Sleep vacuumed the house, the hardwood floors, the area rugs, the runner on the stairs. Then he polished all the woodwork, the piano and the mantel. That was how Momma liked it done. The house hadn’t been very dirty. But it had to be cleaned every week, as Momma had taught him. He didn’t want to live in a pig sty, did he? He would clean the kitchen and bathroom last, everything spic and span.
He enjoyed cleaning, bringing back order from chaos. As he cleaned, he thought about her. Not Momma. Her.
He remembered when she tried to push him out of her life. He was upset at first, until he realized why she’d done it. She had tried to set him free because she loved him. But he could never leave her. He was forever hers.
That summer, so many years ago-they were still teenagers-he was finally enjoying life. He was getting paid to do the work that he loved. The old man had been dead close to a year, so there was no one to criticize him. So what if he liked to play with his Little Things? That didn’t mean that he was gay. How could he be gay if he was in love with Natalie?
She was the reason he had gone into the city. It was the beginning of the summer and she had left home, taking an apartment in the South End, working at one of the boutiques on Newbury Street. He had missed seeing her every day, so he’d spent hours walking, window-shopping, getting a cup of coffee, pretending to read books, hoping to bump into her.
He would use the window in the store across the street from Natalie’s shop as a mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of her in the reflection. That was how he’d met Ronald.
HE’D BEEN STARING INTO the window when Ronald appeared and began undressing the mannequins. He remembered the way Ronald looked the first time he met him-tall, slender, with tight jeans and a silk shirt, open halfway down his chest. Sleep felt small looking up at him.
Momma would have said that Ronald was a handsome man with his dark shining eyes and neat white teeth. A man who would take his girl for a romantic picnic. Maybe at Jamaica Pond, maybe Olmsted Park. That first time, Ronald smiled, gave him a wink and went back to work. Sleep was fascinated by what he was doing with the mannequins. For a while anyway, he’d forgotten about Natalie. He watched for close to an hour as Ronald dismantled the old display and set up the new one with a beach theme-brightly colored starfish, antique sand buckets, striped umbrellas. About halfway through the job, Ronald came out and introduced himself. Soon Sleep was working as his assistant. Lifting and carrying the things Ronald needed. incredible, he thought. A dream. He and Ronald set up displays in half the stores on Newbury. It was perfect, getting paid to do what he loved and having the chance to see Natalie every day, the way he used to.
Then it happened. It was a Saturday, a beautiful day. He and Ronald were setting up a new display when Natalie walked in. She was angry, accusing him of watching her, following her, stalking her. He still remembered her words. “You’re creeping me out,” she had said. “We grew up together. Why are you doing this to me? We used to be friends.” Used to be? She acted like she didn’t remember how she had come to the house after his father died. How she sat with him and Momma, making them all tea. That even if they weren’t together, that special bond was there. She was quiet for a second and then she mentioned a restraining order.
Ronald and their client heard every word. “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he told them after she’d stormed out. He was scared he’d lose his job, but Ronald understood. He said he knew that women sometimes overreacted to things. “Let’s get back to work,” Ronald said. “We have a busy night ahead of us.” They were scheduled to change displays in a couple of stores, getting them ready for summer sales starting on Sunday morning.
Ronald picked up some Chinese food for supper, but Sleep wasn’t hungry. He was too upset by what Natalie had said. He didn’t particularly like Chinese food, either. The brown rice tasted like cardboard. He managed to force some noodles and rice down after Ronald showed him how to smother the rice in lobster sauce. When he finished, Sleep tucked his fortune cookie, dessert, in his back pocket. He wanted to be alone when he read his fortune. As they started back to work, Ronald asked about Natalie. How he knew her. Why she thought he was following her.
It was none of Ronald’s business.
Ronald told him to loosen up. He put his hand on Sleep’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sleep bent away from his touch. It felt fiery hot, and heavy like a big machine.
Ronald stepped back, startled. “I was trying to help you talk things out.”
“Don’t touch me. What are you, half-a-fag?” He didn’t really know what that meant except that his father used to say it when Sleep played in the attic.
Ronald’s face went rigid. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe that girl was telling the truth. We can’t keep stalkers working in boutiques.”
Sleep was stunned. “You mean…?”
Ronald gestured toward the door.
Sleep walked out onto the sidewalk, feeling alone and scared. In one night he had lost the woman and the job he loved.
He still had one thing. Sleep had his gun. It wasn’t really his gun. He had found it in his father’s belongings, and he’d been carrying it around for months. When he first found it, he took it and hid it in the trunk in the attic. As he got used to it-the way it felt in his hand, a comfortable fit-he started to carry it around. He wasn’t sure why. It just felt cool, tucked into his waist, held up by the makeshift holster his father had made from a piece of heavy gauge wire, one end looped around his belt, the other stuck in the barrel of the gun. He felt invincible when he had his piece with him. No one could mess with him. He was a big man when he had the gun.
After Ronald fired him, Sleep walked to the Fens. The sun was setting. When he sat on a bench, he heard the crunch of the fortune cookie in his back pocket. He didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. He couldn’t do anything right. He reached back and held the cellophane wrapper with the crumbled mess in his hand. With all that had happened in one day, he needed some good news. Maybe this was his real fortune. He hoped it would be a good one. There was no rule that said the fortune wouldn’t come true just because the cookie was crumbled was there? Maybe the broken cookie had broken his bad luck. He tore the cellophane with his teeth, dumped the shards of cookie onto the ground. The pigeons could have them. He removed the strip of paper and read “STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.”
He closed his eyes tight. Maybe this was his fortune.
He opened his eyes. There was a young woman at the other end of his bench. She had long dark hair like Natalie. Maybe she was his true love. She was looking straight ahead. He never had the nerve to introduce himself to pretty girls. He just needed to talk to her. His fortune said that happiness was right next to him. There was no one else around.
“What’s your name?”
She said nothing.
“You come here often?” That was a really stupid thing to say.
Nothing.
“I think you’re pretty.”
She looked away.
“My name is-”
“Okay, Babe, you ready to get going?” A man stepped out from behind a bush, adjusting his fly. He was tall and muscular like Ronald.
“I’ve been ready to go since we got here. If you can believe it, this guy’s been hitting on me.” She laughed.
“Look, pal,” the guy said. “Snow White doesn’t date any of the seven dwarfs.” They both laughed.
“That’s not funny.”
“You’re right it’s not.” She tried to control her laughter.
“Tell him to apologize,” Sleep said.
“You should be the one apologizing to her for being a creep,” Ronald said. He put his arm around Natalie’s waist. She buried her cheek in his chest.
Sleep reached into his waistband and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the gun.
They were turned away, starting to move down the street. Sleep sprang up and moved in front of them. As he pressed the gun into Ronald’s chest, he pulled the trigger. Sleep was stunned by the force of the cool metal in his hands. Instantly, it seemed to stutter and fire again. Ronald’s eyes stopped laughing. Bright red crept over his shirt like a seeping stain. His legs crumpled, like a ruined paper doll. Natalie didn’t move. Like a mannequin, she stood with her arms reaching out to Ronald. Her mouth opened, and before she could make a sound, Sleep pounced on her. He had to keep her throat from making a sound.
