* * *
Five steps out the rectory’s back door, despite donning my jacket as I moved through the kitchen, I feel the same rain which had chilled me as I watched Chris walk away begin to wick against my skin again. Trickling past the collar and down my shoulders. By the time I reach my car, nosed close to the garage at the back of the driveway, I am again soaked. Still, I do not seek cover. I move around the car, looking past the cascading waters and through the windows to see if anything has been left within.
A piece of paper is on the passenger seat. I look quickly to the door—it is unlocked. A terrible habit of mine which would allow anyone access. For whatever purpose they chose.
‘
I left you something, Michael.
’
I open the driver’s door and sit behind the wheel, closing the door against the weather behind. It is as I am reaching for the piece of paper that I realize that Chris did not find the open door of my car. Did not leave what I saw through the window. Instead I find the list which had guided me in my search for James Estcek three nights before. I glance at it absently, disappointed.
Disappointed.
Not finding what Chris has left me, not knowing what it might be, for some reason has added to the already biting ache her sudden withdrawal from me brought on. I should not be this affected by something peripheral to what I have learned about Katie’s death.
Katie’s murder.
Chris has her reasons. Motivations I may never know. And I have what I have. A need to know the who and the why of the act which took my sister from us. Were what Chris left of any great importance she would have handed it to me, face to face, outside the hall. But she did not, and so I resolve to dismiss whatever it is. I fold the paper I had left in the car, pocketing it just as my cell phone rings. I fish it from the opposite pocket of my pants and look at the display—Moira Gant.
The name does not register for a moment. Then the memory of a weary woman peering past yellowed curtains rises. She is telling me she has shed the name of a worthless ex husband, but does not share what has replaced the ‘Estcek’ she has cast off. Looking at my phone now, I know the name taken by James Estcek’s mother.
And before I answer I know she is not as hard as she tried to appear. Not as dismissive or uncaring of her son. Without a word I can tell with absolute certainty that the woman calling is, simply, a mother.
“Moira…” I say as I answer. The voice that replies bears none of the caustic inflection from our first exchange. It is almost small. Afraid. Plaintive.
“Father, Jimmy needs help.” She pauses, sniffling away tears. “Please help him. Please.”
I should, at this moment, recognize the utter disconnect between what I am allowing her to plead for, and what it is I seek from her son. She begs salvation in the form she expects one of my kind can offer. Carried to its extreme, what I want of James Estcek is the polar opposite. He murdered my sister.
He murdered my sister!
I should scream that at this woman. Blare it through the electronic connection so that all pretense is erased from our nascent conversation. That would be the path of truth. Or some truth.
But I do not do or say anything of the sort. Nothing to damage the charade I have constructed to make it appear my actions are within the bounds of my calling. I cannot fool myself as I can others, but in doing so I create some insulation from my transgressions. Enough to convince myself, for now, that all this is not a choice, but an imperative.
“Is Jimmy there?” I ask Moira.
“No.” Another sniffle. Then a sob slips out. One she has tried to dam, but can no longer. Some great fear loosing it. “He’s in trouble, Father. He was on something, and he took money from me, and he went out. That stuff’s going to kill him, Father. Please help him. Please help my son.”
I should hesitate. Should appraise my actions against what I would normally do in this situation, because my transgressions now are not just against my calling, my faith, but also against this woman. This believer. And here, in this instant, I realize I am past the point of return. Beyond redemption for my actions. Whatever I do now, it is not as a man of God. It is as a pretender.
Heaven help me.
“Do you know where he went?”
I can imagine her shaking her head against the phone. There is just that much of a pause between bursts of tears and her words. Despair rising. “No. I don’t. Father, he’s not a bad boy. Help him.”
“Do you have any idea where he might go?” I press. “Did he say anything?”
She hesitates, thinking maybe. Recalling as she draws a long breath. “He said something about Jakers. I don’t know what that is.”
