Mystic River (37 page)

“Tell me,” Jimmy said.

Dave told as close to the truth as he could. “I saw her in McGills that night, and she reminded me of a dream I’ve had.”

“About what?” Jimmy said, and his face crumbled, his voice cracked.

“Youth,” Dave said.

Jimmy hung his head.

“I don’t remember having one,” Dave said. “And she was the dream of it, and I just snapped, I guess.”

It killed him to say this to Jimmy, to tear him with this, but Dave just wanted to get home and get his head right and see his family, and if this was what it took, he was going to do it. He was going to make things right. And a year from now, when the real killer had been caught and convicted, Jimmy would understand his sacrifice.

“Some part of me,” he said, “never got out of that car, Jim. Just like you said. Some other Dave came back to the neighborhood in Dave’s clothing, but he wasn’t Dave. Dave’s still in the basement. You know?”

Jimmy nodded, and when he raised his head, Dave could see that his eyes were damp and shiny and filled with compassion, maybe even love.

“It was the dream, then?” Jimmy whispered.

“It was the dream, yeah,” Dave said, and felt the cold of his lie spread through his stomach and grow so cold that he
thought it might have been hunger, having emptied his insides just minutes before into the Mystic Rive. It was a different cold, though, different than any he’d ever felt before. A freezing cold. So cold, it was almost hot. No, it was hot. It was on fire now and licking its way down through his groin and up through his chest, sucking the air out of him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Val Savage jump in the air and shout, “Yes! That’s what
I’m
talking about!”

He looked in Jimmy’s face. Jimmy, his lips moving too slowly and too quickly at the same time, said, “We bury our sins here, Dave. We wash them clean.”

Dave sat down. He watched the blood leak out of him and onto his pants. It was pouring from him, and when he put his hand to his abdomen, his fingers touched a crevice that ran from one side to the other.

He said, You lied.

Jimmy bent down over him. “What?”

You lied.

“See his fucking lips moving?” Val said. “He’s moving his lips.”

“I got eyes, Val.”

Dave felt the knowledge sweep over him then, and it was the ugliest knowledge he’d ever faced. It was mean and indifferent. It was callous, and it was merely this: I am dying.

I cannot come back from this. I cannot cheat or slide away from this. I cannot beg my way out or hide behind my secrets. I cannot expect a reprieve based on sympathy. Sympathy from who? No one cares. No one cares. Except me. I care. I care a lot. And this isn’t fair. I can’t handle that tunnel alone. Please don’t let me go there. Please wake me up. I want to wake up. I want to feel you, Celeste. I want to feel your arms. I’m not ready.

He forced his eyes to focus as Val handed Jimmy something and Jimmy lowered it to Dave’s forehead. It was cool. It was a circle of cool, of kindness and relief from the burning in his body.

Wait! No. No, Jimmy! I know what that is. I can see the
trigger. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. Look at me. See me. Don’t do this. Please. If you get me to a hospital I’ll be all right. They’ll fix me up. Oh God Jimmy don’t you do that with your finger don’t you do that I lied I lied please don’t take me away from this please don’t I can’t prepare for a bullet in my brain. No one can. No one. Please don’t.

Jimmy lowered the gun.

Thank you, Dave said. Thank you, thank you.

Dave lay back and saw the shafts of light streaming across the bridge, cutting through the black of night, glowing. Thank you, Jimmy. I’m going to be a good man now. You’ve taught me something. You have. And I’ll tell you what that something is as soon as I’ve caught my breath. I’m going to be a good father. I’m going to be a good husband. I promise. I swear…

Val said, “So, okay. It’s done.”

Jimmy looked down at Dave’s body, the canyon he’d cut in his abdomen, the bullet hole he’d fired through his forehead. He kicked off his shoes and took off his jacket. Next, he removed the turtleneck and khakis he’d stained with Dave’s blood. He shed the nylon running suit he’d worn underneath and added it to the pile beside Dave’s body. He heard Val place the cinder blocks and length of chain in Huey’s boat, and then Val came back with a large green trash bag. Underneath the running suit, Jimmy wore a T-shirt and jeans, and Val pulled a pair of shoes from the trash bag and tossed them to him. Jimmy slid them on and checked the T-shirt and jeans for any blood that might have leaked through. But there was none. Even the jogging suit was barely stained.

He knelt by Val and stuffed his clothes into the bag. Then he took the knife and the gun to the edge of the wharf and threw them one at a time out into the center of the Mystic River. He could have placed them in the bag with his clothes, tossed them off the boat later along with Dave’s body, but for some reason he needed to do it now, to experience the motion of his arm as it shot out into the air and the
weapons spiraled, arced, plummeted, and sank with soft splashes.

