Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter
Thirty-One
Dog shit. As soon as Father Mark had
said those words, Lucas had known. Well, not quite known, but close
enough.
Father Mark had been so concerned when he’d
seen Lucas’s reaction. He’d apologized for upsetting him; the
police had said there might be a connection to the situation with
Mr. Wilson, so he’d thought Lucas should know. But maybe he
shouldn’t have gone into details, he’d said. Lucas had just shaken
his head. It was good that Father Mark had told him.
And it was good that Lucas was following up
now. He eased the truck into a once-familiar spot by the curb and
didn’t hesitate before getting out and heading for the front door
of the house. He’d come straight from work and probably smelled
like a barnyard, but he didn’t give a damn. This wasn’t a social
call.
But it was a family home, so Lucas knocked on
the door instead of busting inside. When Tina saw him through the
screen, she smiled, then frowned as she saw his expression. “Hey,
Lucas. Good to see you.”
Damn. It would have been easier if she’d been
rude. “Hi, Tina. Good to see you, too. Is Sean around?”
She paused, then nodded slowly and stepped
backward to stand at the bottom of the staircase. “Sean!” she
hollered. “Lucas Cain is here for you.” She paused before adding,
still at full volume, “He looks pissed!”
She waited for a response that didn’t come,
then wandered back to the screen door. She pushed it open a little
and cocked a hip while smiling at Lucas. “There’s a big party this
weekend at Shelly Austin’s. You might know her brother Paul?” The
smile got a little wicked as she added, “You should come. People
say you never go out anymore. But we could have fun.”
Thankfully a door slammed somewhere upstairs
and jeans-clad legs appeared at the top of the stairs. They
descended with Sean’s familiar gate and Lucas swallowed a lump of
confused emotions. He was here for a reason, not for reminiscing.
He needed to stay focused.
Sean came to the doorway and squinted out
into the late afternoon sun. Then he turned to his sister. “Go
away, Tina.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s my house too, you
know. And Lucas was my friend too. Just because you had a fight
with him doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get to talk to him.”
“Fuck off, Tina.” Sean’s voice had an edge to
it, one that made his sister take a step backward. Sean turned his
back on her and pushed the screen door open, his face unreadable as
he asked, “You want to come in?”
“Careful, Sean. Somebody might see us
together, and you wouldn’t want that.” But old hurts weren’t what
Lucas was there for. “Come outside.”
And Sean did, firmly closing the wooden front
door behind him. His tractability made Lucas suspicious, but he’d
come this far so he needed to keep going. “You still hanging out
with Mikey and Tinker?”
Sean squinted at him, then nodded. “Yeah.
Why?”
“Mikey still do that thing? Where he collects
dog shit and spreads it on people’s walls? Writes with it?”
Sean snorted in amusement. “You looking for
some new art?” His grin faded when he saw that Lucas wasn’t
laughing, and he slowly nodded. “Yeah. He still does that. What’s
this about?”
“Were you out with them last night,
Sean?”
“Last night? No. I worked late and had to
work early. I didn’t go out last night. What the fuck, Lucas?
What’s with all the questions?”
Sean had never lied to Lucas. Not unless it
was something he was lying to himself about as well. If Sean said
something, Lucas had always believed him, and he found that he
still did. It was strange how relieved he was to know that Sean
hadn’t been involved. “Somebody broke Father Webber’s window and
wrote on his door in dog shit. Wrote ‘faggot’. It sounds like
Mikey’s style.”
Sean looked as if he was weighing his
possible responses, then shrugged. “Yeah, it does. So what? Is
there a reason you care?”
“Fuck, Sean, I killed his brother. His
father’s in the hospital and he’s maybe going to lose his job just
because he helped a kid out. You really think he needs people
wrecking his apartment, too?”
“Scott Wilson’s been saying you and the
priest were working together,” Sean said. He was watching Lucas for
a reaction. “Said you teamed up to recruit the kid to the dark
side. That true, Lukey? You and the priest? You guys a team?”