Who. Not what—
who
. I reach into my pocket and retrieve the paper just stuffed there, unfolding and spreading it open upon the dashboard. My eyes trace down the list of associates know by James Estcek. One jumps out, in memory first, and in stark black on white before me. Jacob Raidenburg. Known as ‘Jakers’, I had penciled in at Kerrigan’s desk. Listing his alias along with those of a half dozen others whom James Estcek ran with.
“Oh God, help my son,” Moira cries through the phone, her plea from a place so deep that, with practice, she has been able to convince herself that she is beyond caring for the flesh that was born of her.
I have my own deep place.
Had
it. Where I buried Katie without as much as a hint I was doing so. Eric tore the flimsy skin of avoidance from that place. Opened it to my world. The world as it is, not as I crafted it to be.
“Moira, I’ll try to find him,” I tell her, and she collapses into a fit of sobs so paralyzing that I can do no more than listen for a long moment. But already I am gone from this conversation. Just waiting for the chance to end the call and be on my way to find and face the man who shot my sister.
Chapter Seventeen
Trigger Time
Jacob Raidenburg occupied the top floor of a three story walk up a stone’s throw from Marquette Park. I find it just after noon, having never returned to the rectory to change yet again. I simply waited for the call with Moira to end and slipped the key in the ignition and left without a word to my colleagues. Sitting across the street from my destination now, damp clothes tacking me to the car’s upholstery, I cannot find the mental switch to bring about the motions that will carry me to do what I must. My right hand does not turn the key to kill the engine, and my left does not open the door. Instead I sit and stare past slapping wipers toward the building which is not quite a tenement, but not far off either.
Three shots. Then three more. The image plays in my mind just as it did on the computer in Kerrigan’s office. James Estcek fires first. Then Eric. Katie is gone from view after the first shot. Likely dead already.
But they shoot her more.
James Estcek pumps two more bullets into her. Blood leaps from her unseen form and dirties the glass front cold cases.
Then they leave and go on with their lives.
Three shots. And then three more. At another time I might have closed my eyes to force such images from thought. To wipe them away. But not now. They play over and over in my head, like some looped reel of horror I cannot escape. Cannot run from. Must confront.
I turn the engine off and step from the car. The rain has eased. It no longer beats the earth with relentless rhythm, but settles steadily from the brackish sky in a soft, almost soothing cadence. Tiny drops peck at my face as I move away from the car and cross the street. A car passes behind me, honking, and I realize I did not look for traffic. A second later, maybe two, and I might be sprawled on the asphalt.
All about me is careless. My blind stroll across two lanes of traffic in inclement weather. The impromptu visit I paid to Chris. A willingness to abandon the strictures of my calling.
I stop on the sidewalk before going any further. There are no second thoughts. But there is a realization that rises. Whatever comes, from this point forward, I must proceed deliberately. Reason must guide me. There can be no more impulsive dashes across town based upon phone calls from near total strangers. No more conscripting others to do what I must.
This journey is mine.
I step through a low front fence where once there was a gate, but now are just two rusting bolt where it hung. The front steps are slick, and the common front door screeches as I open and close it behind. Stairs rise before me, yellow light from ancient sconces spilling from above. Music thrums from a door to my left, and a television blares beyond the same to my right. I move away from the sound and mount the stairs, taking each step deliberately, I notice. Not because of the pact I have just made with myself to advance with care, but because, for the first time since beginning this search, I am scared.
The stairs zigzag up into the old structure. There is yelling on the second floor. As I reach the third floor landing a baby wails beyond the door to my left. To the right is my destination.
In a film this would be a moment of high drama, I presume. I would draw a breath and steel myself and pound on the door. But this is not some manufactured snippet captured to thrill, or engage. This is real. The door before me is real. And beyond it may very well be the man who murdered my sister.
My arm rises as if I am a statue. It feels thick and disconnected from the thoughts swirling in my head. I see a fist form at its end and as it taps upon the door I hear the words I will say if it should open. ‘
I’m looking for James Estcek. I’m looking for James Estcek. I’m looking for—’
I never speak those words. The door opens after a few knocks and a man stands there, though lean might be a more appropriate description, his thin form wedged between door and jamb, using both for support. His eyes are half closed, swimming in some narcotic haze. But through the glassy film that covers them I see that they are blue. And past the sunken cheeks and cratered brow I see a face that should not be familiar, but is. I am not looking at Jacob Raidenburg. I am face to face with James Estcek.
