He lifted another plank and carried it toward the fire, the heat scorching his face. But it felt good, cleansing. The plank disintegrated as soon as it hit the blue flame in the glowing steel tank.
He saw the old man watching him from under a stand of trees, the farmhouse off in the distance, his eyes milk white, not really seeing anymore.
“And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth,” the old man shouted.
It occurred to him that he could throw the old man into the flames. No one would care. But it was better this way. Trapped in a body that had given out on him, a prisoner with a life sentence.
He gathered an armload of rotting planks and tossed them into the flames. A sudden burst of red, yellow and blue exploded into the air, a beautiful sight, the Phoenix rising from the ashes. A new life, a new purpose, a new beginning.
George Wheeler felt around with his right foot until he found solid ground. He swung his left foot out of the minivan and tried to stand. It was impossible without the use of his hands, and they were tied behind his back. How many times had he ridden in a minivan with his boys-a newer model with the sliding doors on each side that they’d had some dumb white girl rent from a dealer in New Hampshire so it couldn’t be traced back to them-ready to do a drive-by, never thinking that he would end up in a spot like this?
He was lifted out of the minivan by his shirt and forced to walk. The gun was pressed hard between his shoulder blades as he stumbled along on what wasn’t hard like a sidewalk or street, more like a dirt path. The pillowcase covering his head had the stale smell of an old T-shirt that had sat in the bureau for months.
When the pillowcase was finally pulled off, he could see that they were walking through woods, but where? He looked around for something familiar, a landmark, but it was useless. Too dark. The thick woods blocked out the moonlight. But it really wouldn’t have mattered if it were the middle of the day. For someone who grew up in the projects, woods were woods. You had your choice of the Arboretum or Franklin Park. He had no idea where he was. Just before the pillowcase, the last landmark he’d seen was Sun Pizza. He’d spotted the familiar big red canopy as they drove along Blue Hill Ave. They had driven around so long, he wasn’t even sure if they were still in the city.
George Wheeler was scared. He didn’t want to die tonight. He had thought about begging for his life, talking about his moms, trying to get some sympathy. Maybe even crying. But he had made the decision a long time ago that he would never cry or beg when this day came. He had known such a day would come, and he had sworn to himself that he would never act like a bitch. He was a thug and he would take his shit like a man.
He tried to think back to why he had started running with his crew in the first place. He couldn’t even remember now. He used to do pretty good in school, before he stopped going. Maybe it was the easy money, the rush he got selling drugs for a few hours instead of working a full week at Burger King.
But once he got involved in the game, he couldn’t get out. And when his crew started warring with some of the other crews, he had to prove his willingness to sacrifice everything for his boys. Most of the beefs started over stupid shit, a fistfight over a girl or someone selling a beat bag to the wrong person. Selling burn bags on the street was a sure way to bring some drama back on the crew. But once it started, no one would back down or try to make things right. When it was on, it was on.
G-Wheel was young when he had set himself out as a shooter. He had the balls to go on missions that no one else would even think about. He would walk right into enemy territory and light the place up. He had started out with the Mavericks as a crash test dummy for the OGs, the original gangstas, the older guys, doing whatever it was that they wanted done. Then he became one of the leaders of the crew. Nobody messed with him, because they knew he was capable of doing anything, to anyone, at any time.
But his reputation got around and he became a marked man himself. So many dudes wanted to take him out, to be the one that offed the great G-Wheel. At a certain point he felt that he couldn’t trust anyone, even members of the Mavericks. And he was right. He had been ready for anything.
Until tonight. He’d let his guard down. Now he found himself in a situation.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He stopped walking and the hand pushed him down to his knees. He remembered a scene from a gangsta movie he and his boys had watched. They didn’t discriminate between white or black gangsta movies-they liked them all. And just like the guy in the movie, George knew he was about to get smoked.
George Wheeler wished he could go back and change all the bad decisions he had made. He wanted to undo all the blood that was shed between the Mavericks and their enemies. All of it seemed so stupid now. Fighting over what? As he knelt there in those damp, quiet woods, he accepted the fact that he was about to die. He imagined himself in a church, kneeling at the pew. When was the last time he’d been in a church?
He began to pray in a loud voice. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven-”
The cold steel of the gun pressed against the base of his skull.
He didn’t waver, continuing on with his prayer, louder. “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us-”
He heard the explosion at the same time he felt the bullet tear into his head. It was only a momentary sensation, an instant of something like pain, then nothing.
Angel Alves felt like a drill sergeant, watching his little athletes run in place. They were only seven- and eight-year-olds, the Mitey Mite division, and he tried not to laugh as their scrawny legs pumped up and down. But he couldn’t ease up on them. They were counting on him to teach them how to win.
“Hunter,” he yelled, “no time to tie that shoe. And let’s get those knees up, Iris. This is football. There’s no quitting in football.”
He had managed that with a straight face. But he almost laughed once more, suddenly imagining the poor kids with Wayne Mooney as their coach. They’d all be in the bleachers crying to their mothers. He missed the Sarge, but he didn’t miss the way Mooney rode him. Without Mooney as his boss, he had time to be a part of his twins’ lives.
Alves studied Iris’s running form. She kept her knees high, chest level. She was tough. If he’d tried that with little Angel, the kid would be faking an injury. He kept the kids working for another couple minutes. Then he blew his whistle, which meant they had to hit the deck. Iris was the first one down on her belly. She was back on her feet, running in place, before half the other kids hit the dirt. She had great stamina and quickness, and when he saw her doing these drills, competing with the other kids, he was reminded how good an athlete she was.
One last whistle.
“Okay, kids, that’s a wrap,” Alves said. “Give me one lap over the hill and you can go home. First three to make it back get to be the captains for Saturday’s game.”
Alves watched as Iris led the team up the hill while Angel lagged behind. He was always one of the last to finish the lap. Alves had never imagined that his daughter would be the jock in the family. Even though they were the same age, Angel was a couple of inches shorter than Iris, and a good fifteen pounds heavier. His stout legs were moving a hundred miles an hour, but not getting him anywhere. Alves hoped that football would get his son into shape and teach him discipline and toughness. So far, the only thing it had taught him was that his twin sister was a better athlete. And now all the other kids knew it too.
Alves drifted over to talk with some of the parents. A few were angry about having a practice on a Sunday night, especially with the first full week of school starting the next morning. But he had no choice. Their first game was less than a week away and the kids had to be prepared. He didn’t want any of them getting hurt.
Mrs. Williams was staring him down. He gave her his best smile, hoping to break the tension. He was sympathetic, some of the mothers worked long hours like he did. She was a nurse and overprotective. The other parents were folding chairs and gathering up their things. “Same time tomorrow night, guys,” he called before he lost any of them. “Trevor had a great practice, Mrs. Williams. I think we’ve got our center for Saturday’s game.”
But her smile of gratitude froze on her face as a scream cut through the air.
“Kids horsing around,” someone said.
“Maybe,” Alves said. He was always breaking up shoving matches, telling his players to pay attention, to stop poking each other. Raising his whistle to his lips, he turned to see who he was going to have to discipline.
A second scream, this time louder, more sustained. It was Iris. Something was wrong.
Alves began to jog across the dusty baseball diamond in the middle of their practice field, trying to make out figures on the darkening hill. Then a chorus of screams echoed across the field. There was Iris, leading the rest of the team down the hill. She had her brother by his jersey, dragging him. Alves was running at a full sprint now. When he reached Iris at the foot of the hill, her face was pale with terror.
“It’s okay, honey. Daddy’s here,” he said, hugging her close. He reached out and grabbed Angel in his embrace.
“She’s dead, Daddy. She’s dead,” Iris cried.
“Who’s dead?”
“The woman is dead, Daddy. I know she is,” Iris shouted, pointing up the hill.
“Iris,” Alves said. “Listen to me, honey. I want you to lead the team back to the other parents. You and Angel can wait with Mrs. Williams. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
He held her until she nodded.
“Everything’s going to be fine. Now, run.”
Then Alves started up the hill as the last of the kids staggered down. “Go to your parents,” he instructed them. None of them seemed upset. Maybe they hadn’t seen what Iris had.
A few of the other parents caught up to Alves. “Everything okay, Angel?” one of them asked. “You need some help?”
“Wait here,” Alves said. “I’ll give a shout if I need you.”
Alves took his Mini Mag-Lite out of his belt holster and made his way up the hill, shining the light on the path in front of him. He was getting some extra light from the glow of the field lights, not enough to feel comfortable. As he reached the crest of the hill, the path widened out, and he emerged from the tree-lined path onto a ledge surrounding a large rock. He had never been up here before. He had only watched from the field below as the kids made their laps to begin and end practice.
Without the cover of the trees, the moonlight gave him some guidance as he navigated along the path. He scanned his surroundings, sweeping the air with broad strokes of his extended arm, the flashlight cutting into the cool night air. No signs of a dead woman anywhere. What had Iris seen?
Alves turned to go back down the hill on the other side of the rock. And, there she was, leaning up against a tree, her head tilted, gazing at him. Her face was made up for a night out. She was wearing a light-colored gown with a fancy necklace. It was her pose that set something off in him. Her back was arched, accentuating her chest, her cleavage revealed in the cut of the dress. The seductive pose, her outfit, and the makeup made her seem so alive.
But her eyes, covered in a milky film, told a different story. Alves had spent a lot of time around death in the last few years and he could sense it. If he’d wanted, he could check her pulse the way paramedics and doctors did before pronouncing death. He could attempt to revive her. But Alves didn’t. She was dead.
As he got closer with his light he saw that the makeup was caked on thick, covering the discoloration of her skin. A thin black wire secured her to the tree. Her hands were tied to her hips with the same wire. Alves tried to move her head, but it was held firmly in place by the wire running through the braid in her long dark hair. Her eyes appeared to be focused on him, asking him for help. But it was too late for that. Her skin was as cold as the early autumn air.
Instinctively he reached for the radio in his back pocket. The radio was back in the car. He used his cell to call 9-1-1, telling the operator, “Detective Alves from Homicide. I’ve got a body at Franklin Park. In the field by the Shattuck. I need you to make all the notifications.”
He had a thought. Maybe she wasn’t looking at him. What had she been staged to look at before he got there? Alves bent and lifted his pant leg. He took his.38 S &W from his ankle holster. He crouched and spun around with his snubby and the Mag-Lite.
There he was, twenty yards away, against a tree, hidden by a thick shrub.
“Police! Get your hands up!” Alves shouted, staying in his crouched position.
No response.
Alves stayed low as he ducked behind the tree Jane Doe was tied to. He made his way to a tree a little closer, training the light on him. The perp hadn’t moved. He was standing fully upright.
“Show me your hands!” Alves commanded, ducking behind another tree. He was less than ten yards away now. He put the light on the perp again.
In the artificial cone of yellow light, Alves saw that the figure was wearing a tuxedo.
Stepping from behind the tree, Alves made his way forward. The man stood unnaturally rigid. Not even a flinch as Alves stepped over brush and dry leaves to reach him. The man was ocean frank, like the girl. The scene was familiar. Nothing he had seen himself. But he had heard enough from his old sergeant Wayne Mooney to know what he had just found.
THE OLD CROWN VIC SCREECHED AROUND THE CORNER AS DETECTIVE MARK Greene gunned the engine. Detective Jack Ahearn radioed dispatch with their location. In the back, Assistant District Attorney Connie Darget held onto the grab handles above each door. There were no seatbelts. As Greene straightened out the car, Connie ripped off the right handle. The left handle held strong. He tossed the detached U of plastic under Ahearn’s seat.
Connie wasn’t the on-call Homicide Response ADA tonight. He was out with the detectives, looking for a witness on a shooting investigation when BPD Operations put out the call for detectives to respond to the ball field.
Some of the prosecutors in the DA’s office thought Connie was an idiot for riding with the cops nights and weekends. But Connie had picked up some pretty good cases being out at the scene.
That was how he’d picked up his first homicide, the Jesse Wilcox murder, a case that remained unsolved. Connie and Angel Alves always said Jesse was going to wind up either dead or in jail. Not six months after his last acquittal, Jesse was found shot to death. If Connie had been able to convict Wilcox on just one of his cases, he’d probably still be alive.
Greene drove down Jewish War Veterans Drive, the road that cuts through the center of the park. It connects Roxbury to Jamaica Plain, from the edge of Grove Hall to Forest Hills. They sped past the Franklin Park Zoo and White Stadium on the right, the golf course on their left. They passed a couple of marked units, one-man patrol cars, stationed to secure the golf course as a crime scene.
“Just before the rotary,” Connie said. An asphalt footpath ran alongside the access road and circled the park. Beyond the path was a grassy area next to two tennis courts, which led to an opening in some trees. The baseball diamond was on the other side of the trees, flanked by hills. Everything beyond the ball field was part of the golf course.
Greene took the left turn and Connie ripped off the left handle. At least the sides matched. He tossed it under Greene’s seat as they jerked to a stop. The street was blocked off by police vehicles, Boston PD and a couple of state troopers.
Seeing the staties reminded Connie that the Shattuck Hospital and the street running through the park were state property. The state police had jurisdiction over them, while the park itself was maintained by the Boston Parks Department and policed by the BPD. On TV and in movies, local and state police fought about who had jurisdiction over a crime scene. In the real world, the state police weren’t so territorial. If anything, there were times when the BPD tried to dump a case on the staties to keep Boston ’s homicide rate down. But that wasn’t happening tonight; the troopers were leaning against their cruisers.
Connie and the detectives stepped out of the car. The two detectives were an odd pair. Greene was a little guy who called the shots. Ahearn was huge, bigger than Connie.
Greene nodded to the patrolman assigned to secure the scene, and the three of them slipped under the yellow tape.
Connie caught a glimpse of the small crowd of kids and parents near the tennis courts. The kids were dressed in football gear. Pop Warner football. The crowd was growing along the access road as Connie and the detectives made their way across the field to the heart of the crime scene. It was amazing how many people were out on a Sunday night. Word of tragedy spreads fast.
The only information they had was that Detective Alves from Homicide had found two bodies, Caucasian, possibly teenagers, a male and a female. At first Connie was thinking OD. There had been reports of a potent shipment of heroin in the city, and those reports usually led to overdoses. But the BPD wouldn’t call in every available detective for a drug overdose.
The BPD had given out intelligence of some minor gang activity amping up in Franklin Hill and Grove Hall, incidents ranging from kids in groups having fights with bottles, sticks, and bats to fatal drive-bys involving shooters on bicycles or in vehicles. But those neighborhoods were on the other side of the park, beyond the golf course and zoo. This section bordered on Jamaica Plain near Forest Hills. No real gang activity here.
“Two white kids get killed and we call in the whole force,” Connie said, the sand of the baseball diamond soft under his feet. “I didn’t see the same kind of attention when George Wheeler’s body was found this morning.”
“Wheeler was just another gangbanger. A Maverick with a bullet in his head. No need to call out the cavalry unless you’re pursuing a suspect,” Greene said.
From a distance, Connie could see the hill at the other end of the ball field bright as daylight. The BPD lighting crew was on scene with what seemed like all of their equipment. They must have driven their trucks off the access road and across the diamond.
“The lighting crew does a nice job,” Greene said.
“They ought to,” Ahearn said. “They’re making enough on overtime. One of the best gigs going. They’re the lighting crew, but they don’t work nights. So, Connie, not only are you the only one not getting paid to be out here, some people are getting paid overtime to do their regular jobs.”
Alves was up ahead, but Connie didn’t recognize the men he was talking with. They looked like bosses, both older and dressed too casually-polo shirts and khakis-as if they’d been called away from a cookout. Alves was wearing a faded pair of jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt. Connie was used to seeing him at crime scenes in his tailored suits, crisp white shirts and conservative ties.
Connie’d have to wait until they broke the huddle before checking with Alves. By statute, Connie knew that the DA’s office was in charge here, but in reality, the BPD detectives ran the investigation at the crime scene. Every second that passed, that scene slipped away. Some part of the killer remained at a fresh scene. Almost as though he had just stepped away and was due back any minute. Not at this scene though-the criminalists from the BPD crime lab were searching for evidence, the detectives were interviewing witnesses, the ID Unit was labeling and photographing.
Connie needed to be patient. When Alves finished up with his supervisors, Connie would see the part of the crime scene that would teach him the most about the killer.
Luther came down the stairs of his triple decker and into the street. Like everyone else, he wanted to know what was going on. It seemed like ten solid minutes that the sirens hadn’t let up. He’d watched from his window as one police cruiser after another headed toward Franklin Park. Luther walked to Columbia Road and then across Blue Hill Avenue where a crowd had gathered between the entrance to the zoo and the golf course. Officers were stationed there, blocking the park’s entrance. Something big had happened and he needed to find out what.
Luther was in a dicey spot. On the one hand, he was one of the mayor’s Street Saviors, a youth worker helping gang members choose a better path. Not the one he’d chosen, the one that led straight to prison. Saviors were city employees, like the police. But there was no love lost between the cops and the Saviors. Most of the cops looked at him and his partner Richard Zardino as ex-cons who couldn’t be trusted.
If he was going to get the 4-1-1 on what went down in the park, it wouldn’t be because he was a Street Savior, it would be because he was street. He continued down Blue Hill Avenue, avoiding the police, skirting the perimeter of the park. He turned right onto American Legion Parkway and saw a group gathered across from the Franklin Hill Projects.
This was the second time Luther had come to this section of the park today. The body of George Wheeler-that was his government name, his street name was G-Wheel-had been found by some golfers. God rest his soul. Luther had been working with Wheeler for months. Trying to sign him up to get his GED so he could take college classes. Trying to get him to go legit. But G-Wheel wasn’t likely to give up the life. Too entrenched. One of the leaders of the Mavericks. They’d met in prison when Wheeler was doing a deuce on a gun. Luther tried to use their relationship to squash some beefs before they got blown out of whack and people got shot. Things had been cool. Until this morning.
Luther recognized the faces of some of the dudes. They were part of George Wheeler’s crew. Maybe they had already retaliated for G-Wheel’s death. That would only bring more heat on them from the police and more drama from their enemies.
Luther approached one of the familiar faces.
“What’s up, Luther? You back already? You worried we stuck on stupid?”
Luther gave him some dap. “I know you’re not stupid.” The face in front of him was shiny with excitement. Eager, almost.
“We didn’t do nothing. Yet. We’re gonna chill for a while. Make sure we know who did G. Let them think about when we coming for them.”
