Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

“Not this one. I slowed the Storm enough to miss him, and the oncoming cars saw me braking and slowed down themselves, so he was sitting safe on the curb by the time I looked again.”

“It was like that, except Kathleen didn’t retreat. I saw her in my headlights. That ‘cycle looked like one shiny big black bug bristling with armor. RoboRoach. Her own single headlamp almost blinded me. She swerved at the last moment to avoid a head-on collision, not because she cared about damaging any car or motorcycle, but because I’d survive it and she wouldn’t.

“We were already out of town near the Great Nothing of Darkness. She went careening off into it, then I saw her red taillight bobble like a UFO headed for Venus. It arced upward. The front wheel must have hit a pretty big impediment. The little red light sailed up and then fell down so far it disappeared. That’s when I knew that she had landed in a dry wash.”

“Was it very deep?”

“Ten, twelve feet probably. Not so deep unless you’re diving helmet first into the hard sand at seventy miles an hour.”

“You’re sure she’s dead.”

“I’m not, personally. Logically, she had to be. The person pulled out of that gully was sirened away by the EMTs, but they always have to try. Devine saw the body, and swears it was hers.”

“How close did he see it? In a viewing room like where he ID’ed his stepfather?”

“Naked on an autopsy table. It doesn’t come any more revealing than that. They’d even taken out her contactlenses. Blue-green. That was the wrinkle she developed after Ireland. Her eyes were hazel-green.”

“She meant something to you. A lot.”

He didn’t quite look at her. “Kathleen was sweet, charming. So … unspoiled compared to the Material Girls at home. So dedicated to a cause. Sean and I had to pretend it was a contest between us, winning her. But it was first love, for both of us.”

Temple kept silent, knowing from her older brothers how early boys learn to disguise softer feelings beneath a kind of brusque, rude energy.

Max went on without prompting, as if her comment had released the floodgates of the past instead of tears. “After Sean’s death, when I turned on the IRA to punish his killers, I always thought Kathleen’s apparent love had turned to hatred because I’d betrayed her cause. I always felt guilty about that, regretful that my thirst for justice, or vengeance, had come between us, that it was my fault.

“Only when Matt Devine came along recently, the ‘innocent’ ex-priest, and blithely suggested that Kathleen had set up Sean’s death did I understand that he was right, that hatred underlay everything about Kathleen, that she had charmed us into infatuation and goaded us into competition. Do you know the story of Maud Gonne?”

Temple shook her head.

“I was into everything Irish then. Maud Gonne was a beautiful nineteenth-century Irish actress, but first and always she was a relentless patriot. William Butler Yeats, the poet, fell madly in love with her, wrote plays and poems for her, said her beauty ‘belonged to poetry, to some legendary past.’ She refused all his many marriage proposals. He wasn’t as fiercely committed to the Irish cause as she required. His last poems memorialized the fruitless beauty of a bitter, angry woman.”

“When did you first start calling yourself ‘Max,’ after your string of given names?” Temple asked carefully.

His glance was tender, grateful, recognizing the intuition that had guided the seemingly irrelevant question.

“Michael Aloysius Xaviar. After … Kitty and Sean’s death and my blowing the whistle on the IRA, I needed a new identity. Max it was.”

“So you haven’t been called ‘Michael’ since.” Temple didn’t indicate “since” when.

“Not since then. Her. Until now.” He looked at her again, smiling. “It’s time to put away the things of a child, including delusions. We have more modern mysteries to solve.”

Temple decided it was also high time to let Max escape back into present conundrums. “Like why both you and she had a knack for high-tech disguise.”

“Hardly disguise, Temple. Merely effect. I guess she and I liked to stage-manage our own images. Maybe that’s what drew her to me.”

“What drew her was that you had a conscience. That’s the one thing you and Matt have in common.”

“Me, the seasoned man of magic, illusion, counterespionage? You think I have a conscience?” He spoke lightly, self-disparagingly.

“Second only to Matt’s, which is way overdeveloped. That’s why you were both her victims.”

He leaned forward to finally pick up the glass and take a long swallow. “You may be right. We’ll never know, will we?”

“Probably not. Who’s going to bury her?”

She didn’t often startle Max, but this time she had. “Hell, Devine can bury his wicked stepfather, I can do as much for Kitty the Cutter. I’ll do it.”

“How? You don’t exist.”

“It will be a challenge. And it will be a good Catholic interment, priest and all.” He savored the idea like aged whiskey. “Perhaps I can find her something white and bridal to wear, like a Communion dress. She would have loathed it. Thank you, Temple, for suggesting a ritual of closure for her, and for me.”

“Are you going to invite Matt?”

“The less he dwells on her, alive or dead, the better. Ihate to say this, but be gentle with him, Temple.” She eyed him incredulously.

Max shrugged. “He was naive and he got nothing but well-intentioned bad advice. I didn’t help him as much as I could have and I can pity anyone who’s been the object of Kathleen’s distilled ill will. It’s an inbred poison, like any venomous serpent’s. He wouldn’t let me say I’m glad she’s dead, but I am relieved she is. A lot of lives will go easier now, and who knows who would have attracted her lethal attention in the future.”

“I’ll let you say you’re glad she’s dead. Some people are destroyers. They’re just evil, like serial killers. And a lot of them are running around loose in society like ordinary people, poisoning reputations and spreading gossip and lies. I guess we can’t kill all the liars and sociopaths, but we don’t have to pretend they add anything to the world but unnecessary pain.”

“Granted. Kathleen was a disease, and she’s been cured. She must have been scaldingly unhappy to have caused so much hurt. That’s why I can be glad she’s dead. She’s better off that way, I’m sure.”

“Someone too ill to live, I’m not sure Matt would ever accept that.”

“He has to, because she is dead now. She’s gone, Temple. I can feel it, as I’ve never sensed it before. That era is over.”

“And so, where does that leave you?”

“Personally, I’m not sure yet. Professionally, as a provisionary member of the Synth.”

“You mean you can concentrate on finding out what role they’ve played in the column of murders on my table? Max, they could be as dangerous as Kitty.”

“Of course, but they’ll never have the ancient hold on me that she did. Sean is finally at rest. His murderer lies in the same dark, cold ground, the universal ground of planet earth. We are left to walk upon it until our turns come. I plan to make the most of mine.”

* Louie only ventured out from the office when Max had left, leaving the whiskey bottle for long-term interment in Temple’s liquor cupboard, which boasted one half-empty bottle of Old Crow, a vastly inferior brand.

It was like the old English ballad of the briar and the rose, Temple thought, setting the new bottle next to the resident one. Two opposites united. Like Max’s macabre and touching image of his young cousin Sean sharing Mother Earth with his conniving murderer by proxy, the youthful Kathleen O’Connor.