to find his parents’ car and said, “I know where they are. Come with me.”

That silent apparition, devoid of all interest in others, capable of existing but just barely, was the child Bobby D’Amato had never been. The specter had been a deformed, lost soul, and perhaps there are some that would have called it an abomination.

I thought of it as an angel interrupted.

I was glad it had found its way home.

The knock on the hospital door was barely audible, but Maggie was waiting for it. “They’re here,” she told the therapist.

“Would you like me to stay with you?” Miranda asked Bobby. He held her slender hand, squeezing it tightly. She nodded and sat in a chair by his side, the only anchor he had in the entire world as he faced the life he had lost.

Morty was the first to poke his head in the door. “Come in,” Maggie said to him brightly, then bit her lip as if she felt her mood was unseemly.

Morty was in full dress uniform, and he moved as carefully as if he were escorting the president. He opened the door and held out his arm. Rosemary D’Amato stepped through, stumbled, and was quickly steadied by a stocky man behind her. Bobby’s father. He looked as fearful as his wife. They had lived on hope for so long that hope was all they had, and the possibility that it might be taken from them, that a mistake might have been made somehow, was too much to bear.

But then Rosemary D’Amato saw the man lying in the hospital bed, and she gasped. “You look just like my brother,” she whispered. She appealed to her husband for the confirmation they both desperately needed. “He looks just like Dave, doesn’t he?”

Her husband nodded mechanically, his eyes never leaving his son’s face. Sixteen years of silence, of bearing the pain inside, broke in him. He rushed to Bobby and knelt, laying his head on the bed beside his son, hiding his face from the view of others. His body trembled with the sobs he could not hold back.

Bobby shifted awkwardly—and then he reached out and placed his hand on top of his father’s head to comfort him. It changed everything.

His hope had been passed on.

Bobby’s mother joined her husband and patted his back gently as she gazed at her son. “I knew you were alive,” she told him. “I knew you were out there somewhere. I looked for you everywhere.”

Bobby said nothing. He did not know what to say.

The therapist looked up at Maggie and Morty, then nodded. Silently, they left the room. I stayed. I needed to know Bobby D’Amato would make it.

His mother was crying now, too. She clutched her son’s hand, and her tears fell on the thin, white sheet that covered him. She was trying to say something, but the words would not come. Her husband sobbed quietly in the silence.

Bobby was staring at his mother, searching her face. “I saw you at the graveyard,” he finally said, his voice trembling with the certainty that she would be furious at him. “I was trying to find my grave, and I saw you there, visiting it, and I didn’t come up and say anything. But I knew who you must be.”

“It’s okay,” she told him without hesitation. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except that you’re alive and we’re together. It’s going to be okay. I promise you that. It’s going to be okay.”

It’s going to be okay.
Mothers’ words, the kind they murmur when nothing else can be said. But I could feel she was right. It was going to be okay. They had come to their son without hesitation and without fear, even without forgiveness, because, in their minds, there was nothing in the world he could have done that would call for their forgiveness. They had come prepared to love him no matter what. And Bobby D’Amato could feel it. Something deep inside him shifted. Dark memories of terrible times faded. Years of pain fell away. The images in his mind that tormented him receded to a faraway land where, god willing, they would stay. The memory of a family speeding along the highway took their place. I could hear voices united in one single, glorious note as a father, mother, and son sang along to a song on the radio, each one knowing the words and knowing their part. Together, they made a whole new sound, rich with a harmony that delighted the little boy in the backseat. He banged his heels against the cushions and sang about a silver hammer, his heart full of happiness that they were all together, that they belonged, and that he was part of them.

They would get there again. I felt it. It would take time. but, with love, they would get there again.

Colin Gunn was waiting for Maggie on the front porch of his house, a bottle of Maker’s Mark at his side. He knew she’d be coming, and sooner rather than later. She always visited him after she closed a case.

“Did you hear?” Maggie asked as she mounted the front steps. Her smile was wide. Her father’s house was the one place in the world where she allowed herself to show joy and pride in what she could do.

Colin raised a glass in a toast to her, even though it was not yet noon. This qualified as one of his many special occasions. “Eight phone calls from the boys already and the phone is still ringing. You’ve become a legend, Maggie May.”

“Gonzales is pissed. I skipped out on his press conference.”

“Gonzales is down at St. Ignatius throwing quarters into the votive box and starting a month-long novena of thanks that God sent you to him. You made that walking, talking, ladder-climbing, ass-kissing mannequin look good.”

Maggie laughed and took her customary seat on the porch, in the rocking chair next to his wheelchair. “You heard who the perp was, right? Bobby D’Amato.”

“I heard.” Her father’s voice was sad. He knew what the odds were and what lay ahead. “I thought the boy was dead. Not so sure it’s better this way.”

“I think his parents are prepared,” Maggie said. “They seem willing to stand by him no matter what.”

“The boy deserves no less after all he’s been through. And the man who took him?”

“Still alive,” Maggie answered. “If you call that living.” She hesitated, not sure if she should even tell her father what she had to say next. “They’re going to keep him alive,” she finally said. “At least for as long as it takes to try Bobby D’Amato for the fire and for taking Tyler Matthews. The hospital is grateful to Bobby for his help solving the Harker murder, even if the killer was one of their own. This is their way of saying thanks. So long as they can keep Howard McGrew alive, Bobby D’Amato won’t face murder charges, at least. And if he dies after the trial is over, the DA has already said he won’t file new charges.”

