The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3), Brian Shea [best non fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

Now, go get cleaned up and we'll meet back at the office for a debrief."

"I'd like to stop by the hospital first. Need to check on a friend."

Bobby McDonough had a bandage running across his face, covering most of it. The only thing visible was a corner of the left side of his face, including his eye. His hands and part of his midsection were also bandaged in white gauze. Monitors chirped and beeped in the backdrop. Kelly sat in the chair next to his lifelong friend, reached out, and gently grabbed his wrist.

McDonough stirred, and his one visible eye blinked open. It watered as the light struck it.

Kelly reached out and wiped his friend's cheek. "How you holding up, pal?"

"Like I passed out drunk at a beach and woke up with a third-degree sunburn. How do you think I feel?" McDonough snarked.

"Good to see you haven't lost your charming personality. No luck of that getting burned away, is it?" Kelly chuckled, giving his friend a dose of his own medicine.

"Thanks," Bobby said quietly.

"For what?"

"Oh, you going to get all humble on me now, Saint Mike?" McDonough said. "Look, I already heard one of the cops talking. You pulled me out. I would have been dead back there in that house. You saved my life."

"You act like that's such a bad thing," Kelly said.

"It is, if you're going to hold it over my damn head for the rest of my life."

"Nah," Kelly said, “I think we're even."

He knew McDonough understood exactly what he was talking about. The life debt had been repaid with a life, the only way to truly pay those kinds of debts.

"I don't know if they told you, but your boss is down the hallway," Kelly said, rolling his eyes slightly.

"We're hard men to kill."

"Guess so."

"Then I guess you also heard we got him."

McDonough nodded slightly and then winced at the pain of the movement. "I did hear that."

"You know, a lot of this could have been avoided had you just told me who the hell he was. You know that, right?" Kelly leveled a serious stare at his friend's one visible eye.

"I guess, although I didn't know his real name. We called him Gabriel, or that's what he told us to call him. Something about the archangel. Guy was a nutjob."

That made sense, Kelly thought. Fit his whole motif. He was sure the psychiatrists at the FBI were going to have a field day interviewing him post-arrest to dissect him like a guinea pig.

Serial killers of all kinds got a special place in the post-arrest arena. They were treated in an iconic fashion, separated from the general population and held in reverence by psychologists. And with everything Kelly had learned about Christopher Vance, AKA The Penitent One, he would no doubt fit the bill.

"You may not have known who he was, but you could have pointed me in his direction, given me his contact information. Like how you reached out to him for a job. We could have set something up. We could have done this years ago." Kelly was referencing Danny Rourke's case, and McDonough knew it.

McDonough coughed and then groaned in pain but didn’t respond.

"Why Tomlin? Why Rourke?”

“Those are two entirely different questions," McDonough said. "And everything I tell you here now is because of what you did for me in that fire. But none of it, and I mean none of it, will ever go on record, because I'll never speak about it again. And I know you won't name me as your source."

Kelly knew he was right. "Then tell me."

"Tomlin was business. We got word that they had put somebody in play to eavesdrop on Walsh. We heard it was an agent, so we hired outside to take care of the problem. Gabriel was our handyman, our cleaner, when a job needed doing that we couldn't do ourselves."

"Then why did he come after you? Why did he come after Walsh?"

"O'Toole."

"O'Toole? What do you mean, O'Toole?"

"He wanted double because he was doing a fed. Walsh agreed, but O'Toole shorted him."

"I guess that wasn't a good idea," Kelly said.

McDonough nodded and then looked down at an IV drip extending from the line in his wrist. "I guess you could say that. But what's done is done."

"Okay. Why Rourke then?"

Bobby turned slightly away from Kelly. Every movement, no matter how subtle, seemed to cause his friend pain, and it hurt Kelly to watch. But he wasn't leaving this room without an answer, and Bobby knew it.

"You're not going to like what I have to say. Me holding this back from you was as much about protecting you and the memory of your friend and partner."

"Tell me," Kelly said.

"He was dirty, Mike."

Kelly sat back. He felt sick. Danny Rourke, dirty?

"I warned you it wasn’t going to be something you wanted to hear. But it’s the truth. He was on the take. He was in charge of making sure that certain businesses paid up. Problem was, what we paid him for his services wasn't good enough. He got greedy. Walsh didn't like it. Walsh doesn't like being stolen from. There's no coming back from it."

Kelly heard his friend’s words, but they didn't make sense. Didn't match what he knew about Danny Rourke. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew that McDonough wasn't lying. The truth sometimes tasted funny, like day-old pizza. Rourke’s memory soured in his mind.

Kelly stood. There was nothing left to say. He needed time to process everything. He'd risked his life tonight, and so had Barnes and everyone else in their unit, to bring to justice a person who had killed a cop. And he had just found out the reason why and couldn't tell a soul.

"I'll be seeing you, Bobby," Kelly said, turning and walking away.

"I'll be kicking your ass in that ring in no time," McDonough offered as the door closed behind him.

Kelly walked down the hallway toward the elevator.

Up ahead, two doors down, he saw