No Safe Place by Richard North Patterson Page A

loved his mother.
    She, too, was from County Roscommon. At twenty-one, she had given birth to James Joseph; Kerry Francis had not been born until she was thirty-three. Between, there was a string of miscarriages.
    Mary retained a faded prettiness, like a rose preserved in the pages of a book. But what Kerry adored was her laughing green eyes, like crescents. The mere sight of Kerry seemed to make her smile.
    They lived in the Vailsburg section of Newark, populated by Irish and a scattering of Italians. Vailsburg began with the leafy expanse of Vailsburg Park, a rolling tract of land with several ball fields; it ended with Ivy Hill Park and the grander homes of South Orange, where the snobs lived. The streets were tree-lined and quiet, with neat two-story wooden houses populated by the families of policemen and firemen, civil servants and small-businessmen, the odd lawyer or accountant. Children ran free, playing games in the streets, protected by mothers like Mary, who shouted at drivers who went too fast. There were several playgrounds with basketball hoops, and in the winter, the fire department flooded a section of Ivy Hill Park and turned it into a skating rink.
    Mary Kilcannon taught Kerry to skate there, laughing as he flailed his arms, clapping with pleasure as his efforts became stronger and surer. She made him forget what was already clear—that he would never be as tall as Jamie, or as fast and agile at sports. She was the one person on earth Kerry was certain loved him as he was.
    Without speaking, Kerry and his mother became conspirators.
    What Michael Kilcannon imposed on them at night was a shameful secret, never to be discussed. Kerry knew that his mother could not ask the police for help. Michael Kilcannon
was
the police; to tell his friends would shame him, perhaps make him even more brutal. Within the tight community of Vailsburg, where a quiet word from a policeman was enough to nip trouble in the bud, Michael treasured his reputation.
    Every morning, Mary Kilcannon prayed at Sacred Heart.
    In the half-lit vastness of the church, Kerry would watch her rapt profile. Kerry, too, found the church consoling—its hush, its seventy-foot ceilings and beautiful stained-glass windows, its marble altar, framed by a fresco of Jesus ascending. Sometimes they stayed for an hour.
    One snowy winter morning, they wended their way home. They made a game of it, Kerry trying to walk in his mother’s bigger footprints without making footprints of his own.
    His prize was a cup of hot chocolate. As they sat at the kitchen table, his mother smiling at him, Kerry felt he would burst with love. But it was she who said, “I love you more than words can tell, Kerry Francis.”
    Tears came to his eyes. As if reading his mind, Mary Kil-cannon said, “Your father’s a good man when he’s sober. He takes good care of us. He’s only frustrated, afraid he won’t succeed as he deserves.”
    The words were meant as comfort. But what Kerry heard was that they were trapped: from the long nights with his father, he sensed that the reasons for Michael’s failure to rise were the same as for his abusiveness, and that this would never end until someone ended it.
    Kerry squeezed his mother’s hand.
    But outside their home, Kerry knew, Mary Kilcannon would always be known as James’s mother.
    It began with how much Jamie favored her, so closely that only his maleness made him handsome instead of beautiful. By seventeen, Jamie was six feet one, with an easy grace and with hazel eyes that seemed to take in everything around him. Vails-burg thought Jamie close to perfect: he was student body president of Seton Hall Prep; captain of its football team; second in his class. Jamie’s clothes were always neat and pressed, nothing out of place. Girls adored him. Like most obvious expressions of emotion, this seemed to amuse Jamie and, perhaps, to frighten him.
    This was Jamie’s secret—his ability to withdraw. To Kerry, his brother seemed