Black Irish (36 page)

O’Halloran was brought across the Peace Bridge the same year she’d been adopted
.

She’d found out about the monkeys. O’Halloran had remembered the toy she carried when he’d picked her up at the City Mission with her father. John Kearney had probably scooped the picture up at the City Mission along with her things, and O’Halloran must have looked at it, his fat thumb running across the photograph, noticing the little toy. To implicate her, he’d bought a new set of monkeys and worked on them a bit, made them look old and worse for wear, then he’d dropped one at each scene. It was impressive, in a way. They’d even found a brand-new, unscuffed stash of the toys in O’Halloran’s glove compartment.

Her questions had been answered. O’Halloran was the killer; he’d murdered Billy to stop him from telling her what he knew; it had been O’Halloran out on the ice in the red ski mask. She’d been to see Z twice in the hospital and he was getting released in two days; she was planning on visiting Billy’s grave whenever she could get out the front door; and she’d been reinstated at Buffalo PD.

The world had repaired itself as much as possible. So why was her mind so unsettled? As much as she felt her father’s absence as a cold hole in her chest, it was more than that sorrow. Something else was needling her.

O’Halloran had substituted one thing for another. New toy monkeys for old ones
.

She closed her eyes. Boy George was singing again. She had to get the
Best of Culture Club
CD. She wanted to hear more of that voice …

The thought was back. She saw a face, or half of one, a face lit
by lightning. She closed her eyes and slowly rubbed her temples with both index fingers.

No, Absalom. Let it go
.

She couldn’t.

Abbie picked up her cell phone and dialed Mills’s number. She’d heard the warmth in his messages, and she’d liked it. But she hadn’t yet called him back.

“It’s Kearney,” she said when he answered.

“Hey,” he said dully. Then his voice perked up. “Oh,
hey
. Kearney, how the hell are you? Everything okay? I mean …”

“I’m not really sure. Zangara is getting better.”

“What about you?”

“I’m … I don’t know. It’s going to take time.”

“I know. I’m not going to say ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ because you already know that.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you.”

Pause. “So you’re obviously calling me up to make that date …”

She smiled.

“The buffet is on tonight,” he continued. “And we get five dollars in chips if we go before ten. Is that an irresistible deal or what?”

Say yes
, she thought.
Put on that green dress you like and go up and meet the man and forget about all of the things you’ve seen. Let it go
.

“You’re on. But I need a favor first.”

“Shoot.”

“Can you check if you have an unsolved murder from 1982, probably late April, early May.”

Mills sighed. “Jesus Christ, Kearney. Do you ever take a day off?”

“Apparently not.”

“We have all the open cases collated in a file. It’s on my laptop. Hold on.”

He put down the phone.

Say no
, she thought.
Say that 1982 was a perfect year for closed cases at the Niagara Falls PD. Say you’ll meet me at the casino doors and we’ll dance to the corny music
.

“You there?”

“Yes,” she said faintly.

“Joseph Padarski, thirty-two.”

Silence.

Then she said, “Tell me he wasn’t a biker.”

“Um, yeah, he was. Why?”

Abbie closed her eyes. “An Outlaw, right?”

“Yep. I’m looking at his picture. Nasty dude. Wanna guess his weight?”

“Last question. The basement of the Outlaws house. Was it heated?”

Mills’s voice sounded dead. “They don’t heat any basements up here, Kearney. Too damn expensive.”

Silence.

“Kearney? What is this all about?”

A
S SHE DROVE TO THE
E
AST
S
IDE, THE SNOW CAME DOWN IN SHEETS
. A nasty night, a night to stay in and read a good book. The only stores open were the liquor stores, which never closed, and a few corner delicatessens selling the last of their bread and milk before the storm covered the city.

She parked the Saab in front of the Reverend’s building and got out.

That little girl, Rashida, was sitting on the stoop in her braids and an oversize jacket.

“Hi, Detective Kearney.”

“Hi, Rashida. Is the Reverend around?”

“Yeah. I saw him inside with that smelly man from down the block.”