“Why’s everything shut down?”
“Why you think? Po-po don’t shut everything down cuz some nigga got shot.”
He was right. This wasn’t the response for a dead brother. That morning, police had closed off a small area while they investigated Wheeler’s death. There’d been a couple of detectives and a kid from the crime lab working the case. All around them, the golfers continued their games like Wheeler’s body was a squirrel dead in the street, making their way around the inconvenience of the crime scene tape as if it were another sand trap. Luther had recognized the sergeant in charge of the scene earlier. Ray Figgs from Homicide. Luther knew him from the neighborhood. Sergeant Figgs grew up in Roxbury and knew everyone on the street. At one time he was one of the top homicide investigators. Now, word was, he was more interested in Johnnie Walker than George Wheeler.
“What happened?” Luther asked.
“White boy and his woman. Dead. Now you see po-po try to catch the dude that did the shit. Already closed the park. Brought in the dogs. Next be the Feds trying to squeeze everyone.”
Luther felt the heat of anger rise in his chest. He had seen this before. Feeling like this was what got him his prison time. Ten years ago, Marcus was murdered and the police did nothing. Luther had stood by, the helpless kid brother, watching his mother come to see that her oldest son’s life meant nothing to anybody but the two of them. Before Marcus got shot, Luther had never been in any trouble. Never arrested for trespassing or disorderly. And, back then, everybody in Roxbury was stopped by the police and questioned. If you talked back, you had a disorderly charge for your record. Stand on school property and you got yourself a trespassing. But when Marcus died, Luther had to square things.
Marcus was not dead and buried a month when the white kid-couples first started getting themselves killed. The newspapers were all over the police to catch the killer. Prom Night this and that killer. Now, ten years later, it was as though it was happening again. No one cared about George Wheeler. Two white kids get whacked and the National Guard gets called out. Black kid gets killed and they bring in the washed up brother with a badge.
Connie watched Alves direct the investigation, noticed how he didn’t bark out orders like Wayne Mooney. Since Connie and the detectives had arrived, Alves had expanded the crime scene, closing the street and sealing off the perimeter of Franklin Park. This kept the media and spectators out. It also allowed the K-9 units to search for a potential suspect in the park without distraction. The more experienced patrolmen were taking the names of the gawkers who had gathered along the street and recording the plate numbers of the cars in the area before clearing the park.
Once Alves had the area secured, he focused on processing the crime scene. The detective would gradually work his way from the outside in, toward the most important pieces of evidence, the bodies of the victims. Connie watched as Alves took a minute to survey the area, planning his attack.
“Hey, Angel,” Connie called out. This was his best chance to get Alves’s attention before he got consumed by the crime scene.
Alves turned toward Connie and nodded. Then he looked back up at the hill. Even though the klieg lights lit up the area, nothing was visible beyond the woods from this vantage point.
Alves spoke with a couple of the civilian criminalists, pointing toward the hill. Then he walked over to Connie and the detectives.
“We were out looking for a witness on a shooting when we heard your call.” Connie pointed to the detectives. “Mark Greene and Jackie Ahearn, they work out of B-two. This is Angel Alves.”
“Nice to see you guys again,” Alves said. He paused, turning back to the hill for another look.
“Anything you want us to do, just say the word,” Greene said.
“I’ll put you to work then,” Alves said. “I’ve got a crime scene up there that’s as close to pristine as I’m ever going to get. I don’t think anyone’s touched a thing, except for the killer. My daughter saw one of the bodies at the end of practice.”
“Jesus,” Connie said. “Is Iris okay?”
“I don’t know. Marcy took her home.” Alves looked over toward the street. Like he could see the twins and his wife, safe in their car, headed home. His face was creased with worry. “I got up there right after the kids. Secured everything, touched nothing. If we process this thing right, maybe we come up with something.”
“Where do we come in?” Ahearn asked.
“The bodies are in about twenty-five feet from the edge of the woods. I’m treating the wooded area as the immediate crime scene. The killer had to get them in there somehow. I want to search the area between Veterans Drive and the dump site.”
“They weren’t killed here?” Connie asked.
“I don’t think so. I’d like to know how he got them up there without being noticed.”
“He must have parked somewhere close by and carried them up there,” Greene said.
“Exactly. You guys are going to grab as many patrolmen and detectives as you can and walk parallel lines from the street to the edge of the woods and back.”
“I’ll call the DA with an update,” Connie asked.
“Good. I don’t need you finding evidence and becoming a witness. The DA doesn’t want that either.” Alves turned back to Greene. “I need you and your men to search your lanes until you’ve covered the area from the street to the edge of the woods. You know the drill. Look for anything that might be relevant-tire tracks, footprints, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, discarded clothing.”
“Are the victims missing clothes?” Connie asked.
“They’re dressed like they’re going to a prom. I’ve got a feeling they weren’t dressed like that before they were killed.”
“Why does that sound familiar to me?” Ahearn asked.
Alves motioned with his hands for them to move in closer. “We’re trying to keep this quiet. We think it might be the Prom Night Killer.”
“I thought he was dead,” Ahearn said.
“He hasn’t killed anyone in ten years. Not that we know of. But the way the bodies are dressed, looks like his work.”
In the unnatural glare of the lights, the concentrated silence of the men and women intent on their duties, the cool night air full of purpose, Connie knew this wasn’t an ordinary murder scene. They were dealing with a serial killer. A killer who had outwitted Alves’s old boss, Sergeant Detective Wayne Mooney, and the Boston Police Department for more than a decade. “Should we take a look at the bodies?” he asked, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of his back pocket.
“You and your obsession with crime scenes.” Alves showed a little smile.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Connie laughed. “Do we get to see them?”
“I tell you what, you guys do a good job searching every inch of ground leading up that hill while I process the bodies and the rest of the crime scene, and I’ll give you a quick walk-through before the ME takes them away. But don’t go near them until I say it’s okay. I’ve got to take photos, have the ME do a preliminary examination and then have the criminalists process for evidence. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“What are we waiting for?” Connie said to Greene and Ahearn. “You guys get started. I’ll make my call.”
He tried to fall asleep, but they called out to him. They wanted to play. He knew he couldn’t. It was against the rules. His Momma tried to stand up for him. “Let him play with his little things. What harm can it do?” But his old man had warned him. “Boys don’t play with dolls.” Action figures, maybe. But dolls? Never. Boys play sports, they play catch, they run, they hit. They don’t care about girls in pretty white party dresses or handsome young men in tuxedos or fancy table settings.
But his Little Things coaxed him to come and play. They didn’t care that he wanted to sleep. Why should they? They were selfish, making all that noise. Hadn’t he put them back in the trunk? They were locked up where no one would ever look for them, under the wedding clothes, the costumes that symbolized the vows that meant nothing to the old man and Momma.
There they were again, calling his name. He tried covering his ears, but he could still hear them. They would wake the old man if they kept at it, and no one wanted that.
The boy eased himself out from under the sheets, careful not to make any sounds. He slid his feet into his slippers and moved across the floor, gracefully. If the old man knew he had kept them, fished them out of the trash and stashed them away, the boy would catch a beating. He needed to get to them quickly and play with them until they were tired. Then he could put them back to bed. They needed their sleep, just like he did.
The boy knew where to place his feet on each step leading up to the attic so they wouldn’t creak. He wasn’t sure that it mattered, though, with all the noise they were making. He needed to hurry up and get to them. At the top of the stairs, he opened the door on the right, the room at the rear of the house. The room went quiet.
Absolute silence.
He closed the door behind him and listened for them. He whispered to them. There was no noise, no movement, no laughter. Where were they?
He reached to his right and felt along the wall for the light switch, but he instantly wished he hadn’t. They were in the room with him. Now they were like people, bigger, bigger than his old man. Giants, with doll faces. They came toward him, not laughing or smiling. They didn’t want to play. Maybe they were angry that he had left them in the trunk. But that wasn’t his choice. They had to understand that. It was the old man. He was to blame. He was the one they had to hide from. He was the one that needed to be punished.
The boy tried to scream. His lungs were full, as if he were drowning. He reached for the door, but something grabbed at his arm. They were too big, too strong. Somehow he managed to shake his arm free and make a move for the door. He didn’t get far, but his hand hit the light switch. Everything went black again.
SLEEP OPENED HIS EYES. There was no need to panic. He knew the dream. It was the same every time. He no longer wet his bed the way he did when he was a child.
But boy did he sweat. Sleep lay there in Momma’s bed, drenched, the morning sun shining through the sheer curtains. No need to worry about hiding them anymore. The old man wasn’t around. He could play with them whenever he wanted. He could leave them out, sitting at a nice café table, having a tea party or sitting on the grass having a picnic of wine, bread and cheese. But this was not the time to play.
Sleep scanned the room for the clock. It was after seven. He hadn’t had much rest, but it would have to do. It was time to get up and get dressed. He needed to maintain a normal schedule, especially on the morning after the young lovers were discovered by the detective, the morning after the couple had affirmed their eternal commitment to each other.
Today would have to be the same as any other day. He wiped the sleepy seeds out of his eyes and slid out from under the sheets. He walked into the bathroom, gracefully, back arched, his body held straight to an imaginary string running down his back.
Connie looked up from his notes as the jurors shifted their attention to the courtroom door, waiting for the arrival of the witness. Every three months a new set of grand jurors were sworn in. These jurors, seated for two months now, were a good group, very attentive. They asked the right questions and understood the big picture. Their job wasn’t to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt like a regular jury. Their duty was to determine if there was probable cause to indict.
As a prosecutor, Connie recognized that the grand jury was one of the most useful investigative tools available to law enforcement. The grand jury’s subpoena power gave prosecutors the ability to bring in witnesses, against their will if necessary, in order to lock in their testimony. His plan for today was to present the testimony of an uncooperative shooting victim, Tracy Ward, possibly a gang member himself.
Connie had been at the scene till early morning, showing the cops ways to get in and out of Franklin Park undetected. Still, they had found nothing. Now he had to focus. He was about to begin an inquiry into a shooting, a drug feud between rival gangs, he suspected. In the past year, a spate of shootings had commanded the headlines. The DA had responded by creating a Gang Unit with prosecutors who used the grand jury to help police investigations. Connie had a dozen investigations going, half his time spent trying to locate witnesses. Once he located the witnesses, the trick was getting them to cooperate.
That was the challenge he faced this morning.
He still couldn’t get the image of that couple dead at the ball field out of his head. It was eerie the way their bodies had been positioned, the way the male looked like he was spying on the young woman. The way she seemed to be teasing him with her pose.
The courtroom door swung open and Detective Mark Greene led the witness into the grand jury courtroom. Tracy Ward looked like a skeleton. Connie had seen an old booking photo from an arrest about a year ago, and the guy had been beefier, solid. Ward was living proof that a shot in the gut was a great weight loss program.
The jurors focused their attention on the witness as he entered the courtroom in his orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed in front of him and chained to his slim waist. He limped across the floor, his shackled feet shuffling along, six inches at a time. What the jurors couldn’t see was that he had a colostomy bag under the jumpsuit, courtesy of the bullet that had ripped through his abdominal cavity. He was lucky to be alive.
Tracy Ward had been easy to locate for today’s testimony, since he was serving a jail sentence for a probation violation. He was one unlucky bastard. Not only did he get shot, but he was out past his court-ordered curfew when it happened. The curfew violation triggered a probation surrender that landed him back in jail.
Ward’s attitude was pretty typical for a gang-related shooting victim. He hadn’t been overly cooperative with Connie and Mark Greene during their informal sit-down in one of the interview rooms. Connie was hoping to have more luck getting him to talk once he had him under oath, on the witness stand, in front of the grand jury.
Connie signaled to Greene that it was okay to leave Ward on the witness stand. The detective stepped out of the room, leaving only Connie, the witness, the twenty-four-person jury and the court reporter-no judge, no defense lawyers, not in the grand jury. Connie stood and approached the witness.
“Please raise your right hand, sir.”
Ward reluctantly raised his hand a couple of inches above his waist, as high as he could, his cuffed left hand trailing close behind.
“Do you swear that your testimony before this grand jury shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“There is no God.”
Great. This was not going to be easy. “Fine, then do you affirm that your testimony shall be the truth and nothing but the truth?”
Ward nodded.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I need you to verbalize all your answers so that the stenographer can record your testimony.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Now, could you state your name for the record, spelling your last name?”
“Fuck You. Last name is spelled Y-O-U.” Then Ward laughed.
“That’s very funny, sir. I’m going to ask you one more time, then we’ll be going upstairs to see a judge who will hold you in contempt for not answering my questions. Do you know what will happen if the judge finds you in contempt?”
“Yeah. Absolutely nothing. What are you going to do, send me back to jail? I’ve been in the hole for two months now. You can’t do shit to me.”
“Please state your name for the record.”
“I already did. Fuck Y-O-U.”
Connie walked over and opened the door. “Detective, can you get him out of here? Just take him back to the interview room. I want to talk with him before we go to see the judge.”
Ward, looking sickly in his baggy orange jumpsuit, said, “Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance to your investigation, Mr. DA. I already told you, I ain’t no snitch. But thanks for bringing me to court anyway. It was nice to get out of the hole for the day.” He let out another burst of laughter as the door closed behind him.
Alves maneuvered through the parking lot pocked with mortar-sized divots, the result of decades of poorly repaired potholes. He went in the rear entrance of the bakery and scanned the shop. Half the crowd had their newspapers held so high he couldn’t make out their faces. He went to the counter and ordered a coffee before walking over to the man at the corner table.
“Anyone sitting here?” Alves asked.
“Yeah,” the man said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Alves took the seat across from him. “Good morning, Sarge.”
“Morning, Angel.” Wayne Mooney folded his newspaper and placed it on the table. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Happened to be in the neighborhood on a Monday morning. Thought I’d stop for a cup of joe.” Alves took a sip of his coffee. “Saw my old boss tucked away in the corner and thought I’d come over and say hello.”
Mooney shook his head. “What’s wrong with you? You don’t come into the Greenhills Irish Bakery and order a coffee.” Mooney stood and grabbed the full cup out of his hand and stuffed it into a trash barrel. Alves sat patiently until Mooney came back with two teas with milk and sugar and two raisin scones with butter and jam.
“Irish breakfast?” Alves asked.
“This is the light version. You should see what the painters and plasterers eat.” Mooney broke off a piece of his scone and chewed it. He stared at Alves long enough to make him uncomfortable. “Why are you here, Angel?”
“Double murder last night.”
“I heard. Two white kids murdered in Franklin Park. Not good for the city’s image. Drug deal gone bad?”
Alves shook his head.
“Funny thing. I heard that the bodies were discovered by a homicide-detective-turned-Pop-Warner-Football-coach. Angel, you’re not ready for Homicide if you have time for your family.”
“This is what I miss about you,” Alves snapped. “You know how to lay on the guilt whenever I try to be a good father. We’ll talk later about my lack of a work ethic, or, what do you call it…Irish guilt.”
“There has to be something more to you stopping in Adams Village for a cup of coffee.”
“I didn’t find the bodies. Iris did. The kids were doing a lap after practice when she found the girl.”
“I’m sorry,” Mooney said. The ruddiness of his face deepened and Alves knew he was angry. “How is she?”
“Pretty shaken. The first full week of school starts today. She went in, but we’ve asked them to keep an eye on her. We deal with so many kids who witness things that no child should have to see. I tried to shelter the twins, and then last night…”
“This wasn’t your fault,” Mooney waved him off. “You moved your family to a nice neighborhood in J.P., a safe neighborhood. But you can’t shelter them from the world.” Mooney took a long gulp of his tea. “How did the case end up getting assigned to you? Because you found the bodies?”
“My squad was on call last night. I was on-scene, the case is mine.”
“Why are you sitting here having breakfast with me? Shouldn’t you be meeting with your sergeant? I’m not your boss anymore.”
“I need to make a confession,” Alves said. “I miss working with you. As much as I hated you breaking my chops and trying to destroy my marriage, I know you did it because you cared about the victims. You tried to make me a better homicide detective. And you always had my back.”
“Your new sergeant doesn’t have your back?”
Alves didn’t respond.
“Who is he?”
“Duncan Pratt.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Exactly,” Alves said. “He’s an okay guy, but his heart’s not in it. He doesn’t know anything about homicide investigations. I’m told he found some good places to hide and study for the sergeant’s exam. He had no trouble getting higher scores than the guys that were out working the streets. And he’s tight with the mayor.”
“How does he know Dolan?”
“Grew up together.”
“Politics,” Mooney said. He shook his head and laughed, an angry laugh. “No one else up in Homicide you can talk to?”
“It’s not an ordinary double murder.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as an ordinary double murder.” Mooney took another bite of the scone, brushing the crumbs into a little heap on the sheet of waxed paper that served as a plate.
“Two kids, high school or college-aged. We haven’t ID’d them yet. Maybe boyfriend and girlfriend. Dressed for a night on the town. Like they were going to a black tie affair at Symphony Hall or a prom.” Alves watched Mooney’s facial expression change as he stopped chewing. “The male’s got a bullet hole in the center of his chest. No exit wound. No signs of a struggle. Definitely a secondary crime scene. This scene was staged.”
“What about the female?” Mooney asked.
“She would have looked terrific in her white dress, hair done up, but for the fact that she had been strangled, most likely with bare hands.”
Mooney deliberately set his green-and-white paper cup on the small tabletop. He looked away and then back at Alves. “It couldn’t be. After all these years.”
“I remember the case from when I was a patrolman. And I remember what you told me about your old investigation. Everything fits.”
Mooney shook his head. “Has to be a copycat.”
“I don’t think so.” Alves paused, letting the facts sink in. “It’s him, Sarge. The Prom Night Killer.”
“Another stupid nickname the media came up with. They don’t know shit about the case. Yet they have no problem giving the killer a moniker that leads to a cult following.”
“I need your help with this one. I’ve got Evidence Management pulling everything from the old cases. I need you to bring me up to speed with the initial investigation.”
Alves waited as Mooney stared out the window at the morning rush on Adams Street, the cars speeding, trying to beat the next light, dodging jaywalking pedestrians. This was where Mooney grew up and where he was going to die.
“I didn’t tell you everything about the case, Angel.”
“You told me all the major details. And that you never caught him. The killings stopped. You assumed he was dead, or in prison. Maybe that he left the area.”