Father Mark had actually used that term,
Lucas remembered. They were both on Alex’s team. But he hadn’t
meant it the way Sean clearly did. Lucas shook his head in disgust.
“He’s a good man, and he’s been through a lot. I’m not…” Not
what? “I’m not going to stand by and let them put him through
more.”
“So why are you here, Lukey? What’d you come
see me for?”
“I wanted…” He frowned. “I wanted to hear you
say you weren’t part of it. I wanted to know you weren’t involved.”
He hadn’t realized it, but it was true.
Sean nodded slowly, then smiled his crooked
half-smile. “You know I might have been. If I hadn’t been tired
last night, if I’d been in the right mood…I might have been part of
that.” He waited to see Lucas’s reaction.
There was nothing to do but nod. “Yeah. I
guess. But you weren’t. And, Sean…don’t be. If there’s more of
this, don’t be part of it. And tell Mikey and Tinker…” Tell them
what? How far was Lucas prepared to go with this? Pretty far, he
realized. “Tell them not to mess with him anymore. If they do,
they’re messing with me.”
Sean looked like he might laugh. “There was a
time they might have cared about that, man. A time they might have
been scared of you. But it’s a funny thing—you beat a man into a
hospital bed and suddenly he doesn’t seem all that scary anymore,
no matter how psycho you used to think he was.”
“You think three years in the federal pen
made me forget how to fight? Seriously? You think I was
fighting that day in the park? Did I even take a fucking
swing at any of you?” Lucas stepped a little closer, and Sean
didn’t look like he was going to laugh anymore. “I’m glad you
weren’t involved, Sean, because I don’t want to do to you what I’m
going to do to them if they fuck with him again.” He let his gaze
bore into Sean’s and kept his stare as cold and deadly as it had
ever been.
Sean thought for a moment, then softly said,
“So that’s how it is? Me and the boys get in a fight for you,
trying to stand up for your honor, and it’s all ‘I’m on parole’ and
‘I’m not like that anymore’. But your new…” He paused as if
searching for the right word, then snorted in disgust. “Your new
friend gets a broken window, and all of a sudden you’re a
tough guy again? That’s how it is?”
Lucas nodded slowly. “I guess so, yeah.
That’s how it is.” But this was Sean, so Lucas tried a little
harder. “It’s a game with you guys. Don’t say it isn’t, ’cause I
was part of it for too long. And I’m not going back to that. I’m
not playing the game anymore, not getting in made-up fights in bars
over shit nobody even really cares about.” He’d already been
standing close to Sean but now he eased in a little tighter to say,
“If I come back to it, it’s not going to be a game for me. That’s
what you need to get Mikey and Tinker to understand. If I come
back, I’m not going to be playing.”
Sean eased backward but never took his gaze
from Lucas’s face. He smiled sadly. “Fuck, Lucas, you’re still a
badass when you want to be. You and me, man. We could have torn
this town apart. Nobody would have fucked with us.”
There was a time when that would have seemed
like a worthy goal to Lucas, but that time was past. Now, it just
sounded sad, like the old men he and Sean used to laugh at, going
down to the bar with their beer guts and trying to pick up the
scantily dressed young women. But there was no way to explain any
of that to Sean, so Lucas just nodded. “I guess. But that’s not how
it happened.” He stepped back. “Talk to Mikey and Tinker, okay?
This doesn’t have to go bad.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Sean said slowly. “But
I’m not sure they’re going to hear it.” He stepped back toward the
house. “If you’re going to get in the middle of this? You need to
watch your back, Lukey. ’Cause you haven’t got anyone else to do it
for you, not anymore.”
That was true enough, but there wasn’t much
to say in response. “I’ll see you around, Sean.”
He turned and was almost to the sidewalk when
he heard Sean call his name. “I’ll do what I can, Lukey. Okay? I’ll
see what I can do.”
Sean was looking for something, but Lucas
wasn’t sure what it was. And he wasn’t sure he’d be willing to give
it away if he did know. So he nodded and smiled. “Thanks, Sean.”
And then he left. There was nothing more for him to say.