43

The following morning, just shy of nine, Mickey drove to Sean’s house – and, make no mistake, it was Sean’s house, he and his mother nothing more than guests, really. The last time Mickey had set foot inside he had been a couple of months shy of eighteen. After Sean had left for work, Mickey had packed up everything he owned into two boxes and had driven over to the Kelly house to live in the bedroom once occupied by Big Jim’s two older brothers, both of whom had long since moved out.

That was several decades ago, and the neighbourhood had undergone a conversion. Most of the ranch homes that had once occupied the area had been levelled and replaced with nicely sized Colonials, a few of them with two-car garages. A part of him felt he had taken a wrong turn into the wrong neighbourhood.

And then he saw the house where he’d grown up, a small Cape, untouched by time.

Mickey parked against the kerb and stared at his childhood home, thinking about Sean’s note. Sean was giving him a one-shot deal. If he didn’t show up with the cash tomorrow morning, it was over. Like Byrne, Sean would gladly take all his secrets with him to the grave.

Mickey killed the engine.

No good can come of this. You know that.

The voice speaking to him was the rational, sensible one that had kept him out of a good deal of trouble most of his early life. Sensible and rational. Just like his mother.

Mickey got out of the car and shut the door. He fished the key out of his pocket as he walked up the sloping lawn of dead grass.

When it came to his actual living quarters, Sean applied the same lessons on orderliness that he had learned in the military. The low-pile tan carpeting in the living room still looked new, not a stain anywhere. The white walls didn’t have a mark on them – and they were empty, not a single framed picture or print.

The small kitchen, though, was another story. He saw scuff marks left from shoes on the white linoleum floor. He saw cabinet doors hanging open and dishes placed on the counter and the contents of drawers dumped on the table, traces of black fingerprint powder everywhere. Right. The cops had searched the house.

Mickey moved down the narrow hallway, stopped when he saw Sean’s bedroom. Everything had been torn apart, but what caught his attention was a framed photograph of Claire.

No, not one; there were four. Four pictures of his daughter on Sean’s bureau and each one had been taken outdoors. Each photograph had captured Claire at various ages: Claire, around two, walking barefoot on a beach Mickey was pretty sure was in Old Orchard, Maine; Claire smelling a dandelion; Claire playing with Ericka Kelly at the jungle gym at the Hill; Claire dressed in her pink snowsuit, holding Mickey’s hand as they waited for their turn to go down the Hill.

The photos looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Seeing them – it was like he’d been kicked in the stomach. Mickey had never given Sean any pictures of Claire. Heather wouldn’t have done it either, which left only one answer: Sean had taken them. Sean, who had never met Claire and never would. Mickey and Heather had both agreed to keep that murdering scumbag son of a bitch away from their daughter, their family. But Sean had sneaked around and taken these pictures, had captured and stolen these moments – probably using a long-focus lens so he could stand in the shadows. A camera phone would have required that he get closer, and Sean wouldn’t have wanted to get caught by Mickey, no question.

Mickey wanted to search the rest of the house – wanted to rip it apart, from rooftop to basement, to see if there were any more pictures of Claire. He could do that later, when he had more time, when he wasn’t thinking about what was stored in the safe relating to his mother. He removed the Swiss Army knife from his jacket pocket as he walked into his old bedroom.

It was completely empty. He opened the closet, found it empty too, then got down on his knees and used the small knife to cut away a corner section of the carpet. Once he got a strip, he grabbed it and gave it a hard yank, pulling up the construction staples.

Sean’s safe was square and made of solid steel, with a flush cover plate that was perfect for concealment under a carpet. Mickey knew a thing or two about safes, and he was willing to bet Sean had gone all out and sprung for a drill-proof model built to provide protection against forced entry with something like a sledgehammer. The safe had been set in concrete, making it impossible to pull out unless you happened to have some serious construction machinery.

The safe hadn’t been there when he was a kid. It also had to be less than ten years old. When Claire had been abducted and before Byrne became a suspect, Belham PD had their sights locked on Sean and had ripped apart every square inch of this house, the thinking being that Claire had been kidnapped by one of Sean’s past associates. Mickey had never heard anything about a safe in the floor – or about pictures of Claire, for that matter.

Mickey worked the dial. The combination entered, he turned the hinge and heard the safe click open.

Two rows, stacks of crumpled $100 bills bound together with elastic bands. Mickey grabbed one, counted it.

Ten grand. And that was just one stack. There’d be a hell of a lot more, depending on just how deep the safe was.

Five minutes later, he knew.

‘Holy shit.’

Half a million dollars – in cash. In a safe hidden in his old house.

Of course he’d hide it here, Mickey thought. If Sean had placed this amount of money in a bank, the government could have swooped in at any moment and frozen his accounts.

An envelope was at the bottom of the safe. Inside was a stack of pictures, but not of Claire. Well, at least the top one wasn’t. The top picture, the colours slightly off and yellowed by age, was of people walking through a crowded, brightly lit alley of brick buildings.

At first Mickey thought the place might’ve been Faneuil Hall in Boston. But this area was more enclosed and had a foreign feel to it.

Like Paris.

Mickey studied the faces in the photo. He didn’t recognize them. By the way people were dressed, it was either spring or summer. He turned the picture over and saw the developer’s date stamped on the back: 16 July 1976.

July.

July was the month Sean went to Paris.

The next picture was of a woman with frosted blonde hair sitting at an outdoor table under a white awning covered with ivy, a pair of round black sunglasses covering her eyes as she read a newspaper. People sat around her, reading newspapers and books, talking, drinking coffee. Mickey flipped to the next picture, a close-up of the same woman, only she had taken off her sunglasses and was smiling at the man now seated across from her. The man’s back was towards the camera, but the woman’s face was as plain as day.

It was his mother.

Mickey flipped through the rest of the photos. His mother was in every one of them, as was her companion, this unknown man who was a good deal taller than her and had a very sharp, hawk-like nose, long sideburns and thick, wavy, black hair. He wore a suit that had long since gone out of style, and Mickey pegged the guy for an investor or a banker – something in finance. The guy had that feel to him.

What was clear was how much his mother cared for this man. In every picture she was holding either his hand or his arm. In the last photo, the man had his arm wrapped around her shoulder as they walked together down a crowded street, his mother’s wide smile turned away from him, his mother safe and happy, relieved to be back in Paris, lost in the streets of her birthplace and hometown, her other life forgotten.