What Have You Done Page 10

  She walked inside without saying anything, her black heels clicking on the hardwood floors. She took off her black coat and laid it across one of the wingback chairs in the living room and then dropped her black purse on the same chair. Sean came in behind her with Liam clutching his hand so tight it made his fingers white. Both boys stopped in the foyer. Sean watched his mother as she took off the small black hat and veil that had been bobby pinned to her head and tossed it on the coffee table, where piles of bills had been strewn about. As she staggered farther inside, she stripped herself of the remaining black clothes she’d been wearing until only her satin slip and stockings covered her. He didn’t move until she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Sean turned and closed the front door. The streetlights that lined the block were just beginning to come on. Dusk was upon them. The day was coming to a close. He pulled his brother upstairs and into his room to get him changed.

  Liam had been quiet for most of the day. Neither of them had been allowed to attend their father’s wake, so the funeral was the first time they’d had the opportunity to experience what had been, up to that point, only words and tears from others. They hadn’t seen their father since he left that morning a few days ago to go to work. The casket at the funeral was closed. They hadn’t had a chance to properly say goodbye.

  During the funeral, Sean began to cry when the woman in the balcony of the church started singing her sad songs, but Liam was quiet. Even when friends and relatives tried to console Sean, Liam was off to the side, distant, detached. Perhaps he was too young to fully understand what was happening. He knew their father was dead, but how much could a five-year-old really comprehend death? Liam hadn’t known him like Sean had, so the pain and the sadness would be limited. His little brother had been lucky in that regard.

  Sean helped take off Liam’s jacket and pants and unbuttoned his tiny white dress shirt. He fished his Rugrats pajamas from one of his dresser drawers and walked over to the bed where his little brother was sitting.

  “Here,” he said. “Put these on.”

  “I want Mom to help me,” Liam replied quietly.

  “She can’t right now. We gotta do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Because she’s sad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That Dad left her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sad too.”

  Sean shook his head. “What do you know about being sad? You hardly knew him.”

  “I knew Dad! I loved him.”

  “Not like me and Mom. You’re too young.”

  “I still miss him.”

  “I know.”

  Liam hopped off his bed and shuffled over to Sean in only his underwear. He hugged him and squeezed until Sean had to pull him away.

  “Don’t ever leave me,” Liam whispered as he finally began to cry. “Don’t die, Sean. I don’t want you to die.”

  Sean knelt down so they were face-to-face. He used his thumb to wipe away Liam’s tears. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not going to die. I won’t leave you.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever. I’m your brother. You’re stuck with me.”

  Liam tried to smile. “You’re stuck with me too, then. Forever.”

  Sean rumpled Liam’s hair. “Forever sounds good to me. It’s a deal.”

  Sean pulled his red pickup truck into the driveway of his home in Blackwood, New Jersey, and shut off the engine. The house was an old craftsman, a little beat up from years of minimal upkeep. The grass was slightly overgrown with spring dandelions beginning to dot the landscape. He hopped out of the car and walked to the front, never noticing the imperfections his neighbors couldn’t help but see. The house had been given to him after his grandparents died, a reward for helping raise Liam. It never felt like his, though. It was just a place he grew up in and now occupied mortgage-free. Just another hand-me-down. The busted front window and rusted doorframe remained.

  The front door shut with a thud as he stepped into the empty house. He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. Everything was so quiet. He’d been the one to meet Kerri first. He’d seen her leaning against the wall outside the women’s room of a club, waiting for a friend, and had made his move. The conversation was quick but friendly. He’d offered his usual line about being a cop, and she’d bitten with the intrigue he was accustomed to. They talked and drank until the bar closed and the hours turned over the day. Numbers were exchanged, and an on-again, off-again relationship was formed. No sparks, just a little chemistry. A little fun.

  Liam had met Kerri about two months after his brother, and unlike Sean’s experience, the expressiveness of sexual attraction between the two of them was both unmistakable and immediate. Liam, deep within the trenches of a failing marriage and looking for a light at the end of his tunnel, had fallen head over heels for his brother’s girlfriend, and Kerri had responded accordingly. Neither of them could help what they felt for one another, and both knew they were hurting Sean, but love conquered all, and they were no exception. Their relationship began the moment their eyes met.

  Sean never had trouble dating women, but lasting and concrete relationships were few and far between. He did his best, but the inevitability of a breakup always seemed to preoccupy him until he used it as a crutch to let the relationship crumble.

  Although he thought he could’ve loved Kerri, Sean convinced himself their relationship would’ve fizzled within a few months as all the others had; so giving her to Liam was fine. He was used to sacrificing for Liam. Kerri was no different a sacrifice from anything else he’d had to give up. It was all part of being a good brother and the leader of their little family.

  Sean pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts list. When he found what he was looking for, he dialed.

  “Tender Cares,” a voice said on the other line. “How may I help you?”

