“This guy could be him. I don’t know. Mick changes his hair all the time.”
Lynch tossed the empty bag on the floor, then, mumbling to himself, dug for his note pad and cell phone.
“That little jerk-off was in the back of the hall behind the sound board at the BOB too.”
Chaz belched again and spoke.
“Mick? Behind the board at Fellowship Church of Ellisport? Damien’s Board?? No, he wasn’t! Nobody touches Damien’s board.”
Lynch froze as another piece…as it wound up, a crucial piece…snapped into place.
Damien is the fucking sound man at the Church of Rock; not the chair Nazi!
Lynch recalled the sign … “Hands Off”. The sign wasn’t referring to the chairs. The sign was from the sound board, as was the sheet. Nate the custodian (must have) moved them from the board to the stack of chairs so he could clean.
“Mick was there though…at the church, right Chaz?”
“Yeah. He was there.”
“And he was angry. He was angry because his band was competing in front of a full house, and he had to trust their sound to a rival sound man.”
“Dude, that’s right! I mean, you’d think he’d be used to it. Him and Damien argue about it every…”
“So, he went out for a smoke. You said he got Patty smoking again. That means he smokes. He was pissed off and didn’t want to hear someone else mess up his band’s sound, so he went for a smoke.”
“Uuhhhh… I guess he could have.”
Gomez was already going through the list of names given to them by Brother Devlin.
“Ernie, if you want to have a smoke to calm your nerves, and you’re at Fellowship Church, do you hang out on the street side or the river side?”
“The river side…any day of the year and twice on Easter.”
“And you didn’t see him on the walkway, did you Chaz?”
“No man. I didn’t.”
“So, he was under the walkway. He was grabbing a butt on the slab when the gun landed in one of the boats. He got the gun from the boat. He got Samuel’s trench coat from the reject pile at the clothing drive. He was at St. Al’s Saturday because his girlfriend’s daughter was getting Confirmed. Say cheese, Mick! We’ve got you!”
Gomez reluctantly interrupted his crazed partner with a raised finger.
“There’s one problem with that Jaime. Mick isn’t on the volunteer list.”
“That’s impossible.”
Gomez turned the list around.
“There isn’t any ‘Mick’ on here, partner, I checked it twice.”
Chaz had become hypnotized by the exchange. His knuckles were white from clutching the arms of his captain’s chair as he waited for his moment to spring up and become a hero. That moment had come.
“Mick’s not his real name.”
Lynch replied.
“What’s that?”
“Mick’s a nickname. It’s short for McKenzie.”
Lynch started to scan the list again.
“His name is McKenzie?”
“His last name’s McKenzie.”
“Well, for fuck’s sake, what’s his first name?”
“Uh…Phil, I think.”
7. The Woods
”Pow – ping!”
Not good.
”Pow – ping!”
“Maybe next time” isn’t an option this time around.
”Pow – ping!”
Think, dammit, think!
”Pow – ping!”
No pain; no fear. No pain; no fear. No pain; no fear…
”Pow – ping!”
Philip McKenzie put his eyes on his uncle’s shed as he stopped to reload.
“Well…if this whole thing goes pear-shaped, I guess that’s one positive thing to come out of it.”
A feeling Philip hadn’t experienced in a long time started to creep up into his guts. The shrink he hadn’t seen in seven years called it “anxiety-triggered” something-or-other. Brother Devlin called it demons. Whatever it was, it was helping. His heartbeat slowed. His focus returned. His thoughts started to filter through one at a time in a way that was manageable, and horrible.
“Why am I so worried about collateral damage? I’ve already killed two people. I killed them as a means to a heroic end. There is no restart. At this point, if I don’t see this thing through, I’m not a hero; I’m a murderer. I’m doing God’s work. If He hasn’t sent me a solution to this by now, then there is no solution. What if three innocent people die, or six, or twelve? If they are truly innocent, God will give them their place in heaven. If not, they deserve the same fate as those before them. I can do this. I just have to change the game plan.”
He started to pace.
“What am I going to need? I’ll need a…”
His ears twitched. He turned his head toward the distant tree line. A vehicle was approaching, and it wasn’t his uncle’s truck.
8. Lynch’s Car
Three phone calls put them on the right track. The first was to Father Leo.
“We think we know who the girlfriend is.”
According to the photos, Leo’s info, and Chaz’s best guess, at Saturday evening Mass, Philip “Mick” McKenzie had an aisle seat next to a woman named Hesper Laraway.
“Do you have a phone number or an address for her?”
“I can get both, Jim. Hang on.”
Lynch would later find out that Hesper lent a hand in the church secretary’s office from time to time. For years, she’d been donating St. Al’s unclaimed lost-and-found to the Maplewood clothing drive. It was how she met her whacked-out boyfriend. It was also how the last link in this particular chain of evidence hooked into place.
True to his word, Leo found contact information for Ms. Laraway easily enough. Gomez (and the PPD data system) followed in kind with the McKenzies’ address, along with the make and model of Philip’s car. The detectives arrived at Philip’s and Patty’s townhouse to find only street parking, and no blue Prius in sight. Knocking on the front door yielded no response.
“This is the police, Mick, open up.”
After a mutual go-ahead nod, Ernie raised his right heel, aimed it at the latch, held his pose, and spoke.
“Anything?”
In the absence of a search warrant, the fake break-in ploy (as silly as it was) had a high success rate. If Philip was peeking out a window, a