He knelt over the water. Dave’s vomit had long since floated away, and Jimmy plunged his hands into the river, oily and polluted as it was, and washed his hands of Dave’s blood. Sometimes, in his dreams, he was doing this very thing—washing himself in the Mystic—when Just Ray Harris’s head would pop back up, stare at him.

Just Ray always said the same thing. “You can’t outrun a train.”

And Jimmy, confused, said, “No one can, Ray.”

Just Ray, starting to sink again, smiled. “You in particular, though.”

Thirteen years of those dreams, thirteen years of Ray’s head bobbing on the water, and Jimmy still didn’t know what the hell he meant by that.

B
RENDAN’S MOTHER
had gone out to Bingo by the time he got home. She left a note: “Chicken in fridge. Glad you’re okay. Don’t make a habit of it.”

Brendan checked his and Ray’s room, but Ray was out, too, and Brendan took a chair from the kitchen and placed it down in front of the butler’s pantry. He stepped up on the chair and it sagged to the left where one of the legs was missing a bolt. He looked at the ceiling slat and saw the smudge marks of fingers in the dust, and the air directly in front of his eyes began to swim with tiny dark specks. He pressed his right palm against the slat, lifted it slightly. He brought his hand down, wiped it on his pants, and took several breaths.

There were some things you didn’t want to know the answers to. Brendan had never wanted to run into his father once he was grown because he didn’t want to look in his father’s face and see how easy it had been to leave him. He’d never asked Katie about old boyfriends, even Bobby O’Donnell, because he didn’t want to picture her lying on top of someone else, kissing him the way she kissed Brendan.

Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in the face or live with the comfort of ignorance or lies. And ignorance and lies were often underrated. Most people Brendan knew
couldn’t make it through the day without a saucerful of ignorance and a side of lies.

But this, this truth had to be faced. Because he’d already faced it in the holding cell, and it had sliced through him like a bullet and lodged in his stomach. And it wasn’t coming out, which meant he couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t tell himself it wasn’t there. Ignorance was not a possibility. Lying was no longer an accessible part of the equation.

“Shit,” Brendan said, and pushed the ceiling slat aside and reached back into the darkness, his fingers touching dust and chips of wood and more dust, but no gun. He felt around up there for another full minute, even though he knew it was gone. His father’s gun, and it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was out in the world, and it had killed Katie.

He put the slat back in place. He got a dustpan and swept up the dust that had fallen to the floor. He took the chair back to the kitchen. He felt a need to be precise in his movements. He felt it was important that he remain calm. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and placed it on the table. He sat down in the chair with the sagging leg and turned so that he was looking at the door in the center of the apartment. He took a sip of his orange juice and waited for Ray.

“L
OOK AT THIS
,” Sean said, pulling the latent prints file from the box and opening it in front of Whitey. “That’s the cleanest one they pulled off the door. It’s small because it’s a kid’s.”

Whitey said, “Old Lady Prior heard two kids playing on the street just before Katie banged her car up. Playing with hockey sticks, she said.”

“She said she heard Katie say ‘Hi.’ Maybe it wasn’t Katie. A little kid’s voice could sound like a woman’s. And no footprints? Of course not. What do they weigh—a hundred pounds?”

“You recognize that kid’s voice?”

“Sounded a lot like Johnny O’Shea’s.”

Whitey nodded. “The other kid not saying anything at all.”

“Because he can’t fucking speak,” Sean said.

“H
EY
, R
AY
,” Brendan said as the two boys entered the apartment.

Ray nodded. Johnny O’Shea waved. They started heading back toward the bedroom.

“Come on in here a sec, Ray.”

Ray looked at Johnny.

“Just a second, Ray. I got something I want to ask you.”

Ray turned and Johnny O’Shea dropped the gym bag he’d been carrying and sat on the edge of Mrs. Harris’s bed. Ray came down the short hall into the kitchen and held out his hands, looked at his brother like “What?”

Brendan hooked a chair with his foot and pulled it out from under the table, nodded at it.

Ray’s head tilted up as if he smelled something in the air, a scent he wasn’t fond of. He looked at the chair. He looked at Brendan.

He signed, “What did I do?”

“You tell me,” Brendan said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“So sit down.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

Ray shrugged.

Brendan said, “Who do you hate, Ray?”

Ray looked at him like he was nuts.