When they were both quiet, not laughing anymore, he felt better.
The broken cookie was right. He had found happiness right next to him.
HE WENT TO THE mudroom in the back of the house and grabbed the mop and the metal pail. He had to get back to work. Enough time spent daydreaming. The kitchen needed to be cleaned or Momma would be disappointed. He couldn’t have that. And if he had time enough later, he’d walk around his favorite spot. The Victory Gardens in the Fens.
Connie took a seat near the back of the room. The second gang meeting since Ellis Thomas’s death. The superintendent broke up a huddle of cops in the corner and directed them to take seats. Connie balanced the stack of papers on his knees. The analysts from the BRIC had given him a packet of information on what the superintendent called the major “impact players,” the bad guys who they believed were the most likely to be involved in a shooting. Connie’s packet included their criminal records, police reports from recent arrests, and FIOs showing where they’d been hanging around and who they’d been hanging with.
“It’s a little after five, let’s get started,” the superintendent checked her watch and shouted over the noise of the crowd of probation officers, youth workers, prosecutors-all outsiders that the cops didn’t trust-and cops from the Homicide Unit, the specialized units like the Drug Control Unit and the Youth Violence Strike Force, aka the Gang Unit.
The goal was for them to come together and share information. It sounded reasonable enough, but the competition between units was fierce. The din slowly faded.
Even though Connie had a grasp of what was going on in Roxbury, District B-2, these bimonthly meetings were a way for him to get intelligence from around the city, to find out who the players were in the other districts. The bad guys didn’t care about district borders.
“I want to start with the homicide from last night. Shawn Tinsley,” the super said. She was standing next to a podium. To her right were half a dozen analysts from the BRIC. The meeting was a way for them to disseminate intelligence, but it also gave them the opportunity to confirm, through the cops on the street, that their intel was accurate. The superintendent nodded to one of the analysts, a young guy sitting in front of a laptop. He clicked the mouse and the blue screen with the BPD shield at the front of the room faded into a mug shot of a young black kid with corn rows and a small, scruffy beard.
Connie knew the face.
The superintendent continued, “This is Shawn Tinsley. We’re hearing that he might have been associated with Castlegate. A shooter. But we haven’t been able to corroborate that info. He was the main suspect in the Ellis Thomas homicide a little over two weeks ago on Magnolia Street. He may have shot a kid by the name of Tracy Ward, too. Looks like he was definitely one of our top impact players.”
She loved using sports terminology. Bad guys were “impact players.” High crime areas were “hot spots” or “red zones.”
“Tinsley didn’t really have much of a record. No guns or drugs, just larcenies and Chapter Ninety violations. Then he turns up dead last night. Sergeant Detective Figgs is here from Homicide. He’s looking for help.” She motioned for Ray Figgs to step forward.
Figgs got up from his seat in the front row. He looked a little banged up, in his wrinkled suit, stained shirt, top button undone, and a cheap tie. He had the ashy-gray skin of someone who didn’t spend much time outside. Figgs made his way to the podium, probably needing it to balance himself.
“Mr. Tinsley was discovered around sunrise this morning,” Figgs said, “by a woman walking her dog on Tenean Beach in Dorchester. ME said he was dead six to seven hours before we found him. No calls for shots fired last night.”
“Any hits on the Shot Spotter?” someone at the front of the room asked.
The superintendent stepped in. “Many of you know about the system of sensors strategically placed in different spots in the city. These sensors are so sophisticated they can tell the difference between a back-fire, a firecracker, or gunfire. The Shot Spotter can triangulate the location of the shots within five seconds and the closest cameras will zip to that spot. To answer your question, Tenean Beach isn’t exactly one of our hot spots,” she said. “We don’t have any sensors or cameras set up there.”
The system hadn’t helped much in Ellis Thomas’s case either, Connie thought.
Figgs continued, “Tinsley was shot three times in the back. Looks like he was trying to get away from the shooter. Ballistics made a match to a forty-caliber semi that’s been involved in a bunch of shootings over the last six months. Could be a stash gun. Last time we had a hit on this gun was the George Wheeler homicide, almost three weeks ago.”
“I don’t think it’s a stash gun,” a voice called out from the back of the room, one of the guys from the Strike Force. “A few months ago that gun was involved in shots fired at some kids who are feuding with Castlegate. It doesn’t make sense for one of the Castlegate shooters to get killed by the same gun, unless he was killed by one of his own.”
Figgs signaled to the young man sitting at the computer and another image appeared on the screen, a map of the city broken down into police districts. There were red dots and blue dots with names and dates written next to them, and black lines with arrows connecting all the dots. “Let me clarify. It’s a stash gun that’s getting passed around to different groups all over the city. The red dots are homicides. The blue dots are shots fired. Ballistics recovered, no one hit, probably kids doing drive-bys, shooting wildly, missing their targets.”
Connie was surprised by Figgs’s presentation. As bad as he looked, he was able to pull himself together for this meeting in front of the superintendent. Too bad he was heading right back to the bottle as soon as the meeting was over.
“What do you need from us, detective?” the superintendent asked.
“Any information you have on Tinsley or Wheeler. Anything linking Tinsley to the Ellis Thomas murder would be helpful. I’d like to know how the.40’s getting passed around and who’s doing the passing.” Figgs stood for a few seconds to see if anyone was going to offer help, but the cops were a tough crowd. No one did any talking. “Give me a call if you think of anything.”
The computer geek hit a key and Figgs’s contact information filled the blue screen.
Figgs straightened his rumpled jacket and took a seat.
The superintendent took the podium again. “There’s been a lot of misinformation about the Shot Spotter. I’m going to turn the microphone over to the Deputy from Operations to explain the system in more detail. He’ll speak about what this technology can and can’t do for our cases.”
Figgs walked toward the exit of Police Headquarters. That had been one long meeting. It was already getting dark. He needed a cigarette.
“Sergeant Figgs.” He heard his name as he reached the glass door. Behind him in the cavernous lobby he saw two familiar faces. “Hi, Sergeant.” The ADA stuck out his hand. “Connie Darget. I was at the Ellis Thomas murder scene.”
Figgs nodded.
“You remember Detective Mark Greene from District Two. We’re investigating the Tracy Ward shooting. Whatever started that beef has led to your two homicides. Ward told us that Tinsley shot him. He named Ellis Thomas as a witness. The next day we had Thomas and his mother up the grand jury. A few hours later, he turns up dead. Seems obvious that Tinsley or someone in his crew was responsible for killing Thomas.”
“I know that,” Figgs said. “But I don’t have any witnesses putting Tinsley anywhere near Thomas. No one’s talking about what happened.”
“Tinsley wasn’t too cooperative with us,” Darget said. “We served him with a grand jury subpoena. He blew it off. I went to see the judge in the first session and get a Capias for him. Detective Greene scooped him up the next night. We had him up the grand jury a few days after Thomas was killed.”
“He was a jerk,” Greene said.
Darget said, “Part of the new generation of kids who aren’t afraid of anything. When you’re young, you do stupid things thinking you’re invincible. Driving like a nut on the J-Way, jumping off a cliff at the Quincy quarries.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Darget?” Figgs asked.
