Mystic River / Таинственная река. Деннис Лихэйн

turned the corner and drove home.

      It was dead[21] there at night, most of the homes opposite the Pen Channel Park had burned down in a fire four years before and stood empty. Katie just wanted to get home, get into bed, get up in the morning, and be long gone before Bobby or her father ever thought to look for her. She wanted to leave this place, never look back at it.

      And she remembered something she hadn't thought about in years. She remembered walking to the zoo with her mother when she was five years old. Her mother had held her hand. She looked up at her mother's thin face and big eyes. And Katie, five and curious and sad, said, “How come you're tired all the time?” Her mother put both palms on her cheeks and stared at her with red eyes. Katie thought she was mad, but then her mother smiled and said, “Oh, baby,” and pulled Katie closer to her, and then Katie felt her tears in her hair.

      She was trying to remember the color of her mother's eyes when she saw the body lying in the middle of the street. It lay like a sack just in front of her tires and she swerved to the right, feeling something bump under her left tire, thinking, Oh Jesus, oh God, no, tell me I didn't hit it, please, Jesus God no.

      She stopped on the right side of the street, and someone called to her. “Hey, you okay?”

      Katie saw him coming toward her, and she started to relax because he looked familiar and harmless until she noticed the gun in his hand.

* * *

      At three in the morning, Brendan Harris finally fell asleep. He did so smiling, Katie on his mind, telling him she loved him, whispering his name, her soft breath like a kiss in his ear.

      4

      Dave Boyle had ended up in McGills that night, sitting with Stanley the Giant at the corner of the bar, watching a baseball game.

      Dave Boyle, former star for the baseball teams of '78 to '82, was watching it, thinking: Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win.

      But when the team lost, when your team had failed you, it was only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. All you could do was to get in your car and drive back to your home.

      “You see these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up and saw two girls standing on the bar, dancing, as a third friend sang. The one on the right… Dave had known her since she was a little girl – Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor dead Marita's daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife's cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up. Watching her dance and laugh, her blond hair over her face, Dave felt a black hope, and it didn't come from nowhere. It came from her. It was radiated from her body to his, from the sudden recognition when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little wave that brushed against his heart.

      Dave watched Katie, remembering his glory days. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one thinking of him as that kid who'd been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local hero. Pretty girls in his bed. Fate on his side.

      Dave Boyle. Not knowing then how short futures could be. How quickly they could disappear, leaving you with nothing, with no surprises, with no reason for hope, nothing but dull days.

      I will not dream anymore, you said. No more pain. But then you saw a dancing girl who looked like a woman you'd dated in high school – a woman you'd loved and lost – and you said. To hell with it, let's dream just one more time.

* * *

      When Celeste Boyle had been a teenager, she'd been sure someone would come and take her away from the problems they had in her family. She wasn't bad-looking. She had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She thought it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few men, they weren't good enough for her. Mostly they were from Buckingham, Point or Flat punks, and one guy from uptown. Her ill mother's health insurance was out, and quite soon Celeste started working simply to try and pay the monstrous medical bills for her mother's monstrous diseases.

      It had been Dave who Celeste had chosen. He was goodlooking and funny and calm. When they'd married, he'd had a good job, running the mail room, and later he got another on the loading docks of a downtown hotel and never complained about it. Dave, in fact, never complained about anything and almost never talked about his childhood before high school, which had only begun to seem strange to her in the year since her mother had died. It had been a stroke that had finally done the job, Celeste coming home from the supermarket to find her mother dead.

      In the months after the funeral, Celeste comforted herself with the thoughts that at least things would be easier now. But it hadn't worked out that way. Dave's job paid about the same as Celeste's and she would look sadly at the financial crisis in their lives – the bills they'd be paying off for years, the lack of money coming in, the new mountain of bills for schooling Michael, and the destroyed credit.

      Sometimes, Celeste found herself sitting on the toilet, trying not to cry and wondering how her life had gotten here. That's what she was doing at three in the morning, early Sunday, when Dave came in with blood all over him.

      He seemed shocked to find her there. He jumped back when she stood up.

      She gasped, “Honey, what happened?”

      “I got cut.”

      “Dave, Jesus Christ. What happened?”

      He lifted the shirt and Celeste stared at a long cut along his ribs that was bloody red.

      “Jesus, you have to go to the hospital.”

      “No, no,” he said. “Look, it's not that deep. It's just bleeding like hell.”

      He was right. On a second look, she noticed it wasn't that bad. But it was long. And it was bloody. Though not enough to explain all the blood on his shirt and neck.

      “Who did this?”

      “Some junkie psycho,” he said, and took off the shirt. “The guy tried to mug me. That's when he cut me, and then…” He paused to drink some tap water. “I freaked.[22] I mean, I freaked seriously, babe. I think I might've killed this guy.”

      “You what…?”

      “I just went crazy when I felt the knife in my side. You know? I knocked him down, got on top of him, and, baby, I exploded.”

      “So it was self-defense?”

      “I don't think the court would see it that way, tell you the truth.”

      “I can't believe this. Honey, tell me exactly what happened.”

      “I'm walking to my car,” he said, and Celeste sat back on the closed toilet as he knelt in front of her, “and this guy comes up to me, asks me for a light. I say I don't smoke.”

      Celeste nodded.

      “So, my heart starts beating fast right then. Because there's no one around but me and him. And that's when I see the knife and he says, 'Your wallet or your life. I'm leaving with one of them.'”

      “That's what he said?”

      Dave leaned back. “Yeah. Why?”

      “Nothing.” Celeste was thinking it just sounded funny for some reason, too clever maybe, like in the movies.

      “So… so then,” Dave said, “I'm like, 'Come on, man. Just let me get in my car and go home,' which was dumb because now he wants my car keys, too. And I just, I don't know, honey, I get mad instead of scared. And I try to get past him and that's when he pushes and cuts me.” He kissed her hand. “So, uh, he pushes me against the car and cuts me, and I feel the knife going through my skin and I, I just go crazy. I hit him in the side of the head with my fist, and I hit again, like the side of his neck. And he falls. And I jump on him, and, and, and…”

      Dave stared into space, his mouth still open.

      “What?” Celeste asked, still trying to see the whole picture. “What

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