“Come on,” Brendan said. “Who do you hate?”

Ray’s sign was brief: “Nobody.”

Brendan nodded. “Okay. Who do you love?”

Ray gave him that face again.

Brendan leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Who do you love?”

Ray looked down at his shoes, then up at Brendan. He raised his hand and pointed at his brother.

“You love me?”

Ray nodded, fidgeting.

“What about Ma?”

Ray shook his head.

“You don’t love Ma?”

Ray signed, “Don’t feel one way or the other.”

“So I’m the only person you love?”

Ray thrust his small face out and scowled. His hands flew. “
Yes
. Can I go now?”

“No,” Brendan said. “Have a seat.”

Ray looked down at the chair, his face red and angry. He looked up at Brendan. He raised his hand and extended his middle finger, and then he turned to walk out of the kitchen.

Brendan didn’t even realize he’d moved until he had most of Ray’s hair in his hand and was pulling him up off his feet. He pulled back with his arm as if he were pulling the cord on a rusty lawn mower, and then he opened his fingers and Ray flew backward out of his hand and over the kitchen table. He hit the wall and then dropped onto the table, brought the whole thing crashing to the floor with him.

“You love me?” Brendan said, not even looking down at his brother. “You love me so you kill my fucking girlfriend, Ray? Huh?”

That got Johnny O’Shea moving, as Brendan had figured it would. Johnny grabbed his gym bag and bolted for the door, but Brendan was all over him. He picked the little prick up by his throat and slammed him against the door.

“My brother never does anything without you, O’Shea. Never.”

He pulled back his fist and Johnny screamed, “No, Bren! Don’t!”

Brendan punched him so hard in the face he heard the nose break. And then he punched him again. When Johnny hit the floor, he curled into a ball and spit blood on the wood
and Brendan said, “I’m coming back. I’m coming back and I just might beat you to death, you piece of fucking garbage.”

Ray was standing on wobbly feet, his sneakers sliding on broken plates when Brendan came back in the kitchen and slapped him so hard across the face he knocked him into the sink. He grabbed his brother by the shirt, Ray looking into his face with tears streaming from his hate-filled eyes and blood smearing his mouth, and Brendan threw him to the floor and spread his arms and knelt on them.

“Speak,” Brendan said. “I know you can. Speak, you fucking freak, or I swear to God, Ray, I’ll kill you. Speak!” Brendan shouted, and brought his fists down into Ray’s ears. “Speak! Say her name! Say it! Say ‘Katie,’ Ray. Say ‘Katie’!”

Ray’s eyes went foggy and dull and he spit some blood up onto his own face.

“Speak!” Brendan screamed. “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t!”

He grabbed his brother by the hair along his temples and pulled his head off the floor, shook it from side to side until Ray’s eyes focused again and Brendan held his head still and looked deep into those gray pupils, saw so much love and hate in there that he wanted to rip his brother’s head clean off and throw it out the window.

He said it again, “Speak,” but this time it came out in a hoarse, strangled whisper. “Speak.”

He heard a loud cough and looked behind him, saw Johnny O’Shea on his feet, spitting blood down onto the floor, Ray senior’s gun in his hand.

S
EAN AND
W
HITEY
were coming up the stairs when they heard the racket, someone screaming in the apartment and the unmistakable snaps of flesh hitting flesh. They heard a man scream, “I’ll fucking kill you!” and Sean had his hand on his Glock as he reached for the doorknob.

Whitey said, “Wait,” but Sean had already turned the knob, and he stepped into the apartment and saw a gun pointed at his chest from six inches away.

“Hold it! Don’t pull that trigger, kid!”

Sean looked into the bloody face of Johnny O’Shea and what he saw there scared the shit out of him. There was nothing there. Probably never had been. The kid wouldn’t pull the trigger because he was angry or because he was scared. He’d pull the trigger because Sean was just a six-foot-two video image, and the gun was a joystick.

“Johnny, you need to point that gun at the floor.”

Sean could hear Whitey’s breathing from the other side of the threshold.

“Johnny.”

Johnny O’Shea said, “He fucking punched me. Twice. Broke my nose.”

“Who?”

“Brendan.”

Sean looked to his left, saw Brendan standing in the kitchen doorway, hands down by his side, frozen. Johnny O’Shea, he realized, had been about to shoot Brendan when Sean came through the door. He could hear Brendan’s breath, shallow and slow.

“We’ll arrest him for that if you want.”

“Don’t want him fucking arrested. I want him dead.”

“Dead’s a big thing, Johnny. Dead’s never coming back, you know?”

