ONCE IN, NEVER OUT
Chapter 5

     
     
     
After leaving Churchill's, McKenna returned to the Major Case Squad office in police headquarters. It was a large, modern office on the tenth floor, but there were only two detectives there catching up on their paperwork. Everyone else was either at lunch, in court, or out working their cases. Even Inspector Dennis Sheeran, the CO of the unit, was out of the office.
     That was fine by McKenna. He wanted some quiet time to go over the Meaghan case folder. He began with the photos, spreading them out on top of his desk. After studying the fourteen shots for half an hour, McKenna was sure he would know Meaghan anywhere he saw her and he had formed some impressions about what she was like. She reminded him of a Raggedy Ann doll all grown up, but still cherished by those who knew her. He put the photos back in the envelope and went through Walsh's work.
     There was a lot of paper, all photocopies made by Walsh since the original reports had been sent to the Missing Persons Squad. He had been thorough in documenting his interviews of Chris O'Malley, Ray Donovan, seven Jameson's employees, six of Meaghan's neighbors, the building super, and her parents in Ireland. He had also visited four Irish bars frequented by her and had received the same story from all quarters: Meaghan was a hard-working, reliable girl with a loving family and lots of friends, and she had told none of them that she had any intention of leaving on vacation without O'Malley. All thought her disappearance suspicious, and although many had stated that Meaghan could handle herself, they all feared for her safety.
     According to the information originally given by Chris O'Malley on the standard missing persons report, Meaghan was a legal resident alien, twenty-four years old, five-foot-four, and 115 pounds, with red hair, fair complexion, and no tattoos or noticeable scars. She had been born in Ireland, had graduated from secondary school there, and had been in the United States for three years. Her ears had been pierced for earrings, but O'Malley hadn't been sure how many times. Under the JEWELRY caption, O'Malley had reported that besides earrings she usually wore a Claddagh ring on her left hand and a crucifix on a gold chain around her neck.
     During his interview with O'Malley, Walsh had gotten the truth about Meaghan's legal status and he had attached a hand-written, unofficial note to the report stating that she was an illegal alien and that she was twenty-two, not twenty-four. Her birthday was March 18th and she had been in the US for two years. Walsh had also done a criminal record check on both O'Malley and Meaghan. O'Malley had been arrested for a minor assault two years before, but the case had been dismissed. Meaghan had never been arrested.
     It took McKenna an hour of studying the folder before he was satisfied that he really knew everything Walsh knew on the case. By that time the office was filling up with detectives returning to document their day on paper.
     Inspector Sheeran came in, took a quick look around the squad room, gave McKenna a wave, and went into his office without asking McKenna what he was up to.
     A few years before, McKenna had held a political appointment as an assistant commissioner and had been, in theory, Sheeran's boss. McKenna had hated that job, finding it meaningless and unrewarding work, and had finally given up the fancy title with the nice office and the obscene salary and returned to police work as a detective. However, although Sheeran was an old friend, McKenna knew the inspector was uncomfortable supervising him. This, in turn, made McKenna uncomfortable.
     The occasional mission from Brunette didn't help matters, either. Whenever somebody influential enough was scammed, robbed, or burglarized in New York City, they invariably wound up asking that McKenna be assigned their case. Most of the time Brunette ignored these requests, but not always. He believed that he had the best detectives in the world working for him, but occasionally he would drop one of those cases on McKenna.
     The criteria Brunette used was still something of a mystery to McKenna, but he suspected the mayor had something to do with it. Most people Brunette could politely rebuff or tacitly ignore, but the mayor was a politician in charge of a city many people classified as unmanageable. However, His Honor was doing the impossible because he understood the political process of give-and-take; grant a favor now and get it returned later, when needed.
     Aside from what was implied in many of the newspaper columns, the mayor was the popular police commissioner's boss and both men knew it. McKenna suspected that the rule of thumb among the politically influential in town was put pressure on Brunette and you got nowhere; put pressure on the mayor and you got McKenna.
     Which was good in this case, McKenna thought. Without ever having met Meaghan Maher, he had grown fond of her. He couldn't explain why in words and realized that it was unprofessional, but he had already taken a personal interest in her life and wanted to get to the bottom of her disappearance. He was growing impatient waiting for Brunette's call and was about to go through the case folder again when the phone rang.
     Two minutes later McKenna was sitting in Brunette's office on the fourteenth floor, listening to his friend make the usual small talk with his feet propped up on Teddy Roosevelt's big desk. Although Brunette recognized that political influence was a fact of life that had to be dealt with, he didn't like bending his department's traditional procedures by assigning McKenna to his missions. He would eventually bring up the case as a conversation piece and wait for McKenna to express interest in it.
     So they talked about the latest note-passer McKenna was working on, a guy who had robbed four banks in a month, making a total of six thousand dollars for his efforts. McKenna had identified him but hadn't yet located him. To help Brunette along, he described the case as boring and then asked how lunch went with the cardinal.
     "Funny you should ask," Brunette said, taking his feet off the desk. "With St. Paddy's Day coming up, I figured he wanted to talk about ACT UP and Queer Nation, but he hardly mentioned them. Glossed right over it."
     Before his meeting with Chipmunk, McKenna had also assumed that the cardinal had wanted to talk to Brunette about the two radical gay rights groups. According to ACT UP and Queer Nation, the Catholic church and the cardinal were inherently antigay. St. Patrick's Day, when the cardinal was the focus of national media attention as he presided over the St. Patrick's Day parade from the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral, was their time of action. For the past few years, ACT UP and Queer Nation had sought publicity by disrupting church services and organizing demonstrations protesting the cardinal's perceived stand.
     Everyone suspected it was a tough time for the cardinal, but he never deigned to publicly acknowledge the activities of the two groups. "I guess the cardinal had something else on his mind," McKenna stated innocently.
     "Yeah, he's got an Irish aide over from Ireland. Introduced me to him and we all had lunch together."
     "Nice guy?"
     "A sweetheart, and sharp as they come. Cardinal told me he's gonna be a monsignor before long, figures that one day this fella might be heading up the church in Ireland."
     "Really?"
     "Yeah, but the cardinal also mentioned a problem the poor guy's having. He's real upset about his sister."
     "Because she's missing?"
     Brunette sat up straight and eyed McKenna shrewdly. "Damn! Sheeran tell you about this already?"
     That was a cat out of the bag. So he's already discussed it with Sheeran, McKenna realized. Good, saves me the trouble of tiptoeing around the inspector. "No, Ray. He didn't say a word, but I already knew I had this case. Got it from a higher source, probably knew before you did."
     "Higher than the cardinal?"
     "Yep. I got it from Chipmunk."

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