To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world. – Unknown

Chapter Eight - Daddy's Little Girl

Brooklyn Fire Training Academy: Forty Six Hours Missing

As Jack and Danny pulled up to the entrance of the Brooklyn Fire Academy, they flashed their badges and inquired about the whereabouts of Tom McNamara.

"Tommy's running the cadets through drills out on the training course." One of the instructors informed them, then warned. "Be careful when you go out there...it's a live simulation. We play with real fire around here."

Approaching the training course, Danny and Jack eyed the scene with interest. Smoke was pouring out of the windows of a building that looked like it had been constructed for a Hollywood set. The next generation of New York City firefighters were running in and out of the building with equipment and life size dummies on their backs while Lt. Tom McNamara and his staff barked orders at them from a viewing area.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go!" Tom was yelling. "You don't make it into a city firehouse if you leave a man behind in my house!"

"I thought you said he was retired." Danny said, as they continued to watch the training exercise.

"He was. Retired a few months before 9/11." Jack said, never taking his eyes off the scene in front of them. "But the FDNY lost 343 veteran firefighters at Ground Zero, including two of his sons. Not only was the department short staffed, they were spread pretty thin. The experienced guys were being moved around to different houses to spread their experience around, but they still had a lot of rookies. The powers that be lured some of their more decorated guys back into the fold. And Tommy McNamara is as decorated a firefighter as they come. He's practically a legend. So they brought him back to train the rookies here at the academy. Rumor is that since he has, they have graduated the most prepared classes of firefighters to come out of this academy in years."

"I can see why." Danny said, watching as Tom berated his cadets for mistakes made during the drill and sent them back to try it again.

Turning away from his cadets, Tom saw the two agents standing nearby and immediately recognized Jack Malone. He handed his clipboard to one of the other instructors and came over. "Special Agent Jack Malone. Good to see you." He said, extending his hand as he approached.

Tom and Jack shook hands as Jack said, "I wish it were under different circumstances." Turning to Danny, he said, "This is Agent Danny Taylor."

After shaking hands with Danny, Tom remarked, "I wondered when you were going to get around to me, Jack. Your team has questioned my little girl and each of my sons...frankly, I was beginning to feel a little left out."

"We like to think of ourselves as equal opportunity, Tom. So here we are." Jack said. "Frank Runyeon..."

"Deserves whatever has happened to him." Tom said matter of factly.

"That may be." Jack agreed. "But our job is to find out exactly what did happened to him. Can you help us out with that?"

Tom shook his head. "No." Was all he said.

"Can't or won't?" Danny asked. Just like his sons, Tom McNamara was an imposing figure of a man. Tall and still muscular for his age, the eldest McNamara's face retained the look of a man who had spent forty long years pulling people from burning buildings. Danny now had a clearer understanding of Katie's definition of rugged.

Tom eyed Danny for a moment before saying, "Both."

"You're a smart guy, Tom." Jack said. "You know we wouldn't be here if we didn't have Frank Runyeon's phone records. We know you've been calling him."

"He raped my little girl." The statement was emotionless, but the anger flashing behind Tom McNamara's eyes told the real story.

"We know." Jack said quietly.

"No, I don't think you do." Tom McNamara shook his head. "My little girl. Katie was our last child. The baby Mac. After five sons, Sophia was desperate for a baby girl. Not me." Tom laughed a dry, little laugh. "The thought of raising a daughter scared me to death. What the hell did I know about little girls? But she had me wrapped around her little finger from the moment I first held her..." His voice trailed off and the anger in his eyes softened a little. "You know how it is, Jack. You have daughters. What if somebody hurt them?"

"I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like for you." Jack said, trying not to think about what he would do if anything happened to his daughters.

"I spent my whole life trying to protect her. Trying to make her tough. To the point that she would get so mad at me sometimes, you know. Teen-age rebellion and all that. Sophia says she's just like me. I'm still not sure if that is a compliment to either of us." Tom shook his head again and looked at them. "After that animal attacked her, my little girl didn't want to be touched. By any one. You couldn't even breathe on her. The worst thing that could ever happen to a woman and she wouldn't let me hold her. She stopped eating and sleeping. She cried all the time. Katie never cried a day in her life before that. He made her cry and I couldn't make it better for her." He looked away, back over at the training course, to hide his emotions. It was something they had seen before, a trait he had passed down to his sons. "She had these terrible nightmares - nightmares about what happened, nightmares about being raped, and even worse were the nightmares where he was just there, present, a continual invasion of her space. Nights were not her friend. And as for the days...her days were endless. Days meant having to deal with people, days meant flashbacks, and body memories, panic attacks, moments that were too dark to talk about but too immense to ignore. He ruined her life."