“Thanks.”

She entered the hallway, lit by a single bulb hanging from a dark wire. She rang the Reverend’s bell. The sound of voices from inside. Men’s voices. The door opened and the Reverend looked at her in surprise.

“Absalom! You’re back already?”

“Can I talk to you?”

She stood there, willing herself to leave before it was too late.

“Let me finish up here. I’m about to get this young man into a city program, just what he needs. Will you stay out here while I say a prayer with him?”

She nodded.

He looked at her closely, then pursed his lips and shut the door.

Three minutes later, a young man with a shaved head, dressed in an army fatigue jacket and jeans, his eyes wide with excitement, came out, nodded once to himself, and shut the door with a bang.

“Evenin’,” he said.

“Good luck,” she said.

“Don’t need luck,” he said. “I’ve got the Lord with me now.”

The door opened again. Abbie slipped by the Reverend.

“Glad you came by.” The Reverend swept around her, head down, lost in his thoughts, and sat in his desk chair. “I wanted to ask you about giving a talk to some fifth-graders over at Jefferson Elementary. I’m running out of role models to bring ’em over there, and if I brought the famous Absalom Kearney, they’d be floating on air.”

She looked at him.

“I need to talk to you about something, Reverend.”

His eyes were liquid in the low light of the desk lamp. His bald pate caught some of the amber glow from behind.

“Sure. Sit, sit.”

She sat on the hard wooden chair and looked at him. She felt she barely had the energy to move her lips.

“How did my father have your number?”

He seemed to be frozen in mid-gesture, looking at her, frown lines deep on his forehead.

“What now?” he said, his body very still. “How’d your father—”

“He called you up and told me to meet him at Tifft. You passed on the message. How did he have your number?”

The Reverend shook his head. “He must have looked me up. I’m in—”

“I checked his cell phone records; the bill arrived yesterday. He didn’t. He dialed your number directly.”

“Maybe he had it written—”

He realized the mistake then, and he smiled.

“He had it because you knew each other. Your phone number hasn’t changed in thirty years, I’ll bet.”

“The Lord kept me where I was needed.”

“Your phone number hasn’t changed, has it?”

“No, Absalom, it hasn’t.”

“Who did he trade O’Halloran for?”

His gaze left her eyes and fell to the armchair. He seemed to be on the verge of speaking, and then he stopped and looked at her.

“Absalom, what are you talking—”

She shook her head.
I will not cry
, she told herself.

“No,” she said. “You tell me now. A biker was killed in Niagara Falls in 1982, the same year I was adopted by my father. The same year that O’Halloran was brought across the border. I think O’Halloran killed that biker, and the Clan traded someone to get him back. Who did my father trade for O’Halloran?”

The Reverend’s eyes were deep, flickering with the amber light.

“Why, you.”

Abbie shook her head again.

“Who did he give the Outlaws? Who did
you
give?”

The Reverend exhaled loudly. He began to knit one hand into the other, the powerful hands kneading the flesh over and over.

“You could never understand, Absalom, as bad as you want to. You’ll never understand it.”

“The name, Reverend.”

He dropped his hands, rubbing the lines of his forehead, before looking up at her. She had never seem him so depleted, so old looking.

“His name was Michael.”

“Michael who?”

“Michael Minton. Your brother.”

Her eyes closed and she rocked forward once in the chair. She felt if she didn’t move, she would explode.

“Michael. Like the archangel Michael. My mother opened the Bible for that name, too, like she did for mine?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know her then. But she came to me for help with Michael, when he was starting down his path.”

“My brother. My only brother.” Her voice was shaking.

He studied his hands.

“By the time you were born, you wouldn’t have wanted to know Michael. He was twelve years older than you and headed to hell by the fast road—”

“He was only fourteen years old when you sent him away?
Fourteen?
” Her hand was pressed to her mouth.

She stared at the Reverend, waiting for his objection, but instead he looked pleadingly at her.

“Do you know how beautiful a child you were, Absalom? How
bright
, even at two years old? I told your mother I’d never met a child with such intelligence in her eyes. Never in my life.”