“He left another clue,” Mooney lowered his voice. “Only a few of us close to the investigation knew about it. We can’t be sure it’s really him until we confirm one thing. When is the autopsy?”
“Ten o’clock. But, Sarge, you can’t…”
Mooney stood up and put on his jacket. “You drive.”
Connie closed the door to the interview room. This was his last chance to get information out of Tracy Ward. Connie had already threatened to take him upstairs to the judge, but following through on the threat would only make things worse. The judge would appoint an attorney to represent him, and any good defense attorney would get him out of testifying by suggesting to the judge that he had a legitimate Fifth Amendment right not to testify. If the attorney was creative, he could probably find that Ward had committed some crime which led to him being shot. The court would then hold a private in camera hearing with the witness and his attorney, off the record, outside Connie’s presence, and would probably find that Ward did have a legitimate Fifth. And that would be the end of it.
Connie surveyed the room. He had to play this right. Greene was standing by an open window smoking a cigarette, his attempt at hiding his nasty habit in the smoke-free building. Of course the smoke went everywhere except out the window. The cigarette smoke usually bothered Connie, but not today. Ward sat at the small table in the middle of the room staring at Greene, inhaling as much smoke as he could.
“C’mon, man, just a couple of tokes?” he asked the detective. “This is what they call cruel and unusual punishment, ain’t it? Smoking in front of a man who’s been locked up with no privileges.”
Greene smiled and blew some smoke in his direction.
“Asshole.”
Connie sat in the chair across from Ward. “ Tracy, you want a smoke?”
“What the fuck you think, Mr. DA? Yeah, I want a smoke. And don’t call me Tracy. I prefer T, or Mr. Ward from you.”
“T, you know it’s against the rules for us to let a prisoner smoke. You’re technically in the custody of the sheriff’s department even though they passed you off to the detective here. The sheriff’s department doesn’t like it when we violate their rules. But maybe we can make an exception for you. You promise not to tell anyone if we hook you up?”
“No problem. I already told you I ain’t no snitch.”
“Okay, we’ll give you a smoke if you tell us what happened the night you got shot.”
“What did I just tell you about not being a snitch? Why you try to play me? You just brought me into court and tried to put me on trial with no judge. That’s what they call a kangaroo court, right?” He looked toward Greene.
“You weren’t on trial,” Connie said. “You’re the victim here. You’ve been shot and we’re trying to find out who did this so we can charge him with the crime.”
“If I’m the victim, why you putting me through this shit, dragging me into a courtroom and threatening me with contempt.”
“I’m not trying to put you through anything. The people in that courtroom were grand jurors. Their job is to investigate crimes and indict the people who committed those crimes. That’s why there’s no judge. It’s a secret proceeding, and I’m the one that runs the show.”
“I didn’t like it and I ain’t going back, not to testify, not for nothing.”
“I’m not talking about testifying, and you don’t need to go back. I just want you to tell me and the detective what happened that night. It doesn’t leave this room. No grand jury minutes with your name on them floating around the neighborhood.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I’m a man of my word. And I ain’t no snitch either. You don’t tell anyone I gave you a smoke and I don’t tell anyone about our conversation in this room.”
“No tapes?”
Connie shook his head.
“No report with my name in it?”
“No tapes. No reports. I just want to know who you were with that night, who shot you, and what your beef is with him.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You get to nail the dude who left you crapping in a bag. And you get a smoke.”
“Can you do anything with my sentence?”
“No.”
“Can you get me into some programs so I can earn more good time?”
“I know a deputy superintendent at the jail. I can make a call for you. No guarantees. That’s it, a smoke and a phone call. And no one knows we talked.”
“How about you take these cuffs off so I can enjoy the smoke.”
“First we talk.”
The feeling of anxiety was the same every time Alves stepped into the sterile room. He had witnessed dozens of autopsies, but he still felt the way he did before the first one. Death was not a pretty thing, especially unnatural death. It wasn’t like an elderly person dying in bed after a long life, a tired body giving out. There was something about the machinery that is the human body being stopped abruptly, unlawfully, violently, and the pathologist trying to determine which piece of the mechanism was toyed with, hindered, severed, obliterated.
Besides him and Mooney, there were three people in the room. The medical examiner, Jacob Belsky, was all suited up and preparing his equipment and a BPD photographer taking some “before” shots of the John Doe corpse. Eunice Curran, the head of the BPD crime lab, stood by, waiting to examine the body for trace evidence. At his request, she had been at the crime scene the night before, too. Eunice was the best, and Alves couldn’t risk one of her newer criminalists missing an important piece of evidence.
“Find anything yet?” Alves asked Eunice.
“Nothing.” She was all business today. None of the usual harmless flirting, not during an autopsy, and certainly not in front of Belsky. She walked over to another metal table where she had laid out John Doe’s clothing on large individual sheets of brown paper torn from a roll. As always, she was careful to keep each item separate for further analysis and storage. “I gave these a visual inspection before I removed them. I’ll go over them more thoroughly with an alternate light source when I get back to headquarters.” She rested her hand on a duffel bag at the end of the table. “I brought a portable light to go over the bodies before Belsky starts cutting.”
Alves watched as Mooney made his way to the autopsy table. The victim’s skin was discolored, taking on a greenish-black pattern, and his face and abdomen were swollen. He looked worse than he had the night before on the hill. Other than the damage caused by decay, Alves didn’t see any signs of trauma, except for the single bullet hole in the center of his chest. He hoped they’d recover a bullet inside him that wasn’t too damaged. A ballistics match could be another piece of evidence linking this case to the earlier homicides and eventually to a suspect.
“Is this the kid from Franklin Park last night?” Mooney asked the obvious question, not making any assumptions.
The medical examiner nodded. “John Doe. Jane’s in the other room.”
Alves’s BlackBerry vibrated. He removed it from his belt. “Alves,” he said. He mouthed the words “Sergeant Pratt” to Mooney and headed toward the window. Pratt did all the talking and Alves listened intently. It was news that he was hoping for, news that he needed to move forward in the investigation, but news that he dreaded. When Pratt was finished, he hung up on Alves without a good-bye.
“What is it?” Mooney asked.
“They think they’ve got an ID on the vics. Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping. A couple of BC students who haven’t been seen since Saturday night. Their friends didn’t think anything at first. But when they saw the news reports this morning, calls started coming in. Pratt sent some cars out to their parents. They’re on the way to make a formal ID.” It was too bad IDs were made only through photos now. Parents were deprived of the opportunity to give their children a final hug, a kiss, the chance to run their fingers through their children’s hair one last time.
“Where’s the girl?” Mooney asked.
“What do you need from her?” Belsky asked, not much of his face visible beneath his safety glasses and mask.
“We think these victims may be related to some homicides from ten years ago,” Alves said. “Sarge was involved with the original investigation. We need to see the female to confirm that we’re dealing with the same killer.”
The ME led them into the adjoining autopsy room.
“We’re going to need you guys, too,” Mooney said to Eunice and the photographer.
The girl looked just as bad as the boy, her body showing signs of deterioration, her eyes open and covered with a cloudy, opaque film. He wondered if she really was Courtney Steadman. He prayed that she wasn’t, for her parents’ sake. But then, what did it matter? Someone’s parents were going to be devastated. For a moment Alves was back on the hill where he had seen her the night before, staring into his eyes, begging for help. She looked even worse now, lying naked on a cold steel table. A final indignity before being cut open, no longer human, just evidence.
Alves followed Mooney’s lead and put on a pair of latex gloves. Alves helped roll her onto her side and Mooney lifted the braid of long black hair off the back of her neck. He sorted through the hair at the base of her skull. Then he stopped.
Mooney shifted his body so Alves could see the base of the girl’s skull.
She had been stamped with black ink.
“Is that the Yin and Yang symbol?” the photographer asked.
Mooney nodded. “It’s called the Tai-ji.”
“What does it mean?” Eunice asked.
“It means we’re not dealing with a copycat,” Mooney said as he gently lowered Jane Doe’s head to the table. “I need to confirm one more thing.” Mooney leaned over the girl’s body, opened her mouth and looked inside.
“Angel, can I borrow your mini Mag?” Mooney said, extending his hand toward Alves. Mooney put the small flashlight in his mouth so he could use both hands to inspect her oral cavity. Then he reached in and removed a small white piece of paper.
“What is that?” Alves asked.
Mooney removed the flashlight from his mouth. “Her fortune. This is the way this guy communicated with us. A different fortune with each female victim.”
“What does it say?” Belsky asked.
Mooney motioned to Eunice Curran. She carried a piece of the brown paper to him. He placed the rumpled fortune in the center. Eunice placed the sheet on the table. With her gloved fingers, she held down the two ends of the tiny strip, then smoothed out the air pockets caused by the moisture in the girl’s mouth. Alves made out the black letters, all caps, on the thin strip.
Eunice read aloud, “DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED.”
Connie stepped out of the interview room and closed the door. Greene was still with Tracy Ward, smoking up a storm, building a rapport. That was a good thing. Maybe Greene could get him to testify. But if the court officers caught them smoking, Connie would catch hell for it.
The interview had gone well. Ward still refused to give it up in front of the grand jury, but that didn’t matter. He’d identified the shooter as Shawn Tinsley. Even given up the names of two new witnesses to the shooting.
Now they could build a case against Tinsley. If not, they might find another way to take him off the street. Either way, they had a suspect, which was more than they had when the day started. Connie walked down the corridor toward the grand jury’s main office. He’d let the grand jury chief know that he was taking the case off the list for today. No need to present any testimony now.
“Mr. Darget.”
Connie recognized the voice behind him. Sonya Jordan. His old friend Mitch Beaulieu’s ex-girlfriend. A defense attorney. A royal pain in the butt. He knew what she wanted. He turned and said, “Ms. Jordan, nice to see you again.”
“Where’s my discovery? We’re on for trial in three weeks and I still don’t have my client’s FIOs or your ballistics expert’s CV. We need to set up a time so I can look at the gun with my expert.”
“I’ll fax that stuff over to you this afternoon. And you can go over to ballistics any time you’d like. I don’t need to be there.”
“That’s fine.” She turned to walk away. “But if I don’t have my discovery this afternoon, I’ll be filing a motion with the court to impose sanctions.”
“I’m sure you will, Ms. Jordan.”
Wayne Mooney ran through the Fens, past Roberto Clemente Field and onto Avenue Louis Pasteur. He was moving at a steady pace toward Longwood Avenue, the pale gray of new buildings wedged against the weathered stone of older medical buildings. He hadn’t missed a noontime run since getting launched from the Homicide Unit to Evidence Management three years ago. At first he’d been angry with the commissioner. But, honestly, he had embarrassed the mayor during a major investigation, and he had to accept his punishment. But what the mayor and the commissioner didn’t know was all he’d had to sacrifice to work Homicide. His marriage, for one thing.
He had to make some decisions before getting too involved in the case. He was used to his relaxed schedule. No stress of homicide investigations, just sit around and watch boxes all day. He had the quiet of his apartment and the company of Biggie, his twenty-two-pound cat. A year or so ago he’d screwed up the courage to call Leslie. They’d met for tea and scones at Greenhills. That was something they’d always enjoyed doing together, sitting and looking out at the Eire Pub-coldest beer in the city-for a who’s who of Boston ’s politicians, old-school guys hanging out with the working stiffs. Seeing Leslie again, without the pressures of marriage, reminded him why he had fallen for her in the first place.
He tried to pick up his pace a little as he turned down Longwood and continued across Huntington. The steady cardiac workouts were paying off. He felt like he was forty again.
He had gotten used to the idea that his career in Homicide was over. A couple more years and he could finish out his time in the Department. Then maybe he’d get a job working security at the federal courthouse-the Palace on the Pier-keep busy and put in enough quarters to collect on Social Security. Everything was planned out. Rock solid.
Now there were two more dead kids. The MO was unmistakable. This was no copycat. He couldn’t let Alves handle the case alone. His old partner had come a long way as a Homicide detective, but he wasn’t getting any help from his new boss, Duncan Pratt.
The victims and their families deserved to have things done right. No mistakes. Nobody getting off on a technicality. The case couldn’t just be solved, it had to be gift-wrapped for the DA. And the only way that would happen is if he got himself reassigned to Homicide, reassigned to this case.
Mooney struggled down the decline of Tremont Street, watching the crowd of kids outside the Roxbury Crossing T station up ahead. They should all be in school, but he wasn’t about to play truant officer.
This case was about him too. About not having any regrets when he retired. There were other cases he still thought about, cases lost at trial. But that was the system working the way it was supposed to work. If the government couldn’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then the guy walked. That was that. But someone had killed four young couples and hadn’t been arrested. Hadn’t been tried before a jury.
Yet.
“DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED.” A simple message. Once you cracked open your cookie and fished out the fortune, read it over the fried rice and chicken bones on your plate, had a laugh, and tossed it off, you never thought of it again. Now the fortunes found in the bodies of four dead girls haunted him.
He continued past the young truants hanging out at the station and turned onto the Southwest Corridor, the final stretch, less than a mile back to headquarters. The Corridor had been built to replace the old elevated tracks that ran along Washington Street from Forest Hill to downtown Boston, supposedly making the new Orange Line aesthetically pleasing. Instead, it proved to be an excellent place for young professionals to get robbed on their way to and from work.
What was the killer trying to tell them with the fortunes? The first one, Adams and Flowers, read, “STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.” Mooney remembered them all. Two months later with Markis and Riley, “LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT.” Then Picarelli and Weston, “EVERY EXIT IS AN ENTRANCE TO NEW HORIZONS.”
Mooney had just passed the Reggie Lewis Center when he started his dash, a strong kick to finish his workout. This final sprint was the most invigorating part of the run. He knew he would be sucking wind when it was over. Much better than the feeling he was going to have a heart attack jogging up a flight of stairs. When he reached the edge of the parking lot near headquarters, he walked a lap around the parked cars, a good cooldown before hitting the showers.
How did the fortunes tie together? Maybe the messages were random. Even if they were meant to throw him off, they were still clues.
Mooney wove through the vehicles parked by the evidence bays next to the ID Unit. In one of the bays was a car covered over with a massive tent, being fumed for prints. The officers from the Crime Scene Unit parked their SUVs at the end of the drive.
As he came around one hulking blue-and-white Explorer, Mooney heard a familiar voice. “Quite a run. Back in top shape?”
Commissioner Sheehan was sitting on a bench on the edge of the Corridor, a bench usually occupied by the smokers in the department. “Trying to keep up with the bad guys,” Mooney said.
The commissioner pointed to the gun on his belt. “This works pretty well for bad guys. And without all the sweating.”
“You taking up smoking?” Mooney asked. “Or you just out here catching rays?”
“Have a seat, Wayne.”
“I’m okay.” Mooney stood where he was.
“I need a minute.”
“Clock’s running.”
“I’m putting you back on Homicide.”
“This is what I remember. After I solved the Blood Bath case, it was you that shipped me out to Evidence Management, the Siberia of the Department.”
“Wayne, we’ve got eight dead college students. Two last night. Dolan might be pissed with you, but he’s not stupid.”
“What about Pratt?”
“He won’t be heading up the investigation. Starting today. The Mayor’s promoting him to Deputy.”
“A long time ago, when we both started on the job, you told me there are two kinds of people in this world, those that give a fuck and those that don’t. We both know that Duncan Pratt doesn’t give a fuck.” Mooney turned and started toward the building, the locker room and the peace of the shower. A place he could forget for just a few minutes how incompetence always got rewarded.
“Wayne?”
“Don’t worry, Commissioner Sheehan. I’m on it. And I’ll try not to embarrass you or Mayor Dolan.”
Angel Alves sat alone in the anteroom at the medical examiner’s office. He’d just finished up interviewing the Steadmans and the Kip-pings. In the two hours he’d spent with them, he’d had them ID photos of Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping. He’d had to ask when they’d last talked with their kids and put together a list of their acquaintances. The victims appeared to be normal college kids with no known enemies, no bad habits. Before the interview, he’d had the parents sit with a victim witness advocate to talk about what would happen next, answer questions about the process, give them a Homicide Survivors pamphlet and welcome them to the club no parent wants to be a member of.
While he did that, he’d had to assign one of the district detectives to witness the autopsy of Josh Kipping.
Alves sank back in a corner chair, closing his eyes, the image of the two kids lying in the next room, their devastated parents, burned into his brain. He wasn’t ready to head back into the autopsy room. He wasn’t ready for any of this, especially the responsibility of catching another serial killer. He had never stopped thinking about the case three years ago that the press had dubbed the Blood Bath Killings. The surreal crime scenes, each of them the same, a bathtub filled with warm water and blood, like a suicide. The missing bodies, never recovered. The devastated families. There was no closure for any of them, especially with the killer, a man Alves had worked with, taking his own life before they could learn where he had dumped the bodies.
The BlackBerry on his hip vibrated, and he saw Wayne Mooney’s number.
“What’s up, Sarge?”
“What do you have? Did you get an ID from the parents?”
“I haven’t even called Pratt yet.”
“No need to. I’m heading up the case again. Had a brief conversation with Commissioner Sheehan out in the parking lot at headquarters. We’re all set.”
“You kidding me?”
“I’ll update you later. Did you get a positive ID?”
“Steadman and Kipping. Parents just left. Parents spoke with their friends early this morning. I’ve got names. Say they were at the BC football game Saturday night. Couple left the stadium after halftime. No one saw them after that.”
“What did Belsky say about cause of death?”
“Asphyxia. Steadman was strangled. No ligature marks, indicating manual strangulation. The marks from the wire were postmortem. They’re trying to get fingerprints off her skin, a button on the back of her dress, her shoes.”
“They won’t have any luck,” Mooney said.
“Kipping was shot four times.” Alves stood up. He had to stay focused. “Belsky found a bunch of internal perforations. They were small caliber bullets, but they had caused a lot of damage. Death was quick. Massive internal hemorrhaging. They didn’t have the clothes he was wearing when he was killed. No stippling. Belsky found tattooing on the skin. A bruise identical to a gun barrel. The killer put the gun up against Kipping and fired the shots into the same wound.”
“Anything on time of death?” Mooney asked.
“Belsky should be finished soon. He thinks they died within two hours of leaving the stadium. Stomach contents consistent with their halftime meal. Rigor just starting to dissipate at the scene. Belsky figured they’d been dead about twenty-four hours when I found them.”
“That’s consistent with the victims in the old cases. He attacks quickly. It’s not like he kills the guy and then has his way with the girl. That’s not what he’s about. It’s all about the way he displays them after they’re dead.”