“First, I figured Tinsley was thinking the same way. But he wasn’t. Just the opposite. He decided he didn’t have much time left. He was what, seventeen years old? He believed by the time he was twenty, twenty-one, he was going to be dead or in jail for life anyhow. He said he’d rather be dead.”
“Got his wish,” Figgs said.
“We tried to get through to him,” Darget said. “I told him to think about his mother. If he gets killed, she’s the one suffering for the rest of her life. If he’s in prison, she’ll be doing the time too.”
“Tinsley wasn’t buying it,” Greene said.
“He told us he wanted to sow his seed to carry on the family name. Needed to back his boys. His loyalty to his crew was more important than any bond he had with his mother,” Darget said.
“What did he tell you about the shootings?” Figgs asked.
“Said he didn’t know anything about them,” Greene said. “He had no trouble with Ward or Thomas.”
“We asked if he was beefing with anyone,” Darget said.
“Told us he could take care of himself,” Greene said. “But we knew someone was going to retaliate against him. That’s why the super ordered the Strike Force to follow him. See what he was up to. Did a day in the life, followed him around for a week.”
“They come up with anything?” Figgs asked.
“No. Tinsley must have known he was being watched.”
“That’s one thing you got right,” Figgs said. “Too bad he didn’t catch on it was the bad guys following him.” He opened the door to leave. He lit his cigarette in the foyer and stepped out into the night.
Alves spotted Connie standing with Mark Greene in the main lobby of Schroeder Plaza. “Not the person I want to run into right now,” Alves said. He’d taken a thousand calls from Connie trying to get the scoop on the case.
“I thought he was your bff,” Mooney sniped.
“Connie’s getting to be a pain. Seems to think that he can catch the killer. Since the Blood Bath case, I’ve been more careful about giving out information on an open investigation.” Alves knew he had said too much to Connie during that case. And that Connie may have unwittingly fed that information to Mitch Beaulieu, the killer.
“Where’s the third Musketeer?” Mooney asked.
“Ahearn?” Greene asked. “Got stuck with the super after the meeting.”
“Hey, Angel, I’ve been meaning to call you,” Connie said. “Anything new on Steadman and Kipping?”
“I haven’t caught him yet. How’s that for an update?”
“Thanks for ditching me with the super.” Ahearn joined them.
“These meetings would be vastly improved by the addition of an open bar,” Mooney laughed. “No one shares information. No one trusts anyone else. Speaking of which,” Mooney turned to Connie, “who are those two guys you were talking to before the meeting?”
“A couple of the mayor’s Street Saviors. The white guy is Rich Zardino.”
“Richie Z,” Mooney said. “Two-bit hood from East Boston. Convicted murderer.”
“He was exonerated,” Connie said. “Wrongly convicted.”
“Sure he was. Once in a while a guy gets lucky enough that all the witnesses against him are dead. Then he gets some new witness to come forward and tell a different story. The next thing you know he’s a big hero. ‘Wrongly convicted’ by a corrupt system.” Mooney was winding up for one of his rants.
“His case is a little different,” Alves said. “The only witness who testified against him was a federal informant. Turns out the witness lied about Zardino to give the feds someone to send to jail for an unsolved mob hit.”
“I’m sure he did something he deserved to go to jail for,” Mooney said.
“We had a run-in with him and his sidekick the other night,” Greene said. “His buddy acts like he’s a lawyer instead of an ex-con.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t give him a beating,” Ahearn said.
“Goes by the name Luther,” Connie said. “He did time in state prison on a home invasion. Shot someone.”
Mooney shook his head. “Luther what?”
“He only gave us Luther.”
“That’s not his real name,” Mooney said. “He used to be a little thug. I remember the face.”
Mooney had a gift for faces. He could thumb through a stack of Arrest Summary Reports and remember most of the faces.
“Darius Little,” Greene said. “I looked into his background after the incident the other night.”
“That’s it,” Mooney said. “They used to call him D-Lite. No criminal history when he was younger, but his big brother was no good. Darius went away to college down South. Played football, Division One. Great running back. He was home from school one summer when his brother lost a gunfight and ended up dead. Darius never went back to school. Then he’s in the mix with his brother’s old crew. Kid became a one-man crime spree, and the man he shot ended up in a wheelchair. His lawyer got him in front of the right judge. Took eight to ten on a plea deal. Only nineteen at the time.”
“You know quite a bit about him,” Alves said.
“I investigated the brother’s death. Darius flipped out at the scene. Had to cuff him to calm him down. We never caught the killer, and Darius still holds a grudge. Said I didn’t work the case hard enough. Said I was too busy working the Prom Night case.”
“Apparently, he found Christ in prison,” Greene said.
“Great program the mayor has there,” Mooney said. “Let’s pair up ex-cons, or ‘ex-offenders’ as he calls them, and send them out on the street so they can teach gang kids how to become better criminals.”
“I don’t think that’s the goal of the program,” Alves said. “The kids connect with these guys because they’ve experienced some of the same things.”
“You should have seen them the other night,” Greene said, “telling us not to lay a hand on them, that we had no reason to search. They’re giving the kids a lesson on criminal procedure, how to tell the cops to screw-”
“You want to know what really pisses me off?” Ahearn interrupted.
Alves could see that Ahearn was angry, his hands clenched into massive grapefruit-sized fists.
“Let’s hear it, big guy,” Mooney said.
“We come to this meeting because we’re ordered to,” Ahearn started. “Fine. It’s a waste of my time, but I’m told to be here, so here I am. Then we get a lecture from the super that we need to be out there stopping everything that moves. Like we’re rookies and we don’t know how to do our jobs. I can deal with that. She’s the boss. But what the hell are those two scumbags doing at our intel meeting?”
Greene interrupted him. “Jackie, keep your voice down.”
Alves looked around at the steady stream of bodies moving down the hall toward them, away from the Media Room and the table set up with coffee and old Danish. It was too late to stop Ahearn.
“Greenie, she invites criminals into our house and expects us to share information with them. These meetings used to be closed to everyone except the good cops, a couple of probation officers and ADAs, guys we could trust with sensitive information. It meant something to be invited here.”
“Jackie’s right. It’s gotten to the point where she’s inviting the bad guys into the room,” Mark Greene said.
Maybe they were right, Alves thought. Here they were, inviting strangers into their own house.
Luther had felt the hostility in the room. He and Zardino were pariahs. They had no reason to stay after the meeting, but they did. Maybe to make the cops feel uncomfortable, maybe to stand their ground.
The one person who’d been friendly was Conrad Darget. He’d come over before the meeting started. Told them he’d heard that he and Richie had done a great presentation at the mayor’s Peace Conference. Darget was their new friend, a real politician, working the room, saying hello to everyone, shaking hands and backslapping.
“We should get going,” Zardino said, pulling at the collar of a shirt that was tight for him.
Rich was right. They had made their point. Now the room was almost empty, only a few stragglers left, kissing up to the superintendent. “These meetings remind me that my people live in a police state,” Luther said as they started down the long hallway, weaving through the small herds of officers. “You heard them talking about that Shot Spotter system? Homeland Security money. System’s hooked up to satellite imaging and cameras that run twenty-four-seven. What do you think they’re taking pictures of when shots aren’t being fired? That money’s supposed to fight terrorists, not spy on people in the city. It’s Big Brother keeping an eye on the black man.”
