Fall Guy (25 page)

I still don't understand,” Maggie said. “How did Francis find Tim after all those years?”

“Internet search, perhaps. I tried it. Tim's name showed up twenty-seven times in newspaper articles. There are also national phone directories. Tim had a driver's license, so the Department of Motor Vehicles had a record of his whereabouts. But my guess is that he found out from his parents.”

“Simple as that?”

I nodded.

We were sitting in the backyard, Dashiell lying across my foot, not taking any chances that I might leave when he wasn't paying attention.

“I think he stayed in touch with your aunt and uncle all along. He was too hung up on family not to have done that. But since they had said he'd become a monk, they wouldn't be telling anyone anything to the contrary—that he'd been in jail, perhaps, or that he was living as a drifter with occasional jobs washing dishes or delivering takeout.”

“Is that what he's been doing?”

“I don't know what he's been doing. I only know what he did.”

“But why did he wait so long? I understand he couldn't do anything when he was twelve, but why wait twenty-nine long years, hold all that hatred in your heart and act on it after all that time?”

“Because of what happened with your father. I don't believe his intent was to hurt your father. My guess is he was horrified at what happened.”

“What was his intent? To get Tim into trouble? To hurt him back?”

“That's what I thought at first. But that might not have been the case. He was still a kid, a very, very troubled kid. He'd lost the two people he was closest to in all the world, his best friend and his brother. His life had been turned upside down. Worse than that, it seemed to be destroyed. I think in talking to your father he was trying to alleviate some of the pain he was feeling.”

“How? I don't understand the point of telling my father what really happened. Didn't he see that…”

I shook my head. “The point was confession. No one could fix the sorrow he felt. But maybe talking to his uncle could help with the guilt.”

“Over Joey's death?”

I nodded. “And more. When someone you're close to commits suicide, there's always the feeling that…”

“If only you'd known, you could have done something. You could have prevented it.”

I nodded.

“I know that well.”

“I know you do, Maggie. It was a heavy burden to grow up with.”

“So Francis was only trying to help himself to feel better. He thought my father would be able to help him live with it,” she said. “But it didn't turn out the way he expected it to.”

“No, it didn't.”

“Once my father knew what had truly happened that day,
he
couldn't find a way to live with it, to live with himself.”

“That's what I think, too.”

“Because if one of his sons killed the other, what kind of a father could he have been?”

And what kind of a man? I thought. When he learned he'd failed to protect those who needed him most, his own children, how could he have lived with himself another day?

“And after your father's suicide,” I said, “no way was Francis going to take the chance of being the cause of your mother's death, too.”

“By killing Tim while she was alive.”

“Exactly. My guess is that when his parents told him that your mother was sick, that's when he began to stalk Tim in earnest. That's when he moved close by and began watching the apartment, when he befriended Parker, when he readied himself for what he would do once your mother was gone.”

Dashiell had gotten up and put his chin on Maggie's lap. Absentmindedly, she stroked his head.

“And all those years, while he was waiting, the hatred he felt never diminished.”

“No. It festered.”

She turned away, then swiped at her cheeks
with the palms of her hands. When she turned back, her face was determined, her lips tight.

“Why didn't he just leave, after he'd killed Timothy? Why stay around? Wasn't that risky? Wasn't it stupid?”

“Rage was the only thing that made him feel good. It was the only thing that empowered him. It was all he had by then. It was his life.”

“So he stayed to keep the rage alive.”

I nodded.

“He stayed for the pleasure it gave him, the only pleasure he had. And he stayed because if he left, he'd be starting over from scratch. Perhaps he didn't have the imagination or the courage to do that, to start a whole new life.”

“Because he'd finished the old one.”

“Yes. He had.”

When I got up to go, she walked me to the car. Neither of us could speak. I put my arms around her and she held me tight. Then she bent and whispered something in Dashiell's ear. She was still standing there when we drove away.

I thought about the place where it all started, up on top of the Palisades, just a bunch of kids fooling around. And then one careless accident, one push destroyed two families.

I thought about O'Fallon, too, about how he had hidden his grief along with a lifetime of secrets. He'd carried the weight of it alone. Until now.

I pulled into the gas station right before the bridge to fill the gas tank and call Brody.

“I think I know the answer to that question now,” I said.

“What question?”

“What Tim wanted me to do for him, why he chose me for this.”

He waited.

“When it was all over, whenever that was going to be, he wanted someone to understand.”

“What he'd done?”

“And how he'd tried to make up for it by taking in men who might have been his brother, had his brother lived. I think he was hoping that someone, that one other human being, would know it all and then forgive him,” I said. “Because he was never able to do that himself.”

They'd tried, each of them, in their own way, to find a way to live despite what had happened at Breyer's Landing, and only Maggie was left now. I wondered if she was strong enough to let it go, to decide to live in spite of it.

Driving across the George Washington Bridge, I could see the Palisades in the rearview mirror, harsh and rocky, rising up from the Hudson. Toward my right the river, flowing toward the ocean, looked calm, the sun painting the ripples of water with quick, graceful strokes of silver. And beyond, the city, tall and strong against the bright summer sky, tapering toward downtown, where in the year that Joey O'Fallon was pushed to his death by his own brother, the World Trade Center had been completed.

For the generous sharing of information about cadaver dog training, I thank Bill McGlynn of the Rochester NYPD; Carla Collins, K9 training director of Search One Rescue Team of Texas; and retired bloodhound handler Gina Lyn Hayes. For being a constant resource about police work, my gratitude to Lieutenant Detective Commander, NYPD, Peter C. Fenty.

I would also like to thank Anita LaTorre, Philip Levy, Stephen Solomita, Barbara Jaye Wilson, JoAnn Fleming, Victoria Joubert, Beth Adelman, Wayde Vickrey and my sweetheart, Stephen Lennard, for information, advice and general shoring up.

No book is as good as it could be without an eagle-eyed editor. I thank Trish Grader for this and for her generosity. This story wouldn't have become a book without my agent, Gail Hochman, miracle worker. I thank their able assistants as well, Erin Richnow at Morrow and Joanne Brownstein at Brandt and Hochman.

With special thanks to G.D., who showed me that the dead do tell tales. And to Dexter and Flash—no words can begin to cover what I owe you.