“That’s a generous gesture on the hospital’s part, considering how much it will cost them. They wanted four thousand dollars from poor Mrs. Nevins down the street just for setting her broken arm. And Maggie?” Colin looked at his daughter, shaking his head. “You will forgive me if I say that every minute that man lies in his bed in the burn unit consumed with agony is a minute of agony he deserves. He was going to burn sooner or later, whether in hell or here on earth. He brought that fate on himself.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “You’re not the only one who thinks that. Can I have a glass of that?”

He poured her a tumbler of whiskey. She took a deep sip, and then laid her head back against the rocker and sighed. “I asked Gonzales to give Calvano another chance.”

“Did you?” her father asked, surprised. “Oh, boy. You’ve got more than a drop of your mother in you. The bums she used to feed. The old friends she never gave up on.”

“Do you ever talk to her?” Maggie asked suddenly.

“Your mother? Of course I do.” He was silent, thinking about it. “I talk to her more now than I did when she was alive.”

“Does she answer?”

“Are you daft?” Colin took another sip of whiskey. “The day she starts answering me is the day I want you to wheel me down to the VA and put me in the drooler ward.”

“I just wondered.” Maggie hesitated. She wanted to say more but did not know how to begin.

“What is it?” her father asked. “What’s got your mind buzzing?”

“If I told you, you’ll think I was crazy.”

“A hunch?” he guessed. “My little girl had a hunch that was heaven-sent?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when you do something crazy because your gut tells you to do it, and it turns out you were right, and you can’t tell anyone else because then they’ll think you’re either crazy or, well, they’ll think you’re crazy.”

“You had those?”

“Sure I did. Solved a good eighth of my cases with them. You don’t talk about it, though. It’s like changing your underwear when you’re on a winning streak. If you’re smart, you just don’t do it.”

“I do,” Maggie said emphatically. “Change my underwear, that is.”

“Tell me about this hunch,” he asked curiously. “I want to know what happened.”

Another gulp of Maker’s Mark convinced her, and Maggie ended up telling her father all about the drawing the little girl had given her in the hospital and how it had led her to Tyler Matthews.

“You see?” her father said when she was done. “That’s why your mother and I made you go to Sunday school and church every week.”

“I don’t see what getting beaten with a ruler by a bad-tempered nun who smells like onions has to do with it,” Maggie said grudgingly. I had to smile. I’d caught a glimpse of a reluctant young Maggie, being scrubbed for church, protesting the entire time.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” her father retorted. He filled his glass again, happily, and I started to wonder just how long he’d been sitting out there on his front porch waiting for his daughter.

As soon as I heard the voice, I knew who it was.

He had come for her.

Christian Fletcher stood at the end of the walkway, dressed in a golf shirt and pants. The bastard even looked good out of his doctor clothes. He looked like the king of the country club.

Maggie stood so abruptly, I thought the rocking chair might tip over.

Oddly, her father seemed neither surprised nor perturbed.

“How did you find me?” Maggie asked him.

“Your friend Peggy told me.” He glanced at Colin quickly.
Aha.
Colin had told Peggy that Maggie would be stopping by. Those two old lovebirds were up to something.

“Peggy?” Maggie asked. She was walking slowly toward Fletcher, as if she could not quite control her body. I don’t think she was even aware of what she was doing. He was near—and she wanted to be nearer to him.

“Yes,” Fletcher explained. “I stopped by the station house to offer my help with the case. To tell you what I know about Serena’s movements over the past few months. Not that I know much, apparently, about my own wife.” He looked Maggie straight in the eye. “I didn’t know about it, Maggie. I swear to you, I didn’t. I had no idea what Serena was doing or what she had done. It makes sense now, of course. I understand why Fiona was acting the way she was around me, the time she suggested we get coffee, and then asked me about my marriage.” He ran out of words to say and just shrugged, hoping she would trust him.

“I know,” Maggie said. “I believe you.”

“Then why did you act like you didn’t even see me in the lobby? Why did you avoid me in the hospital?”

“Christian, this is probably going to be the longest and most difficult court case of my career. Your wife is going to take us to the mat. I can only imagine the lawyers she can afford, the fight she’ll put up. She’s going to drag me through the mud, and you, too. I have to be able to sit up there on the stand and tell the truth when I’m asked if I have a personal relationship with you.”

“I understand,” he said quickly. “I get that part. I’m not here to ask you to do anything except promise me that you’ll wait. That you’ll wait until . . .” He searched for the right words. “Until we have the chance to give it a shot.”

She didn’t say anything at first, and I could tell Christian Fletcher’s heart was undergoing a torturous moment of regret and indecision as he began to think that he had been a fool, that he should never have put his heart on the line. Oh, how people are like that. They offer their hearts, but a heart can never be offered without the fear of rejection attached—and that fear can be as paralyzing as tangled marionette strings. “I’m sorry,” he said into the silence. “I never should have come—”

“Of course I’ll wait,” Maggie interrupted. “Christian, waiting is nothing for me. I haven’t dated a man in . . . I don’t know, two years?”