“I wanted to jump in when they were going on about Shawn Tinsley as an impact player, a shooter,” Zardino said. “He was a creampuff, nothing but talk.”
“Shawn never shot anyone in his life,” Luther agreed, “but it’s good you kept your mouth shut. We promised his boys they could talk to us confidentially. You can’t break your promise.”
“But they told us who committed the murder. It wasn’t Shawn,” Zardino said. “Tinsley’s dead. His good name shouldn’t die with him. You know how I feel about people being falsely accused of a crime.”
“We’re between a rock and a hard place. If we tell anyone that it was Michael Rogers who killed Ellis Thomas, his friend, we betray our clients’ confidence. We lose our street cred. We stay quiet, a decent boy’s name is ruined.”
“And a killer is out there on the street. Maybe we can get out the information confidentially, tell someone familiar with the case who the shooter is. Give them the killer’s name. Otherwise they’ll never look at Rogers as a suspect. Never think he’d kill his friend for being a snitch.”
Luther was silent for a couple minutes as they walked through the cars stuck in rush hour traffic and hopped over the jersey barriers on Tremont. “Maybe we should talk to Darget,” Luther said. “He owes us a favor for not diming him out that night with the detectives. We tell him the story. Tell him we know who the killer is. But we’re not giving up our source.”
“We could tell Ray Figgs instead. It’s his case,” Zardino said.
Luther knew how Zardino felt about the prosecutor. “Decade ago, Figgs would have been our best chance, but not now.” The story of a former Marine going from sharpshooter to bar stool was a sad one. Luther didn’t want to see another case slip away with a detective whose heart wasn’t in it. Someone had to be held responsible for the murder. But it had to be the right man. The name of an innocent boy of color ruined, blasted to nothing, immortalized as a murderer? That was wrong. Luther slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. He felt the small shape of the card the prosecutor had given him.
Early fall night and Wollaston Beach was packed. He waited in line at the Clam Box, watching the fuzzy television over the counter showing the Red Sox and Yankees. Final home stand of the season. As his plate came up-fried clams and fries-a seat opened up by the windows. Pure luck. He could sit and eat, watch the kids rollerblading, the parade of fit young couples walking their designer dogs. Nice to be away from the stress of the job, kick back and relax, maybe get a beer at Nostalgia, a couple doors down.
The Nextel in his pocket chirped. He looked at the screen. Luther. Luther hardly ever called, except for bad news. He pushed the connect button and said, “What’s going on?”
“Richie. One of ours got shot. Junior, from Humboldt.”
“Stutter’s little brother? Is he okay?”
“He didn’t look good.”
“Why would anyone shoot him? He’s not in the mix.” The kid was in school, not hanging on the corner.
“You’re going to have to come out here, Rich. Everybody’s buggin’.”
“Where are you?”
“Corner of Humboldt and Ruthven.”
“Be right there.” Zardino hopped up and made his way to the counter. For a couple quarters he bought two toasted hot dog rolls. He could stuff in his clams, slather them with tartar sauce and eat them on the ride. Tank up for the long night ahead.
It was a quick trip. Not much traffic this late. He jumped on the Expressway and took the UMass/JFK exit. Columbia Road was like a video game, dodging pedestrians popping out from behind double-parked cars, everyone switching lanes without signaling, stopping without any warning.
When he finally turned onto Seaver, the sky ahead was lit up with the glow of police lights. Strobes, wigwags, flashbacks, all filling the night sky like the aurora borealis. He parked a block away and headed toward the maze of cars angled across the street, blocking traffic. Already the crowds of curious onlookers were forming.
He found Luther in front of the Dry and Fold Laundromat, just outside the crime scene tape.
Luther had a look. Not like they hadn’t seen this kind of violence before. But when Luther’s eyes met his, there was something new there, maybe a sort of desperation.
“Junior’s dead,” Luther told him. “I overheard one of the cops talking, trying to locate Sergeant Figgs. They found shell casings:.40’s.” Luther bent into him and said, “Richie, what if the weapon isn’t a stash gun? What if someone’s been killing these kids?”
The thought astonished him, but why would someone do that? “Maybe we need to talk to Figgs.”
“Hasn’t shown up yet.”
“How’d you get here so quick?”
“I was in the neighborhood, visiting a client,” Luther said. “Heard the shots fired. I couldn’t have been more than a couple steps behind the shooter.”
“What’d you see?”
“A smoked-out van. Driver wasn’t stressing. Van was moving at a normal speed. Most likely not connected.”
“Too bad the shooting wasn’t on Blue,” Zardino said. “What we heard about earlier at the intel meeting. Cameras would have picked up the shooter.”
“I’m more concerned about Stutter. That’s the reason I called you,” Luther said. “He’ll be looking for revenge.”
“No one’s seen the kid in months. We need to get to Stutter before he does something stupid.” Before he retaliated, before more kids ended up in body bags.
Visitors had to check in through security at One Schroeder Plaza before entering the building. Stepping around the metal detector, Connie nodded to the officer working security at the front entrance. A little after seven, Friday morning, so the lobby was pretty quiet except for the early birds grabbing their breakfast. Angel Alves was one of them, standing outside the cafeteria, holding a cup of coffee, talking with a lieutenant. Connie waited for them to split up. Alves looked like he hadn’t slept.
“What’s up, buddy?” Connie asked. “You look a little rough.”
“Typical evening with Wayne Mooney will do that.”
“Working with Sarge can’t be good for your marriage. Everything all right with Marcy and the twins?”
“Long story,” Alves said.
“I’ve got a meeting with Sergeant Stone in Ballistics,” Connie changed the subject. “Trial prep. Gun case. Miracle of miracles, they found a fingerprint on the clip. Matches the defendant.”
“Who’s the defendant?” Alves was looking over Connie’s shoulder, scanning the lobby.
“Nineteen-year-old kid from Dorchester. Not on anyone’s radar. Got a bad record. Getting arrested with the gun made him a level three ACC. Looking at fifteen years minimum mandatory.”
“Therefore, no plea deal.”
“I offered him a seven to ten in Cedar Junction. Figures he’ll roll the dice, try his luck with the jury.”
“Any issues with the case?”
“A couple. But I got it all figured out.”
“I’m sure you’ve already practiced your closing.”
“I always know my closing before the trial starts. Fewer surprises that way. So what’s going on with the Prom Night case?”
“Connie, I don’t have time right now.”
“Give me the CliffsNotes version.”
“I’ll give you a quick briefing,” Alves glanced at the phone in his hand. Checking the time.
“Reports and crime scene photos.”
“All I need is Mooney catching you rifling through a homicide case file. Sarge walks in while we’re talking, you came to get my advice on your gun case.”
They started down the hall toward the bank of elevators. “You hear about the shooting last night?” Connie asked.
“Stutter Simpson’s kid brother, Junior. Took two in the hat.”
“Could be a case of mistaken identity. That kid looked just like his brother.”
