The word “right” upwardly inflected at the end of a sentence bugged the shit out of Lynch, almost as much as overuse of the word “like.”
“So, you saw the Meadowbrook arrests in Sunday morning’s police briefs, along with Jeremy’s beating.”
“Yes, and the front-page write-up on Reilly’s assault two days later.”
“Why did it take you until this morning to show yourself?”
“Pathetically enough, I was working up courage…then there’s this.”
Samuel stood slightly and produced a copy of that day’s Herald, upon which he had been sitting. Had he done it a few minutes earlier, he would have been staring down the barrel of a police issue Glock .38.
He handed the paper to Lynch. It was open to an article about a motorcycle that was pulled out of Pickering Creek. A fly-fisherman stumbled across it around sundown the night before. The tag had been removed.
“Did you read this, Detective?”
“I glanced over it. They pulled it out in Morrisville…not my beat.”
“The bike belongs to Bubbs. I assume you’ve had the pleasure.”
“I have, but that’s a stock Softail. It could be anybody’s.”
“The bike could…”
Samuel pointed at the Herald’s photo, specifically at a uniformed police officer in the background bagging evidence.
“…but not the helmet. That’s a custom-painted honey badger. Don’t ask.”
Lynch struggled to put the pieces together as he read. Samuel was kind enough to get him started, using insight that was off of Lynch’s radar.
“Something’s going down between the UJ and someone close to Reilly. The Bishop is killed; Jeremy is attacked; Reilly is injured while trying to (finger quotes) ‘break up a gang fight;’ Bubbs’s bike ends up at the bottom of the Pickering. It’s back and forth. The next hit is on Reilly’s crew, and I’m getting Kelly out of here before she finds herself dead or in jail.”
Lynch finished the article. For a fleeting moment, it occurred to him that Carrie Warner lived in Morrisville. The relevance escaped him. He gave a terse, but sincere, reply.
“This is helpful.”
Lynch stared at the floor while he processed everything. The mall was almost empty. Samuel let a half-chorus of “I Say a Little Prayer for You” go by over the piped music, before offering his next nugget of chesty advice.
“It’s your investigation, but if I were you, I’d question…”
“Ian Reilly.”
“The article on Reilly said that he and his brother chased after a kid named Gordon Weiss.”
“That’s right. He goes by Gordy.”
“Kelly told me about him. He’s a lackey for the UJ. I don’t know the kid. He joined after I left. Has he been questioned?”
Lynch’s expression revealed exactly what he was thinking.
I can’t answer that, and even if I could,you’re not my boss so go piss up a rope.
Gordy had been interrogated about the vandalism, but his lips were vacuum-sealed regarding the UJ. All they had on him was the fact that he wore a similar jacket (which he could explain), and that he appeared to be riding out to the barn the night of the murder. He fell off of his bike before he got there, so no one saw him interact with any member of the UJ. It all added up to a big stinking pile of circumstance. Gordy, at least for now, was useless, unless Kelly was willing to go on the record…unlikely.
Samuel took the hint and backed off the question.
“Detective, I’m just saying that Reilly didn’t follow anybody anywhere; he was led. He didn’t stumble upon a gang fight in the Yard; the UJ was waiting for him there. Beyond that, I don’t know what happened. The only person conscious and not in hiding who does know what happened is Ian Reilly.”
Samuel took a breather. The man had obviously indulged in a few courtroom dramas too many. It didn’t mean he was wrong. As a cop, Lynch wasn’t able to comment on any of it, but he silently stayed on board. Still, it was all conjecture. No arrests would be made on the merit of Samuel’s theories.
“You said we could help each other. How does this help you?”
Samuel looked around.
“I want you to fuck up Artie for me, or at least fuck him over.”
The statement was absurd.
“Samuel, you don’t appeal to me as an idiot…”
“Are you hungry, detective?”
“No. Not really.”
“Good. Me neither. In the course of your little dance with the UJ, have you ever heard the term ‘painting party?’”
Lynch shook his head.
“I have not.”
“That’s surprising. Well, I’m going to have to familiarize you with the term before I can explain myself.”
“If you must (jackass).”
Samuel stretched but showed no signs that he was tired of talking.
“Basically, it’s a unifier for the UJ. The one downside of being part of a group without rules is that after a while, it ceases to feel like a group. So, once a month, the UJ gather in the cloister for a painting party. We recreate Wallace Avery’s painting. It’s pretty impressive. We…I’m sorry…they break out the hookahs; they bring on the junk food; they haul in all sorts of furniture to destroy; they fire up the knife-throwing target and bring handfuls of ecstasy tablets for…I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, the most important part of it, as you can imagine, is…”
“The boobies?”
Samuel laughed and hooted out loud.
“Fuckin’ Avery. The UJ call it The Rite.”
“I’m assuming that’s a euphemism for sexual free-for-all.”
To Samuel, The Rite was so much more, but how could he expect anyone outside the cloister to understand. He’d had enough trouble getting those inside the cloister to understand. He decided the best route was to just describe it rather than try to explain it.
“They position the hookahs and the food and the furniture roughly as it appears in Avery’s painting. Then each person in the cloister picks a figure to be.”
“A figure?”
“A person in the painting. They pick a