“That’s the other thing,” Alves said, pacing the small room. “Belsky wasn’t sure how long they’d been up there in the woods, but it had to have been more than a few hours. Their body temp had reached equilibrium with the outside temperature. But they hadn’t been put in those poses until some time Sunday morning, at the earliest, probably after it was light out.”
“Why’d he think that?”
“They showed signs of lividity in the buttocks, thighs and feet, as if they’d been sitting. We found the two of them standing.”
“So you think the guy had them sitting down after he killed them?”
“That’s what Belsky thinks. He said that after the heart stops pumping, gravity causes the blood to pool up in different parts of the body, depending on the positioning of the corpse. Initially the discoloration caused by the pooling blood can be shifted, but after six to eight hours the discoloration is fixed.”
“I understand what lividity is, Angel,” Mooney grunted.
“I’m just telling you what the ME said. The bottom line is that they had been someplace else, sitting up, possibly dressed in their formal wear, before they were dumped in Franklin Park.”
“It’s something to think about. He may have had them sitting upright in his car, strapped in with seatbelts, while he drove around trying to decide where to dump them.”
“I’m still not convinced as to how this all went down,” Alves said. “Let’s say he shoots Josh immediately. Why doesn’t anyone see or hear it? And Courtney would have screamed. There were people everywhere. How could there be no witnesses?”
“They were drunk,” Mooney said. “Maybe he tricked them into going someplace more secluded. He could have lured them into his vehicle. I could see them as good Samaritans,” Mooney said. “If the guy pretends he’s hurt, they walk right into his trap. Vintage Ted Bundy. He was a good looking guy, All American Boy. He’d wear a fake cast and pretend he needed help. Once the victim let her guard down, he’d attack.”
“What do you think he’s driving to pull off a stunt like that?” Alves said. “I’m picturing a van with tinted-out windows or a rusted-out old pickup with a cap. Every time I see something like that cruising around, I think ‘serial killer.’”
“It might not matter what he’s driving. Remember, he’s carrying a gun, the great equalizer,” Mooney said. “Guns tend to encourage people to cooperate.”
“Maybe the kids saw the gun, thought they were being robbed and figured they’d be released unharmed if they cooperated?”
“Even with a gun, it would be tough to control two people while driving. Either one of the kids could have freaked out on him and he’d have to kill them in the vehicle or risk getting caught.”
“What if there was more than one killer?” Alves said. “One guy to drive and one guy to control the victims until they got them to the primary scene.”
“This is the work of one man.”
“Okay. What if he’s not driving a van. What if he’s in an unmarked police car or something that looks like one? If he pretended to be a cop, he could have scooped them up without much trouble.”
“What if he is a cop?” Mooney asked.
“Either way, he could have told them they were under arrest for drunk and disorderly, or that he was taking them into protective custody until they sobered up. He could have placed them in cuffs and taken them wherever he wanted. Killed them at his leisure.”
“I’d like to get back out there before the next home game and talk with some of the tailgaters, see if they saw any suspicious vehicles cruising around or if they saw someone that looked like a cop riding around in an unmarked car. Problem is BC’s on the road the next two weeks.”
“What are the chances we’ll run into anyone that was there last weekend?”
“Pretty good,” Mooney said. “The same people stake out the same spots for every home game. This guy grabbed these kids. If we get lucky, one of the tailgaters saw something.”
“Three weeks is a long time to wait to talk to a bunch of drunks about something they saw a month earlier.”
“Read me that list of witnesses. I’m going over to BC right now.”
Mooney was tired. He crumpled into the seat of his newly assigned Ford Five Hundred. He didn’t appreciate the downgrade from the Crown Vic that supervisors used to drive.
After leaving headquarters, he’d driven to Chestnut Hill. He used Alves’s list of witnesses who had seen Courtney and Josh before they disappeared Saturday night. According to their friends, the couple had been tailgating along with the rest of the BC community. The game was a major event at the school, the first home game, one of only two nationally televised night games.
Their friends said that Courtney and Josh had had a few drinks. Neither of them drank often, so they were pretty intoxicated. The one thing the witnesses agreed on was that the two were in love. They went for long walks, held hands, talked, were affectionate in public. They seemed to enjoy being alone and talking. Their closest friends said their favorite spots were the area around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Chestnut Hill Park where they’d sit in the bleachers by the baseball field.
Mooney knew the area. At the park he pulled into one of the spots by the bleachers. When he was in high school, he had played a few games on that baseball diamond. First base for the Boston Latin Wolfpack. A few years back he’d played in a charity softball game with some cops and DAs on the same field. On the night of the murders, the area would have been teeming with people. BC was playing Florida State, one of the biggest games of the season.
How could the killer have abducted and killed the couple with so many potential witnesses in the area? Mooney believed that the woman was the killer’s main target. The man was more of a prop needed to set up the scene. But the male also complicated matters. It would be harder to take two people. Probably the male victim was shot right away. The friends Mooney had spoken with confirmed that Courtney and Josh had eaten hot dogs and sausages not long before they left the game. Exactly what the ME found in their stomachs.
So how did the killer pull it off? Mooney scanned the bleachers littered with empty beer bottles and cans. The sweet smell of spilled beer was in the air. Courtney and Josh had been a little drunk, but that didn’t explain why no one saw anything. Mooney stared out at the empty ball field.
Someone must have seen something.
Sleep sat in his car in the parking lot at the far end of the field. He watched the detective walking along the bleachers and then down onto the baseball diamond. This was the detective who had read his messages and still didn’t understand. Now here he was looking for clues to find out what had happened to the two lovers.
He would not find any. Because Sleep hadn’t left any. He was careful not to leave evidence that would implicate him. The first time he was impulsive, careless. Not any more. Now, everything was planned perfectly. And, of course, he had made himself invisible. The cops would only find what he wanted them to find. The man and the woman. The black and the white. The life and the death. The Tai-ji. The message.
Sleep watched as the detective made his way back up to the last row of the bleachers and sat on the aluminum bench. He slumped forward, hands dangling between his knees, staring down. Body language said the detective was beat, and it was only the first day of the investigation. Sergeant Mooney would have to get used to those feelings just as he had ten years ago.
Sergeant Detective Ray Figgs ducked into the men’s room and took a swig of scotch from the flask in his breast pocket. Carefully unfolding a bar napkin, he took a small cache of peanuts and shoved them into his mouth. He’d chew them as long as possible before swallowing. Wiping the salt from his hand onto his wrinkled pants, he straightened out his tie and stepped into the corridor. Ballistics was around the corner.
Figgs rang the bell, and one of the ballisticians let him in. He picked a pair of latex gloves from one of the boxes lying on the desk top, and put them on. He took a seat and waited for Sergeant Reginald Stone. Stone had promised to do a rush job on the bullet that killed George Wheeler.
Stone came from his office carrying an envelope and a plastic vial containing a single bullet. He secured the bullet and gestured for Figgs to come over to a comparison microscope. “Ray, this is the projectile you brought me this morning. The George Wheeler homicide. Forty cal.” Stone took a second vial with a second bullet from the manila envelope and secured that alongside the first. “This is from the Jesse Wilcox homicide. The number of lands and grooves gives us our weapon, the striations give us a match.”
Figgs had anticipated this news, but the reality hit hard. The same.40 was being passed around all over the city. It didn’t make sense that a community gun, a stash gun, was being used by so many rival gangs. It would be impossible to link it to any one suspect. “How many incidents is it tied to?” Figgs asked, dreading the answer.
“Close to a dozen, if you count everything, homicides, nonfatals, and shots fired.”
“Any connections between them?” Figgs asked.
“None that I know of. But the analysts at the BRIC have mapped each incident where ballistic evidence was recovered. That’ll give you a history of the gun and how it’s been used.”
In the old days, they used to map all that out on a chalkboard. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center was his next stop. Right down the hall. After that, after the fancy computer-generated maps and information bubbles, it was back to basic police work. Knocking on doors, reinterviewing witnesses, finding a common link. If there was one.
Time for all that after he freshened up in the men’s room.
Connie parked in the South Bay courthouse parking lot, next to the police station. He was trying to make roll call, but he was late. He grabbed his police radio from the center console. Besides the use of an office vehicle, the radio was the only thing he got when the DA named him a Rapid Indictment Prosecutor. But it was a good piece of equipment to have. He pushed the button on the side of the radio. “Bravo DA One, Ocean Nora,” he said, signing on for the night.
“DA on,” the dispatcher acknowledged him.
Connie stuck the radio in the back pocket of his jeans and secured his.38 in his ankle holster, the weapon of choice of some of the old school cops before they got the semis. As an assistant DA, he wasn’t supposed to carry a gun at work, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to carry one riding around at night with the cops. But he’d rather lose his job than lose his life.
Figures moved across the windows in the courthouse, and he thought back to the long nights he’d put in prepping cases in that building. The courthouse was still home to him. He had started his career there, working cases with Angel Alves, next door in District B-2, Roxbury.
Connie picked up his pace. He’d hoped to catch part of the four o’clock roll call. He needed to have the same information as the cops when he was on the street with them. In the main lobby, he punched in the key code and took the back stairs to the second floor and stepped into the watch room just as roll call was ending.
Connie didn’t recognize the patrol supervisor giving the briefing. The sergeant stopped his update as the defective spring on the door hissed gently and then gave way, the door slamming shut. The sergeant stared at Connie for what seemed like a minute without saying a word. It was no secret that some of the cops, especially old-timers like this sergeant, didn’t like having ADAs in their station. They didn’t trust lawyers even if they were on the same side. They saw every young prosecutor as a defense attorney in training. He turned to Connie. “You the DA I’ve been hearing so much about?”
“I suppose so,” Connie said.
“Name?” he barked. He had an egg-shaped head, a high and tight doing nothing to disguise the horseshoe-shaped bald spot on the top of his head.
“Conrad Darget.”
“Who you riding with, Darget?”
After riding with different guys for the first few months after becoming a RIP, Connie had settled on Mark Greene and Jack Ahearn. They were the hardest working detectives in the district, destined to make Homicide. “I ride with Greene and Ahearn, sir.”
“Fine. You carrying?”
He had to give an answer. “Sir, I…”
“Never mind,” the sergeant interrupted him. “I don’t want to know. You signed a liability waiver form?”
“Yes, sir. On file with the captain.”
“I don’t want to catch any shit if you get hurt out there. And if you are carrying a piece, don’t use it. Detective Greene, make sure he has a vest. I don’t want a DA getting killed on my watch.” He turned back to face the officers standing before him. “Everyone. Careful out there tonight. Things have been heating up. And like I said, anyone with information on Wheeler, reach out to Sergeant Figgs.” The familiar hiss and bang announced the patrol supervisor’s departure.
Roll call was over.
Connie waded through the officers and found Greene and Ahearn. “What’s on the agenda tonight?”
“Shawn Tinsley. The shooter Tracy Ward ID’d today,” Greene said. “I pulled everything I could find on him. Checked his BOP. Not much of a record. Weed charges, a domestic. Everything dismissed. I pulled his FIOs to see if any of the guys have stopped him, see who he’s hanging with. No real bad guys in the bunch, at least not according to their BOPs. I checked with the BRIC. Not on their radar either.”
“That could be a problem. They are the Boston Regional Intel Center. If they start asking who the kid is, next thing you know, the whole world knows Shawn Tinsley.”
“I didn’t tell them why I was asking about him. Otherwise they’d tell the Strike Force and half the Gang Unit would be up Tinsley’s ass in ten minutes.”
“Not the most subtle bunch,” Ahearn laughed.
“That’s their job,” Greene continued. “Jackie and I used to do the same thing. Won’t help us on this case. Tinsley’d know something was up and he’d lay low.”
“Let’s hope we get lucky and find him tonight,” Connie said.
Greene said, “I think Tracy Ward’s full of shit. He gave us Shawn Tinsley’s name just to get us off his back.”
“And to get a smoke,” Ahearn added.
“His story sounded too good,” Connie said. “He gave us a lot of detail about Tinsley’s crew. How they’ve been dealing crack. How Tinsley thought Ward was moving in on his turf.”
“None of that has checked out. That’s why we’re going up there tonight. See if there’s any truth to what he gave us.” Mark Greene patted his chest. “You want to borrow a vest, Connie?”
“Never wear one,” Jackie Ahearn said. “I hate those things. Can’t move around. I’m not afraid of bullets.” Ahearn smiled. “Connie, use mine. Get it out of my locker on the way out. You know the combination. But hurry up. It’s almost four-thirty and we haven’t made any arrests yet.”
“I’ll put it on in the car,” Connie said. “What about the two witnesses Ward gave us? He said they hang on Magnolia. If we find them, we can hit them with subpoenas for the grand jury. Maybe they can corroborate Ward’s story.”
“Or blow it out of the water.” Greene said.
Sleep entered Momma’s bedroom and drew the shades. It would be getting dark soon and he couldn’t risk anyone seeing the splendor of what he had done with the old place. They wouldn’t understand. But Momma appreciated it, he knew she did. Now she could relive those days, the happy times.
He opened the yellowed wedding album, flipped the gorgeous slip of parchment inscribed with his parents’ names and the names of their attendants. Sleep loved most the photograph of his mother alone, standing before a lush fall of velvet drapery. There was a corona of light behind her, perfect as the Virgin Mary’s halo, her skirts fanned out around her invisible feet. She is holding a bouquet of pale roses-probably yellow, her favorite. A cap of white artificial flowers interspersed with tiny bows of netting is perched jauntily on her head. Her hair is the deep auburn of his childhood, shining, curled and brushed away from her heart-shaped face, revealing her widow’s peak. She is smiling shyly at the camera.
The photo, of course, had been taken before all the disappointment in her life, before the old man stopped loving her. Before he started blaming her for giving him a freak for a son.
This room, the house itself, was a special gift Sleep had given her. He sauntered across the darkened room and flipped the switch on the wall. The room had a warm glow, the pink walls reflecting beautifully. His Little Things loved it. The perfect atmosphere for them.
It was also the perfect backdrop for the handsome couple as they began their lives together. Sleep walked around the room, admiring the photos he had taken of them as they sat in this room only yesterday. They looked so happy, sipping champagne, eating finger sandwiches, laughing. Then off to the park, their little Garden of Eden, away from the rest of the world. She must have been a little drunk at that point, willing to give in to him. And that was where he had to stop them. They would be frozen in time, just at that moment before she gave in to temptation, the moment before she made the decision that would lead both of them to misery. Now they could both feel the anticipation, the longing, the magic of true love. For all eternity.
He wished he could have spent more time with them at the park. It would have been wonderful to stay the night, but he could never do that. Stay too long and you leave too much of yourself. He had stood on that hill long enough to inhale the cool early autumn evening. To see stars, even with the distant city lights. Study his young lovers. Till he heard the voices of the children. Screeching. Their feet drumming the earth. Like little furies.
At least he had the pictures.
Sleep made his way around the room, stopping to admire each of the photos he had taken. Each told a different fragment of the story of these young lovers. They were a beautiful pair. He was happy for them. They had been given the gift of eternal happiness. He lay down on Momma’s bed, closed his eyes and imagined himself back on the hill with them, breathing in the smell of the woods, sharing in their unbridled love.
Momma would be so proud of him, of all he’d accomplished, of who he had become.
I love you, honey.” Alves was using the phone in the conference room to get the privacy that he couldn’t get at his work cubicle. “Tell Iris and Angel I love them.”
“What time will you be home?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry, more disappointed, frustrated.
“Late. We just came up from the press conference. The plan was to put the public on alert. And to avoid giving specifics. But the reporters went crazy with speculation. Tonight Mooney and I have to go through boxes of evidence, see if there’s a connection to old cases.” Alves looked at the six boxes of reports and photos stacked in the corner.
“The reporters are saying the Prom Night Killer is back.”
Alves had wanted to spare his wife for as long as he could, but the reporters had pounced on the obvious connections. One after another they’d called out the name of the killer linked to six unsolved murders.
“I need you at home. Iris is up in her room. She didn’t eat any dinner. She’s got her brother all nerved up. Angel, she found that young couple right down the street.”
“Marcy, if it helps any, he didn’t murder those kids in our neighborhood. Franklin Park was a secondary crime scene, a dump site.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized how bad they sounded. Not comforting to think of a killer using your local park to stage a murder scene.
“What the hell does that matter.” Her voice was strained with anger. “This maniac was in our neighborhood, where our kids play, where we sleep at night.”
“That’s why I need to be here.” Alves tried to talk calmly, but she had a point. His first job was to protect his family. “The only way I can hope to solve this case is to learn as much as I can from Mooney’s old files. Try not to worry. I asked the captain at E-13 to make extra rounds on our street.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Marcy…” He heard the phone click. Alves placed the receiver down. He could feel the vein in his temple throbbing. She was right. He shouldn’t be here. He should be home with his family, making his wife and kids feel safe enough to sleep.
He picked up a stack of photos-at the top was one of Courtney at the crime scene. Her face wasn’t contorted in terror. He studied the photo, from the gentle wave of her long hair caught back in its braid to the firm line of her chin. He’d seen the look before, on the faces of other victims. A little smile almost, a kind of peace.
Alves was starved. Mooney finally got back from BC, and he brought pizza. Alves cleared a space on the conference table and found some paper plates and napkins in a file drawer.
“No football practice tonight?” Mooney said.
“Cancelled for the rest of the week. One of the other parents is taking over for me when they start up again.”
“How are the kids? How’s Iris?”
“Not playing anymore. Iris won’t go near the field. And Angel has never seen his sister scared before. Let’s eat,” he said. He didn’t want to think about Marcy getting the kids ready for bed. How he wasn’t there to tuck the twins in. He opened the pizza box and took a long, stringy slice. He held the box open while Mooney took one. “Learn anything about Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping today?”
“Both decent students. Good kids. Saturday night they were pretty drunk. We know that from the autopsy. They were lightweights who got caught up in the tailgating atmosphere. At some point they slipped away.”
“Probably to go fool around,” Alves said.
“They didn’t seem the type. They were pretty caught up in the whole Jesuit education thing. Liked to hang out and talk.” Mooney’s face flushed with anger. “Two goofy kids go out and have a few drinks, and this bastard takes their lives.”
“Did you get a chance to reach out to the parents of the other victims?”
“I did that before I went to BC. I had to let them know what happened and prepare them for the media blitz that is sure to follow. I’ve kept in touch with them over the years. Six families.”