“I couldn’t tell you, Connie. That’s Ray Figgs’s case.”
“I know. I was out there last night. You and I still have the Jesse Wilcox murder. And Stutter is our main suspect, so the murder last night could be related.”
Alves stared straight ahead at the elevator lights. “Figgs has been assigned everything related to that forty. Including Wilcox. You need to talk to him.”
“What the fuck, Angel.” Everything he’d worked for was on the line. “This was our case. We had Stutter Simpson in the crosshairs. Now Figgs is going to screw everything up.”
“It’s not my call, Connie. It came down from the commissioner.”
The elevator chimed, the doors opened, and Alves stepped in.
“You didn’t even put up a fight, Angel?”
Alves shrugged his shoulders.
“You too, Angel? White college kids more important than some kids from the neighborhood?”
The elevator doors started to close. Alves put out his hand to hold them open.
“Thanks, pal, but I’ll take the stairs.”
Figgs took a handful of peanuts from his pocket. He hadn’t spent much time with Mrs. Simpson. She’d identified her son while he was lying on the sidewalk dying, so there was no need for her to make a formal ID. And last night wasn’t the right time. But now he needed to talk with her. She’d had one whole day to get used to the idea that her son was gone. Stupid thought, that a mother would ever get used to her son being dead.
Making his way up the stairs of the duplex, Figgs checked the number and rang the bell. It took a lot of rings and a lot of time before the door swung open. Before yesterday, Junior Simpson’s mother was probably an attractive woman, still on the younger side. It was a second before Figgs realized that the woman holding on to the door frame was not Junior’s grandmother. Junior’s mother’s hair was bunched on one side of her head as though she’d slept wrong on it. Her eyes were red, and long streaks of mascara glistened on her cheeks. No tears now, she looked all cried out. That impulse, that little spark that used to drive him in the old days flared up briefly. Maybe, Figgs thought, I can get a little something out of her. “Can I come in for a minute?” he asked.
She left the door open and wandered into the living room. Figgs followed her, closing the door behind him. “What do you want, detective? I have a busy day. I have to make arrangements to bury my baby.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words sounded lame before the woman’s devastation. “I want to catch the person who shot Junior.”
She reared back, as though regarding him, and laughed. “You know you’re never going to catch them. No one will come forward to tell you what they saw.”
“There is one person who can help. He looks a lot like Junior. He can tell me who might want to kill someone who looks like Junior.”
“Stutter isn’t home.” Her face was closing him off. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Your son has warrants. There are a lot of people gunning for him. You have my number. Let him know I’m not looking to arrest him. He can meet with me anywhere he chooses, and I guarantee he walks out without the cuffs. You don’t want to lose another son.”
Figgs stood up and walked to the front hall. He could hear Mrs. Simpson crying as he closed the door.
Tell us again what you saw,” Alves said. He was at the ball field, Chestnut Hill Park, near Boston College. The stadium was about a quarter mile away. He was getting impatient with the witness, one of many tailgaters he and Wayne Mooney had to interview. Alves hated dealing with drunks. That was one thing he didn’t miss. When he was a patrolman, a regular part of his job was dealing with drunk drivers, drunks getting into fights, drunks stumbling around their houses and injuring themselves. Most of the time they babbled, and sometimes, if you were really lucky, they’d throw up in the back of the cruiser. You could never get rid of that smell.
This one looked like he was getting ready to blow the tailgate snacks he’d been shoving down his gullet all morning. Fans milled around them, and from Alumni Stadium Alves could hear a din and the faint marching music of bands warming up.
“Take your time,” Mooney said. “Try to focus. Tell us exactly what you remember.”
“It was nothing. I was coming back to our spot from the stadium,” the drunk waved to someone in a car passing by. “Have you ever been to the stadium? It’s a nice place but they shut down the concessions too soon. Everything’s so expensive. Anyway, I felt like I hadn’t eaten since half-time. You ever get that feeling like you’re so hungry you could throw up if you don’t get something to eat?”
“What happened when you got back to the tailgate?” Alves asked.
“Like I said before, this is my favorite spot. At the top of the bleachers. You get all this extra seating, and sometimes you get entertained by a baseball game. Anyway, I’m starving so I just want to spark up the grill and get some sausages going. I love sausages. We had those Chinese ones with, like, the Ah-So sauce built right into them. Those are awesome. We had the hot Italian ones, too. I couldn’t figure out which kind I wanted so I decided to grill a bunch.”
Alves wanted to strangle the guy. “After you got the sausages going, you said you saw something.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, officer. I saw a white van.”
“What kind of van?”
“Ford. Chevy. It was American.”
“Anything unusual about it? Old model, new, dents, bumper stickers, modifications?”
“An older model, in good condition. Not beat-up or rusty. Roof rack. One of those homemade jobs, built with welded pipe and a white PVC pipe attached with caps on the ends.”
“Any company name on the van?”
“Just a white van. The kind you see the Irish plasterers and painters riding around Brighton in.”
“How about a plate number?”
“No.”
“If it was a nondescript white van, why do you remember it?”
“Because it was bouncing around.”
“Did you hear any noise coming from the van?”
“No.”
“Gunshots?”
“Jesus, no.” His eyes widened at the suggestion.
“How close did you get?”
“Pretty close.”
“How close?” Mooney asked.
“I got right up next to it. I’m no Peeping Tom. I just wanted to find out what was going on in there. See if I could hear some moans or something. That guy must have had the thing soundproofed, because it was hopping all over the place, but I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t go any farther than that. I didn’t try to peek in the windows or anything. You know what they say, ‘if you see this van a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.’ I’m no Peeping Tom.”
“What happened next?” Alves asked.
“The fat from the sausages made the grill flare up. I had a massive grease fire on my hands. The grill was too close to my truck, so I had to get over there and get everything under control. By the time I got it squared away, the van was gone. Too bad, because I wanted to see what they looked like, maybe give them a standing-O.”
“Yeah,” Alves said, “too bad. We’ll be in touch.” He and Mooney turned toward the next group of tailgaters.
“You get all his info?” Mooney asked.
Alves nodded. “I don’t know what good it’ll do us.”
“We can pay him a visit at his house some time. He might remember more when he’s sober.”
“Maybe a good candidate for hypnosis,” Alves said.
“We can take him to have his palm read while we’re at it.”
“I’m serious, Sarge.”
“It’s a waste of time, Angel. If he does remember something, we won’t be able to use him at trial. Any good defense attorney will tear him apart. He’ll say that the testimony was fabricated by false memories suggested by the hypnotist at the request of the police.”
“Right now he isn’t a witness to anything,” Alves said. “He saw a white van rocking. For all we know it could have been two guys having a Greco-Roman wrestling match. If hypnosis helps him remember a plate number, maybe we’ll have something. A tainted witness is better than no witness.”
Connie rang the doorbell and waited to be buzzed in. Once inside, he jogged up the stairs, two at a time, to the second floor. The door at the end of the hall was open a crack, a big striped cat paw hooked around it, trying to pull it open. Connie nudged the escaping cat back into the apartment and closed the door.
Mooney and Alves were sitting in the living room set up like a command center. A card table was stationed in the middle of the room. The walls were lined with giant colored Post-it notes.