“What happened to my brother?”

“You had more promise at two years old than most of those City Mission kids have at twenty-five. I said so then and I was right. I wanted one child to have a chance. Can you understand that?”

He stood up and turned his back to her, staring at the books on the shelf as he spoke.

“When Michael was about fourteen, things started happening in the neighborhood. First we started finding cats left in alleyways. Without their heads. I recall about four of them.”

He turned to look at her.

“They’d been tortured. Their fur burned off by a cigarette lighter while they were alive.”

Abbie’s eyes narrowed. “And you traced them to Michael?”

“The cats turned up dead near where he stayed.”

“That’s it? No one ever saw him abusing the cats?”

“No, Absalom. But there was more. The fires.”

“What fires?”

“We had an arsonist loose around here in ’81, ’82. Abandoned buildings mostly, plenty of them to use as kindling wood. But some occupied ones, too. The person would put some old newspapers and
cardboard boxes and some lighter fluid in the basement and light ’em up. Two of the places where Michael had been staying were burnt out.”

“You have no proof he did it. And, yes, fire-starting and torture of small animals are two early traits shared by serial killers. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“I learned that.”

“But they could also be the signs of abuse. Disturbed children do the same things. He wasn’t a serial killer at fourteen, Reverend.”

“Maybe not. But then there were the robberies.”

“What robberies?”

“Bad ones, push-in robberies, you know. His victims were terrified, Absalom.”

He turned.

“They said the young man had this look in his eyes.”

“A look in his eyes. Because he wore a ski mask, didn’t he?”

“How did you know that?”

Abbie said nothing, only closed her eyes.

“They told me about how he was almost disappointed to find their little stashes of money,” the Reverend continued, “or a bit of jewelry. Something told them that he’d come there to kill, to hurt them, and robbing was just an excuse. And his voice sounded like your brother’s.”

Abbie shot out of her chair. “This neighborhood has more ex-cons that you can throw a stick at, arsonists, robbers. Half the men on this block probably have a record. But you pinned it all on Michael.”

“I had to protect my community.”

“And what if it
was
him? He was desperate for money, his mother was a heroin addict. He was lonely and neglected. These are the signs of a boy crying out for help, not a psychotic killer.”

“When he left, the robberies stopped. They
stopped
, Absalom.”

“Even if he did everything you say, it wasn’t too late to save him. Only a tiny percentage of kids with those traits go on to kill, Reverend. It wasn’t too late.”

The Reverend turned away, back to his books.

“But you sold him to the Outlaws in exchange for some IRA assassin.”

The Reverend said nothing.

“Why did they Outlaws want a teenager? What were they going to do with him?”

“I don’t know that.”

“You
tell
me, Reverend. Why—”

“I do
not
know that. Your father told me there needed to be an exchange. If I gave him someone for the Outlaws, he would take you and give you a good home. The best schools. You ended up at Harvard, Absalom. Do you know what that meant to the people at the City Mission? One of their own at Harvard?”

Abbie stared ahead. Her face felt as if it had been jabbed with a powerful anesthetic. The only thing she felt were tears welling in her eyes.

“And so my father adopted me?”

“That’s right. To save you.”

“To save me?!” she shouted. “Don’t … you … dare.”

“Your mother was dying.
I
couldn’t take you in. No one could, no one that I trusted to see to your upbringing. I went to the foster homes that would take you in, Absalom. They were …” He covered his face with his hands. “They were
not right
for you!”

“You knew all along, didn’t you?” Abbie said.

“Knew what, my child?”

“You knew it was my brother killing all those men from the County. He was hunting them down. And you told no one.”

The Reverend nodded.

“Why?”

“I’d done enough to him.”

“And maybe, just maybe, you thought they deserved to die?”

He looked at her, his eyes colder.

“Four white men die and the city is turned upside down. We’ve had that many casualties here every six
months
for as long as I’ve been here.”

“It’s no excuse,” Abbie whispered.

He turned and slapped his palm against the desk.