“Eight now,” Alves said.
Mooney paused. “I call them every summer on the anniversaries, just to let them know I haven’t forgotten. I told them that we’re working the cases together, that you’ll look at everything with fresh eyes.”
“Where do you think Josh and Courtney went from the game?” Alves asked.
“Either the reservoir or the park at Cleveland Circle.”
“Not one of their rooms?”
“Their friends said that’s where they liked to go to be alone. But that night there was no being alone anywhere. On top of the rowdy BC diehards, there were busloads of Seminole fans up from Tallahassee.”
“Sounds like you were there,” Alves said.
“I was. Working a detail. That’s what makes it so hard to believe he pulled it off without being seen. He’s getting bolder. And better.”
“Did you ever have any real suspects?”
“We had a few guys with bad records but no evidence connecting them. The first vics, Adams and Flowers, were killed where they were found. The others were staged at secondary crime scenes. Where are the photos from the first scene?”
Alves shuffled through the stack and found the manila envelope with the photos and handed it to Mooney. Alves had spent the last couple hours organizing the boxes and looking through the files. “Reports indicate it was a nice night. Looks like Kelly Adams and Eric Flowers snuck out of their prom at the Sheraton Prudential for a walk that led them to the Fens. Next morning a runner found them dead on the grass between a park bench and some shrubs.”
Mooney flipped through the photos. “My first time working a serial murder. I’d seen plenty of domestics, bar fights turned fatal, even mob hits. But nothing like this. The victims were dressed up in their prom clothes. The only victims wearing the clothes they were killed in. After that, the victims were dressed up by the killer. Flowers’s shirt had a stel-late pattern, a four-pointed star-shaped tear.” Mooney made a rough diamond with his index fingers and thumbs. “There was also tattooing, bruising in the shape of an elongated gun barrel opening.”
“A contact shot like the others.”
“Eric Flowers was shot three times in the chest, one entry wound. He may have struggled a little, but he bled out quickly.”
“Belsky found four slugs with one entry wound and similar tattooing on Kipping. I’ll have Belsky compare the tattooing on all the male autopsy photos. I took the slugs to Stone. They’re a match. That leaves us with the females,” Alves said, holding up a photo of Kelly Adams, lying in the grass next to her prom date.
“She was strangled,” Mooney said, “probably with bare hands, just like the other females. The thing is she had a real tattoo of the Tai-ji. After that, he started stamping the symbol on the other girls with a craft store stamper.” Mooney tossed a balled-up napkin on the table. “This whole Tai-ji thing is bullshit. He’s using that because he saw Kelly’s tattoo and thought it would throw us off. I bet he doesn’t even know what it means. He certainly doesn’t know what it should look like. The last two times he’s stamped it upside down.”
“Does it matter if the white is on the right or the left?”
“The white side representing heat should be rising and the dark side, the cool side, should be settling. Another thing. Kelly and Eric were dragged from the park bench behind some bushes.” Mooney handed a picture to Alves. “The killer didn’t use any wires, and the staging was simple, but it looked like they were lying next to each other, having a picnic or something. Somewhere along the way he shoves the Chinese fortune in her mouth.”
“The Herald always comes up with a great headline,” Alves read from a cut-and-pasted headline, “PROM NIGHT, BLOODY PROM NIGHT!”
“The media were ridiculous. The city was hitting an all-time low in the homicide rate. Good for the average Joe, bad for newspapers. These first murders gave the press a jump start. They made the killer out to be the next Boston Strangler. I think he killed impulsively the first time. Pure luck he didn’t get caught.” Mooney pointed to a gruesome photo of the young lovers, lying in the grass. “Then the newspapers make him out to be this super villain. My theory? They gave him the idea to keep using the same MO. It turned into a game. He takes more victims, only now there’s more work involved. He has to eat enough Chinese takeout to find a good fortune, keep a supply of clothes for his victims, buy some cheap jewelry, stamp the tattoo, transport them to some secluded spot and pose them. Now he’s enjoying it. He’s getting more sophisticated, using the wire.”
Alves remembered the frenzy that summer. At the time he was working last halfs, the midnight shift. Newly married. Between work and court, he barely had time to read the paper. But he remembered the intense media coverage. “So you think the media made this guy a serial killer?”
“They encouraged him. So many details of the first case are coincidental. The victims happen to be dressed up. They’re killed and then staged in the vicinity. I don’t know why he uses the fortunes. But the Tai-ji stamped on the back of Kelly’s neck? He didn’t bring that to the party.” Mooney dropped the photo in front of Alves. “He gets a boatload of attention for his crime. Next thing you know he starts killing and recreating that first scene. Where are the pictures from the second crime scene?”
Alves had separated the photos into stacks. He handed Mooney a tightly packed envelope.
Mooney flipped through the photos till he found one that showed a wide angle of the crime scene. “Daria Markis and David Riley. He left them on the Riverway, not far from the banks of the Muddy River. The scene was hastily put together. Not enough wire. David Riley’s body slumped on its side. We were lucky we found him in the overgrown reeds. Daria was wired to a tree, but slouched forward. The killer was nervous someone would see him. He’s gotten better at staging. He’s gained confidence that he won’t get caught.”
Alves nodded. “Looking at these pictures, I was starting to think we weren’t dealing with the same guy. Last night’s scene looked like it was orchestrated by a pro. Something you’d see at a wax museum. Nothing like Kelly and Eric.”
Another thing Mooney had taught him. Think of the case in terms of the victims, remember their first names, humanize them. All of it helped him focus.
“Where are the pictures from the third scene?” Mooney asked.
“Over there,” Alves nodded toward the two boxes in the corner.
Mooney went over and dug out the bottom box. He removed another envelope and slid out the photos. “Gina Picarelli and Mark Weston. Found in Olmsted Park. The killer was more comfortable, taking his time to get it right, closer to what you saw last night with Courtney and Josh. He used wire to pose Gina more seductively, with her head facing her would-be suitor.”
“Who is spying on her through the bushes, like a game of hide-and-seek. It’s almost as if he’s using the victims to act out his own voyeuristic fantasies. You think he’s into bondage? S and M? That could be why he ties them up,” Alves said.
“They’re never put in bondage poses. And he doesn’t show much sophistication with knots. Always a simple square knot,” Mooney studied the photos. “Anything from Eunice?”
“She did a rape kit. No semen or saliva.”
“He never sexually assaults them,” Mooney said without looking up. “So we have no motive beyond this voyeuristic fantasy.” His voice was low and measured. Alves expected him to pound the table, snap a pen in half, the usual Wayne Mooney anger and frustration response, but this quiet intensity was different.
“Eunice is comparing the wire he used in this case to the wire in the old cases,” Alves said. “Same with the clothes. I’ll check with her in the morning. We don’t know if he’s had this stuff stored someplace or if he buys things when he needs them.” Alves reached across the table and took the last slice of pizza, stiff and cold. It didn’t matter. Good pizza could stand the test of being eaten cold.
“The clothes are a good angle. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out that end of it. They were always used outfits, but they didn’t belong to the victims. Either too big, bunched up with safety pins, or too small, left unzipped and unbuttoned.”
“Same thing last night,” Alves said. “Josh’s pants were at least six inches too long. Pinned up. Courtney was busting out of her dress in the back. You couldn’t tell until she was cut loose from the tree.”
“I always figured the clothes might have come from thrift shops, Salvation Army or Goodwill, but I could never prove anything. He could be buying the stuff at yard sales. Tough to trace. But we’ve got to check it out anyway. Maybe he made a mistake this time.”
“Most thrift stores don’t have security cameras. They usually take cash only. We might find a receipt where someone bought some evening gowns and tuxes, but we’ll have no way of IDing the person. I’m hoping a male buying dresses sticks out in someone’s mind.”
“Give it a shot,” Mooney said. “Leslie used to work with a theater company. People used to go out to Goodwill to buy up gowns for their productions.” He looked back down at the photos he had arranged on the table. “It’s good to be working with you again, Angel.”
Ray Figgs switched off the lamp and sank back in the upholstered chair. Most of the furniture in the small room was from the old house. Dad’s TV chair. His metal snack tray. Dad’s lamp with a base of carved pine-two wood ducks on a log. Always reminded his dad of fishing holes down South. All of it to make the old folks feel comfortable in their new digs. They weren’t called nursing homes anymore, they were rehabilitation centers.
Figgs watched his father breathe-like a baby, irregular blips and bubbles. His dad had been a police officer too-retired more than twenty years. Used to love to listen to Ray’s stories, give him advice. Ray wished he could talk to his father now.
Lately, all his cases were gang shootings. He spent his time out talking to a bunch of people who had witnessed the shooting, and they all basically told him to go pound sand. If those cases didn’t get solved in the first couple of days, they were not going to get solved. Not until someone with information got jammed up on a drug or a gun charge and started looking to cut a deal for their testimony. That was the only way those cases got cleared. It didn’t matter how many hours were put into the investigation. It all came down to someone willing to rat someone else out to save his own hide.
His father would understand what he was up against. Ray used to process every crime scene according to protocol. He’d follow up on leads and talk with witnesses, lean on them, haul them in to the grand jury if he needed to.
His father’s skin was ashy in the semi-dark. He’d have to remember to pick up more of that lotion his father liked. The one that smelled like almonds. Ray could rub it on his father’s hands, his forearms. His father seemed to like that.
All he could think about was that.40. At least two kids killed with the same weapon. Evidence from shots-fired in different parts of the city linked to the same gun. A stash gun. He needed to clear his head. He needed to connect the dots.
Mooney put down the stack of reports and stood up from the table. He walked to the window and looked down at the few cars passing by on Tremont Street. It was after ten o’clock. They had gone through most of the old files. He’d had enough of sitting around reading reports and looking at pictures. He had missed being at the crime scene the night before. A Sunday night, and he’d been home watching the opening games of the football season. Only twenty-four hours ago, he’d been assigned to Evidence Management. Working days. “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to see where he left Courtney and Josh.”
It was great working with Angel Alves again. He was young enough to believe he could solve every case and had the energy to follow through. His energy was catchy, but Mooney had to keep him focused. Mooney was primed for the long night ahead.
“Any idea how he picks his victims?” Alves asked as he started the Ford.
“After Kelly and Eric? I don’t know. This city’s full of college kids. He could have run into the others, walking after dinner, outside a club, after a party. We had some info that one of the couples-Daria and David-used to go parking up on Chickatawbut Road in the Blue Hills.”
“Mostly gay guys cruising up there, and it’s outside the city.”
“The staties helped us. We sat on it for a few weeks. Kept an eye on some of the regulars and stopped a few to FIO them, get their names and addresses. They must have spread the word. Within two days we were watching squirrels and raccoons. Six murders, bodies at three different sites, and we had nothing.”
“Just like we have now,” Alves said.
“Did you know there’s a website devoted to this guy? Promnightkiller.com. A bunch of conspiracy theorists speculating about who the killer is and why he stopped killing. Most of them think he’s still out there. Like the Jack the Ripper theorists-they believe the killer is some powerful politician’s relative and the police are covering it up. The website must be buzzing tonight.”
“I’ll talk to the guys at the BRIC about monitoring the site,” Alves said. “They track everything going on in the city. A great resource on shooting cases. It’s not just intel, they’ve also got the Shot Spotter. Within seconds of a gunshot, the system pulls up aerial images and uses triangulation to show where the shots came from. The cameras set up around the city tie into the system and provide video of that area at the time of the shots. It’s a great way to get an ID on a suspect or to eliminate someone as a suspect.”
“Sounds good on paper.” Mooney was staring straight ahead.
“It’s not perfect. They’re still working out the kinks. And there aren’t enough cameras set up around the city yet. Remember how we used to pull the jail tapes and listen to phone calls of guys in custody? The BRIC working with the Sheriff’s Department can set it up so that my cell phone will ring whenever a person of interest makes a call from jail. I can listen to the call live. Pretty amazing stuff.”
Anything was worth a shot. “So you think these guys at the BRIC can monitor the website?”
“They can. They might be able to tell if this guy’s trying to communicate on it. Maybe there are hints that he was going to kill again.”
“It’s worth a try, but I don’t think this guy is one to communicate. We tried to draw him out, but he never left any messages outside of the fortunes.”
“We need to get him in a dialogue. Maybe we can have someone at the BRIC get involved in an online chat on the website. Have him say that he thinks the recent killings are the work of a copycat. That this guy is an amateur, not the real Prom Night Killer.”
“So we piss him off and get him to convince us he’s the real killer.” Mooney recognized the sound principle behind this gambit. Serial killers always thought they were smarter than the cops. They wanted the last word.
“What if he tries to convince us by killing two more kids?” Angel asked.
“That’s always a possibility.” Mooney lifted a photo of Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping, studying it. “But that’s a risk we have to take.”
Alves parked along the access road, near the tennis courts. The park was dark. A blanket of grass led to the baseball diamond and, beyond that, the fairway. A darker sweep led to a hill, rising against the night sky, ragged and forbidding.
It had been quiet. No arrests. They’d spent most of the night looking for Tinsley, circling the streets of Grove Hall, an area of Roxbury with old mansions with widow’s walks and stained glass, a neighborhood now plagued with drugs and violent crime. Connie had been to crime watches and community meetings. He’d met families living in the same houses for generations who refused to give up their neighborhood to a few bad actors.
“What are the names Ward gave us?” Ahearn asked.
“Michael Rogers and Ellis Thomas,” Connie said. “You know them?”
Ahearn shook his head, focusing on the dark road ahead.
Greene said, “I ran their BOPs. Thomas is clean. Never been arrested. Rogers is another story. Looks like he’s putting himself in the mix, cafeteria-style offenses. Little of this, little of that. Possession of weed, shoplifting, disorderly, resisting, that kind of crap. Next thing you know he’s sticking kids up at school, stealing cars. Had a gun charge dismissed. Backseat passenger in a car that belonged to the driver’s girlfriend. Gun in the glovy. I’m thinking he’s a crash test dummy, trying to earn some respect, get himself a reputation on the street.”
“If this kid wants to keep building his résumé, then he’s got to establish himself as a shooter,” Connie said.
“Jackie,” Greene said, “If we see anyone hanging out, we’ll stop and FIO them, get their personal info, see what they’re up to. Don’t let on who we’re looking for or why. We don’t want anyone going after Ward for being a snitch. If we find Rogers and Thomas, we’ll pull them aside and see if we can get anything. If not, we’ll hit them with the subpoenas. Sound good, Connie?”
“That’s a plan.”
Ahearn turned the car at a ninety-degree angle to the curb, lights on the sidewalk. Connie followed them out of the unmarked cruiser. They walked toward a group standing in front of them. A small shrine of burning candles flickered in the night. A pile of teddy bears honored the most recent homicide victim. Not ten feet away was another shrine, the toys washed out from sun and rain, the votives filled with old rainwater. On the corner was a small store, the brick façade painted with a mural dedicated to the “fallen heroes” of the neighborhood. Connie recognized the faces, gang members that had terrorized the area. Now they would be remembered as innocent victims of gun violence, the familiar RIP painted over their images.
There were eight of them gathered there, mostly teenagers. And two older guys. One of them was dark-skinned, maybe thirty. Maybe one of the OGs. But he was dressed too sharp. Buttoned-down oxford shirt, sports jacket, slacks, and spit-shined shoes. Connie had seen him before, but he couldn’t place the man’s face.
Then there was the white guy.
He really didn’t fit in the picture. He was short, a little over five feet, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. At first, Connie thought he might be a junkie looking to make a score, but he looked too clean to be a fiend. If he wasn’t there to buy drugs, what was he doing on Magnolia Street in the middle of the night?
They were outnumbered almost three to one. Connie focused on everyone’s hands as he’d seen Angel Alves do. He laid back as the detectives approached the group.
“What’s going on tonight, gentlemen?” Greene asked.
“We didn’t do nothing,” one of the teenagers protested.
“You din’ do nothing?” Ahearn asked, bending over and picking up a half empty forty-ounce bottle of beer in a paper bag. “This feels cold. Whose is it?”
Jackie Ahearn was someone you didn’t want to mess with. There was a story about when Ahearn and Greene first made detective and got transferred to B-2. One of the neighborhood gangs kept telling them they weren’t shit without their guns and badges. Ahearn took off his gun and badge, laid them on the hood of his car, and offered to have a fair one with anyone willing. There were no takers.
“It’s our boy’s. He likes his beer cold,” one of the kids said. He was young, a small, skinny kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
“Which boy?” Ahearn asked.
“The one whose memorial you’re disrespecting,” the kid said, pointing to a guttering candle at Ahearn’s feet.
“All you guys been drinking tonight?” Ahearn asked.
Silence.
“Anyone have anything we should know about?” Greene asked. “Liquor, weed, weapons?” Ahearn started patting them down, and Greene joined him. Connie stayed back and let them do their jobs. The kids stood with their arms out. They knew the drill. Keep your mouth shut, let the cops do what they had to do, and they’ll let you go.
“Please, do not lay your hands on my body, unless you have a warrant.” The words were spoken with an unexpected formality.
“Excuse me?” Ahearn said to the sharply-dressed, older black man.
“You heard me officer,” the man said. “I do not mean to be disrespectful, but I have done nothing wrong. I can not condone being searched under these circumstances.”
“What’s your name?” Ahearn asked.
“I do not believe I need to answer that question, but I will. My name is Luther.”
“Luther what?”
“Just Luther.”
“You only have one name, like Madonna or Usher?”
“I only have one name, like Luther.”
“Well, Luther Last-Name-Unknown” Ahearn said, “what exactly is a grown man doing hanging on a corner with a bunch of teenagers? Teenagers with beer. You wouldn’t happen to be the one who bought the beer, would you? Because it is illegal to contribute to the delinquency of a minor, and you would be subject to arrest and a search incident to arrest. You still think I can’t search you?”
Luther slowly put his hands out toward Ahearn, palms up. “I did not do anything illegal. I am an outreach worker, a mentor with the Crispus Attucks Youth Center.”
Ahearn smirked. “You got to be kidding me. Is that why you’re out here? Trying to save America’s youth?”
“I also work for the mayor,” Luther said. “We come out a couple of nights a week to talk with the kids.”
Now Connie remembered who he was. And the white guy, too. They were two of Mayor Dolan’s Street Saviors. It was their job to make relationships with kids in gangs and help them out of the so-called “life.” Connie had seen them at gang intelligence meetings sponsored by the BRIC at police headquarters every other week. Ahearn hadn’t made the connection.
