Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(24)

I came out from my side of the booth, and she waved me away, but I slid in beside her, and she caved into me. She gripped my shirt and wept silently into my shoulder. I smoothed her hair, kissed her head, and held her. I could feel the blood coursing through her body as she shook in my arms.



“I feel like such a goof,” Angie said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

We’d left the Ashmont Grille and Angie asked me to stop at Columbia Park in South Boston. A horseshoe of bleachers set in granite surrounded the dusty track at the tip of the park, and we bought a six-pack and took it down there with us, dusted some splinters off a bleacher plank before sitting down.

Columbia Park is Angie’s sacred place. Her father, Jimmy, disappeared in a mob hit over two decades ago, and the park is where her mother chose to tell Angie and her sister that their father was dead, corpse or no corpse. Angie returns to the park sometimes during her dark nights, when she can’t sleep, when the ghosts crawl around in her head.

The ocean was fifty yards to our right, and the breeze coming off it was cool enough for us to wrap up in each other to keep from shivering.

She leaned forward, staring out at the track and the wide swath of green park beyond. “You know what it is?”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t understand people who choose to hurt other people.” She turned on the bleacher until she was facing me. “I’m not talking about people who respond to violence with violence. I mean, we’re as guilty of that as anyone. I’m talking about people who hurt other people without provocation. Who enjoy ugliness. Who get off on dragging everyone down into the muck with them.”

“The guys in the bar.”

“Yeah. They would have raped me. Raped. Me.” Her mouth remained open for a moment, as if the full implication of that were truly hitting her for the first time. “And then they would have gone home and celebrated. No, no, wait.” She raised her arm in front of her face. “No, that’s not it. They wouldn’t have celebrated. That’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is, they wouldn’t have given it much thought at all. They would have opened up my body, violated me in every sick way they could think of, and then after they were done, they’d remember it the way you’d remember a cup of coffee. Not as something to celebrate, just as one more thing that got you through your day.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. I held her eyes and waited for her to go on.

“And Helene,” she said. “She’s almost as bad as those guys, Patrick.”

“With all due respect, that’s pushing it, Ange.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide. “No, it’s not. Rape is instant violation. It burns your insides out and reduces you to nothing in the time it takes some asshole to shove his dick in you. But what Helene does to her child…” She glanced at the dusty track below, took a slug from her beer. “You heard the stories from those mothers. You saw how she’s dealing with her little girl’s disappearance. I bet she violates Amanda every day, not with rape or violence but with apathy. She was burning that child’s insides out in tiny doses, like arsenic. That’s Helene. She’s arsenic.” She nodded to herself and repeated in a whisper, “She’s arsenic.”

I took her hands in mine. “I can make a phone call from the car and drop this case. Now.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No way. These people, these selfish, fucking people—these Big Daves and Helenes—they pollute the world. And I know they’ll reap what they sow. And good. But I’m not going anywhere until we find that child. Beatrice was right. She’s alone. And nobody speaks for her.”

“Except us.”

“Except us.” She nodded. “I’m going to find that girl, Patrick.”

There was an obsessive light in her eyes I’d never seen shine so brightly before.

“Okay, Ange,” I said. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She tapped my beer can with her own.

“What if she’s dead already?” I said.

“She isn’t,” Angie said. “I can feel it.”

“But if she is?”

“She isn’t.” She drained her beer, tossed the can into the bag at my feet. “She just isn’t.” She looked at me. “Understand?”

“Sure,” I said.



Back at the apartment, all Angie’s energy and fire drained out of her at once, and she passed out on top of the bedcovers. I slid them out from under her, then pulled them over her and turned out the light.

I sat at the kitchen table, wrote Amanda McCready on a file folder, and scribbled a few pages of notes regarding the last twenty-four hours: our interviews with the McCreadys and the men at the Filmore and the parents at the ball game. When I was through, I got up, took a beer from the fridge, and stood in the middle of the kitchen floor as I drank some of it. I hadn’t pulled the shades on the kitchen windows, and every time I looked at one of the dark squares, Gerry Glynn’s face leered back at me, his hair soaked with gasoline, his face spotted with the blood of his last victim, Phil Dimassi.

I pulled the shades.

Patrick, Gerry whispered from the center of my chest, I’m waiting for you.

When Angie, Oscar, Devin, Phil Dimassi, and I had gone head-to-head with Gerry Glynn, his partner, Evandro Arujo, and an imprisoned psychotic named Alec Hardiman, I doubt any of us had realized the toll it would take. Gerry and Evandro had been eviscerating people, decapitating and disemboweling and crucifying them, out of a sense of fun or spite, or because Gerry was mad at God, or just because. I never fully understood the reasons behind it. I’m not sure anyone could. Sooner or later motives pale in light of the actions they give birth to.