something in his hand.
Nothing but a blur to her unfocused retinas. “Can you help me to my car?”
“You okay?” He stopped, looked her over.
“Whatever it is will have to wait till tomorrow. Sorry” She gripped the lip of the bench, tried to stand. “Forget my car. Just drive me home. I’m so tired I feel drunk.”
Kate faltered, he caught her arm. Settled her back onto the pew. “Easy.”
He sat next to her and Kate closed her eyes. Her arm wrapped around his elbow and held on, like they were at the movies. Something slapped onto her lap, exploding her peace. An old leather folio, its cover cracked and flaking. Yellowed paper slipping from the seams.
“Read it.”
Pushing it away. “Tomorrow.”
“Corrigan was right all along,” he said. “That’s the proof. Signed confessions from the men who committed the murders.”
“What are you talking about?” She blinked, trying to focus on the thing in her lap.
He opened the bundle, flipping through the loose pages. Stopping at one, he ran his finger down a list of names. “They did it. Our ancestors killed those people. Just like Corrigan said” His finger tapped the paper. “Yours too. Look.”
Her eyes took forever to F-stop the cursive script and decipher what it said.
“Where did you get this?”
He told her. About Gallagher and the hole in the wall. The secret hidden in the archives and the ugly thing that now sat in her lap. Kate pushed it away onto the bench.
“All this time.” He leaned back against the pew. “What are we going to do?”
Kate rubbed her eyes then shook her head.
He mistook it for a shrug. “We have to tell him. We have to tell everyone.”
“No.”
“We can’t keep this a secret anymore. You have to make it public.”
She straightened her back. “And tell people what? That their ancestors were murderers?”
“Jesus, Kate. You want to stay mum about this because someone’s feelings are gonna get hurt?”
“It’s more than that now.” Kate pointed at the door, as if Corrigan was right outside. “The man’s made claims against a dozen people in town. Their businesses, property.” Shaking her head again. “No. It was a different time back then, different world. You go back far enough, everyone has a guilty past. What good will this do now?”
It took a moment to register. “You have to make this public. People are ready to lynch this guy. Come clean with this and he’ll be satisfied. Yes, it will be a shock but everyone will deal with it. End this stupid feud now.” He tapped the folio between them. “Do the right thing.”
“Don’t get righteous with me, Jim,” she said. “It’s bigger than simply right or wrong, for God sakes. People’s livelihoods are at stake. This,” she nodded to the cracked folio, “this will tear the town apart. It’s a bomb.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“We have to think it through. That’s all I’m saying.” Her vision swam. “And I’m too tired to think anymore.”
“Do the right thing. Or I’ll do it for you.”
He turned and walked out the door, leaving the folio behind.
Kate pushed the thing further down the pew. It smelled awful.
ASSHOLE. LIAR.
The words gouged deep into the paint with something big. Bigger than a set of keys at least. A screwdriver maybe. The letters tall and fairly straight. Someone had taken their time to do it right, not some passerby scoring paint. They had smashed out the right tail light and driver’s side window too.
Corrigan had parked his truck well away from the fair ground parking lot for exactly this reason. Not far enough. Someone had spotted it hiding under the maple tree and came calling. The list of suspects was narrow and he was surprised the vandal could spell. Perhaps he had some help.
He loaded his treasures into the back. The shattered bone bundled into a gingham cloth and tied off, like some hobo’s lunch. Unlatching a side panel, he reached past the bungee cords and jumper cables and slipped out the black nightstick. A police truncheon, solid and lethal. A Paddy whacker, as they used to call it.
The party had thinned to all but the most earnest of drinkers but the humidity rolling out from under the beer tent hit like a sauna as Corrigan stepped out of the rain. He ducked under the drooping flap and surveyed the tables. Dripping from the rain, the nightstick slick in his hand. The truncheon was an equalizer, him being alone, and a warning to any resident Paddies looking for a fight. The volume dropped a decibel as eyeball after eyeball swung around to see what the fuss was.
Perfect, he thought, watching every face turn his way. The guilty paint-gouger would, upon seeing him, turn away quickly. No one did and big Bill Berryhill was nowhere among the picnic tables. The faces regarded him and his fuckstick and then drifted back to their conversations. Only one set of eyes lingered and when Corrigan hawked them out, the eyes turned away. Guilty. If not of trashing his truck then of something else.
The boozers parted before him. Corrigan ordered and leaned against the makeshift rail beside those guilty eyes now shunning him. The bartender slid his plastic cup across and Corrigan drank but said nothing. He simply stared down at the old reprobate until a bead of sweat ran down Gallagher’s leathery neck.
“Ye want something?”
“Yes. The cocksucker who keyed my truck.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“I didn’t say it was.” Corrigan sipped, soured at the swill in his cup. “But the guilty man still averts his eyes. So tell me, Mister Gallagher, what are you guilty of?”
Gallagher laughed. “What am I not guilty of is the short answer. Like all of us. You do what you can to abide the rest.”
“That’s true. But you’ve yet to look me in the eye. Why is that? Some guilty worm of a secret in your petrified little heart. So what is it? Tell me.”
“Piss off.”
Corrigan warmed to the cantankerous lecher and leaned in, elbow to elbow. “You know something and it’s written all over that craggy face of yours. So how about I just stare at you until you fess up.”
Gallagher shooed him away as if he were a mosquito in his ear. “Do us a favour, mister Corrigan. Fuck off back to whatever rock you crawled out from.”
“This must be a juicy one.” Corrigan flagged the bartender and twirled a finger over their cheap plastic cups. “Whiskey for my friend here! A tall one.”
Gallagher watched the bartender pour and slide the cup under his nose. Corrigan bounced the nightstick off his knee. “Bottoms up, granddad. I got all night.”
The old man shuddered. The devil’s punch under his nose, the fiend at his elbow. He was tired. Too bone weary to endure those eyes glaring at him. Who could? His calcified heart muscle banging against his ribs. One, two, three.
Martin Gallagher lifted the cup and told the devil what he had done.
24
RAIN DRUMMED OVER the metal roof of the pickup. Water sluice down the windshield, blurring the world in shimmery distortion. Jim’s clothes were sopped and the rainwater dripping from his hair rinsed away the grimed sweat of his neck.
He didn’t see the rain, just the cramped script of the confessions. The illegible cursive signature of his predecessor. The scrawls of the other confessed men, names he knew by their descendants. Friends and enemies, school chums and hockey mates. His family’s prosperity built on a bonepile of ash and blood. Murder and secrecy.
