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  The 8th Circle

  The 8th Circle

  A Danny Ryan Thriller

  Sarah Cain

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Sarah Cain

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-62953-480-0

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-62953-485-5

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-62953-479-4

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-62953-658-3

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-62953-669-9

  Cover design by Andy Ruggirello

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  2 Park Avenue, 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10016

  First Edition: January 2016

  In Memory

  of

  Lily Maude

  Who Knew All the Stories

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Acknowledgments

  1

  “We’re all dying, so we might as well get on with it.”

  Danny Ryan looked at the words scrawled across his laptop with some satisfaction and winced. He almost felt his grandmother’s boney knuckle rap against the back of his head.

  “Blasphemer. Do y’think He died on the cross for you to dismiss life so lightly?”

  “I’m not dismissing life. I’m saying we’re all headed to one end,” Danny said aloud. Then he realized how ridiculous it was to argue with a dead woman.

  “‘I spit in the face of Time.’”

  “Yeats again? Really?” But she was gone, and he was losing his mind by inches. He slammed the laptop shut.

  Danny wanted to hurl the goddamn machine across the room. What happened to the words that used to flow out of his brain, through his fingers, onto the keyboard? What good was a columnist who couldn’t write?

  But he wasn’t a columnist anymore. He was, what? His mind skittered through the possibilities: dumbass, delinquent, decayed. So many D words, but not the one he wanted.

  Leaning back in his leather chair, he picked up the photograph of his son that sat on his desk to the left of the laptop. Conor wore his purple soccer jersey and sported a bruise on his forehead. His huge grin showcased his missing right front tooth, and he clutched his MVP trophy in his small hands like it was the World Cup.

  Danny set the photograph back on the desk and forced back the surge that threatened to drown him. He opened his drawer, pulled out an old Tokarev TT-33, and then stood and walked to the stone hearth. When he sat next to Beowulf, the dog laid his massive head across Danny’s knees. He stroked Beowulf’s black fur. Beowulf licked his face.

  “This was my grandfather’s.” Danny held up the gun and drew a bead on the computer. He then turned the gun around and pointed it at his temple. “The old man gave this to me, Wolf. You know why?” He pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, and Danny set it on the hearth. “He said it was the perfect gun for a Commie asshole.”

  Outside, the sound of splintering wood brought Danny to his feet. Beowulf tore into the kitchen and hurled himself at the door, barking loud enough to raise the dead. Danny left the gun on the hearth and followed. He grabbed his parka, cell phone, and a flashlight and pushed Beowulf back from the door. “Wolf, stay here.”

  Following the beam of the light through the wind-driven sleet, he saw the hole in the fence. A car balanced precariously on the small island of ornamental shrubbery in the middle of the duck pond. Whoever sat in that car wasn’t trying to get out.

  Rain stung Danny’s face. The wind slapped his skin, and tiny pellets of ice beat against him. He called 9-1-1 and then clambered down the slippery incline.

  The flashlight lit up the back of the car, and Danny froze. Jesus. He knew that old black BMW with its “Ahh, I See the Screw-Up Fairy Has Visited Us Again” bumper sticker.

  Michael Cohen. They’d fought. It seemed long ago now. The wet seeped under Danny’s coat, and he shoved his phone into his pocket. He heard a crunch, and the front end of the BMW dipped into the water.

  Danny sloshed into the pond. It wasn’t that deep, but the freezing water sent shock waves up his legs. He stumbled in the sucking mud, and the flashlight slid from his wet hand. For a moment, it illuminated the pond in eerie green and then blinked out. He grabbed the door handle with numb fingers and wrenched it open.

  In the glow of the overhead light, he could see the smashed windshield and Michael draped over the steering wheel. No airbags in this heap. Danny pushed Michael back as gently as he could, careful to avoid the shattered glass. Blood bubbled from Michael’s nose and mouth and oozed down the front of his blue jacket. Michael gave a shuddering wheeze, and his eyes blinked open. His round face looked slack.

  Danny could hear the faint call of sirens now. “Don’t try to talk. Help’s coming.” The metallic stench of blood assaulted him. “It’ll be all right, Michael.”

  Michael shuddered. “Danny.” Rasping coughs shook his husky frame, and flecks of bloody foam hit Danny in the face. “I . . . I love you. Y’know? Brothers.”

  Danny knew Michael didn’t have much
time. He leaned closer. “What happened?”

  “So sorry,” Michael’s voice came slow and thick. The light in his eyes faded with each word.

  “Sorry? Sorry for what? Michael?” Police cars and an ambulance screeched around the curve. Red-and-blue lights reflected off the black water. Michael’s head drooped down. When he gave a rattling wheeze, Danny grasped his shoulders. “Michael?”