“I don’t care who you are,” Ahearn said. “Working for the mayor doesn’t give you a free pass to buy beer for kids so they’ll think you’re cool.”
“I did not buy them any beer. It is my job to counsel these young men. They are grieving because they lost a friend. They wanted to share libation with him.” Connie had seen this before. Kids passing around a forty-ounce beer and pouring some of it over the spot where a friend had been killed. “I do not fully agree with what they are doing, but I have not come here to judge. I want to help them find ways to deal with their anger without seeking revenge and retribution.”
Ahearn shook his head. “So you figured you’d buy them some beer to help drown their sorrows. Is that what the mayor’s paying you to do?”
“We did not buy the beer.” Luther pointed to the white man. Connie turned to look at him more carefully. The man was short and stocky, thick with muscle, prison muscle. The kind of guy you wouldn’t want to get into a scrape with. His dark hair was neatly combed, slicked back, the wet look. He wouldn’t have been bad looking but for his right eye. The eyelid was half closed and the eye itself drooped. “My partner and I came out here tonight, without weapons, knowing that violence could erupt. But we have faith in these young men. We can help them choose a better path.”
“Why don’t you pass a joint around with them while you’re at it?” Ahearn asked.
“I am not encouraging any of this behavior, officer. Nor am I condemning it. I am a man who has broken no laws, and I will not be searched by you or anyone else. You should not be searching any of these young men either.”
“They are minors in possession of alcohol,” Ahearn said. “Another one of those little laws that you don’t seem to think matters.”
“No one was in possession of that bottle. It was on the ground, part of a shrine.”
Connie could see Ahearn’s face tensing with anger. He watched as Greene stepped between the two men. He must have realized that they couldn’t win this battle.
The mayor would take Luther’s side if this thing blew up. The Street Savior Program was his baby, giving him credibility in minority communities. It was a crime prevention effort to point to whenever he and the commissioner were criticized for overaggressive policing. Nothing would look worse in the press than two cops and an assistant DA acting like cowboys rousting the mayor’s Street Saviors. It would be powerful ammunition for the mayor’s critics. The DA wouldn’t be too happy about Connie being in the middle of it either.
“Jackie, come here for a second,” Greene said. He led the big man back toward their cruiser. Connie could hear Greene’s Irish whisper as he told his partner to calm down. It would take some work, but Greene would handle Ahearn.
“Can I speak with you?” Connie said to Luther and his partner. He walked toward the corner, away from the group of kids, the two men following.
Connie extended his hand. “Luther, I’m Connie Darget. I’m with the DA’s office.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong, Mr. Darget.” His voice was calm, as it had been throughout the exchange with Ahearn. When Connie shook the man’s hand, he could feel a ripple of anxiety.
“I know,” Connie said. He turned to the white man and extended his hand. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Rich Zardino.”
“Haven’t I seen you guys at the gang intel meetings?”
The two men nodded. Not overly talkative. Upset by the exchange with Ahearn.
“I want to apologize for what just happened,” Connie said. “Maybe you can help me. I’m investigating a shooting and these detectives offered to help me find a couple of witnesses. They weren’t trying to give you a hard time. We just want to find these kids. We’re concerned they may have guns.”
“We understand, Mr. Darget,” Luther said.
“Connie.”
“We don’t want trouble with the police, either. But we’d lose our street credibility if we allowed the search. I didn’t want to show up the officer in front of the young men, but I had to stand my ground.”
“Understood. These witnesses I’m looking for are not in any trouble. Do you know Michael Rogers or Ellis Thomas?”
“Sorry, I do not,” Luther said, maintaining a tone of formality.
Zardino shrugged his shoulders.
“Thanks for your help. Here’s my card. I’ll let the detectives know I’m all set. You can get back to doing your job.”
Connie shook their hands. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any complaints filed with the Police Commissioner or with the DA.
Rich Zardino’s hands were clenched as they walked back to the car. He didn’t trust cops. He didn’t trust anybody. Serving eight years of a life sentence had taught him that he had no friends. After his release and some bad press for the city, the mayor had offered him this job, a “sorry we took eight years of your life” peace offering. Both he and Luther had done their time, innocent or not, and now they were committed to working for peace.
Zardino didn’t want to throw it all away because of a confrontation with a couple of yahoo dt’s. The dt’s would badmouth him and Luther to other cops. Say they were teaching kids their constitutional rights, helping them become better criminals. He knew the cops didn’t trust them. To them, he and Luther would always be thugs, one bad decision away from a life sentence.
“You okay?” Rich Zardino asked Luther. Luther seemed startled by the question, like he was a million miles away. It had taken Luther awhile to warm up to him, an Italian guy from East Boston who had done state prison time for a murder he didn’t commit. What would a guy like that have in common with the kids they were servicing, black and brown kids from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan? But they both knew it made for great press. A former gangbanger, a convicted felon who had found Christ teamed up with a wrongly-convicted white guy. The kind of stuff they made movies about.
Turned out he was pretty good at communicating with the kids. He was real, and that was all he needed for the kids to trust him, no matter the color of his skin.
“I’m upset those cops put us in that situation,” Luther said. “The big guy could have shown us a little respect and it wouldn’t have gone down like that.”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s over,” Zardino said. “The police have a lot to lose if they file a report.”
“Maybe I should have handled it differently, let them search me, let them see that I’m clean.”
“Bull.” Zardino spat in the street. It was a dirty habit that drove his partner crazy. “You did the right thing. How else are they going to learn to stand up for their rights?”
Luther was always stumping about setting an example. But tonight, no one had learned anything from the beef with the cops. Once the police left, the kids started imitating the pissed-off cop, trying to high-five Luther for how he had handled them. That drove Luther nuts.
“Maybe I am making them better criminals,” Luther said. “But so are the police, by treating everyone like a criminal. They’re teaching them to distrust the police, to disrespect authority and to turn to the streets for support. At least what happened tonight was witnessed by a prosecutor.”
“I don’t trust that guy,” Zardino said.
“You don’t trust any lawyers. I can’t say I blame you after what you’ve been through.”
“I was watching him,” Zardino shifted and got comfortable against the car. “He wasn’t going to say nothing while the cops did their thing. When he found out who we were he realized it wouldn’t look good. I saw the light go on in his head. That’s the only reason he stepped in.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely. I know guys like that. He had no problem with what the cops were doing until he thought it could come back and bite him. Then he’s a peacemaker. Screw him. He’s a lawyer. No, he’s a prosecutor, an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the Constitution. He shouldn’t be letting dt’s do things like that. He’s as bad as they are.”
“He extended the olive branch to us. We might as well use him as an ally.”
“We need to watch our backs.”
“You really are one suspicious dude.”
“That’s what happens when your friends set you up and send you to jail for a crime you had nothing to do with. I don’t trust anyone except my mother.”
“Truth told, my boys forgot about me when I was upstate. No visits. No money in the canteen fund for chips, sodas and snacks. In the end, Richard, it’s always just you and your mom. And the Lord.”
Alves saw her standing at the bus stop. She was always at the bus stop.
She wasn’t too far away. Maybe a hundred yards. If he hurried, he could get to her in time. But his feet were heavy. He tried moving faster, his legs weren’t responding. He had to close the gap between them.
Then the bus came around the corner, smoke billowing behind it. It was loud, without a muffler. He called her name, but she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the bus.
He had to get to her.
He was running now, but the bus was moving so fast. He called her name again. This time he couldn’t even hear his own voice.
He watched as the bus stopped to let her on. He could see the driver and the passengers.
He shouted her name one last time.
Alves stopped running. The driver watched Robyn Stokes, Alves’s childhood friend, dressed in her hospital whites, as she climbed the steps. When she turned to find a seat, the driver looked over at him. It was a familiar face, the face of a former colleague, a man he didn’t know too well, but had respected. The man who had murdered Robyn Stokes. The driver, Mitch Beaulieu, former assistant district attorney and murderer, pulled the bus away from the curb with Robyn and the rest of his doomed passengers. Alves felt his hip, his back pocket, for a phone, a radio, his gun. Nothing. There was no way to stop the bus. Then he heard a loud bang.
Alves jerked forward in his chair. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight streaming through the conference room windows. The noise Alves heard must have been a door out in the hall slamming.
It was getting harder to sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he thought about his old friend Robyn. Killed three years before by a killer the press called the Blood Bath Killer. Left tubs full of water and blood. No bodies. He and Mooney had caught Robyn’s killer, Mitch Beaulieu, but they never found her body. He owed Robyn and her mother one last thing. A Christian burial. A final resting place, a grave to cover with flowers.
Propped in front of him against a pile of folders was a note written on a sheet torn from a detective’s notebook. Quick shower then off to ballistics. You check in with Eunice Curran. WM
Mooney stepped out of the Homicide Unit and turned down the corridor toward the gym. The city had spared no expense when they built One Schroeder Plaza. Their new headquarters had everything from a state-of-the-art crime lab to a gym as good as any private health club in the city.
Mooney stepped into the gym and took his first left into the locker room. He wasn’t looking for a workout. No time. He needed a quick shave and shower.
Within a half hour he was banging on the glass doors of the Ballistics Unit with his knee, a cup of coffee in each hand. He knew Sergeant Reginald Stone would be in early; like Mooney, he was a Marine. He gave it a minute before kicking the baseplates of the heavy doors.
A few seconds later Stone emerged from an office door at the far end of the Ballistics Unit. He didn’t look happy that someone was trying to kick in the door.
“Open up, Reggie,” Mooney shouted through the heavy glass doors.
Stone looked down at Mooney’s hands. “Cream, no sugar?”
“What am I, an idiot?”
Stone smiled and came over to let him in. Mooney went to put the coffees down on a table so he could shake his friend’s hand, but he was greeted with a firm hug instead. It was awkward, since Stone was so much shorter. He had quite a bear hug for a little guy.
“Ease up there, pal. You’re going to be wearing two cups of coffee if you’re not careful,” Mooney said.
He released Mooney from his grip. “Great to see you, Wayne.”
“I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you on the promotion, Reggie. The first black officer to head up the Ballistics Unit.”
“I don’t look at it like that. I’m just another sergeant given the honor.”
“Bullshit,” Mooney said. “This is big. You’re a groundbreaker. It’s important to the other officers coming up in the department.”
“There are some people out there saying I only got the job because I’m black.”
“Give me the names of the bozos talking smack, and I’ll crack them over the head. You got the position because you’re the best man. This ballistics unit has been messed up for years. How many guns have been secured here as evidence and turned up missing?”
“My first priority is to inventory, box up, and bar code everything for the evidence management system.”
“You’re the best. And you’re going to prove it by helping me out with a case.” He handed one of the coffees to Stone.
Stone led Mooney back to his office. “What case?”
“Josh Kipping. Alves brought you four slugs and some autopsy photos yesterday.”
“The Prom Night Killer.” Stone sat behind his desk and removed the lid from his coffee. “Interesting case. Multiple shots. One entry. Angel told you I matched the projectiles to the evidence from ten years ago?”
“That’s helpful.” Mooney flipped the cover off his coffee and took a sip. “But I already knew it was the same guy. What’s your theory on the single entry wound and the number of shots fired?”
Stone took a sip. “I think he’s using a machine gun.”
“A machine gun?” Mooney almost coughed up his coffee.
“Not a regular machine gun. Not something that was manufactured as such.” Stone put his cup down and got up from his chair. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Mooney followed him down the hall to the Secure Firearm Evidence Room where the guns were stored. Stone walked down the rows of shelves and came out with an evidence box. He led Mooney to the test firing room.
“What do you have there?” Mooney asked.
Stone placed the box on a table and removed the gun. “It’s an interesting case from a few years back, before I made sergeant, when I was just a detective examining firearms and testifying in court. It’s a twenty-two caliber Berretta semiautomatic, altered to fire fully auto.”
“I’d like to see how to do that.”
“Let me show you.” Stone took a stack of photos from the box and spread them on the table. “I had a second gun that was in pristine condition. Took the two of them apart and took some comparison photos. You can see in the pictures that the trigger bar arm has been cut by about a third in the altered firearm. You know how this type of weapon is supposed to work.”
Mooney nodded, focusing on the photos.
“When the gun is fired, the slide is forced back, loading the next round from the magazine and resetting the hammer. The bar arm’s supposed to hold the hammer in the cocked position until you pull the trigger again to fire the next round. With the bar arm cut short, the hammer doesn’t stay in the cocked position. The weapon keeps firing as long as you hold the trigger. It keeps firing until the clip is empty. Nine rounds. Unless it jams.”
“Does it jam?”
“Every time. I’ve never gotten it to fire the full nine rounds, but it always manages to pump out three, four, even five rounds.”
“Like we’ve found in each of the victims.”
“Correct. Let me show you.” Stone opened a file cabinet drawer, shuffled through some boxes and took out some.22 caliber ammunition. He fed nine rounds into the clip and slid it into the handle of the gun. He put on his sound-deadening headphones and handed a pair to Mooney before making his way to the projectile recovery tank. He put on his safety glasses. “Watch carefully, Wayne. It’s going to come out in one burst. To an untrained ear it would almost seem like one shot, but you’ll see and hear that it isn’t. The first time I fired this thing, I almost had a heart attack. I didn’t know it had been altered. I was just testing it to see if it was a working firearm and it took off on me.”
Stone positioned himself, the gun in his right hand, supported by the left. Then he squeezed the trigger. Mooney saw the flash from the barrel of the gun. He could hear it was multiple shots, but he wasn’t sure how many. He tried to count the shell casings as they were ejecting, but it happened too fast, the casings scattering on the floor.
Stone removed his ear protection. “I think that was five. That’s what it felt like.” He bent over and picked the casings up off the floor. “Confirmed. Five.”
“The bullets that killed these kids are also twenty-two cal. Were they fired from a Berretta?”
“I think so. Six lands and grooves with a right twist. Consistent with a Berretta. But I’d want to see the weapon to make a positive match. If this killer has a gun like this, altered in the same way, it would explain why you have multiple shots, but never the same number, and only one entry wound. And tattooing consistent with this gun barrel.” Stone placed the gun down on the table. “Wayne, you know this gun serves only one purpose. It’s a hit man’s weapon. Small caliber, so it doesn’t make too much noise. When you pull the trigger, it sounds like one round being fired instead of four or five. It fires so fast that the last round would be fired before the first casing hits the ground. And you know from experience that small caliber rounds can cause more internal damage to the victim.”
Stone picked the gun up again. “And this gun would be useless in a gunfight. You basically get one pull of the trigger and you discharge all nine rounds at once or the gun jams up. Either way, if you miss your target, you’re out of luck. The fight’s over and you’re a dead man.”
Alves rang the buzzer outside the crime lab. He was tired. Putting his head down on a conference room table for a couple of hours didn’t qualify as a good night’s sleep. Having nightmares and picturing your sleeping family alone in a dark house didn’t help.
“Can I help you?” Alves heard the pleasant voice behind him. A young woman opened the door to the crime lab. He had never seen her before. Blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like a teenager, but she was probably a new criminalist, straight out of college with her biology degree. The new hires seemed to be getting younger.
“I’m looking for Eunice Curran?” Alves said.
“And you are?”
“Detective Alves. Homicide.” He had his gold badge clipped to his belt.
She left him at the reception desk and went back to check with Eunice. Following protocol. Good for her. Once she’d cleared everything with the boss, she let Alves enter the inner sanctum of the DNA lab and the evidence examination rooms. Eunice Curran was in one of those rooms, laying out the evidence she had recovered over the last couple of days.
“Hi there, handsome,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you. Like clockwork, you always show up the morning after…an autopsy, that is. But you’re usually not this early.”
“Never made it home last night.”
“I saw your buddy Sergeant Mooney across the hall,” she said. “That’s two days in a row I’ve seen you guys together. People are starting to talk.”
“Nothing to talk about. Mooney’s back in Homicide.”
“Good to hear. Let me show you what I’ve got…the evidence, that is.” She brought over two paper evidence bags. He could see the change in her face, in the tone of her voice. She was discussing her work now, so no more fooling around. “Here’s the wire that was used to secure the victims. I’ve kept them separate. It’s all identical black telephone wire, one of the fine, multicolored wires you find inside a telephone line. I pulled the evidence from the old cases. It’s a match. It looks like he’s taking ordinary telephone line, slicing off the outer casing and using the black wire inside. He probably likes it because it’s less visible to the naked eye than the colored wire, the reds, greens and yellows. It definitely serves its purpose. Thin, but sturdy.”
“Any idea where he got it?”
“Manufacturer’s a company called Teletech. They’ve been around forever. Seeing that it’s a match with the wire from the earlier crime scenes, I’d say he got a good supply of the stuff somewhere. Kept it on hand over the years.”
“Maybe he works for a phone company or a company that installs security systems,” Alves said. “He might be an electrician. Any one of those jobs would put him in regular contact with this kind of wire.”
“He could have bought it at Home Depot, like everyone else. Paid cash for part of a roll and kept it on hand. I don’t think it’s any indication of what he does for work.”
Alves shook his head. “Have you ever been to a mason’s house, Eunice?”
“You mean like a Benjamin Franklin, George Washington type Mason, or a tradesman who lays bricks?”
“Works with bricks.” He avoided the word lay. He figured she was through with the flirting, but why give her ammunition?
“I can’t say I have, but if you know one who’s not married, feel free to give him my number.”
“I’ll get on that.” He smiled. “If you ever get lucky enough to see a mason’s house, you’ll notice that all of the home improvements involve masonry work. New walkway, brick. New siding, brick. Garden edging, old bricks. Kitchen and bathroom floors are tile, never linoleum.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that people like to work with a familiar medium. If a guy works with concrete, he’ll put in a concrete walkway with a concrete apron around his house. My next-door neighbor is an electrician. If he gets bored on weekends, he changes light fixtures, puts in new circuit breakers and transformers. Once he even dug a trench in his front yard and ran PVC pipe underground so the power and phone lines running to his house wouldn’t be visible.”
Eunice tried to interrupt him, but Alves held his hand up.
“The most important thing I’ve noticed about this neighbor is that he uses pieces of that heavy Romex electric line-the kind with the positive, negative and grounding wires in the white casing-to tie things up. He uses it instead of rope. If he puts a ladder on the roof of his van, he secures it with a couple of pieces of Romex. Rolls up his garden hose for the winter and ties it with Romex. His wife plants a sapling in the back yard, he keeps it upright with a piece of rebar and Romex. He uses it for everything because that’s what he’s familiar with.”
