Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson Page B

even if this wondering over Katie’s death is just a fool’s errand, it still holds hope, if not promise.
    “I don’t know,” I answer, choosing cold honesty over sunny promises. She considers that for a second, then nods, with acceptance or resignation I cannot tell. In truth, I do not care. I hold no sway over her embrace or ambivalence toward this foray into events of the past. I can only hope that in whatever transpires, she finds what has eluded her since Katie’s death. Solace, understanding, closure, I can only imagine. I only know what it will bring for me if I…if we find an open road where before there was only a dead end. I will not say it is justice. For my sister any ultimate answer will bring that, in some measure. For myself, I will find that I have come full circle to a place where a darker decision confronts me. Just as I have now decided to search for a hidden truth, once that is mine to behold I must choose whether to seek redemption with that knowledge. Or vengeance.

Chapter Fourteen
    Closed Casket
    Chicago plants its forgotten dead south of the city in a plot of county land behind Oak Forest Hospital, the noting of their names in a ledger the only epitaph afforded them. No gravestones are placed to differentiate one from another. Indigent homeless rest next to newborns dumped in alleys.
    Criminals next to the righteous.
    “He was interred this morning,” Kerrigan tells me. Were he a Deputy Superintendent he would be able to glimpse a sliver of Lake Michigan down East 35 th from his fourth floor office in the headquarters of the Chicago Police Department. As a Captain in Administrative Services, with a desk responsible for everything from cultural diversity training to liaising with the chaplain’s unit, he has a grand view across the parking lot to the Dan Ryan a few blocks to the west. “No family to notify that we could find.”
    Kerrigan tells me this about Eric without emotion. Just the cold facts of how a would-be cop killer was covered by six feet of earth. He has every reason to despise Eric and let all memory of him pass. I cannot abide by the latter for myself.
    “This is a delicate area, Captain,” I say, taking a seat facing Kerrigan’s desk. To this point I have stood, near the window, watching my breath paint foggy ovals on the glass. “He mentioned someone during confession that I need to contact.”
    Not for an instant is Kerrigan confused by my obliqueness. “We’re not talking a long lost cousin, are we?”
    I shake my head to confirm his appraisal. “A friend.”
    “Someone he ran with,” Kerrigan corrects me. Men like Eric do not—did not—have friends in the traditional sense. In his world, proximity tainted. Hypes hung with hypes. Runners with runners.
    Killers with killers.
    “I can’t discuss the specifics,” I tell Kerrigan. He knows this, but he would expect me to remind him, and at this moment, in this charade I am performing, I am mindful to act precisely as I would were this all not a lie.
    Kerrigan shakes his head, though not at my request. He looks off toward the expressway, cars and busses and trucks seeming like toys at this distance. Zipping along under the guidance of some unseen hand. “Guy spends his life fucking people over…pardon my language, father…and then decides when it all catches up with him that he wants to spread some sorry around. Is that it? That little cocksucker made you his messenger to deliver an apology?”
    I say nothing. Kerrigan’s restrained vitriol rolls right past me. I am not the only person for whom a certain response is expected. He turns from the window and looks to me, not a hint of regret about him for what he has just said.
    “I can’t discuss the specifics,” I repeat, and Kerrigan nods. I understand him, his reaction, just as he understands my request. It is true only on its face, but simple enough to defy any need for probing.
    Kerrigan stands behind his desk and steps away from the chair, motioning me