Connie set a Box-of-Joe and half a dozen bagels from Dunkies on a ratty coffee table. “Sunday brunch is served,” he said. “I appreciate you letting me in on this, Sarge.”
“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” Alves asked, irritation in his voice. “I thought you were getting ready for a trial.”
“Garden variety gun case,” Connie said, easing into a folding chair. It wasn’t worth getting into with Angel. Something was wrong with the detective, and Connie didn’t feel like playing junior psychiatrist. “I have some ideas on the Prom Night case. Angel said you’re trying to find a link between the fortunes and the victims.”
“You got something that will help us?” Mooney asked.
“What were the fortunes again?”
“They’re all up here on the wall,” Mooney pointed. “Color-coded for each set of murders. First one, Adams and Flowers, fortune was ‘STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.’ With Markis and Riley he left us, ‘LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT.’ Then Picarelli and Weston, ‘EVERY EXIT IS AN ENTRANCE TO NEW HORIZONS.’”
“Now, with Steadman and Kipping,” Alves said, “‘DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED.’ Odd thing is the fortune looks like the ones from ten years ago.”
“All came from a company called Kookie King,” Mooney said. “Company’s still around. One of the largest suppliers in the area. Haven’t changed the format over the years. The fortunes left with the original victims were printed in black ink, all capital letters. They gave a fortune and nothing else. More recently, a lot of the other companies switched to colored ink, blues and reds. They have a fortune, a lucky number and a translation of a phrase in Chinese. And they don’t use all caps. The fortunes aren’t as good as the ones Kookie King uses.”
“So our guy is old school, a purist, like you,” Connie said. “He sticks with these cookies because they give him his true fortunes.”
“Interesting.” Mooney said. “Whenever Leslie and I ordered Chinese, before we broke into our fortune cookies she would ask if I thought this would be her one true fortune.”
“And?” Alves asked.
“Let’s say he has these twisted thoughts bouncing around and he’s trying to give some legitimacy to the urges he’s feeling,” Mooney said. “Maybe he’s having homicidal thoughts about the girl he rides the bus with every morning. Then he gets this fortune telling him that happiness is right next to him. Basically telling him his feelings are right.”
“His one true fortune,” Connie said.
“I went through every inch of Kelly Adams’s life,” Mooney said. “She was the first female victim. I didn’t find anything.”
“What if it was the boy next door that he was interested in?” Connie asked. “Did you look into Eric Flowers’s life?”
“I didn’t find anything.” Mooney stood up and moved toward the window, looking out onto Gallivan Boulevard. Maybe he wasn’t looking at anything outside, just focused on his own reflection.
“Second victims, Daria Markis and David Riley, used to go parking up on Chickatawbut Road, a known cruising spot,” Alves said.
“It all fits,” Connie said. “He gets that first fortune, realizes that Eric Flowers is the one and kills him and Kelly Adams. Then one night, after he’s read his second true fortune, he’s out cruising. He runs into David and Daria parked on Chickatawbut and decides to take a risk by killing them.”
“Because, ‘LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT,’” Mooney finished.
“That all works out pretty neatly,” Alves said. “But what if that first fortune wasn’t meant for the victim but someone else?”
“That would mean there was no connection between the killer and the victims beyond convenience or opportunity,” Mooney said. “Complicates things.”
“Exactly my theory,” Connie said. “The victims may be how the killer is getting out his message. To someone he’s trying to impress. Someone still alive. Remember John Hinkley?”
“The guy who shot President Reagan,” Alves said.
“Right. I’m at home last night thinking about Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. A classic super-villain. Thomas Harris did research, creating a killer with the traits of a real serial killer. Then I started thinking about Doctor Lecter’s relationship with Clarice Starling. Jody Foster in the movie.”
Mooney interrupted, “John Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jody Foster.”
“Exactly.”
“You’ve got quite a lot going on in that head of yours,” Mooney said.
“So you’re equating our murders with Hinkley’s efforts to impress Jody Foster?” Alves asked.
“Even though his ultimate goal was to impress her, I think Hinkley was trying to gain fame by killing someone important. He committed his crime so brazenly that he couldn’t help but get caught.”
“But our killer is careful not to get caught,” Mooney said.
“Think about it,” Connie said. “He gives a fortune to someone who’s dead. That doesn’t make sense. But if the fortune is for someone else, a lover, an old girlfriend, then it does.”
“And he doesn’t spend the rest of his life in jail,” Mooney concluded. He poured himself another coffee. “Not bad. Problem is no one’s reading those fortunes. We held them from the media.”
“I’ve thought about that too. Look at his first message,” Connie said. “‘STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.’ Say there’s this woman. Sees her every day. He’s afraid to tell her how he feels so he tells her through the fortune. But, key point, he doesn’t know you’re not going to release the message.”
Alves and Mooney looked at Connie. They’d caught his drift.
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument,” Mooney interrupted, “that he’s been in jail. Gets paroled, finds a job. She works at the same place. Or maybe they go to the same gym or she rides the same train. To you or me, that might seem like a coincidence, small world, bup-bup-bup-bup. But to him, bingo, looks like fate. The last fortune-‘DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED.’”
“My theory? Even if he got his girl,” Connie said, “he won’t stop killing. He enjoys the challenge. This woman he’s infatuated with gives him a good excuse.”
“I like what you’ve come up with here,” Mooney said. “Maybe I’ll put you on the case instead of Angel.”
Alves didn’t laugh.
“Another thought. Is our mystery woman Chinese?” Connie asked. “Is there anything else of significance about Chinese culture?”
Connie watched as Alves made eye contact with Mooney. Mooney laughed. “You think fortune cookies have anything to do with real Chinese culture? There’s nothing else.”
There was something. Connie could tell by the way Alves had turned to Mooney for a sign. There was something they were keeping from him. He’d get it out of Alves later.
“Maybe we leak those fortunes, from an unnamed source of course, to the media,” Mooney said. “Convince him we’re getting sloppy or desperate.”
“Too dangerous,” Alves said.
Connie could see Mooney was thinking about every possibility, like a maze when you trace out your routes in your head until you find the one way that gets you to the endpoint without any dead ends.
“We have to try something, Angel,” Mooney said finally.
Sleep watched her as she pranced around her room. The attic was dark, and he stood away from the window, with his binoculars. He had such a lovely view. He could almost see the fine pores of her skin. She was getting her clothes ready for work the next day, the new work week. She had set up the ironing board and pressed several outfits, trying each of them on, always positioning herself so that he could see her changing. She knew he was watching. She had to know.
Each night she put on a show for him, acting as though she were getting ready for work. She was really just giving him a preview of the woman who, one day, would belong to him.
He held his breath as she folded the ironing board. Next she would be getting ready for bed. It was almost more than he could bear. He watched as she removed her bra and panties. She only gave him a momentary glimpse, before she pulled a long T-shirt over her head. She was such a tease. That’s what he liked most about her.
He couldn’t believe she was still so beautiful after all these years. His little princess. He remembered the day he’d met her, the day she moved in across the street. He fell in love with her immediately. But she was young for her age, interested in athletes, guys with cars, material things. Inevitably, she would mature and come to realize that her true love had been right there all the time.