"So why did you call him?" Jack asked quietly.

"To ruin his." Tom said, his voice free of any emotion. "I couldn't let it go, Jack. Katie got better, you know. She moved on. She figured out how to rescue herself from the role of a victim. That she had a choice left. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life being bitter and locked up. But I raised a girl who's a better person than I am. I couldn't do what she did. Because I still have this vision of my little girl the way I saw her in that hospital...I won't ever get that out of my head. Her face and body were bruised and beaten, the knife wound from where he stabbed her. And that word painted across her chest in her own blood." Tom McNamara's voice choked at the thought and he took a moment to regain his composure. "I watched her mother cry herself to sleep every night because Katie had been through something that most women don't recover from. Her brothers blamed themselves for not being able to do what they'd done all their lives...save her from the big, bad bully on the playground. A father doesn't forget those things."

"You kept track of him?" Danny asked, trying to rid his head of the images Tom McNamara was painting of his daughter following her attack.

"Everyday for the last eight years. I know his every twisted movement."

"Why?"

"I've got no answer for that. It's just something I had to do. To make sure he stayed away from her." Tom looked Jack right in the eye. "Do you know that son of a bitch got married? And they had a baby boy? Runyeon's a partner in a fancy Wall Street trading firm now. His creep of a father set him up good. Made a nice life for him and his little family. He should never have been allowed to do that."

"What did you do, Lt. McNamara?" Danny asked quietly, trying to suppress the emotions welling up inside of had inflicted so much damage on so many lives.

"I let him know that I knew he was screwing a girl in his office." Tom informed them, unaware that they already knew. "And apparently, the only way he could get her into his bed was to tell her about all the money he was stealing from his company. Which I then let his partners know."

"How did you acquire this information?" Danny asked.

Tom McNamara leveled the agent with his eyes. "I've lived in this neighborhood a long time, Agent. I have a lot of friends. And when Frank Runyeon got away with raping my daughter, he made a lot of enemies he never even knew about. I didn't have to look very far to find someone willing to help me expose him."

"Figuring that if you couldn't put him away for rape, then you could send him up on embezzlement charges?" Jack finished for him. "Would that have been enough punishment to ease your soul, Tom?"

"We've known each other a long time, Jack." Tom countered, focusing on his friend. "You have something you want to ask me, then you damn well better ask it and leave your slick F.B.I. style for people who are impressed by it."

Danny winced. He didn't know many people who could talk to Jack Malone like that. He could definitely see that attitude was a McNamara family value. To Danny's surprise, Jack didn't even bat an eye. Calmly he answered his friend, "Frank Runyeon's body was recovered earlier today..."

A look of surprise registered in Tom's eyes, but he recovered quickly and said, "Proving that maybe there is a little justice in this world, after all."

"We need to know where you were Tuesday night." Jack continued in an even tone.

"Ball field a few blocks from St. Mary's church." Tom answered quickly. "Danny's oldest boy, Mike, plays centerfield for the church league and the annual Father/Son game is this weekend, so we had practice Tuesday night. Ever since Danny died, the boys and I have taken turns playing with Mikey in that game. This year it's grandpa's turn." He then made a point to say, "Sat right next to Father Xavier all night."

"And after that?" Jack asked, ignoring the sarcastic comment about the priest.

"My grandson knocked in the game winning run. Afterward I took him over to the bakery for some pastries to celebrate and tell his grandmother all about it. We helped Sophia close up, then I drove him back over to his mom's on Staten Island."

"Across the Verazzano Bridge?" Danny asked.

"You know a better way to get to Staten Island from Brooklyn?" Tom shot back..

"Frank Runyeon's car was found under the entrance ramp to the Verazzano." Jack informed him.

Tom looked back and forth from Jack to Danny and oddly didn't offer up any defense for himself. Instead he said, "Frank Runyeon's the one with blood on his hands, not me. And not my boys." Turning to walk away from them, he said, "Stay away from my family, Jack. We've survived too much to be destroyed by something like this."