I knew it was him, and I knew, watching him, what he had done.” Sheila looked up from the table, her cheeks the color of granite. “I only wish Tom, God bless him, was here to see it too.”
In the kitchen, Patrick sat back, suddenly seeing how it all fit together. Mrs. O’B. His father. Landry. Deirdre.
“I knew with all my heart that he was the one. The one who had killed my Deirdre. That name. That he was from here. And how he had left. That very same year. I could see in those eyes what he was. They were so lifeless and lying. A mother can see that, Patrick, when it comes to her child. See right to the core.
“And I knew we had him cold. He had incriminated himself. Because I had her diary. It was like God had sent it back to me in the storm to bring him to judgment. After all this time, I could finally make him pay.”
“Why didn’t you just take it to the police?” Patrick pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “Or to me . . . ?”
“To the police . . . ? A nickname his family used to call him. Over twenty years ago. A buried body no one even remembered but Tom and me. We knew what we had would never hold up in a trial. Not against this man, who had the sympathies of everyone. Joe said they could exhume her body and test for DNA. Maybe they could. But I could do something else. I could ruin him. I could bleed him dry like he bled me. Like I said, spite is a hard teacher, Patrick. It’s a hard thing to rid yourself of when you’ve held it in like I had for over twenty years.
“And I could make him confess. That was your father’s idea. The only reason we even asked for the money. If he paid it, it would be as good as a confession. Then we could take it to the police.”
“So you went with it to my dad?”
“Who else did I have? Tom was gone. Joe would do anything to help protect me. He even claimed that the diary was his. That he’d found it at a niece’s. Joe was like that, you know. Stand-up. Landry probably didn’t even know that I was still alive.”
“Yeah, he was,” Patrick said with a smile, “stand-up.”
Mrs. O’B looked at him. “Yes, he was letting me know he had the money on his way back. Then I called and called and it just seemed like he had disappeared. When you told me he was dead, it was like God saying again, It’s your fault, Sheila. You did a bad thing. And maybe I did.”
“That’s why you didn’t come to the funeral? Not just because it hurt. But because you felt responsible. Complicit. In how he died.”
“One way or another that storm took everything I had left that I held dear,” Mrs. O’B said. “The storm, or what I held on to in my heart. But I still want him. Landry.”
Patrick understood. He nodded.
“So how did you come to find out?” Mrs. O’B asked. “About the money?”
“Someone took it.” Patrick told her how Hilary had come upon the accident scene. What she had done there and how she had come to him.
“Joe told them, if anything happened to him, anything, he still had a way of getting everything out. We held on to parts of it. A few pages from Deirdre’s journal. As a kind of insurance. So they tracked who took their money and somehow it led to you?”
“In a way.” Patrick knew now that things had changed. That this could no longer remain a secret. “If this man is a killer, Mrs. O’B, it has to come out.”
“I know that. I already placed a call to the people who did that interview with him. I haven’t heard back yet. But I will. It’s going to get bad.”
“It’s already gotten bad, Mrs. O’B. Someone else has been killed. The person who first came upon Joe’s accident, at least according to the police. They tried to frame his death as a suicide. But we found out. He was killed by the man who gave Dad the money. Who’s done some very bad things. And they tried to get to someone else the other day. The woman who took the money, who came to me. They want the rest of what you’re holding. Your insurance, as you say.”
“You know what the irony is?” Her eyes were glazed over. “We were never even going to keep it anyway. The money. The money was simply his confession. Once we got it we said we were always going to hand over the rest. We were going to go to the media with the money and the diary.”
Patrick looked at her. “Well, I’m afraid now it’s gotten a lot more complicated than that.”
He told her about Hilary and Brandon, and the part of the money she had already spent. Over sixty grand. And then about Rollie. Just a Good Samaritan who tried to help the wrong guy. Sheila crossed herself and shook her head. “That money’s got blood on it. Deirdre’s blood,” she said. “And it’ll infect anyone who touches it.”
“I’m not done,” Patrick said. He told her about his sister, Annette, and the fraud she’d committed after the storm. Annette had grown up with Sheila too. And how he had paid off her debt to keep her from being charged, but had implicated himself with some very bad people. The Russian mob.
“It just doesn’t end, Patrick. The evil my daughter’s death caused. So keep the money. I don’t want it anyway. I’m glad if it can do some good for you and this girl. It won’t bring Deirdre back.”
“It’s too late to keep it, Mrs. O’B. Now that we know what’s behind it.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked at him. “You want this to all come out?”
“Yes, it has to.” Patrick nodded.
“If it does, then it’ll all come out, won’t it? Everything. What you did for Annette. The Russians.”
He nodded again. “I suppose it will.”
“What about your job? Your father was so proud of you. And this woman, you said she has a young son. Handicapped?”
“Asperger’s syndrome,” Patrick said. “It’s like—”
“I know what it is,” Sheila O Byrne said. “My legs may not move as they used to, but my brain still manages just fine. You said she did this to keep him in school. He’ll be affected by this too?”
“He will. But too much has happened, Mrs. O’B.” Patrick reached forward and took her hand. “So where are they? Those pages?”
“I can’t bear that anyone else is hurt on account of them. As much as I want this man to be accountable for what he did, it won’t bring Deirdre back.”
“Other people are dead, Mrs. O’B. Where are they?” he asked again. “Please.”
She got up and went to a cabinet above the dishwasher where canned goods and sauces were kept and reached to the back of the shelf. She came out with a wooden box. A floral design, hand painted, lacquered. “Deirdre made this. In the fifth grade.”
She put it on the table and took out some photos and a few other things from inside. A piece of blond hair. Some baby shoes. Then some handwritten pages that she paged through and folded together, then handed to him. “It’s all I have of her. What’s in here means everything to me. But use them. Do whatever you have to. Just promise me one thing.”
“Whatever you want.” He nodded.
“Promise me you’ll make him pay.”
Patrick held the pages in his hands. He remembered Deirdre. She was two years older. She had sunny blond hair and blue eyes and played soccer for the Purple Eagles and liked to write. “I promise, Mrs. O’B. I knew Deirdre too.”
“Not just for Deirdre.” She reached out and latched onto Patrick’s wrist, a different glimmer in her eyes. “There was something else I saw as I listened to what that man described and looked into those eyes. That scared me just as much as what he did to Deirdre . . .”
Patrick looked at her, and his stomach clenched as he realized what she was saying.
“You know that wasn’t any accident, what happened up on that river. He can say it, and he can tell the world, but you can see it in his eyes, what he is, no matter how deep or how long he’s kept it buried. You see what I’m saying, don’t you?”
Her eyes were lit up like lava.
“You make him pay, Patrick. But not just for Deirdre.” She tightened her hold on his wrist and looked into his eyes. “For that poor woman who’ll never have anyone to speak for her. You make him pay for what he did to his wife too.”