After putting on her nightshirt she walked to the wall and flipped the light switch. He hated this part. Bedtime.
He would try to see her again tomorrow night. If he could find the time.
Now he had work to do. He walked to the opposite side of the attic, the unfinished side. He closed the door behind him before turning on the light. The brittle yellow shade was drawn on this window. It was always drawn. He bent down and pulled two old trunks from under the eaves. He unlocked them with the keys from his pocket. He was struck with the smell of mothballs as he opened them.
It was time for him to select the outfits.
He had made a guess as to the size of the tux he would need and removed it from the larger trunk. It didn’t have to be a perfect fit, after all. He chose a paisley cummerbund and matching suspenders to complete the outfit. The young man would look quite dashing. He locked the trunk and slid it back under the eaves.
Then he rummaged through the other trunk and found the dress he was looking for, an ecru satin affair that would look lovely on its new model. He placed the garments on hangers to air them out, let the wrinkles fall out naturally. He turned off the light and went back down to his room.
Judging from the line out the door of the courthouse, it was going to be a typical Monday.
Connie took out his credentials, flashed his badge, and stepped around the metal detectors. The line at the elevator bank was five people deep. No way he could wait. Connie took the stairs to the sixth floor.
He checked with the clerk. Judge wasn’t in yet. He looked around the lobby for the defense attorney on the case, Sonya Jordan. Harvard professor and true believer. Almost a month ago, they’d locked horns outside the grand jury after Tracy Ward gave up the name of his shooter. It was impossible to have a discussion with her. For her, everyone was being persecuted. And all her clients were innocent. He’d first met her when she was dating his old friend Mitch Beaulieu. Much as he liked Mitch, he and Sonya had never been friends. She’d stayed in Boston after Mitch’s death. Now she was on a mission to crucify the DA’s office.
As the supervising attorney for the Harvard Law students in their clinical program, she led an army of budding lawyers she brainwashed into believing that prosecutors were a bunch of fascists. She kept this case for herself in superior court. Maybe because Connie was the prosecutor.
He spotted Sonya Jordan in the corner speaking with her client. She held up a finger asking him to wait. When she finished, she came over to him. “Mr. Darget, are you ready for trial?” She never dropped the formalities. No matter how many cases they had together, he would always be “Mr. Darget.”
“Ms. Jordan,” he was careful to maintain the same level of formality. “I’m as ready as I’m going to be. I just need the cops to show up with the gun.” His strategy was like a pro football coach overstating injuries of key players to lull his opponents and gain an edge.
“This trial won’t be an enjoyable experience. I don’t care for self-righteous sheep that get their rocks off by locking up innocent people in cages. Unlike you, Mr. Darget, I protect our precious liberty and uphold the Constitution. A Constitution that serves one purpose, to protect us from an overzealous government. To protect us,” she pointed her long manicured nail at his chest, “from white guys in white hats.”
Connie smiled. He didn’t want to let her get to him. “My job is to hold people accountable for their crimes. So let’s save the histrionics for the jury, Ms. Jordan.” He took a couple steps ahead and opened the courtroom door for her, bowing gallantly. Just to irritate her.
Sleep stood outside the bar smoking a cigarette. He had smoked close to an entire pack. Even though he didn’t smoke. Tonight the Sox were playing the Yankees at Fenway. Final game of the season, a make-up game for last night’s rainout. Sold out, as usual. Anyone who couldn’t get tickets packed into the bars, especially college kids who took advantage of any excuse to get wasted on a weeknight. Inside the bar, half the televisions were tuned in to the Sox game and the other half were on Monday Night Football.
He practiced blowing smoke rings to kill time. He wasn’t very good at it. Finally, the girl stepped out of the bar. She was beautiful, even after a night of drinking. The boy, her boyfriend, was handsome, but not good-looking enough to be with her. Maybe deep down the boy knew that somehow he’d lucked into dating a goddess. Recognized that this was the only time in his life he would be with someone like her.
Sleep saw that the boy would take full advantage of her if he could. The boy put his arm around her, kissing her cheek as they stumbled down the street.
They were heading back toward her apartment. Sleep had hoped they would do that. The boy was talking loud and laughing, thinking he’d get lucky.
Not tonight. Sleep’s van was parked one block ahead. Right where the boy’s luck would run out.
Sleep flipped the cigarette into the sidewalk and crossed the street. He made it to the corner well ahead of the couple. Crossing back over to their side of the street, he watched as they made their way along the sidewalk. When they were a few car lengths from the van, he walked toward them. He reached them as they passed the van. He bumped into the boy. Pretending to get knocked off balance, Sleep took a pratfall onto the concrete.
Even in their drunken state, they had their manners. The boy stuck out a hand and helped him to his feet.
“Hey, I know you,” the girl said, giggling. She had a stiff smile etched on her face. She was very drunk. “You’re the guy that-”
“Oh, yeah,” the boy said. “I remember. Are you okay, mister?” He brushed off the back of Sleep’s jacket.
“You kids are out late,” Sleep said. “Don’t you have classes tomorrow?”
The girl giggled.
“Watching the game,” the boy said. He pulled her close to him again, more to hold her up than anything. He was tugging at her, trying to get her to move away.
Sleep looked at her eyes and smiled, then turned to the boy. “Where do you live?” As if he didn’t know.
“Just up Comm Ave.,” the boy said.
“Why don’t I give you a lift? Make sure you get there in one piece. This is my van right here.”
The young Romeo took an assessing look at the girl. She could barely stand, her eyes were half closed. He knew what the boy was thinking. Get her back to her apartment before she threw up or passed out. The sooner, the better.
“Sure,” he said, “we’ll take a ride.”
He helped the boy arrange her in the passenger’s seat, strapping on her seat belt. Then he led the boy around the work van, explaining that he didn’t like to use the rear and side doors. He didn’t mention that they had been covered with insulation. He’d taken the bulb out of the overhead light too. He directed the boy to climb over the driver’s seat and sit on an empty five-gallon paint bucket between the two seats.
The boy adjusted himself on his makeshift chair. Sleep put in his ear plugs. The girl was slumped over in her seat. Sleep closed the door, hit the automatic lock button, and turned toward the boy. He pulled the gun from his holster, and in one motion, put it to the boy’s chest and pulled the trigger. Sleep was ready for the recoil this time. The boy flew back onto the large canvas set up in back. The canvas covered a plastic tarp. An effective way to minimize the mess.
The shot woke the girl from her stupor. She looked around, stunned by the blast of the gunshot. She looked at the gun in his hand and turned to look at the boy’s body sprawled in the back of the van. It was a few seconds before she could put all the pieces together. When it all fit, she screamed. No one could hear her. The soundproofing muffled the shot, so it would certainly stifle her cries of fear.
He casually removed the earplugs. He wanted to enjoy her death with all of his senses.
She reached for the door handle, fumbled around, clawing for it, but it wasn’t there. It had been removed a long time ago.
He felt her stiffen when he undid her seat belt, slid it gently off her shoulder, and wrapped his fingers around her throat. He had her from behind, which was a good thing. It made it more difficult for her to scratch at his face. She struggled to get away from him, but he held a firm grip. He didn’t want her to hurt herself in the struggle. The last thing he wanted was to damage her perfect face.