  Sean cleared his throat. “Yes, hi. I need to make an appointment to see Marisol Carpenter and her primary caretaker at the facility. I’d like to come tomorrow if I can.”

  “Are you family or friend?”

  “Family,” Sean replied. “We’re family.”

  22

  Back in 2008, during the peak of the financial crisis, Liam’s team had been brought in on a homicide involving a young financial advisor who had been skimming his clients’ accounts for almost a decade, while at the same time creating quite a lifestyle for himself. As the market declined, his clients had begun to withdraw their money from funds that were losing millions by the day, and it was then his scheme was discovered. It wasn’t long before the man was found shot three times in the foyer of his home.

  Partnering with Homicide and Forensics was the tech team from the police department. They had used a hacking device called rainbow tables to bypass the victim’s password and gain access to his computer, thus providing client lists, emails, ledgers that tracked the amounts of stolen money throughout the years, and whatever else they needed. In the end, it had been an older woman, six years into retirement, who’d killed the financial advisor with her husband’s illegal handgun. The tech team had uncovered several email exchanges between the woman and the advisor that had ended with threats, which ultimately steered the homicide detectives toward the woman, who eventually confessed. The investigation had lasted about three weeks, and Liam had ended up keeping a copy of the hacking software on a CD-ROM one of the team members had given him. He’d never imagined a scenario where he’d have to use it, but then again, he’d never imagined a scenario in which he’d be a murder suspect.

  Operating systems didn’t store a user’s passwords in plain text. It would be too vulnerable to attack. Instead, they executed calculations through an algorithm called a hash and put the passwords through a one-way hash function for storage. Even if someone were to obtain these hashes, they would be rather useless as they’d be no more than symbols that meant nothing. The password would still need to be entered, aft
er which the hash would need to be calculated and compared to the stored password hash. A rainbow table circumvented this requirement in a matter of seconds by matching against an enormous list of passwords with the respective hashes included. This allowed a hacker to get into a person’s computer without having to delete or change a password. The victim would never know his or her system had been compromised, which was the beauty of the rainbow table. It was the skeleton key to a person’s protected data, and it was exactly what Liam needed to pull off his latest move.

  As dawn broke on a new day, the Homicide Division was relatively empty. There were a few detectives at their desks, but for the most part, the floor was dark and quiet with changeover from the midnight to day shift still about an hour away. Liam quietly slipped through the double doors and hid behind a row of filing cabinets. He made his way to the opposite end of the room and sidled up to the last row of desks in the far corner. Keenan’s desk was one in from where he stood. He looked from behind the cabinets and saw two detectives, three rows away, hardly moving, their heads buried in their computer screens. The entire floor was deadly quiet. There was no way he could come out from where he was without being seen. One wrong step on the ancient hardwood floors and all heads would turn. It was too dangerous.

  Plan B.

  Liam retraced his steps, walked back out into the hallway, and made his way down to the first-floor back entrance, where he was alone. He leaned against the wall and ran through his contingency plan once more in his head.

  There wouldn’t be much time once things began. He’d have to act quickly and with purpose. The next few minutes could dictate the rest of his life.

  The fire alarm was just outside the stairwell that led up to the second and third floors of the department. The nearest fire department was five blocks away, which meant arrival time would be about ten minutes. He’d have ten minutes to get this done. Anything more, and he’d be caught. And if he were caught, things would be revealed, which would mean the end of him trying to find the truth. Trembling fingers wrapped around the alarm’s tiny glass handle. One more breath, then he pulled it.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Liam knew the siren ripping through the station house was deafening, but his focus was solely on the metal stairs he climbed two at a time. When he got to the second floor, he was met by about a dozen officers and detectives making their way out of the green steel fire door and onto the stairs that would bring them to the lobby and out onto the street, where they would await further instructions. Liam could hear some of the men mumbling profanities under their breath while others wondered if the alarm was a drill or the real thing.

  It took some effort to swim against the current of bodies pouring against him, but he stepped to the side and moved ahead as they passed by without so much as a glance. He waited until the last man remaining from the second floor began to make his descent and then ran down the hall into the Homicide Division, which was now void of anyone other than himself.

  The clock was ticking. Liam scurried to Keenan’s desk at the far end of the room and turned on his computer. In the moments it took the computer to boot up, he finally noticed the volume of the alarm as well as the flashing strobe lights coming from the fire monitors that were mounted on the walls.

  The computer was on.

  Unlike the simple method of copying files from a computer that Don had done on Kerri’s laptop, this process required complete stealth and had to leave files intact. Keenan couldn’t know Liam had ever touched his keyboard, let alone been inside his system. Therefore, this was a procedure that needed to be done physically at Keenan’s desk. There was no other way around it, and time was of the essence.

  Beads of perspiration slipped down his forehead as Liam took the CD from his pocket and placed it in the disc sleeve on the side of the laptop. He pushed the sleeve back in and checked his watch. Eight more minutes. By his estimation, the emergency responders were already suiting up, and an EMT unit was being dispatched from one of the area hospitals. This had to work quickly. Police personnel would stay out of the building until the fire department gave them the all clear, so he didn’t need to worry about anyone else sneaking up on him. Still, the clock was ticking.

