Chapter 6 - The Ghost of Cormac Sullivan
They hid in a safe house on Fell’s Point—an anonymous red-brick townhouse owned under a shell company that even Helena Kowalic didn't know existed.
The rooms were sparse: bare hardwood, a leather sofa, and tall windows looking out over the dark, choppy expanse of the Patapsco River. Outside, dawn broke in shades of bruised violet and dull pewter.
Maggie stood in the kitchen, washing soot from her arms with cold water from the tap. Her skin was raw, her sweater ruined, but her hands were entirely steady.
Rafferty walked into the kitchen carrying a cardboard archive box. He set it on the kitchen island and pulled out a bottle of antiseptic, placing it beside her.
“The market didn’t burn completely,” he said quietly. “The fire department stopped it at stall 8. Stall 14 is intact. Your cookie tin is safe; Moses retrieved it.”
Maggie paused, the water running over her bruised knuckles. She turned off the tap and turned to face him. “You went back for my money?”
“It was your father’s savings and your deposit,” Rafferty replied, leaning against the counter. The fatigue was visible in the hollows of his cheeks, but the cold sharpness in his eyes hadn't wavered. “You said money that hasn't finished its job isn't yours yet. That money has a job to do tomorrow.”
Maggie walked over to the archive box. “What is this?”
“Everything Anthony Voss left behind when he retired to his estate in Annapolis,” Rafferty said. “My father kept copies of every transaction. If Julian Voss ordered the hit on the warehouse and the market, he did it to erase Anthony’s connection to Cormac Sullivan’s death.”
Maggie opened the box. Inside were yellowed shipping ledgers, cassette tapes of wiretapped phone calls, and an envelope sealed with black wax.
She broke the wax. Inside was a second photograph.
Maggie gasped.
It was taken on the same day as the Polaroid she carried in her coat. Her father, Cormac Sullivan, stood on Pier 7 beside the man in the gray wool coat with the missing little finger on his left hand.
Only in this photo, the man was facing the camera.
It wasn't Vittorio Kowalic.
It was Anthony Voss.
And behind them, sitting on an overturned crate with a young boy’s wide, terrified eyes, was a ten-year-old Rafferty.
Maggie looked up at Rafferty, her breath caught in her throat. “You were there.”
Rafferty looked out the window at the harbor. “I was ten years old. My father brought me to Pier 7 to teach me how the freight line worked. I sat on that crate and watched your father stand between Anthony Voss and the cargo hold of *The Gilded Tern*.”
Maggie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What happened?”
“Your father had a gaff hook in his hand,” Rafferty said, his voice flat, stripped of all emotion by years of buried memory. “Anthony Voss told him that if he didn't sign the customs clearance, his daughter wouldn't live to see high school. Your father didn't flinch. He swung the hook. He took the little finger off Anthony Voss’s left hand before my father’s guards tackled him to the deck.”
Maggie pressed her hand against her mouth, a sob tearing through her chest.
“My father wanted to shoot him right there,” Rafferty continued. “Anthony Voss said no. He said a bullet was too clean for a dock rat. They tied your father to his own anchor chain and dropped it three miles out into the basin.”
Rafferty turned from the window, walking toward her until he was inches away.
“I watched him go into the water, Maggie. And when I was old enough to hold a gun, I swore I would drown every single man who stood on that deck. That’s why I shut down the route. That’s why I’m here.”
Maggie looked down at the photograph, then reached beneath her collar and pulled out her own yellowed Polaroid. She laid them side by side on the counter.
The puzzle was complete.
“My father didn't write *ASK THE KOWALICS* because you killed him,” Maggie said, understanding crashing over her like a tidal wave. “He wrote it because you were the only witnesses who knew what Voss had done.”
May you like
“We were,” Rafferty said. “And tomorrow night, we testify.”
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