EPILOGUE

MAY 31, 11:05 AM

MEMORIAL DAY BROUGHT a punishing sun to the Delaware Valley. The sky was clear and azure blue; the cars that lined the streets around Holy Cross Cemetery were polished and tuned for summer. Hard gold sunlight glinted off the windshields.

The men were dressed in bright polo shirts and khakis; the grandfathers wore suits. The women wore spaghetti strap sundresses and JCPenney espadrilles in a rainbow of pastels.

Jessica knelt and put the flowers at her brother Michael’s grave. She planted the small flag near the headstone. She looked across the expanse of the cemetery; saw other families planting their flags. Some of the older men saluted. Wheelchairs gleamed, their occupants deep in private remembrance. As always on this day, across the shimmering breadth of green, families of fallen servicemen and servicewomen would find each other, their eyes meeting in understanding, in shared sorrow.

In a few minutes Jessica would join her father at her mother’s stone, and they would file silently back to the car. This is how they did things in her family. They grieved separately.

She turned and looked at the road.

Vincent leaned against the Cherokee. He was not good at grave sites, and that was okay. They had not worked it all out, they might never, but for the last few weeks he had seemed like a new man.

Jessica said a silent prayer and made her way through the headstones.

“How’s he doing?” Vincent asked. They both glanced over at Peter, his broad shoulders still powerful at sixty-two.

“He’s a rock,” Jessica said.

Vincent reached out, took Jessica’s hand softly in his. “How are we doing?”

Jessica looked at her husband. She saw a man in sorrow, a man laboring beneath the yoke of failure—failure to honor his marriage vows, failure to protect his wife and daughter. A crazy man had come into Vincent Balzano’s house, threatened his family, and he had not been there. This was a special corner of hell for police officers.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here, though.”

Vincent smiled, held on to her hand. Jessica didn’t pull away.

They had agreed to attend marriage counseling; their first session was in just a few days. Jessica wasn’t ready to share her bed, or her life, with Vincent again just yet, but it was a first step. If they were meant to weather these storms, they would.

Sophie had picked some flowers at the house and was methodically distributing them on the grave sites. Because she hadn’t gotten to wear the lemon-yellow Easter dress they had bought at Lord & Taylor’s on the day itself, she seemed determined to wear it every Sunday and holiday until it was too small. Hopefully, that was a long way off.

As Peter began to make his way to the car, a squirrel darted out from behind a headstone. Sophie giggled and gave chase, her yellow frock and chestnut curls radiant in the springtime sun.

She seemed happy again.

Maybe that was enough.

 

IT HAD BEEN FIVE DAYS since Kevin Byrne had been moved from intensive care at HUP, the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania. The bullet Andrew Chase had fired that night had lodged in Byrne’s occipital lobe, missing his brain stem by just over a centimeter. He had endured more than twelve hours of cranial surgery, and since that time he had been in a coma.

The doctors said his vital signs were strong, but confided that every week that went by significantly reduced the likelihood that he was going to regain consciousness.

Jessica had met Donna and Colleen Byrne a few days after the incident at her house. They were developing a relationship that Jessica was starting to feel might last a long time. Either in sorrow, or joy. It was too early to tell. She had even learned a few words in sign language.

Today, as Jessica came for her daily visit, she knew she had a lot to do. As much as it made her feel bad to leave, she knew that life would, and must, go on. She’d stay about fifteen minutes. She sat in the chair in Byrne’s flower-filled room, thumbed through a magazine. For all she knew it could have been Field & Stream or Cosmo.

From time to time, she glanced up at Byrne. He was much thinner; his skin had a deep gray pallor. His hair was just starting to grow back.

Around his neck he wore the silver crucifix that Althea Pettigrew had given him. Jessica wore the angel pendant she had received from Frank Wells. It seemed that they both had their talisman against the Andrew Chases of the world.

There was so much she wanted to tell him, about how Colleen was voted valedictorian at her deaf school, about the death of Andrew Chase. She wanted to tell him that, a week earlier, the FBI had faxed the unit with the information that Miguel Duarte, the man who confessed to the murder of Robert and Helen Blanchard, had an account at a New Jersey bank under a false name. They had traced the money back to a wire transfer received from an offshore account belonging to Morris Blanchard. Morris Blanchard had paid Duarte ten thousand dollars to kill his parents.

Kevin Byrne had been right all along.

Jessica turned back to her magazine, and an article about how and where walleyes spawn. She supposed it was Field & Stream after all.

“Hey,” Byrne said.

Jessica nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice. It was low and raspy and terribly weak, but it was there.

She scrambled to her feet. She leaned over the bed. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m . . . I’m here.”

Kevin Byrne opened, then closed his eyes. For a horrifying moment, Jessica was certain he would never open them again. But after a few seconds he proved her wrong. “Got a question for you,” he said.

“Okay,” Jessica said, her heart racing. “Sure.”

“Did I ever tell you why they call me Riff Raff?” he asked.

“No,” she said, softly. She would not cry. She would not.

The slightest smile graced his parched lips.

“It’s a good story, partner,” he said.

Jessica took his hand in hers.

She squeezed gently.

Partner.