“I know,” the kid said. “I fucking know all about that. You going to use that?” The kid’s face was a mess, blood pouring from that broken nose and dripping off his chin.

Sean said, “What?”

Johnny O’Shea nodded at Sean’s hip. “That gun. It’s a Glock, right?”

“It’s a Glock, yeah.”

“Glocks kick ass, man. I’d like to get me one of those. So you going to use it?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. You going to draw on me?”

Sean smiled. “No, Johnny.”

Johnny said, “The fuck you smiling for? Draw on me. We’ll see what happens. It’ll be cool.” He thrust the gun out, his arm straight, the muzzle maybe an inch from Sean’s chest now.

Sean said, “I’d say you got the drop on me, partner. Know what I mean?”

“Got the drop, Ray,” Johnny called. “On a fucking cop, dude. Me! Check it out.”

Sean said, “Let’s not let this get out—”

“Saw this movie once, right? Cop’s chasing this black guy on a roof? Nigger threw his ass
off
. Cop’s like all ‘Aaagh’ and shit the whole way down. Nigger’s so bad-ass he don’t
care
the cop got the wife and little shits at home. Nigger’s that cool, man.”

Sean had seen this before. Back when he was in uniform and sent as crowd control on a bank robbery gone bad, the guy inside gradually growing stronger for a two-hour period, feeling the power of the gun in his hand and the effect it had, Sean watching him rant and rave over the monitor hooked up to the bank cameras. At the start, the guy had been terrified, but he’d gotten over that. Fell in love with that gun.

And for one moment, Sean saw Lauren looking over at him from the pillow, one hand pressed to the side of her head. He saw his dream daughter, smelled her, and thought what a shitty thing it would be to die without meeting her or seeing Lauren again.

He focused on the empty face before him. He said, “You see that guy to your left, Johnny? The one in the doorway?”

Johnny’s eyes darted fast to his left. “Yeah.”

“He
doesn’t
want to shoot you. He doesn’t.”

“Don’t care if he does,” Johnny said, but Sean could see it got to the kid, his eyes getting rabbity now, jerking up and down.

“But if you shoot me, he has no choice.”

“Ain’t afraid of dying.”

“I know that. Thing is, though? He won’t shoot you in the head or nothing. We don’t kill kids, man. But if he shoots you from where he’s standing, you know where that bullet’s going to go?”

Sean kept his eyes on Johnny, even though his head seemed to be magnetized to the gun in the kid’s hand, wanting to look down on it, see where the trigger was, if the kid was pulling on it at all, Sean thinking, I don’t want to get shot, and I definitely don’t want to get shot by a
kid
. He couldn’t think of a more pathetic way to go. He could feel Brendan, ten feet to his left and frozen, probably thinking the same thing.

Johnny licked his lips.

“It’s going to go through your armpit and into your spine, man. It’s going to paralyze you. You’ll be like those kids on those Jimmy Fund commercials. You know the ones. Sitting in the wheelchair, all frozen up on one side, head hanging off the chair. You’ll be a drooler, Johnny. People will have to hold the cup up beside your head so you can suck from the straw.”

Johnny made up his mind. Sean could see it, as if a light had clicked off in the kid’s dark brain, and Sean felt the fear seize him now, knew this kid was going to pull the trigger if only to hear the sound.

“My fucking
nose
, man,” Johnny said, and turned toward Brendan.

Sean heard his own breath pop out of his mouth in surprise, and he looked down to see that gun sweeping away from his body, as if revolving on top of a tripod. He reached out so fast it was as if someone else was controlling his arms, and closed his hand over the gun as Whitey stepped into the room, Glock pointed at the kid’s chest. A sound came out of the kid’s mouth—a gasp of defeated surprise as if he’d opened a Christmas present to find a soiled gym sock inside—and Sean pushed the kid’s forehead back against the wall and stripped the gun from him.

Sean said, “Mother
fucker
,” and blinked at Whitey through the sweat in his eyes.

Johnny started to cry the way only a thirteen-year-old could, as if the whole world was sitting on his face.

Sean turned him to the wall and pulled his hands behind his back, saw Brendan finally take a deep breath, his lips and arms trembling, Ray Harris standing behind him in a kitchen that looked like it had been hit by a cyclone.

Whitey stepped up behind Sean, put a hand on his shoulder. “How you doing?”

“Kid was going to
do
it,” Sean said, feeling the sweat that drenched every inch of his clothes, even his socks.

“No, I wasn’t,” Johnny wailed. “I was just kidding.”