“So your next-door neighbor is the killer because he likes to use electrical wire to tie things.”
“What I’m saying is the killer didn’t just choose this type of black telephone wire. It chose him,” Alves said. “Maybe that’s the case with everything he uses. Mooney brought this up last night and it got me thinking. What if this guy is with a local theater group? What if he does lighting and electrical work for them? That would give him access to the wire, the makeup, and the clothes. Working in theater would give him a reason to go to thrift shops, yard sales, and flea markets looking for used formal wear for men and women. No one would question it.”
“Problem is the makeup isn’t that heavy theatrical makeup. He caked it on the best he could so the victims looked good from a distance, but it was inexpensive makeup, like Revlon, the kind that’s sold in pharmacies and supermarkets.”
“This is the first time he’s used makeup,” Alves said.
“I noticed that. I guess he just wanted to add a new touch to his creation. Another thing. I’m not sure if this tells us anything, but the clothes smelled like naphthalene.”
“What’s that?”
“Mothballs. Old school mothballs. They still make them, but most mothballs today are made with dichlorobenzene. Less flammable.”
“So it makes sense that he could have had the clothes in an attic.”
“Or he just bought them at a flea market,” Eunice said. “Stuff someone else had stored away. So it doesn’t tell us anything, really.”
“I can’t help but think this guy has this stuff packed up and ready to go. We know he’s got a supply of the wire. We know he’s had the same gun all these years. I’m willing to bet he’s done the same with the clothes. What about the jewelry?”
“The first victim had a gold necklace, real emeralds.”
Alves had read in the reports that Kelly Adams’s mother loaned it to her for the prom.
“After that, costume stuff. Similar, but cheap glass beads. I can’t tell you if he bought the jewelry last week or ten years ago.”
“Eunice, are you familiar with the BTK Killer?”
Eunice nodded. “Bind. Torture. Kill. Dennis Rader.”
“Rader lived what most people would call a normal life, aside from the fact that he was a murderer. He was involved with his church, Boy Scouts, a regular family guy. But he had a ‘hit kit’ with pistols, knives, venetian blind cords, plastic bags, duct tape, electrical tape. He kept it all hidden in a closet until he went out on one of his ‘projects.’ Sometimes he shoved the stuff he needed into a coat pocket, sometimes he’d carry it in a black bag or a briefcase. Maybe our guy’s had his ‘kit’ stored somewhere over the years. I’m checking the local storage facilities. There weren’t that many ten years ago.”
“The next safest place would be with a girlfriend or wife, if he had one,” Eunice winked.
“Exactly. He had to have been living somewhere, with someone he could trust. Problem is we’re not going to find that person until we find the killer.” Alves felt a sudden surge of tension run from his shoulders up into his neck. He could expect a headache if he didn’t get some fresh air soon.
Alves needed to get back out on the streets. He’d had enough of sitting in offices and conference rooms, reading through old case files. Courtney and Josh were his latest victims, and that was where Alves needed to focus his attention. “Thanks, Eunice.”
“Any time, handsome.”
He went for the door, then stopped and turned back to Eunice Curran. “You’ll let me know if you come up with anything else.”
“I always do.”
I found a broken meter,” Zardino said. “Never pass up a broken meter.”
“What good is it if it’s in Cambridge?” Luther asked.
“Stop crying.” But Luther was right. It had been a long walk in the hot September sun. As they rounded the corner onto Huntington Avenue, the Northeastern University campus came into view. “We’re going to be here for a few hours. I needed a good spot. Finding the perfect parking spot is one of my many talents.”
“You could have dropped me at the door.”
“If I’m walking, you’re walking.” Zardino smiled. “The good news is that you get to look forward to walking back.”
“Not today. I have a meeting with a client at the Youth Center. I’ll take the T when the conference ends.”
Zardino picked up the pace. “The mayor doesn’t like it if you show up late for one of his events.”
Luther lengthened his strides, and Zardino had to jog to keep up with him. Today was the mayor’s Annual Peace Conference, held every year around the time school started. Everyone would be there: elected officials, law enforcement, social services, professors, some students. The place would be packed, and he and Luther were speaking.
“We’re sitting on another panel today, Luther. Just follow my lead. I’ll talk a little bit about my life, my background and my experience in the criminal justice system, how I was framed and wrongly convicted. And you can talk about your experience.”
“As a real criminal, someone rightly convicted?”
“As someone who got caught up in a bad situation and made some mistakes,” Zardino explained patiently, “but who’s turned things around. You know the spiel. The same pitch we use when we talk on the street.”
“I don’t mind telling people about the mistakes I’ve made,” Luther said. “But why should I humiliate myself in front of a bunch of suits, cops and white women social workers from Wellesley?”
“Because Mayor Dolan pays you to. Could you survive on the money you make at the Crispus Attucks?” Zardino didn’t wait for a response. “Of course not. That’s why it’s nice to have that steady income from the Street Saviors. Did I mention the health insurance? We can’t lose sight of the big picture. We just need to play the game and sometimes that involves being Dolan’s poster boys. Today could be good for your career. A lot of those white women from Wellesley are college professors. You impress them, they might have you back to talk to their classes or to professors at a faculty training.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the routine down.”
“You know my lawyer, the one who got me out of jail?” Zardino asked.
“The one from Harvard Law School? Sonya Jordan?”
“When I first got out, she used her connections to get me speaking gigs-conferences for lawyers and judges, college and law school classes. I even did some TV and radio interviews. She’s not just some ham-n-kegger trying to make a quick buck. She wanted to let the world know that there are people who have been wrongly convicted. It was a way for me to tell my story. That’s why the mayor hired me.”
“And you get paid for all these gigs?”
“Sometimes. Usually I get a sandwich and a bag of chips. But I let people know this can happen when people abuse the system. It’s everyone’s nightmare, getting convicted of a crime you didn’t commit. I’ll tell you something else. You should see how the women act after I tell my story. At least one good thing came out of my nightmare. My plight is a chick magnet.”
“I’m all set with the chicks. I want to know how I’m going to follow your act. My story’s not heartbreaking. Remember, I did commit the crime. I hurt someone, Richard. I put him in a wheelchair. I went to prison. A lot of people don’t think I was in there long enough. They figure the man in the wheelchair is trapped in sort of a prison, so I should be there, too.”
“Your message is that you made mistakes. You did your time. And now you’re trying to keep kids from making the same mistakes. The people at this conference will want to know what it was like for you growing up in a tough neighborhood, losing your big brother the way you did, and then turning to crime yourself.”
“You have put a lot of thought into my life and the decisions I’ve made.” Luther smiled.
“See who comes to these things. See what people are interested in. You’ve got a unique story and people want to hear it. You just need the right way to tell it. The kids on the street are a tougher audience than these creampuffs.” Zardino spotted a packed Student Center just ahead of them. “These people have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a poor neighborhood, with gangs, guns and drugs. You know more about it than any of the so-called ‘experts’ in the room. You’ll be a rock star with the students, especially the Chiquitas.”
Luther stared straight ahead at that comment. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor about women. “I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of these people,” Luther finally said.
“You’ll be fine,” Zardino said.
They were crammed in a small interview room on the sixth floor of the courthouse. Lydia Thomas was in Connie’s face, shouting. “I don’t care what kind of subpoena you served my son with. He’s not going into no grand jury!”
It was too early for this. It had been after midnight, after dogs at Simco’s for dinner, when they’d found Ellis Thomas hanging out in front of an apartment building on Magnolia Street. His crew took off when they spotted the unmarked car. But Ahearn got to Ellis and served him with a subpoena in front of the whole neighborhood.
Fatigue from his late nights and crazy mornings with uncooperative witnesses was starting to set in. Connie and Mark Greene hadn’t counted on Ellis Thomas showing up this morning with his mother. His angry mother. But since she was there, he knew it was best for her to let it out. Then, maybe he could reason with her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he has to go in there and tell us what he knows about this case,” Connie said.
“He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t see anything. He wasn’t there.” Ellis was slouched in his chair, sullen and silent. Mrs. Thomas reached over and pulled her son by his red-and-black Avirex shirt, forcing him to sit up straight. “Tell them, Ellis.”
Connie spoke up before Ellis could say anything. “We have a witness who says he was there.”
“Your witness is lying. Ellis was home with me that night.”
“Ellis admitted to us last night that he was there.”
“He was mistaken.”
“No one’s mistaken. Our other witness is not lying,” Mark Greene interrupted her. “Your son saw everything.”
“Who the hell are you?” she took a step toward him.
“Mark Greene. I’m the detective investigating this shooting.”
“Well, detective, we’re not in a police station, are we?” She stood over him. She was a tall woman, imposing. “We’re in a courthouse. So, unless you’re a lawyer, I suggest you stay out of this conversation. I don’t even know why you’re in this room.”
“Because I asked him to be here,” Connie said.
“Well, Mr. Darget,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “my son was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. You’ve been trying to interrogate him in this room all morning. Why haven’t you brought him to the grand jury so he can tell them he didn’t see anything?”
“Because I don’t want him to make the mistake of going in there and lying. Miss Thomas, I want us all to talk this through first. If you’d take a seat we can try to figure out what to do here.” Connie pulled out the chair next to Ellis.
“I don’t need to sit. And I don’t need to figure nothing out.”
“Please, ma’am?” Connie tried a soothing tone. “I need to know what he saw. Then we can make sure he’s safe.”
“You can’t do anything to keep him safe. You gonna ride the bus with him every day? You gonna walk him to the corner store when he want a bag of chips? These kids are vicious. They kill you for no good reason.”
She was right. There really wasn’t much he could do for her son. If these gangbangers wanted to get to her and her son, they could.
“My office has access to witness protection funds,” Connie said. “It’s nothing like federal witness protection, but we can help move you to an apartment or a housing development in another neighborhood.”
“So you want us to pack up and move out because of these thugs? You think that will make the neighborhood safer? You be giving them the power. You think they don’t have ways of finding us? No, Mr. Darget, I lived in that neighborhood my whole life. We are not moving.”
“What do you think it does when people hide in their houses and pretend they didn’t see anything? These kids know that the adults are scared of them. If you really want to change the neighborhood, someone has to be the first to stand up.”
“I know that, Mr. Darget. I’m no fool. I know what it will take to bring these kids down. If I witnessed the incident, I would be testifying in front of that grand jury right now. But this is my only child. From the day he was born, it was just the two of us. I swore I would protect him. I will not let him bear the burden of saving our neighborhood. He’s too young to carry that responsibility.”
“Miss Thomas,” Connie said, “the grand jury is a secret proceeding. It’s not open to the public like a regular courtroom. No judge sitting, no defense attorneys. It would just be me and Ellis in there. I would ask him questions and he would answer them. He’d only be in there ten, fifteen minutes, and it would be over.”
“Mr. Darget, I know there’s one more person in that courtroom. Nothing is secret in there. There’s a court reporter who takes down every word. Am I right?” Lydia Thomas asked. “And she type it out for the world to see. She put my boy’s name on the first page. She write his name before every word he speaks.”
“No one will have access to the grand jury minutes.”
“Don’t try to play me. I seen your ‘secret grand jury minutes.’ I seen them plastered on doors and hallways and telephone poles in my neighborhood. The kids call them black and whites. They pass them around whenever they get them from their lawyers.”
Greene shifted in his chair. What she said was 100 percent true.
“Mr. Darget. If my son goes in there and testifies, he will be marked for death.”
“We can get a protective order from a judge,” Connie argued. “No one sees the grand jury minutes unless we charge someone. That’s the only time I have to turn them over to the defense. Then I can ask the judge to order the defense attorney not to make any copies. I can have it ordered that he not give a copy to the defendant.”
“So you want me to put my son’s fate in the hands of a lawyer?” She gave a short laugh. “I’m supposed to trust that some defense attorney is going to follow a court order and not turn over a copy of my son’s testimony to his client? What happen if that attorney says his secretary accidentally sent a copy to his client? I tell you what happen. He apologize to the court and that will be the end of it. And my son’s testimony, his ‘secret’ testimony, will be out there.”
“Most attorneys are honest and respect the court’s orders. If you’re worried about it, I can also redact your son’s name out of the grand jury minutes that I turn over. I will black out every reference to his name before I turn anything over to the defense. We’ll be covered even if we’re dealing with an unethical defense attorney.”
Mrs. Thomas stared at Connie. For the first time all morning it looked like he had her thinking. He needed to act fast and stay on her.
“Ma’am, this is your chance, your son’s chance, to make a difference in your neighborhood, the neighborhood you grew up in. Your chance to take it back. What if we were able to rally some of your neighbors to stand behind you and Ellis when it comes time for him to testify at trial? We’ve done it before. I’m glad you don’t want to run from these kids. It’s more effective if we can get the whole community to stand up. They’ll learn not to mess around in your neighborhood.”
“So they just move on to another neighborhood and terrorize them?”
“If they do, we’ll follow them and try to get those people to fight them the same way you did. If everyone stands up to them, they’ll eventually have no place to go. The first thing we need to do is hold them accountable for shooting Tracy Ward.”
“No black and whites floating around?”
“Court ordered, and redacted. And I’ll get people in your neighborhood to show their support for what you and Ellis are doing.”
Lydia Thomas sank into the chair Connie had provided for her. She took a deep breath. She brought her hands to her face and started to cry.
She was going to let her boy testify.
Connie felt the cold wave of responsibility roll over him. He had promised a woman he would keep her son safe. He needed to deliver on that promise.
Massachusetts Avenue was crowded with students. Sleep savored the stroll through his favorite section of the city. He had enjoyed his visit to Boston College-such trusting youngsters there-but Chestnut Hill was so inconvenient, nothing more than a glorified section of Brighton, the forgotten stepchild of Boston. The neighborhood was tough to get to, plagued with tight, crowded one-way streets that were difficult to maneuver, and it was nearly impossible to find a parking spot-not an insignificant detail for what Sleep was trying to accomplish.
But the BC campus had served its purpose. It had pulled the police attention away from his favorite part of the city, the neighborhoods around the Fens, with so many schools, so many beautiful couples. This section of Mass Ave. near the Christian Science Park was a magnet for students from Northeastern, Berkeley School of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Even those from BU and BC managed to find their way to this Mecca of youth and beauty.
He continued on toward Commonwealth Avenue, looking in the windows of the many restaurants and bars along the way, dodging skateboarders whizzing by. Sleep was overwhelmed by the number of people basking in the sun, enjoying what was sure to be one of the last warm days before the fall settled in in earnest. All these fresh faces, young people experiencing the best time of their lives. Time could stop for them. They could spend eternity as they were, enjoying the company of a young lover, flirting, teasing, anticipating the moment when the two would become one. He could give them that gift.
Sadly, there were too many for him to attend to. He had to be selective, careful. Sleep would never just take them off the street, not without a plan. Not anymore. He had only done that the one time, the first time. It was a foolish risk he had taken. He was lucky he hadn’t been caught. But he didn’t regret having done it. Now he understood that he needed to know more about them, to study them, to learn their habits, prepare and patiently wait for the right moment, just as he had done at the football game last weekend. That had seemed risky, but he had planned. He was prepared to drive away if things weren’t perfect, but everything had worked out fine.
Sleep stopped when he reached Newbury Street. The memories of that first night came back to him in a rush as he stood on the corner, and for a moment he had difficulty breathing. Then he remembered something from high school football after wind sprints. He put his hands on his hips and raised his head to open his airway and breathed. He knew why he had come, but he wanted to take his time, savor every moment. He waited for the light to turn, then crossed to the other side of Mass Ave. and began his trek down Newbury. To the spot where it all began. Maybe he would get lucky and see her working in the shop.
He took his time, looking in each of the store windows along the way. His favorite part of window-shopping wasn’t so much the items on display, but the design of the displays themselves. He despised discount stores, the way they just threw clothes over the mannequins and stuck them wherever they found some open floor space. The boutique shops on Newbury Street were different. There was an art to setting the displays, positioning the mannequins in a way that would entice people to enter the store to learn more about these life-sized dolls, the world they lived in, the clothes they were wearing. Sleep knew that he could do this better than anyone else, even without a college degree. He had, after all, been practicing on his own since he was a little boy.
Alves was hungry. He waited patiently as Mooney unfolded the legs of the card table and set it up in the living room. There was no dining room in Mooney’s tiny apartment, so this would have to do. Mooney went to a closet and rounded up a couple of folding chairs and set them up. “Dinner is served,” he said.
Alves took the sandwiches from the brown paper bag, figured out which one was the large Italian with everything, unwrapped it and used the wax paper as a plate. He forgot his manners and took a bite before Mooney had a chance to sit down.
“What do you have to drink?” Alves asked, his mouth full.
“Tap water and beer.”
“I don’t drink Boston tap water.”
“Let me get you a beer.”
Biggie, Mooney’s Maine coon cat, jumped up on the card table and started rubbing his chin on a corner of Alves’s wax paper plate. He wasn’t sure if the cat was begging for food or looking to be petted. His head was as big as a coconut. He waited for Mooney to come back with the beer.
“I really don’t like cats, Sarge.”
“You’re not allergic.” Mooney said. “So suck it up.” Mooney lifted Biggie and put him on the floor. By the time he sat in his chair, the cat was back on the table. He flopped down on the one empty spot, as if he knew he’d get tossed out if he got too close to the food. Mooney handed Alves a beer, an ice cold sixteen-ounce can of Schlitz.
“I dislike Schlitz beer more than I hate cats.”
“Sorry. They were all out of that John Adams Wicked Pisser Summer Brew that you drink.”
“Where do you find this stuff?”
“I have my sources.”
Alves popped the top and took a sip. It wasn’t so bad, but he wouldn’t give Mooney the satisfaction. He made a face like he was drinking skunked beer, then cleared his palate with another bite of his sub. He watched Mooney take his time unwrapping his sandwich, folding the paper back so it wouldn’t touch his tie. “What did you get?” Alves asked.
“An American with mayo.”
“I forgot that hanging out with you is like going back in time. I know sub shops have Americans listed on the menu, but I’ve never actually seen anyone order one. What’s in it?”
“Bologna, boiled ham, salami and American cheese.”
“With mayo? I’d rather drink Schlitz beer.” Alves chugged half his beer and made a show of wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
“Eat your sandwich before Biggie gets it.” Mooney took a bite and washed it down.
