John Lescroart - Dead Irish

“Sure, it’s yours,” one of them said.

Hardy spoke up. “I’m gonna tag along.”

Griffin said, “It’s a free country.”

Steven woke up alert. The pills didn’t seem to be knocking him out as bad as they had. Or maybe it was that there was so much for him to think about. Probably that was it.

The vacuuming had stopped. He heard his mother messing around in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, emptying the dishwasher. It was something how quiet the house was with no TV or radio going, no records on, Mom not humming or singing while she worked. She’d stopped doing that, and she used to do it all the time.

In the quiet, the quiet deepened. Mom wasn’t moving at all, maybe just leaning against the counter, or sitting at the table. The telephone rang and he heard her say: “Oh, hi, Jim.” She paused. “What’s the matter?”

Steven reached for the extension phone by his bed and picked up the receiver in time to hear Father Jim saying: “… can’t believe this is happening again, right on top of…”

It sounded like he was crying.

“Mom,” Steven said, “I’m on the extension.”

“Hang up, Steven.”

“I want to talk to Father Jim.”

“He can’t talk now.”

Father said, “It’s okay. Hi, Steven.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Steven, you hang up,” his mom repeated. “You can talk when we’re finished.”

“Okay, don’t forget,” he said.

What was the boy saying?

Cavanaugh shook his head, trying to clear it. The first two black-and-white squad cars were out by the garage with a distraught Father Dietrick and a confused Father Paul. It had seemed to Cavanaugh to be an eminently logical thing to do- excuse himself to call Erin, his best friend and confidante. He’d establish, with Erin, how badly Rose’s suicide had torn him up. Especially now, hard on the heels of Eddie. So that any suspicion that he might have killed Rose would have to get around Erin’s testimony. He had figured that between Father Dietrick swearing Rose had been depressed and Erin describing how he, Cavanaugh, had been deeply hurt but not altogether surprised by the suicide, he would have covered all the bases.

So he had called Erin. But then her son wanted to talk.

And now Steven was saying to him that he knew all about it, describing it so closely it made him dizzy, as though he were about to topple from some great height. Steven sounding so much like Eddie. It was frightening, almost as though Eddie had come back to haunt him. And all of it whispered, not wanting Erin to hear.

He looked out at the garage again. Six men in uniform-four cops and two priests. A paramedic’s van, or the coroner’s, pulled into the driveway, went past the kitchen and continued out over the asphalt.

Steven was saying: “You know?”

He had to ask what. It was all about Steven understanding and having to tell Erin, all coming out jumbled, or sounding that way to him. Words in a torrent that was drowning him. Steven might even be making a point, but it was blunted by his own onset of panic.

All he knew was that once again, after having to do what he did to Rose…

He couldn’t think about that. Even for a minute. This was Steven Cochran, Eddie’s brother. He couldn’t do that to Erin another time. No, he couldn’t. If he did, that would really be the end of it.

But if he didn’t, it would all come out, and he could never ever see Erin again.

He heard himself saying, after Steven had finished, “Can I talk to your mother again?”

“You’re not going to tell her now, are you?”

“Steven, come on,” he said, putting a light edge on it, “I promised.”

Did he? It would have been seconds ago, but he didn’t remember.

He stretched his neck to look out to the street. Dietrick had parked in front of the rectory, not in the back where all the commotion was. The spare keys to that car hung on the same peg by the kitchen door that the spare garage key had hung on.

Then Erin’s voice: “Jim?”

He could easily explain when he got back that he’d just needed to clear his head, take a walk.

“Listen, I know this is an imposition but…” He struggled with the words. “But if you could come over here? I’m all… I don’t know. It would help me a lot.”

She didn’t answer right away. He didn’t wonder she thought about it-another suicide so close on the heels of her son. But when Erin was needed she came through. Except in one thing, for him. But he wasn’t thinking about that now.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “forget it. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s not fair to you.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said, covering, white-lying. “I was just thinking about Steven.” He said nothing, letting her work on herself. “All right, Jim. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

As soon as he hung up he took Dietrick’s spare keys from the peg, walked through the rectory and out the front door. The car, a year-old Honda Accord, started right away. The drive to the Cochrans’ took under three minutes. If he hurried and timed it right, he could take care of things and be back here in fifteen.

FATHER PAUL sat on the asphalt in the shade thrown by the garage, his back up against the building. Father Dietrick had propped himself up on the hood of one of the police cars and sat as though sleeping, his arms crossed over his cassock.

Once, in his second mission, Father Paul had come to his destination, a village of Tukuna Indians just outside of Tabatinga where Brazil met Peru (as though the national boundaries made any difference that far up the Amazon). He had arrived, alone, in time to witness the public execution of a thief, where in a carnival atmosphere most of the men of the tribe gathered around in a circle, keeping the condemned man inside their perimeter, closing in and beating him with heavy sticks, poking at his face, his eyes and throat, his groin. When the man finally went down, everybody, male and female-from the smallest child to the oldest grandmother-took a turn swatting at the prostrate figure until he wasn’t much more than a smear on the dusty and rutted road.

Something about his timing, he thought. His bowels were hurting from the airplane food, and the culture shock here, with ubiquitous death here, too, in this civilized place, was almost harder to take than that execution had been. These trips home to ask for money-one every blessed two years-were supposed to recharge his batteries. Food, wine, conversation, a surcease from the endless monotony and misery of the bush.

But too much time in the bush, Father Paul was beginning to realize, and it got inside you. All these trappings of civilization- the asphalt, the beautiful church, the grass on the lawns, cars, clothes, everything-were just artifacts. Not necessarily phony but inessential to what was most human-the coping with mortality, the fear of being alone, the need to love.

He missed his woman, Sarita, badly.

But that was, in theory, why they sent you home-so that you didn’t become one of the tribe. So you remembered what it was you were trying to do, which was bring the message of Jesus Christ to impoverished people and somehow convince them, since there was no hope in changing their situation, that there was at least nobility and holiness in it.

Father Paul sighed, sweating even in the shade. He feared he was losing his faith in God, that he might even already be a Marxist. Coming upon a death like this, in the first moments of what was supposed to be a vacation, had the strength of a message, and the message was: “Don’t get too caught up in what looks like the security of the civilized world. The whole thing is pretty tenuous.”

He got up. In the garage no one had moved the woman. Even though there were four policemen in uniform and three medical people of some kind, no one seemed inclined to do anything. The officials stood around in two groups, making chitchat.