“Did you get it?”
“Pled guilty,” Morrissey said. “Public defender I had thought it was the best option to plead out, and I did my time.” Morrissey cracked another beer, took a slurp, and squinted one eye at Mike. “This is about the Harriet Fogarty murder, isn’t it? Over there in Lake Haven. ’Cause she, ah, back then she was the one, I think, to take the baby and deal with all that stuff – the adoption or whatever.”
“You ever see your child?”
He shook his head. “No, never. She’s better off.”
“So you think it was a good thing; that she was removed from your custody, and that no one in your family was going to raise your child?”
Morrissey looked at Mike for a long time, drank the rest of the second beer, crumpled up the can and burped. He was crude, Mike thought, but he wasn’t stupid – there was intelligence in the man’s eyes. “If anyone’s got to be upset by the whole thing, it’s my daughter. Some nights, well…” He tossed the can aside and fished around in the cooler for another.
“Some nights?”
He pulled out the beer, tapped the top of it with a fingernail but didn’t open it yet, staring off. “Some nights I dream she comes for me. You know? And I don’t blame her; I let her. I let her burn it all down, burn me right down in that trailer.” Finally, he cracked the beer and took a sip, focused on Mike. “Say hi to Terry for me,” he said, and headed back for the trailer.
“You know Terry Fogarty?”
Keeping his back to Mike as he walked way, he said, “Sure. That was my job back then, ’fore I got into all this.”
“You worked for the Highway Department?”
“Yah. Old Terry was my supervisor.” Morrissey burped and climbed the three steps, pushed in the door, and went inside.
Mike let him go.
* * *
Mike drove aimlessly for a while, thinking about Morrissey, thinking about the man’s dream of his estranged daughter burning his home to the ground with him in it. He thought about Terry Fogarty, working with this guy all those years back. Their relationship didn’t indicate anything more than living in a scarcely populated area (in the Adirondacks, everybody knew somebody who knew somebody), but it made Mike feel restless. Like something was forming in his mind, a sort of mental Polaroid developing, and he couldn’t make out the image just yet.
He chose a direction and wound up bumping down Terry Fogarty’s long driveway on the outskirts of Lake Placid. The sun was lowering toward the treetops, the day’s heat giving up a little grip, and the place looked picturesque in the fading light.
Terry’s eyes were fuzzy with sleep when he came to the door, like he’d been napping, or just never got out of bed from the night before. There were dogs barking at his feet; Labs – one chocolate, one black. He took hold of their collars and invited Mike in.
They moved into the kitchen, where Terry let the dogs out a side door. They raced away, happy to be outside. “What can I do for you, Mike?”
The kitchen was charming, rustically old-fashioned. There were some upgrades, like the stove and microwave, but the old sink was deep-basin, slightly rusted around the fixtures, looking like it weighed a couple hundred pounds. “Just wanted to check in,” Mike said. Piled everywhere were bouquets of flowers, unopened boxes, and foodstuffs yet to be put away.
“Bobbi Noelle dropped off a bunch of groceries,” Terry said, seeing where Mike was looking. “Help yourself to anything you want.”
“Bobbi did?” Mike asked.
They sat down at the farm-style table with a view. The dogs chased each other around in the yard.
“Yeah,” Terry said. “She came over, ah, couple nights ago. I can’t remember which… everything is a blur.”
“I’m sure,” Mike said, having similar thoughts.
But Terry really meant it, and he looked dazed. “Emerson said a man is what he thinks about all day long, but I don’t know what I’m thinking from one minute to the next. I can’t seem to catch anything and… hold onto it.”
“I understand. You like Emerson?”
“I’m not such a huge fan of his libertarian leanings, I guess, but his essays on nature, his optimism for humankind, really something.” Terry seemed to look directly at Mike for the first time. “I wasn’t always working for the Highway Department. A million years ago I was a philosophy major at Plattsburgh State.”
“That’s partly why I’m here,” Mike admitted.
“Philosophy?”
“Ha, no. I know Emerson, but that’s about it. I always liked what Keith Richards had to say. As far as quotes go, anyway, he said, ‘The blacksmith invents the iron work, the horse wears them.’ I guess I really don’t even know what it means. Or maybe it means, this is all here, this life, and we just wear it. Our names, our clothes. Anyway, I bumped into someone today who used to work with you.”
“Who was that?”
“Charles Morrissey.”
“Morrissey…” Something flickered in his eyes. “You bumped into him?”
“You ever have any relationship with him outside of work?”
“None. He went away to prison for his wife. That was it.”
“He’s out,” Mike said. “Been out for a couple of years.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” Terry looked out at the dogs and said, “He was a pretty normal guy, I guess. He was a drinker but in the winter he kept sober so he could plow. What he did to his wife was…” Another spark in Terry, like the lights were coming on inside his head. “You saw him – you asked him about Harriet? I think she might have… yeah, she handled it when his wife delivered the baby and the baby needed a place to go. Are you looking at him; is he a suspect?”
“We’re going through all of your wife’s cases from years back,” Mike said. “His name is one of many.” He switched gears. “So, Bobbi Noelle came by, brought some groceries? That was nice of her.”
Terry just stared a moment, like he was deciding whether to get more upset about Morrissey. Finally, he said, “I told Bobbi she didn’t have to trouble herself, people already helped out. But she insisted. Came by, talked with me and Victor, then went to the store. Yeah, I remember now – it was after Harriet’s memorial service. She went up to Price Chopper at ten o’clock at night, came back with bags full of groceries.”
“That’s very nice,” Mike said. Terry was gaunt and Mike doubted he’d eaten a morsel from Bobbi or anyone else all week. The widower fell silent and studied his hands, which he rested on the table.
Mike said, “I lost my wife.”
Terry looked up. “I didn’t, ah… I’m sorry. How did she die?”
“First it was breast cancer. We thought we’d caught it in time, and we did, sort of. She had a double mastectomy, she did the radiation. My daughter – she was very young, but she had the presence of mind to tell us about using cannabis.”
Terry smiled on one side of his mouth, but the humor didn’t travel to his eyes.
“And then it came back,” Mike said. “Molly complained about her back one day, and her shoulder, and we took her in. She just had a real aggressive type. I guess it actually started in her ovaries, and it just kept coming. After that, I… we managed her pain as best we could, and she went pretty quick.” Mike ran a hand over his jaw, said, “Kristen was just a kid. Turning thirteen.”
Terry took a deep breath, expanding his chest, let it out slowly, like a deflating balloon. “I guess there’s a small mercy in knowing that she… that Rita, she went quickly.” He frowned, and a thought seeming to cross his mind. “I’m so sorry – I don’t mean to use your wife’s death to—”