Dan O'Shea - Penance

“Pissed myself,” he said.

Rusty was shrunken, hollowed out, shattered.

Lynch squatted down, got the old man under the arms, pulled him to his feet. Rusty fumbled his pants closed, leaned back against the wall, panting from the small effort, tried to hold Lynch’s eyes, white hair hanging sweaty and stringy over his fleshy face, the huge head shaking back and forth.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “Not then. Didn’t know nothin’. Not for a long time. And I never did know nothin’ for sure. I didn’t know.”

Part of Lynch wanted to bury a fist in the old man’s gut. Part of him wanted to hug him. Lynch reached up and took Rusty’s chin, steadied his face, looked into his eyes.

“You didn’t want to know, Rusty.”

The old man came apart, falling forward, Lynch holding him up while Rusty wept into his shoulder.

“Pissed myself,” Rusty muttered. “Your mother’s wake and I pissed myself.”

A kaleidoscope of emotions swirling in Lynch’s head, Lynch not knowing which of them to seize on, which of them to feel. Rusty didn’t know up front. Lynch was sure of that. Probably didn’t even have a clue for a while. And he’d made a promise to Lynch’s dad the day Declan Lynch put on the uniform. Said he’d watch out for the family, it ever came to that. He’d kept that promise, the promise maybe being the reason that, once Rusty knew there might be something, that maybe his masters had had a hand in his brother’s death, that promise being the reason he never looked, never pushed it. Rusty maybe thinking there was the truth, and then there was his brother’s family, and there was no way to serve both of them.

Now Lynch didn’t know either. Didn’t know what to say, what to think, what to feel. But he knew what his father would do.

“You’re still family, Rusty,” Lynch said, turning the old man toward the door, getting an arm around him. “Let’s get you home.”

Next morning, Cunningham stepped out his door, saw a FedEx guy with a huge box on a dolly in the front foyer.

“Hey, good timing,” the guy said. “I was just getting ready to leave. Tried the buzzer, wasn’t getting anybody. Looking for Jackson? Paperwork says unit one, so I’m guessing that’s you?”

“I’m unit one, but I’m not Jackson. He’s on four.”

“Always some damn thing,” the FedEx man said, pointing his little hand-held scanner at Cunningham and pulling the trigger. The darts were similar to a Taser, but stronger. Cunningham hit the floor in a heap, twitching. The FedEx man laid the large container flat on the floor, squatted down, opened the lid and flipped Cunningham inside. Then he pulled a small syringe out of the end of his clipboard, injected Cunningham with the sedative, and buckled the cuffs attached inside the box around Cunningham’s wrists and ankles. He clamped the top of the box shut, tipped the box up on the dolly, and walked it out the door and into his truck.

Holy Thursday, early morning.

Lynch saw Johnson drinking coffee in a booth by the window when he got to the McDonald’s on Western just north of Pratt. Her condo was on Lunt, just a bit east. Lynch picked the McDonald’s. It was close to her place and it was public. His phone beeped. He checked it. Text from Paddy Wang. Wang wanted a sit down. He forwarded it to Ferguson along with a time.

“You’re running late, Lynch,” Johnson said as he walked up. “I’m the one working on no sleep here.”

“Bus was slow.” Lynch was carrying a nylon messenger bag over his shoulder.

Johnson paused a count. “Bus?”

“Hard to follow a guy on a bus.”

“Things that bad?”

“Probably worse,” Lynch said. “C’mon, let’s take a walk. Little park near here. It’s kind of nice.”

“Let me guess. It’s hard to follow somebody in a park, too.”

Lynch smiled. But he also nodded. They grabbed some crap at the counter, walked up to Indian Boundary Park.

“What kind of name is Indian Boundary for a park?” Johnson asked.

“This was the line between the US and Pottawatomie land, some treaty after the War of 1812.”

“How long did that last?”

“I dunno. Week and a half maybe. I only know about it because they’ve got a historical marker up by the corner there. Had to check out a body next to it once, back when I was in uniform. Just some drunk, passed out one night, middle of January. Froze to death.” Lynch shrugged the bag off his shoulder held it out to Johnson. “This is for you.”

Lynch ran down what he knew. The Hurley murder-suicide back in 1971, his father’s murder, the Fishers, father and son, Clarke’s involvement, Ferguson, Chen, how they needed the press to push in this, needed her to push it, all of it.

“Jesus,” Johnson said. “My god, your father?” She stopped, turned to face him.

Lynch just nodded.

“And you never knew?”

“Still don’t know, not for sure. Not everything.”

Johnson started to say something, but Lynch held a hand up, cut her off.

“Listen, part of me didn’t want to give you this. Didn’t want you in this. These people, they’ve got no boundaries. Nobody’s off limits. Nobody. But it’s a big story, important story, and that’s what you do. So it has to be your call. Somebody’s gotta do it, but nothing says that has to be you. I don’t want it to be you. But that has to be your call.”

She stopped, turned to face him.

“You know I’m going to run with it. I have to.”

“I know.”

Another pause, then walking in silence again, Johnson talking first.

“This going to be a problem for us?” she asked.

Lynch shook his head. “You grew up with cops, you knew the risks, hell, you’ve seen me get shot. You’re still here. What am I supposed to do? Tell you to stay home and bake cookies? You love somebody, nobody says you get a free ride, that you’re gonna like everything. Can you do me a favor though?”

“What?”

“Don’t get greedy, try for some kind of exclusive on this. Spread it around a little. Make sure your editor’s up to speed, maybe loop somebody in on the TV side. You start poking and these guys think they can stuff the genie back in the bottle with one bullet, they’re gonna take the shot. You get enough people involved, then they’ll know it’s too late for that.”

Johnson nodded.

“Too much for me to handle alone anyway. I don’t have DC contacts, I’ll need the help. And trust me, I’m all about not getting shot.”

They passed the small zoo at the back of the park, most of the cages empty now, budget cuts. A lone goat looked up for a moment, went back to picking at the long grass that grew up along the edge of the fence.

Johnson nudged the bag that hung from her shoulder now. “What’s all this got to do with the killings now?”

“This Zeke Fisher? His kid went into the spook business, but he’s gone off the deep end. He’s on some kind of redemption mission.”

“Killing people’s children? Grandchildren? What kind of sense does that make?”

“Guy’s a nutjob. Only one it has to make sense to is him.”

Quiet again for a minute.

“The children he wants to kill. You could be one of them,” she said.

Lynch nodded. “Good thing I haven’t been to confession in thirty years.”

Johnson smiled. “I tell you what, big boy, you promise to stay out of the confessional until this is over, I’ll make sure you’ve got something really juicy to confess.” She reached down, squeezed his ass.

Lynch smiled. “Deal.”

Johnson took his hand and they walked quietly for a while, both with the sense that this could be their last good moment.