Backfire

It was difficult to step back, cut off the rage and sadness, to force their minds to focus on what was in front of them. Sherlock said, “There’s a chance he left fingerprints.”

Eve said, “He hasn’t missed a single trick so far, but he never expected anyone to find this shack. So maybe you’re right.”

Harry asked Sheriff Hibbert, “Do you have any idea how long this shack has stood vacant?”

“At least twenty years, maybe longer. I haven’t heard of anybody staying out here since I’ve been sheriff. We get some homeless people squatting in our abandoned buildings now and then, but not here, because it’s too remote.” He looked up at the boards sunk in on the crumbling ceiling. “It’d be safer to camp under a tree.” He looked toward the bed. “How I hate this smell, the smell of death.”

Cheney took one last look around the room, and said, more to himself than to the rest of them, “It’s up to me to tell Mrs. O’Rourke her husband’s dead. I’ll take a chaplain with me.” He sighed. “As if that will help.” He looked up. “This guy doesn’t deserve to walk the earth.” He paused for a moment. “I know a woman didn’t do this. If this was Sue, then Sue is a man.”

—

It was odd, Eve thought, looking out the Suburban window as Harry drove them back to the city, how the ride home always felt quicker.

She listened to the windshield wipers clapping steady as a metronome, the rain, now that they weren’t getting soaked standing in it, oddly soothing, somehow comforting.

She saw Cheney’s eyes were on his hands, clasped in his lap. He had to be thinking about Mrs. O’Rourke and the girls and what he would say to them—it couldn’t be the truth, at least not all of it.

Harry looked stiff, mechanical, as if he was afraid to express anything for fear he’d yell with it. Savich and Sherlock, too, were without expression, but Dillon was pressing his wife’s open palm against his thigh. She wondered how much horror they’d seen. Too much, she thought. What were they thinking?

Eve felt a wave of despair, not just because of the bloodbath they’d found in the shack but because it was the naked proof that some people were simply evil, some people were simply missing all compassion or any human feelings at all. How else could this monster have killed Mickey so brutally?

RIP Mickey. She wanted to kill him herself.

She met Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock said, “How’s your back, Eve?”

She snapped back from the edge. “Thanks to Harry the Hands, I’m feeling fine.” She added, “Harry was at my condo this morning, and let me tell you he’s got the greatest hands. I think he even got a moan out of me, it felt so good.”

No one said a word.

Where had that come from?

Eve cleared her throat. “What I meant to say was that he massaged my back with muscle cream and—”

“Let it go, Eve,” Harry said. “No one thinks there were any prurient thoughts in your head or mine. Your back is purple and green, and you were hobbling around like a crippled old deputy marshal retired lady.”

Insanely, Eve wanted to laugh.

When they arrived at the Federal Building, Cheney said, “I’m going to pick up the chaplain in my own car and drive over to see Mrs. O’Rourke. As for the rest of you, it’s Sunday. Take some time off, try to let go of all this. We need all your brains ready tomorrow morning. We can bank on hearing from forensics and the medical examiner first thing.” He paused for a moment. “Wish me luck.”

They did, all of them grateful they weren’t walking in his shoes today.

Eve said her good-byes and went walking in the rain. She realized her mistake a couple blocks later when every step made her back hurt. She saw a taxi, and, miracle of miracles, it stopped for her. She directed the Ukrainian driver to Saint Francis Church on Larkin, a fixture in her Russian Hill neighborhood for nearly a hundred years. The rain was coming down heavier when she opened the side door and slipped inside. It was warm and dim and ancient. She breathed in the soft air scented with incense. She always felt safe here. She sat awhile, absorbing the quiet and gazing at the many symbols of hope that surrounded her, hope she knew was embedded in the very walls. She eased forward on the pew and sent a prayer of gratitude that Eleanor and Rufino were alive. She prayed to find this man who’d wantonly killed Mickey O’Rourke, who’d tried to kill Ramsey. She didn’t pray that she would kill him; she didn’t think she should push God on things like that. And she prayed for Mickey O’Rourke’s soul.