Dan O'Shea - Penance

“Along with yours, if I read things correctly.”

“Doc, my nuts have been in a vice since Vietnam. I’m used to it.”

“I think, then, that Fisher’s motivation is fairly plain. He is not, as I previously assumed, trying to balance his books, as you put it. He is trying to clear his father’s account. You’ve said before that Fisher and his father shared not only their religious zealotry but also their patriotic zeal. I now believe that killing bad men did not and does not trouble Fisher. But what may trouble him is that his father killed a good man. One can assume in the context of the Fishers’ shared patriotic mania that the black activists framed for the old murders were acceptable victims — political apostates, if you will. But the detective, this Lynch? He was a truly innocent party. Beyond innocent, even. Actually heroic. And so Fisher is harvesting innocent souls connected with Lynch’s murder and offering them to God as a holocaust in penance for his father’s sins.”

“Great,” said Weaver. “Mess of guys involved in that. How do we narrow it down?”

“The victims have to be religious. As I understand it, confession has fallen out of favor with many Catholics, so that should help. After that, some direct ancestral involvement with the act itself.”

“Marslovak barely qualified.”

“But she did. Her husband maintained his silence in order to benefit from the act. And when Fisher took Marslovak, he was also baiting his trap. Riordan would have been more overt, so he was harvested after your little tête-a-tête downstate.”

“Fisher is a tricky bastard.”

“You have to remember, Colonel, that his motivation, however demented it may appear to you, makes perfect sense to him. His pathology in no way compromises his cognitive skills or his training.”

“Swell.”

Snyder and Weaver rode in silence. Just as the plane began its descent, Snyder spoke again.

“Colonel, I am in no way competent to offer what you would consider tactical advice, but I did have a thought.”

“Shoot.”

“How droll. In any case, you told me that a Darius Cunningham is assisting Lynch the younger with his inquiries.”

“That’s who ID’d Ferguson.”

“Darius is an odd name. It sounds as though he may be an African-American.”

“He is.”

“And I assume that, with your usual passion for detail, you have a dossier on him?”

“Most of it. His father was a Kenyan national, immigrated during the Mau Mau business — seems his name was on somebody’s chop-chop list. Settled in Chicago, went into social services, got pretty political during the whole civil rights deal. Real pain in the ass for the Hurleys. He wasn’t one of the Panthers, more in the work-inside-the-system crowd, but he sure as hell played footsie with them. He was real wired in with King and the SCLC people during their fair-housing shindig in Chicago in ’66. Got roughed up pretty good during one of their marches, some kind of back injury, never came all the way back from it. Our Darius enlisted in the Marines in1968, eighteenth birthday. His old man died in ’71.”

“The same year as Lynch’s father.”

“Same month.”

“And Cunningham is a contemporary of Lynch’s?”

“Same age? Give or take.”

“Colonel, I assume that, in addition to addressing the Fisher situation, you would like to provide an alternative explanation for the killings so as to divert an investigation?”

“Ideally, yeah. But I’ll settle for Fisher in a body bag.”

“Don’t you see, Colonel? Lynch is seeking to avenge his father. Yet four other men, black men, also innocent by legal standards, died that night. Given Cunningham’s race and your talent for adjusting history, it should not be difficult to establish that Cunningham is also seeking to avenge a murder — if not his father’s then some other connection to the radicals killed in the raid. Given his father’s history, that should not prove overly difficult.”

Weaver turned and looked at Snyder for a long moment. “And Cunningham is one of the few guys in town with the skill set to have done these church killings.”

“Exactly,” Snyder said.

“Blame the whole thing on the nigger with the gun?”

“It is the American way, Colonel.”

The plane landed at O’Hare and taxied to a hangar used by the local Air Force Reserve unit. As the team unloaded, Weaver pulled aside four of his new recruits. He had to admit Clarke had gone all out, cashed in some heavy markers. These guys were on loan from Mossad.

Weaver handed a couple of files to Uri, the team leader. “Got a special job for you four. I know you don’t have much background on this whole situation, but we had a command breakdown a couple days ago. Two of our people went rogue. They still think we’re on the same side, and I want them to keep thinking that right up until you take them out. They’ve got tac support from us — money, comm. We can use the credit cards to track them and the phones to GPS em. Paravola’ll get you what you need for that. I want them off the board by tonight. Pictures, background, it’s all in the files.”

“They any good?”

“Damn good.”

The Israeli smiled. “So are we.”

“Young Lynch, after all these years, finally you honor me,” said Paddy Wang, standing behind his desk in his dark, intensely ornate office. The young Asian woman who had ushered Lynch in backed out, bowing. A tough-looking young guy in the black suit of Wang’s people stood next to the desk, eyeballing Lynch.

“Something I needed to run past you, pretty sensitive. I thought you might be able to offer some guidance,” said Lynch. “Be better if we talked alone.”

Wang turned, said something in Chinese. The man walked out past Lynch, walking closer to him than he had to, radiating threat. Wang waved toward one of the chairs in front of the desk.

Wang, sitting down, chuckled at his aide’s behavior. “To be so young and with so much need to prove oneself. Is that a blessing or a curse?”

“Probably both, like everything else,” said Lynch.

Wang laughed. “Are you sure you’re not Confucian?”

“Just don’t tell the Pope.”

“I have not yet met the new Pope, but I shall keep your secret when I do,” said Wang. “So, what concerns you, young Lynch?”

“I never know what you already know, Paddy, so I usually just figure everything,” said Lynch. “You know I’m working on these sniper shootings?”

“I have heard,” said Wang.

“The thing is, a pattern may be emerging.”

“The religious involvement?”

“A historical pattern. A potential relationship with the murder of the mayor’s father.”

“This I had not heard. How disturbing. There is evidence of this?”

“Nothing direct. Riordan’s father, of course, was very involved, helping to identify the Black Panther wannabes. The widow Marslovak? Her husband worked very closely with Stefanski at the time.”

“Ah, the man that the blacks killed along with Hurley.”

“Right. So what’s concerning me is that these shootings — so far, we have two — both have this tie back to figures associated with the killings. Clearly, the shooter has some kind of agenda, possibly a pretty powerful psychological agenda. If his target profile really is driven off that event, then the mayor may be on his list — the mayor or others close to him.”

“I understand your concern. But why come to me?”

“Come on, Paddy. I go through channels with this, it’s on the news by the weekend. I know how the Hurleys are about family. I don’t need that aggravation.”

“And it does involve your father,” said Wang. “You may be in danger too, young Lynch.”