Alves could see the man’s mind working. He could see that Mooney was not in the mood to discuss the merits of his sub sandwich. “You come up with anything today, Sarge?”
“Yeah. A headache. I told you what Stone said about the gun. Later I interviewed Eric Flowers’s parents again, started digging around in his past. First time around, we spent a lot of time on Kelly Adams. I want to be sure Flowers wasn’t the primary target.” Mooney looked frustrated. “I have to figure out why he’s started up again.”
“I had a thought about that today,” Alves said.
“Let’s hear it,” Mooney’s mouth was full, a small glob of mayonnaise clinging to his lower lip.
Alves motioned for Mooney to wipe his face and he did. “I was talking with Eunice Curran about the possibility that this guy has a hit kit like Dennis Rader.”
“BTK.”
“Rader kept everything he needed for his so-called ‘projects’ in a hit kit in his bedroom closet.”
“I read about that on the Internet.”
“Look at our guy. The wire’s the same, the cheap necklaces, the ballistics, and it looks like he may have had the clothes stored away. Eunice mentioned mothballs.”
Mooney nodded. “So he’s had all this stuff stashed somewhere while he was away.”
“What if he wasn’t ‘away’? I got a list of recent releases from the DOC. Only a couple of guys live near the BC campus. Their records didn’t fit. Mostly involved with drugs. No real violence or sex offenses. That got me thinking. What if this guy stopped killing because he wanted to stop. He was smart enough, or paranoid enough, to stop because he didn’t want to get caught. BTK did the same thing. Just stopped killing. He had images of his victims, so he could relive the attacks as fantasies.”
Mooney closed his eyes. He looked to be mulling things over.
“Just a thought,” Alves said. “Maybe he has pictures or video of his victims.”
“How does this help us?”
“I don’t know that it does, beyond helping us understand him better. If that’s what happened, if he’s like Rader, just a seemingly upstanding citizen with no criminal record, who can stop killing when he wants to, then it does us no good to round up the usual suspects.”
“Do it anyway. It’s a nice theory, Angel, but we have no idea if it’s true. It just puts more pressure on us to figure out how he came across Steadman and Kipping.” Mooney downed the rest of his beer. He went into the kitchen and came back with two more. “Let’s get back to the two most recent vics. If the killer ran into them at school he’s probably not a student, unless they’ve got thirty- or thirty-five-year-old freshmen running around BC. Maybe he works there.”
“Administration faxed me a list of employees, from maintenance workers to professors. I have the groundskeeper who paints the lines at Alumni Stadium and the Zamboni driver at the Conte Forum. I have the BRIC helping with that, running everyone’s BOP.”
“What about the bars in the area?” Mooney asked.
“I talked to the sergeant who does the licensed premises checks in the district. He’s getting me a list from every bar. Bartenders, waitstaff, bar backs, bouncers, hostesses. Everyone. These two didn’t drink much, but they went out with their friends to hang out, dance.”
“I talked to Commissioner Sheehan. He’s putting out the word to all the media outlets that anyone with information should call the Homicide Unit or the Crime Stoppers Hotline. That should bog us down with useless leads.”
“I checked in with their professors, got class rosters, talked with a bunch of kids who were too busy texting and talking on their cells to notice anything.”
Alves and Biggie watched Mooney pick through his sandwich and pull out strands of shaved onions. “I knew I tasted onion. I told them no onions. Tomatoes, pickles, no onions. They can’t even make a simple sandwich anymore.”
“Are you going to finish eating that or what?” Alves asked as Mooney fished through his sandwich fiasco. Biggie was purring so loud it sounded like a motorcycle. He had never understood why people kept cats. They were unpredictable. A cat that big could kill a baby. Maybe, just maybe, he’d let Angel and Iris get a hamster some day. “I’ve had enough of working in your living room with Mr. Big Cat here, staring at my throat.”
Mooney took a bite of his crumbling sandwich. Typical Irish guy. Couldn’t eat a couple slices of shaved onion. “Almost done.”
“I got a bunch of video. BC has a decent number of cameras set up all over the campus, same with some of the bars. The guys at the BRIC are going over the footage, looking for Steadman and Kipping, see if anyone’s following them. I told them to look for suspicious vehicles circling the area, unmarked cruisers that don’t belong, the kind of stuff we talked about.”
“Are they monitoring the website, too?”
“That, and one of the detectives has been logging on to the site and leaving postings on the message board, trying to get a response.”
“Anything?”
“Nothing yet.”
Mooney took the last bite of his sandwich and wiped his hands with a paper towel. No napkins in the bachelor pad. He took his time, finished off his beer, and held the last can out to Alves. Alves shook his head. Mooney opened the beer and took a savoring draft. “It’s time for the same information to get leaked to the media. I don’t get along with many reporters, but I’ve got a few who owe me a favor or two. We’re going to have them tout me as the guy who caught the Blood Bath Killer. Now I’ve got my sights set on this guy. The press will catch me off guard, as I’m walking out of headquarters. I’ll let it slip that I think he’s a copycat, a fraud, that the real killer is probably dead. We need to get him to communicate. And make a mistake.”
“I hope we’re not making the mistake. Forcing him to kill two more kids. Shouldn’t we wait on this, see what we come up with first? We haven’t looked into all the people working at BC, the bars. He’s not stupid. Even if he thinks we didn’t find the Tai-ji or the fortune, he would assume we have a ballistics match. Which means the killer isn’t a copycat.”
Mooney balled up his waxed paper. He stood up and reached for his jacket. “That’s what we’re doing tonight. Let’s go hit those bars.”
Connie pulled over when the call came in. His radio was the most important tool for keeping on top of the action in real time. It could be cleared as shots fired. Or there might be a shooting victim.
He listened carefully.
“Three callers report hearing shots from the area of Greenhay and Magnolia,” the calm voice of the dispatcher anounced.
Connie thought about turning around and going to the area, but he didn’t want to waste time. No point unless the police confirmed someone had been shot.
One of the responding officers radioed back. “Negative. I got nothing out here.”
No witnesses.
No ballistics.
No victim.
Connie took his foot off the brake and continued on home. If anything turned up, a message would go out to all the alpha pagers. Like the one Connie wore on his belt, a gift from the captain at District 2. With the alpha pager, Connie got the same notification the BPD brass got whenever there was a shooting, homicide, hostage situation, any major occurrence in the city.
He was tired. He headed down Blue Hill Avenue and took a right onto American Legion Highway. He’d be home in ten, fifteen minutes tops.
The radio crackled. The call sign indicated the Rapid Response car on Magnolia. “Bravo one-o-one,” the patrolman’s voice rose with nervous energy. “I got something behind Nine-thirty Magnolia. An abandoned house. I need a patrol supervisor out here and EMTs. I think we need to make notifications.”
They had a body.
Connie spun into a quick U-turn at a break in the island that ran down the center of American Legion Highway. The tires squealed as he put the pedal to the floor and raced back toward District 2. The heart of Roxbury.
Alves checked his beeping alpha pager. Shooting on Magnolia. One body. Male. The good news? The victim wasn’t wearing a tux.
The other good news was that Alves wasn’t on call tonight. He pulled his car into the driveway. It was almost eleven o’clock, and he’d just left Mooney. The minivan was parked in the driveway ahead of him. Lights were on in the bathroom and kitchen. Marcy might still be awake.
Alves hadn’t been home much since Iris had found the bodies two nights ago. He had only seen Marcy for a few minutes earlier in the day when he stopped in to shower and shave. Iris and Angel had already gone to school, and Marcy had given him the silent treatment. It wasn’t the usual silent treatment, the one he got for working late and leaving her to deal with all the kids’ activities. It was clear she was angry that he’d left her and the twins alone with a killer in the neighborhood.
He tried to open the front door quietly, but it stuck at the top the way it always did. He gave it a little shove with his hip, and it creaked open. Marcy was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. She didn’t look up at him. “Are you sleeping here tonight?” she asked.
“I’m in for the night,” he said, taking care not to be sarcastic with his answer.
“You sure? I was just watching the news. They found a body in Roxbury.”
“God, they’re quick. That just came across the pager, and they’re already reporting it on TV?” He walked around the table and kissed her on the top of her head. “Mooney and I aren’t on call tonight. Unless someone turns up dead dressed in formal wear, I’m not going anywhere.”
She didn’t smile.
“How’s Iris?” he asked. “She make it through school today?”
Marcy nodded. “My mother picked them up at school. She had them all day. Said they were okay. Iris was a little withdrawn. Spent most of the day in her room reading. Mom left an hour ago, when I got home.”
It hit him. Marcy was teaching three classes this semester. A full time workload for a part-time professor. She usually taught two sections, Tuesdays and Thursday in the late morning. That way she could send the kids off to school and be home in time to meet them at the bus. Her schedule got thrown off this semester when one of the full-time professors took a medical leave, sticking Marcy with two afternoon classes and a night class. They had decided that she would get the kids out the door in the morning and her mom would be there for them in the afternoon. Alves agreed that he would come home early and help out. He figured he could manage since it was only two days a week. The first day with the new system and he’d already blown it. “I’m sorry, honey. I forgot. I’ll be early on Thursday.”
“That’s okay. You do your work,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “The kids will be fine. They can just eat Cheerios out of the box. And my mother loves having them for eight hours straight, twice a week. It’s good for her arthritis to stay out until ten, eleven o’clock at night. And, sweetheart, it’s not like anything bad ever happens in our neighborhood. We haven’t had a double homicide in two whole days.”
What could he say? She was right. He shouldn’t open his mouth, but once he started talking it was too late to take the words back. “Honey, I understand how you feel, but I know that this neighborhood is safe.”
“Don’t patronize me, Angel.”
“Marcy, the killer didn’t attack anyone in this neighborhood. He could have dumped those bodies anywhere in the city.”
“But he didn’t. He left them right here, practically on our doorstep. He left them for our daughter to find. If he wanted you to find them he could have dropped them off at One Schroeder Plaza.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? What would have happened if she had found the bodies while your killer was still tying them up?”
He didn’t allow the thought. It was more than he could take.
“I didn’t think you’d have an answer for that one.” Marcy dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink. “I’ve decided to take the kids and live at my mother’s for a couple weeks. Till you solve the case. Her house is not that far out of your way. You can stop by and visit whenever you’re off duty.”
She left him standing by the kitchen table, his head spinning with the news.
Sergeant Detective Ray Figgs downed another shot of Johnnie Walker Red. The Tap in Dudley Square was good for a quick drink. Or eight of them. It was better than going home and watching reality shows until he passed out on the couch. Or sitting with his father in the rehab. First he needed a cigarette. Thanks to the mayor and the city council and the freaking state legislature, he couldn’t smoke in the bar. He’d have to go stand on the sidewalk with the other holdouts, sweating in the summer and freezing their butts off in the winter. It was ridiculous how he and the other smokers were punished for fueling the economy, spending their money in bars, tipping the waitresses and bartenders, supporting half the state’s social programs with the cigarette tax. Not to mention Keno.
Ray Figgs reached into his jacket pocket for his last cigarette, a crumpled-up soft pack of the no-name brand sold at Economy Gas on Blue Hill Ave. As he fumbled for the pack, he felt his pager vibrating. He had five unanswered pages, three from Operations and two from Inch O’Neill, his partner. Inchie was a good detective. Didn’t need babysitting, did things on his own. Figgs checked his alpha pager and saw that a male had been killed on Magnolia Street.
He settled up his tab, grabbed a few handfuls of salted peanuts, folded them into a cocktail napkin and shoved it into his sports jacket pocket. He took another handful and tossed them in his mouth. He would chew them on the ride. He was really going to need the nuts tonight. He was the on-call Homicide Sergeant and he was already late getting to a crime scene.
Connie hung back while Greene, Ahearn and a couple of patrolmen secured the scene on Magnolia. The house was a single-family colonial with green asphalt shingles and graffiti-covered plywood sheets covering the windows and doors. Connie had spent most of the night in this neighborhood with the detectives looking for Michael Rogers, Ellis Thomas’s friend. Thomas hadn’t given them much information, even after his mother agreed to let him talk. The kid was scared word would hit the street that he was a snitch. The only thing he’d told them was where to look for his pal.
The two patrolmen were setting up the crime scene tape around the property. Greene and Ahearn stood in front of the building, managing the crowd gathering in the street. Ellis Thomas lived across the street. Connie expected the kid’s mother, with Ellis in tow, to show up on the scene.
As Connie moved closer, he could see that Greene didn’t look good. He should have been barking orders. Instead he was quiet. Jack Ahearn, alone, minus his usual swagger, was moving the crowd back.
“Jackie, where’s the body?” Connie asked.
“In back with Detective O’Neill from Homicide. He’s securing things till Figgs gets here.”
A car pulled up across the street. Connie and the detectives watched as Lydia Thomas-Connie recognized her large frame-struggled to get out of her car. She scanned the crowd, turning her attention to Connie and the detectives. A thin woman in a housecoat rushed to hug her.
“This is going to get ugly,” Ahearn said. He pushed the button on his radio and said, “Where’s the Bravo 902? We need a supervisor and some backup units out here.”
“What’s going on?” Connie asked.
“What do you think?” Greene asked.
Connie looked back at Miss Thomas. She lurched out of the thin woman’s embrace. In an instant she went from concerned mother to angry bear. She walked toward them, quicker than Connie thought a woman her size could move. “You did this!” she shouted, pointing at Connie. “You killed my son!”
Connie turned to the detectives. He could see it in Greene’s eyes. Ellis, her only son, was dead. The same son that Connie had promised to protect.
Greene tried to pull him back, but Connie was stronger. He stood his ground and waited for her. She stopped a few inches away from him. Almost as tall as he was, close to six feet, she was intimidating.
“I’m sorry,” Connie said. There was nothing else he could say.
She slapped his face. He didn’t turn away or try to block her hand. She was right. He had killed her son.
Then she started to cry. Not quietly, the way she had cried up the grand jury earlier. She was wailing. She wasn’t afraid of losing her son anymore. He was lost. Her knees buckled. Connie thought of big timber crashing during a storm. Violent. Dangerous. He caught her in his arms and led her back toward her house.
Alves lay in bed with his eyes open, watching shadows move back and forth on the ceiling, the moonlight intercepted by the trees swaying outside the window. Marcy had fallen asleep right away. Or pretended she had. The news that she was packing up the twins and moving over to her mother’s-even if only temporarily-had blindsided him. He had hoped the regular rhythm of her breathing would help him sleep. It usually did. An hour later he was still awake.
Alves closed his eyes. He was getting caught up in a cycle that was going to wear him out. Trying to sleep. His mind racing. Thinking about his marriage, the case. When he did fall asleep, the alarm would sound and it would be time for another day.
He opened his eyes again. It was a shame to waste the mental energy. He knew everything there was to know about the investigation. But he knew nothing about the killer. He didn’t know why he killed or how he selected his victims, the two most important pieces of the puzzle.
Alves thought about Mooney’s plan to draw the killer out, to get him to communicate. Get him to make a mistake. He remembered the website promnightkiller.com. Mooney had talked about the cult following that the killer had developed over the years. How could someone have a fan club based on the murders of innocent couples? The BRIC was monitoring the site, but Alves hadn’t had time to go there himself. This was as good a time as any to check it out.
Alves slid out from under the sheets and quietly made his way back downstairs. The family computer was set up in the den. He logged on and saw that the site was active. He scrolled down the long list of messages posted on the message board, wondering how many of them had come from the officers at the BRIC. The killer’s groupies seemed to know quite a bit about the murders. Someone running the site must have known enough to file a request under the Mass Public Records Law, because the actual police reports were posted. Mooney had been careful to leave out any references to the fortunes and the Tai-ji from every report, so at least that information was not available to these kooks.
The people who visited the site had an unhealthy obsession with trying to discover everything about the killer and his crimes. They posted any information they could find about the victims, much of it unflattering, hoping that the more they knew about the victims, the closer they’d get to understanding the killer. It didn’t seem to matter who the source of information was. The victims and their families were being victimized again.
Someone using the screen name printsofdarkness had posted the message: “The killer is known to police. Like old Jack the Ripper. A friend or relative of someone high up in the department, same old story. This is the biggest COVER UP!!! in history.”
Shortnsassy wrote, “He’s out there now. Waiting for the right time. Then he will begin his work in earnest.”
Alves could feel the fog of a headache settling in behind his eyes.
Two days ago, the only people who thought about the unsolved murders were Wayne Mooney, the families of the victims and the losers on this website. Now everyone in the city was thinking about the killer, locking their doors.
Alves logged off. Looking at the site convinced him that the killer had to be one of the visitors to the site, maybe not a contributor, but certainly an occasional visitor. So maybe they could draw him out and get him involved in a dialogue. It had to work. So far, they had nothing else.
But for now, he would make another attempt to get some sleep.
Connie stayed with Lydia Thomas until the EMTs arrived. They gave her a sedative and took her by ambulance to Boston Medical Center. She had wanted to go back outside and see her son, but Connie had convinced her that she could see him later, after they processed the scene. “We can’t miss any evidence,” he had told her. “Not if we’re going to catch Ellis’s killer.” Even before the sedative had kicked in, she had looked at him with hopelessness in her eyes.
When Connie finally stepped back outside he could see that the scene was more controlled, a half dozen cruisers on the street, enough patrol officers to control the crowd, and supervisors giving orders.
“Is Figgs on scene yet?” Connie asked Ahearn, shaking his head. “He’s had a problem with the bottle as long as I’ve known him. Hasn’t solved a case in how long?”
“Luck of the draw,” Ahearn said. “We don’t decide who’s on the pager.”
“We need to make sure this one gets solved.”
“It’s his case, Connie.”
“I can’t let this one go. I’m responsible for that kid’s death.”
“You brought him up to the grand jury as a witness. He barely cooperated. It’s not like his testimony was floating around in the neighborhood. He gave you nothing.”
“But I promised his mother he wouldn’t get hurt.”
“We don’t know what happened here. Would it have been your fault if he got hit by a car?”
“He died because I brought him in to the grand jury.”
“You don’t know that. For all we know this could have been a drug deal gone bad or a botched robbery. Let Ray Figgs do his investigation, and we’ll see where it goes.”
“But I’m telling you right now. I can’t sit and watch Figgs do nothing.” Connie walked into the middle of the street and put in a call to the DA. He would need to know what was going on. That one of their grand jury witnesses had been murdered not twelve hours after his appearance in court.