  Michael lifted his head enough that his lips brushed Danny’s ear. “Inferno.”

  2

  Danny sat at his kitchen table and stared into his mug of coffee. The tightening behind his right eye signaled the onset of a really shitty migraine as swirls of light rippled in the dark liquid and bounced off the walls. He tried to concentrate on the copper tabletop.

  “Mr. Ryan?” The younger of the two Chester County detectives moved a little closer. “I know this has been traumatic for you, but if we could just go over a few details one more time.”

  They were handling him. After all, he was still Danny Ryan, Boy Wonder, Pulitzer Prize winner. He’d been a national TV talk show regular. A celebrity. They hadn’t figured out he was just another hustler. His stomach tightened.

  “Mr. Ryan? Are you all right?”

  He nodded. All right as opposed to what?

  They had let him change out of his wet things, but despite the dry clothes and two mugs of coffee, he couldn’t shake the cold that seeped into his bones. What the hell was the young cop’s name? McSomething. He had a little black notebook.

  “Could we go over this one more time?” McSomething said to Danny as he glanced at his partner.

  The other cop stood just to Danny’s left. Older. Had that ex-army posture, though his short, gray hair looked wrong. Uneven, like he cut it himself. He had a notebook too. Danny could hear his pen scratch over the page. Jesus, how many times were they going to do this routine?

  McSomething said, “You were here alone when your friend crashed through the fence. Is that right?”

  “I was alone.” Danny pressed his fingers against his right cheekbone. Inferno. “I heard a crash and came outside.” Lights zoomed around the room, leaving gleaming trails of white. Danny dug his fingers deeper into his cheek. He should take something to dull the growing pain.

  Pain is good. It’s part of the healing process. You have to let yourself feel, Danny. Wasn’t that what the shrink had told him? Then he had written out a handful of prescriptions for mind-numbing pharmaceuticals.

  “You understand your friend was shot, Mr. Ryan?” McSomething asked.

  “Yes.” Danny understood. They had tested his hands for gunpowder residue.

  “You worked together on the same paper for how many years?”

  “Sixteen.” Michael wouldn’t have had a job if his family hadn’t owned the paper, but why say that now? Inferno. “Michael wrote On the Scene,” Danny continued. “Half of it came right off the wire service. He had a blog, Around Town. His dad is Andy Cohen, the managing editor.”

  The older, silent cop bent closer. Danny smelled coffee and the faint tang of scotch and mint. “Anything else you can think of?” the cop asked.

  “No.” Danny licked his chapped lips. That smell. Scotch and mint. Just like home. Fireworks exploded behind Danny’s eyes. The cop’s face blurred into two, then three.

  “Okay, then, Mr. Ryan, tell me again. Are you sure Michael Cohen didn’t say anything to you?”

  The lights in the kitchen burned his eyeballs, and cold sweat soaked into the back of his shirt. He tasted the coffee, bitter and sour, in the back of his throat as pain wormed into his right eye and tunneled down the side of his face.

  “Mr. Ryan?”

  Danny pulled himself to his feet, but the floor dipped beneath him. He stumbled to the sink and vomited.

  *

  The house creaked, and silence settled around him. In the heavy darkness, he could feel his ghosts watching, the old man sitting in the corner gloating. God is watching you, boy. Danny curled into a ball and pressed an ice pack against his right eye. Cold helped dull the pain while the drugs seeped into his system. His muscles began to relax.

  Inferno.

  What the hell was Michael doing? Buying drugs?

  Beowulf jumped up beside Danny and nestled in, his paw flung across him, his wet muzzle against Danny’s left ear.

  Beth hadn’t allowed Beowulf to sleep upstairs. She had wanted a designer dog that would look good on the cover of Lifestyle, not some hundred-pound Heinz 57 who thought he was a lapdog. When the magazine had come to do its cover story on them, Danny had to ask old Mrs. Norton in the house next door to watch Beowulf for the day.

  Conor had loved Beowulf. He had loved dogs and soccer and the soldiers’ cabins at Valley Forge Park. Danny’s eyes drifted shut. He could see Conor now. Snow was falling. They’d build a snowman ten feet high when he got home with Beth from that stupid Christmas tea.

  “Daddy, there’s a monster under the bed.”

  “Conor.”

  Danny pushed himself up, staggered down the hall, and yanked open Conor’s bedroom door. The room stood forlorn, its mementos gone. Only the double bed with its neat blue comforter, the oak dresser, and the wallpaper with the planets and stars remained.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  He rammed his fist into the wall.