“Who are you?” he asks, not as if he is confronting a stranger. But as if his brain cannot process the visuals before him. I might be a person closest to him, but the hold his drug, or drugs, of choice has on him suspends any recognition which should come without query.
I know the answer to the question, but I still ask it. “Are you James Estcek?”
His sleepy gaze narrows quizzically at me. Perhaps, like his mother, he expects that the unknown face before him belongs to an officer of the law. But unlike her, the gaze he fixes upon me seems to discard that possibility quickly. Even addled by a pharmacopeia flowing through his veins, he knows what I am not.
“What the fuck do you want?” He slurs, an attempt at menace in his tone. But it is little more than the slothly anger of a drunk before passing out. Bluster alone.
“I’d like to talk to you,” I say.
“Yeah?” His eyes close almost fully and he snickers. “I’d like a blonde on my dick.”
The snicker builds now until he laughs, his own clever retort somehow satisfying him to the point of giddiness. But as I stand there, smelling the stench of his unbathed body and the stale sweetness of booze on his breath, all I can think, as irrational as it is, is that he is laughing at Katie. In my mind the scene in the market is suddenly edited and reshot like some bad film that cannot be fixed, and James Estcek is standing over my sister laughing as he pumps bullets into her.
Three shots. And laughter. That is what I see.
That moment. Brought to the here and now and projected before me in place of the ignorant addict.
Three shots. Right here. Right now. It is too much.
I explode, driving forward, my hands slamming against James Estcek’s chest, propelling him backward. Into the apartment where he tumbles over a table littered with empty liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia, used needles and blackened table spoons falling to the floor around him.
“What the…”
He mumbles the truncated expression as I charge in, my foot kicking the door shut behind. There is still a smirk upon his face, surprised and amused all at once, and it remains even when I grab him by his stained black sweatshirt and jerk him to his feet. His body only half supports itself, the rest seeming to hang from my grip.
“Five years ago,” I say. “Tyler Street. You and Eric Redmond in a market. You shot a girl.” I shake him, punctuating my words. No accusation in them, just conviction and certainty. “
You
shot her.”
The smile remains for a moment, then it changes. Wariness creeping in. Malice. His body shifts, leaning backward, trying to pull away. But I bunch the folds of his sweatshirt tighter in my fists and yank him close again.
“Why did you shoot her?” I ask, with as much force as I can manage, my heart racing, its thrumming a fast cadence in my ears.
He twists against my grip, a halfhearted attempt at escape that ends suddenly with a wash of foggy realization in his gaze. His head tilts back against the wall and his gaze narrows as he looks down his nose at me. “You’re no fucking cop.”
I heave him off the wall and across the space, his raggish body crashing into a collection of cinder blocks and boards, the flatscreen atop the makeshift stand tipping forward and smashing to the floor. He sluggishly tries to pull himself up, grasping for a cheap torchiere that tips away as soon as his weight bears upon it, and is face down on the threadbare carpet before he knows it. I move toward him and he rolls, scuttling away from me like an upended crab in flight. After a few feet he thuds into the wall and can only watch as I reach down and yank him up again.
“Eric said you did it for the money,” I say, a measure of menace to my voice I have never imagined myself capable of. “What money?” He twists halfheartedly to pull free until I jam the whole of his frame into the corner and lay my forearm across his throat. “Who paid you? Who paid you to kill my sister?!”
Even through the drugged stupor in whose grip James Estcek has clearly lived for some time, my words reach some internal place where a memory does exist. That memory. The flipside to mine, as it happened. Not the flat recreation on some video screen, but the moment of the act itself. The feel of the space, the sounds, the sight of Katie standing just before him. The back of her head. His gun coming up.