  As soon as the CD loaded, a series of numbers and letters flashed onto the screen too fast for the human eye to keep up with. Alphanumeric combinations came, one after the other, in nanoseconds. After about two minutes, the screen went black, and then Keenan’s desktop appeared. Liam slid the mouse over to the email file and clicked on it. The computer opened the file, and Keenan’s inbox appeared. He was in.

  Just as Nelson had promised, the phone records sat at the top of the list, unread. Liam clicked on the email and forwarded it to himself.

  “Floor Captain!” a voice cried over the unrelenting alarm. “Anyone up here?”

  Liam’s heart skipped a beat as he slid off the chair he was sitting on. He hid the best he could while trying to delete the email from Keenan’s inbox as well as delete the email he’d sent himself from the Sent file.

  “Hello! Anyone here?”

  The department had assigned several officers to be floor captains in the event of a fire drill. Their job was to be the last people out to ensure everyone else was evacuated and accounted for. He’d forgotten about them.

  “Hello!”

  Both emails were deleted. Fumbling hands moved the mouse over to the deleted files, and with a few key strokes, he purged those as well. Almost done.

  The beam of a flashlight bounced off the wall as it approached from down the hall. It was time to go. Liam ejected the CD from the sleeve and shut down the computer. Just as he stood up, the flashlight hit him square in the chest.

  “What’re you doing here?” the floor captain asked.

  The man behind the flashlight was an older sergeant he recognized by face, but he couldn’t place the name. Liam made a circular motion with his hand. “All clear,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “I already checked this floor. All clear.”

  “You’re not a floor captain.”

  “Just trying to help. That alarm came out of nowhere. Wasn’t sure if it was a drill or not.”

  The sergeant dropped his flashlight. “All right, let’s get out of here. Follow me. FD’s on its way. ETA one minute.”

  Liam followed the sergeant back down the hall, out the green fire door, and down to the first floor. When they got out into the street, he turned and walked in the opposite direction of where the rest of the precinct’s personnel had gathered. He’d done it. The phone records were now in his inbox and deleted from Keenan’s. He’d need to edit the records and resend to Keenan before noon. Otherwise, he’d risk Keenan calling down to place a rush himself. Timing was everything. His life depended on it.

  23

  There were still a few hours before he was due to show up at the station house, and with the extra time, Liam found himself turning off of Broad Street and onto Passyunk Avenue. The brick row homes he passed by brought a sense of joy as well as the familiar weight of dread. He’d spent the beginning of his childhood playing out on these very streets in endless games of stickball and tag and touch football and hockey. But with those memories came the nightmares of his father’s death and his mother’s attempted murder-suicide. South Philly always had an air of both joy and misfortune. Whenever he traveled through the streets here, he never quite felt at home, but he couldn’t deny the comfort that was also there. It was unmistakable.

  South Street Mission was nothing more than a redbrick facade, a metal door, and a small sign fastened to the side. There was ten-minute parking out front, so Liam knew there’d be a spot when he pulled up. The mission’s tow policy was no joke. Outside, a few kids played hopscotch inside chalk boxes that had been drawn on the sidewalk. The chalk itself had almost been washed away by the recent rain, leaving a ghostly outline instead. Small puddles splashed up as the kids jumped from one end to the other. Liam pulled over, turned off the car, and decided, withou
t really thinking, to go inside.

  The aroma from inside the mission was always the same no matter how many times he’d walked through those doors: bleach, finger paint, and paste. It was one of the most distinctive smells in the city, and it hadn’t changed for more than two decades. The mission had originally been founded as an after-school program, daycare facility, and meeting room for support groups or hobby clubs or whomever wanted to rent the space. After the tech bubble burst in 2000, and then again after the housing crash in 2008, the mission had converted itself into a homeless shelter and food pantry, eliminating the space for clubs but keeping the after-school program and half of its daycare. It was a place of peace. There was a sense of calm here.

  Liam walked down the hallway into the administration office to find Father Brennan sitting alone behind a desk filled with stacks of paperwork—so much so, the desk’s wood surface was completely hidden. Father Brennan was short and pudgy. He was pushing seventy. His face looked like pink Play-Doh, with cheeks so round the older women in his congregation couldn’t help but squeeze them as they exited his service each week after Sunday mass. A full head of silver hair was still intact. His green eyes shone. The priest was beloved in the neighborhood, a staple at Saint Agnes, and helped run the mission. There wasn’t a soul in South Philly who had a bad thing to say about him.

  “Liam!” Father Brennan shouted when he saw him standing outside the office. He rose from his chair and scurried around to wrap his boy in a giant hug. “How are you?”

  Liam couldn’t help but smile as he was engulfed in the old man’s embrace. “I’m good, Father. I’m good.”