  After the funeral and the luncheon, when the last person had left, Danny had stood in the kitchen amid the casseroles and containers of cakes and cookies he would dump the next day and stared out at the Christmas tree, still tied up on the back porch. The size and silence of the house had pressed down on him like a giant hand, and he had smashed his fists against the stone wall of the kitchen. He hadn’t felt the skin ripping off or noticed the bits of rock flaking under his assault until he had seen his own blood painting the porous gray rock.

  Now Beowulf bumped against him, nudging him until Danny shuffled back to his own bedroom and climbed under the covers. He pressed his head against the pillow.

  Let go. I can’t . . . let go.

  3

  When Beowulf started to bark, Danny wiped the condensation from the bathroom window. A black Crown Vic sat in the driveway, and a Crime Scene Unit waded through the pond. Headlines ran through his mind: Death in the Duck Pond? Something Fishy in the Pond? Death Among the Duckies?

  Out of habit, Danny jerked open the door to the medicine cabinet. A whole army of bottles awaited his command—his multicolored friends, a regular rainbow coalition. He slammed the door shut. He’d taken himself off the antidepressants and tranquilizers months ago. All the medication had turned him into a zombie. Now he faced mornings clear eyed and jittery with a sense of life bleeding back into his veins. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

  Danny pulled on a pair of jeans and a black sweater and glanced at himself in the mirrors that surrounded him on all sides of the cavernous dressing room.

  Very GQ today, Mr. Ryan. Ready for your close-up?

  A year ago, his column had run on the front page of the Metro section, three times a week, including Sunday, and Andy had been talking syndication. After all, he had been a valuable asset in an industry dying from the competition generated by the twenty-four-hour news channels, bloggers, and online self-promoters. He still sold papers. His columns and blogs had helped staunch the hemorrhaging somewhat. Now it was a good day if he got dressed and remembered to eat. The great Danny Ryan. What was it the old man used to say about him?

  You can package shite and call it butter, but it’s still shite. The old man had a way with words. Maybe he should have been the writer.

  Danny walked down the narrow back stairs, part of the original house built in the mid-1700s. The steps were steep and treacherous. Beth and he had debated ripping them out, but the handmade beauty of the polished oak had won out. They had settled for childproof gates Conor had quickly learned to open.

  Once, Conor had wrapped the fuzzy, blue rug from his bedroom around himself, sat on his plastic, green sled, and launched himself down the back stairs. Danny had
run to him, horrified.

  “Look what I did, Dad,” Conor had said. “Indoor sledding! Cool, huh?”

  Danny had to bite his cheek to control the urge to yell, Are you fucking insane? Instead, he had knelt beside Conor and said, “Not cool, dude. You could have cracked your skull. Don’t do it again.” They had spit and shook hands.

  He went into the kitchen. His great family home, minus the family.

  Beowulf was still barking, but the cops hadn’t approached the door. Danny opened the refrigerator. “Quiet, Wolf. Walk in a minute.”

  He tossed Beowulf two hot dogs. Beowulf gave one last growl, grabbed the hot dogs, and settled under the table as Danny pulled out an urn and made coffee. He opened the freezer and extracted eight enormous coffee cakes. Beth and Conor had been gone almost a year, and women still brought him food. He would stuff most of it in the freezer until there wasn’t any more room and then clear everything and take it to the local homeless shelter.

  But Danny knew cops loved free food and hot coffee. Why not feed them? The poor bastards were in for a miserable enough morning.

  Melting frost on the sunlit windows sparkled in a dancing prism across the cherry cabinets just like any winter morning. Danny could almost believe last night was a dream.

  Inferno. Michael had said that, but what the hell did it mean? Could Michael have been working on something? Danny couldn’t imagine what that something could be. A play about firefighters? A hot new group? A club? It would be a first if Andy had assigned him anything serious. Andy had always treated Michael like the village idiot, even if he was his son.

  He picked up his cell phone, charging on the counter. He had a missed call: Alex Burton, the paper’s chief political reporter. He deleted it. Over the past two weeks, she had left messages ranging from “Yo, Ryan, could you give me a call?” to “Daniel, I really need to talk to you.”

  He told himself he’d call her back soon.

  “Come on, Wolf.” Danny pulled on a jacket, and the big dog jumped up, eager as a puppy. He attached Beowulf’s leash, and they headed out to the duck pond. The two local cops from last night stood watching. Not unusual. After they’d determined Michael had been shot, the county detectives had taken over. The local cops didn’t have the resources to handle a homicide investigation. Of course Michael had died here, but who knew where he’d been shot? In town, probably. That wouldn’t be a surprise. Michael bought his coke in quantity, which meant he carried serious cash. Anyone could have ripped him off. It wouldn’t have been a first.