“I just left the house. She’s mighty torn up.”
“Oh, dear God. Bless her heart. And those two kids. I…” My head was swirling with grief and guilt. “Steve, he went to Amsterdam because of me. He was trying to make sure I was safe.”
“He was doing his job, Doc. The DEA was running a dangerous operation, and it got compromised. He couldn’t trust anybody else. You’re not the only reason he went. He had people working undercover in Amsterdam, and he needed to reel them in. It’s not your fault.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Believe it, Doc. Not your fault.” In the background, I heard another phone ringing, and I heard Steve answer it, then speak tersely, though I couldn’t make out the words. “Doc, I gotta go,” he said when he came back on the line. “I know he was a friend of yours. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Yeah. Yeah, me, too. He was a good man. I…thanks for the call, Steve. Be careful out there.” My left arm dropped to my side; the phone slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor, bouncing down two of the stone steps before clattering to a stop. I left it there.
Years before, I had lost a wife to cancer. More recently—just as I’d emerged from my cave of grief—a woman I’d begun to love had been murdered. And now Rocky Stone, a good man, a dedicated cop, a devoted husband and father. At the moment, my heart felt like a graveyard full of tombstones.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring unseeing at the stone steps. After a few seconds or many minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice asked, in Irish-accented English, “Are you all right, lad?” I looked up. Standing before me, two steps down, was a silver-haired priest. He was dressed like a priest, at any rate—the black pants and shirt with the white clerical collar—but he didn’t look like a priest, or at least like any priest I’d ever seen. I guessed him to be ten years older than I was, but he had the physique of a man half his age: tall, broad shouldered, flat stomached. His shirt was short sleeved, and it strained to contain his chest and his biceps. He leaned closer, looked into my eyes, and asked again, “Are you all right? Anything I can do to help you?”
I took a deep breath to steady myself, then another. “Thank you, but no.” Another breath, which came in very raggedly. I forced it out between pursed lips, as if I were blowing out birthday candles. Rocky Stone was what, forty-four? Forty-eight? “It’s kind of you to offer, though. I just got some bad news. It blindsided me.”
He kept his left hand on my shoulder and extended his right, which held my cell phone. “I’m thinking this was the bearer of bad tidings; would I be right about that, lad?” I nodded, taking it from him. “I got a phone call like that once,” he said. “Long ago. Changed my life. It’s been an interesting life, and lots of it’s been good. But I’d give anything not to have gotten that call, you know?”
I nodded again, intrigued now, or maybe just desperate to be distracted from my own sadness. “Do you mind my asking what your bad-news call was?”
“Ah. No, lad, I don’t mind. Part of me penance is tellin’ it.” I looked up, puzzled. “It was bad news that I had a hand in bringin’ about, see?” I didn’t see, but he seemed to be diving into deep inner waters, so I waited for whatever it was that he felt bound by penance to tell. “I was twenty-two when the Troubles began. A young hothead livin’ at home with me mum in Banbridge, not far from Belfast. I had no job, no goals, and nothing better to do than to brood and rage, and blame everything that I hated about my life on the British Army and the Protestants. So I joined the Provisional IRA. I didn’t actually do much; I suppose I was provisional. Mostly spouted off a lot, in front of me mum and my little brother, Jimmy.”