Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

Siobhan’s nod was barely perceptible.

“So he destroys Karen because she’s the heir.”

Another tiny nod.

Angie took a drag off her cigarette, considered it. “But, wait, impersonating Wesley Dawe would only get him so far. Even if the Dawes die and the circumstances don’t seem suspicious, they’re not leaving their fortune to a son they haven’t seen in ten years. And even if-even if -they did, Pearse’s impersonation of Wesley is limited. It’s not going to pass muster with estate lawyers.”

Siobhan watched her carefully.

“But,” Angie said, going really slowly now, “if he destroys Christopher Dawe, he’ll still gain nothing.”

Siobhan used Angie’s matches to light her own cigarette.

“Unless,” Angie said, “he’s gained access to…Carrie Dawe.”

The name fell from her mouth and seemed to drop on the table between us as heavily as a plate.

“That’s it,” Angie said. “Isn’t it? He and Carrie are in on it together.”

Siobhan flicked her ash into the ashtray. “No. You were so close there for a moment, Miss Gennaro.”

“Then…?”

“She knows him as Timothy McGoldrick,” Siobhan said. “They’ve been lovers for eighteen months. She has no idea he’s the same man who destroyed Karen and wants to destroy her husband.”

“Shit,” I said. “We had the picture of him and she wasn’t home.”

Angie kicked the floorboard of the booth with her heel. “We should have gone to the damn country club with it.”

Siobhan’s tiny eyes had grown large. “You have a picture of him?”

I nodded. “Several.”

“Oh, he won’t like that. He won’t like that at all.”

I shivered and wagged my fingers at her. “Oooh.”

She frowned. “You have no idea what his rage is like, Mr. Kenzie.”

I leaned into the table. “Let me tell you something, Siobhan. I don’t give a shit about his rage. I don’t give a shit how magnetic he is. I don’t give a shit if he can look into your soul and my soul and has God’s phone number on speed dial. He’s a psycho? Yes. He’s a Special Forces bad-ass who can do spin kicks that can rip your head off your neck? Good for him. He destroyed a woman who never wanted more out of life than to be happy and drive a fucking Camry. He turned a guy into a vegetable just for fun. He cut off another guy’s hands and tongue. And he poisoned a dog who I happened to have liked. A lot. You want to see rage?”

Siobhan had pressed her shoulders and head as far back as possible into the red imitation leather behind her. She glanced nervously at Angie.

Angie smiled. “It takes a lot, but once he gets revved up, honey?” She shook her head. “Pack up the kids and get out of town, because Main Street’s going to explode.”

Siobhan glanced back in my direction. “He’s smarter than you,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “He’s had the advantage of access. Now I do, too. I’m in his life now,” I said. “I’m in it up until the very end.”

She shook her head. “You have no idea what you’re…” She dropped her eyes, continued to shake her head.

“No idea of what?” Angie asked.

She raised her eyes and her head stopped moving. “What you’re truly up against, what you really walked into.”

“So tell us.”

“Ah, thank you, no.” She placed her cigarettes in her purse. “I’ve given you all I care to. I trust you won’t call me to the attention of your INS friend. And I wish you both the best, though I don’t think it’ll help.”

She stood, slid the bag strap over her shoulder.

“Why did Pearse have to be so merciless with Karen?” I asked.

She looked down at me. “I just told you. She was the only heir.”

“I understand that. But why not just have her meet with an accident? Why destroy her piece by piece?”

“That’s his method.”

“That’s not method,” I said. “That’s abhorrence. Why did he hate her so bad?”

She held out her arms, seemingly exasperated. “He didn’t. He barely knew her until Miles introduced them three months before she died.”

“So why do all that to her?”

Her hands clapped her outer thigh. “I told you-it’s his way.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s all I have for you.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “Big chunks of this don’t add up, Siobhan.”

She rolled her eyes, exhaled a weary sigh. “Well, that’s the thing about us criminal types, yeah, Mr. Kenzie? We tend to be a bit untrustworthy.”

She turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’ve a friend in Canton. I’ll stay with her for a bit.”

“How do we know you’re not going straight to Pearse?”

She gave us a wry grin. “The moment I didn’t arrive on the train into Boston, they knew you’d gotten to me. I’m a weak link now, aren’t I? And Pearse doesn’t like weak links.” She bent for her overnight bag, lifted it off the floor. “Not to worry. No one knows about my friend in Canton, except for you two. I’ll have at least a week before anyone has the time to go looking for me, and by then, I expect you’ll have all killed each other.” Her flat eyes twinkled. “Have a nice day now, won’t you?”

She walked to the door, and Angie said, “Siobhan.”

“Yeah?” She grasped the door handle.

“Where’s the real Wesley?” Angie asked.

“I don’t know.” She wouldn’t look at us.

“Guess.”

“Dead,” she said. She still didn’t meet our eyes.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “He outlived his usefulness, yeah? We all do where Scott is concerned, sooner or later.”

She opened the door and stepped out into the parking lot. She walked toward the bus stop on Main without a look back, just a steady shake of her small head, as if simultaneously bitter and bemused by the choices that had led her here.

“She said ‘they,’” Angie said. “You notice that? ‘They knew you’d gotten to me.’”

“I noticed,” I said.

Carrie Dawe’s face cracked in on itself as if it had been hit in the center with an ax.

She didn’t weep. She didn’t cry out or scream or move much at all as she looked down at the photo of Pearse we’d placed on the coffee table in front of her. Her face merely folded inward and her breath turned shallow.

Christopher Dawe was still at the hospital, and the great empty house felt cold and haunted around us.

“You know him as Timothy McGoldrick,” Angie said. “Correct?”

Carrie Dawe nodded.

“What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a…” She swallowed, snapped her eyes away from the photo and curled into herself on the couch. “He said he was an airline pilot for TWA. Hell, we met in an airport. I saw his IDs, a route schedule update or two. He was based out of Chicago. It fit. He has the trace of a midwestern accent.”

“You want to kill him,” I said.

She looked at me, eyes wide, then dropped her chin.

“Of course you do,” I said. “Is there a gun in the house?”

She kept her chin pressed to her chest.

“Is there a gun in the house?” I repeated.

“No,” she said quietly.

“But you have access to one,” I said.

She nodded. “We have a house in New Hampshire. For ski season. There are two there.”

“What kind?”

“Excuse me?”

“What kind, Mrs. Dawe?”

“A handgun and a rifle. Christopher sometimes hunts in the late autumn.”

Angie reached out, put a hand over Carrie Dawe’s. “If you kill him, he still wins.”

Carrie Dawe laughed. “How’s that?”

“You’re destroyed. Your husband is destroyed. Most of the fortune, I’ll bet, will go to your criminal defense.”