The man was already shaking his head, chipping at some leverage. “Jim, you can’t—”
“Yes or no. That’s all you get.”
Corrigan grunted to the affirmative. Then he grinned, still looking to drive a wedge in. “And you’ll buy me out at your offer?”
Jim stifled a shudder looking at that perverse grin. It was like looking eye to eye with a coiled snake. “Agreed.”
No handshake, no gentlemen’s agreement. Jim slid back into his pickup and fired it up.
Corrigan shielded his eyes from the headlights. “Who else knows about this?”
There was no reply. The truck gunned up out of the ditch and rumbled away.
Thirty minutes ago, Kate could have fallen asleep standing up but now any thought of rest was gone. Back inside the stillness of her office, she gazed into the stone fireplace and cursed Jim Hawkshaw for being such a goddamn busybody. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone?
She lifted her eyes to the portraits over the hearth. The founding fathers and heroes. Once, she had taken inspiration from these stern faced men ringing the walls of her office, no small sense of pride and tradition. Duty even. Now she just felt dirty and no amount of single malt would scour it away.
After Jim had stormed out, she had taken the smelly folio to her office and laid it on her desk. Go home, she’d told herself. Leave it till the morning. But who could resist? The foul thing beckoned to be opened, like some forbidden grimoire in a storybook. If Pandora couldn’t resist, how could she?
It was worse than she could have imagined, all of it there in arch script. Page after page, each man describing their part, their actions, their sins. Each confession ended with a plea for clemency from the magistrate and a prayer of mercy from God Almighty. Repugnant details of the murders. How the mother, Johanna Corrigan, begged for a moment to pray before being bludgeoned with her own shillelagh. How the patriarch was run through with a pitchfork and clubbed so many times his skull was shattered flat into the snow. The girl killed in the loft with a knife, raped before and after.
Kate turned the rest of the pages, unable to stomach the narrative any longer. The last page in the cracked leather was a letter from Judge Charlton Gallagher, magistrate in charge of the inquest into the Corrigan incident. Judge Gallagher explained how he had forced the confessions from the guilty men but scuttled the laws of Middlesex County and buried the truth. The conviction, imprisonment and eventual hanging of nineteen community leaders would be a devastating blow to their small village. Judge Gallagher declared that the Corrigans had brought their fate upon themselves and the town would be a better place without them. In a clandestine ceremony, the magistrate swore the conspirators to secrecy and bartered their freedom in exchange for a tithe from each, to be paid annually on the anniversary of the crime. The monies from these tithes would be put to public works. Digging roads and erecting a proper town hall. A public library and the town square. The guilty men would police themselves in the keeping of the secret tithe, the judge forewarning that if but one defaulted or lapsed in his obligation, all would be exposed and hanged. Judge Gallagher’s letter ended the same as the confessions did, with a plea for mercy from the Almighty.
How could anyone sleep after reading that? Kate downed the rest of the scotch but it did nothing to settle her. She had made a decision and would simply have to live with it now. Like those men all those years ago.
See what tomorrow brings.
Searching for her damn keys, she heard the doors out in the lobby scrape open. She had forgotten to lock it when Jim left.
“Hello?”
No answer, just the click of footfalls on the marble floor. Kate called out again, thinking it must be Jim coming back for more indignation.
A shadow darkened the doorway and within it appeared William Corrigan.
Kate Farrell had seen plenty of scary movies in her time, enough that the word ‘ghost’ flittered across her brain as the man seemed to vapour up out of nothing like some stageshow devil. The man knew how to make an entrance.
Kate held her poker face steady and plucked her keys from her bag. “We’re closed, Mister Corrigan. Any ridiculous complaint you’re here to file will have to wait until Monday.”
Mister Corrigan strode forward, eyes casting crazily about the room. When they settled on her, she saw how bloodshot his eyes were. Drunk. “Where is it?”
“It’s late, Mister Corrigan. And I’m leaving.” She motioned towards the door. “Please don’t make me call security.”
“Jimmy Hawkshaw uncovered the confessions of the men who killed my family,” Corrigan said. He sidestepped the desk. Blocked her path. “He said they were left somewhere safe. That means you.”
“Get out of my office.” Kate lowered her own voice to equal his menace. “Now. Before I call the police.”
Corrigan snatched the phone from its cradle. “Let’s call them. Maybe they can find the evidence you’re hiding.”
She backed up, one hand digging for her cell. “Get the hell out.”
“All I want are the documents.” He scanned the room again. “Where are they?”
He sighed. “Don’t play hard to get with me, Kate. It’s unseemly in a woman of your… experience.”
She stalled for time, remembering only half of the pub’s phone number.
“What is that smell?” Corrigan’s nostrils flared. Like a hound, his nose tracked to the fireplace. The thing resting in the old grate, coiled up and blackened to a brittle crisp.
The hearth was limestone, four feet wide as it was tall. The last time she had lit a fire, the place smoked out because the flue was blocked with a bird’s nest. It had been cleared since but it didn’t matter. All she needed to burn this time was a little paper and cracked leather.
Corrigan knelt on the flagstone and reached into the grate. The carbonized paper fell away under his fingertips, blowing through the air like black snowflakes. All of it disintegrated save for the charred leather spine.
He roared and Kate winced at the awful sound. All black rage and venom. She crept back and made for the door while his back was turned.
He spun around. “You evil fucking witch!”
The look in his eyes. Not human. She ran for the exit.
Corrigan ran faster.
25
CLICK.
The shotgun locked shut with a firm snap. Solid and heavy in his hands. Travis seated the stock into his shoulder and brought the barrels up. Cheek flat against the grain and one eye lined down the sight, he swung the gun over the room and drew aim at the door, the window, the desk. Puffing out a gunshot sound with his teeth, pretending to shoot up the room. The gun slung huge in his hands, sleek and intoxicating, but it grew heavy and he couldn’t hold the aim any longer.
He pushed the lever and broke it at the breech. The barrels empty. He had looked for the shells but couldn’t find where Mr. Corrigan had hidden them. He slid the gun back onto the mantelpiece just as he’d found it.
Already bored but he didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to deal with his mom. She’d just insist they talk about what had happened. She’d ask him about his ‘feelings’. Wanting him to cry just so she could feel useful. Any little bruise and she was all over him like a wet blanket. Treating him like a baby, smothering him. It was enough to make you puke.