He pulled her close, away from the door, away from any hard surfaces, protecting her. He dragged her into the back of the van, her arms and legs flailing.
Then he squeezed.
Connie made his way toward Peter’s Hill and stopped at the yellow crime scene tape. He stood on Bussey Street at the base of the hill near a dozen police cars. The message had come across the alpha pager twenty minutes earlier. Two bodies, one male and one female, discovered by a runner in the Arnold Arboretum. This was an upscale neighborhood. All the old houses were being bought up and renovated by a new generation. More gentrified by the day.
He had been on his way to meet Greene and Ahearn at the station, but when he got the page, his plans for the evening changed. He didn’t have much going with them anyway. Not since Shawn Tinsley’s death. With a shooter like Tinsley out of the picture, things would quiet down in District 2.
Connie kept an eye out for Alves. He’d already called the DA’s office and spoken with the chief of homicide. He wanted them to know that there was no need to page the Homicide Response ADA. Connie would handle things at the scene and give updates.
Connie skirted the perimeter of the crime scene, taking in as much as he could, which was very little. He was familiar with the area. When he was a teenager, Peter’s Hill was a popular place for parties. The gentle rise of tree-covered ground provided a spectacular view of downtown Boston at night. And it offered plenty of hideaways if a couple wanted to slip away for some privacy. From where he stood, the police seemed focused on one of those spots, well off the paved path that looped around the hill.
He saw Alves and a familiar figure lumbering from a thicket. Wayne Mooney. He was carrying a stack of small, numbered orange cones that he was using to mark evidence. Working slowly around the scene, Alves gestured to the criminalists and directed the photographer.
Connie could provide valuable information about Peter’s Hill. He could point out the different entrances to the park and the best place to conceal a vehicle if someone was trying to drop something off unnoticed. The killer had done that with two bodies. If the investigators looked in the right spots, they might find tire treads or shoe imprints in the dirt paths near one of the entrances.
Angel Alves acknowledged Connie with a nod. That was all he needed. Alves was balking a little at letting him into this case, but Mooney had liked his ideas on the fortunes. One of the two would let him know when he could have access to the crime scene. Then he could dig deeper into what this killer was about. When things started to fit together, he could point Alves and Mooney in the right direction.
Sleep waited in the line of cars on Walter Street in Roslindale. He thought he could see the glare of unnatural light coming from Peter’s Hill. The police roadblock closed off Bussey Street, and when he got that far, probably Mendum Street too. All the direct public accesses to the Arboretum were blocked. The commotion indicated that the police had found his perfect couple.
It made him sad. The lovers would get to repose only a short time more.
With these two, he could see that he was getting better at his art. The girl was beautiful and didn’t need much makeup, even after meeting Brother Death. The dress Sleep had chosen for her slipped on, a perfect fit. The boy was the boy. Just like at weddings and proms, you could put a call into central casting and get a handsome groom or a date in a white shirt and black tux. But the boy was a necessary part of the tableau. Sleep was getting better with hair too. Momma had left a generous supply of beauty products. All in all, a very successful venture.
There was a time, long ago, when he didn’t understand his purpose. Before he’d discovered all those books about mythology in the library. Before he’d met his brother Death. A time when he lived for his Little Things. Dressing them, buying new outfits for them at yard sales. Browsing through stores, pretending he was selecting a gift for an imaginary sister.
It was exactly at that time that his father caught on.
Then his Little Things started demanding even more.
He could remember every detail of that day. The two of them, Sleep and his father, were alone at the bakery. They’d been working since one in the morning. It was three when his father, the black hairs of his arms dusted in flour, his round face greasy from frying oil, said, “When are you gonna get a girlfriend? Act like other kids your age? When I get home, I’m gonna go up to that attic and get those dolls. I’m gonna bring ’em here and hang them in the window with a sign that says ‘These are my half-a-fag son’s toys.’ Week after that, we’ll hang Cinderella’s pissy wet bedsheet in the window.”
Something like a dozen plane engines roaring filled Sleep’s head. His old man was relentless. He watched girls on the street and nudged Sleep to watch too. If a love scene came on the TV screen, he jacked up the volume. Once they had been waiting for Momma in Filene’s and his old man had shoved him into a rack of bras.
Sleep could see himself reaching for the rolling pin. He could see himself waiting for his old man to show the back of his head. He could see himself raise the pin, feel the heft of the wood. Before he could stop himself, he remembered trying to say something like “oh no,” he could see himself hammering until his father was quiet at last.
When the police came, he told them he had come in late that morning and found his father on the floor, the register open and empty.
He didn’t tell the police about his father nattering at him, humiliating him, pushing him. And he didn’t tell them about the queen of the gods and the dwelling of Sleep and his Brother Death. He bet none of the cops had ever read The Tales of Troy.
Sleep was startled by the loud noise. The driver in the car behind him was leaning on his horn. Traffic was moving. Sleep adjusted his sunglasses and pulled his Bruins cap down tighter on his head. He drove toward the patrolman directing traffic. He waved to the officer as he passed close to Peter’s Hill, taking one last look.
Connie followed Alves up Peter’s Hill. He’d stood in the cold, watching Mooney setting up cones while a photographer snapped pictures, for close to two hours before getting inside the yellow tape.
“Aren’t you in the middle of a trial?” Alves asked.
Alves was treating him like a punk DA, making him wait, greeting him with a sarcastic question first thing. “Trial’s over,” Connie said. “A simple gun case, remember? Jury came back in ten minutes with a guilty. Angel, I’m out here because this case is important to me.”
Alves didn’t say anything as he led Connie around a thicket of bushes, toward the glow of the klieg lights. The hill was lit up like a night game at Fenway. Connie stopped when he saw the girl. She was lovely, even in death. She reminded him of Andi, his ex-girlfriend, but without the long red hair. The victim was a brunette, like the others. “Have they been moved?” Connie asked.
“Not yet. We’ve marked off everything that might have evidentiary value. Sarge had the ID unit take about a thousand pictures. Mooney wanted me to give you a walk-though before the ME takes the bodies. Eunice Curran and her crew are standing by to collect everything else.”
“Their poses are different from the last time,” Connie said. “These two are having a picnic.”
“Yeah. A post-prom snack. He has them set up to make you think, next thing, the dress comes off.”
“You’re wrong,” Connie said. “Look at the scene. It’s more like a romantic dinner. She’s wearing a dress that will never come off. The killer doesn’t want it to. He wants them in this position, at this moment in time, happy, before the relationship is consummated. Before everything goes to shit. He wants them to live happily ever after, like in fairy tales.”
Alves’s face betrayed a range of emotions, pain among them. Connie had heard the rumors that Marcy Alves wasn’t sleeping in the big bed anymore. “You got all that from looking at this setup?” Alves seemed impressed, then doubtful. “Creative, but it doesn’t fit. Remember, he’s re-creating prom night.”
“Who gave him the name Prom Night Killer? The media? The police? He’s never called himself that.” Connie closed his eyes and imagined himself at the first crime scene. “The first victims were coming from their prom, but our killer didn’t know that. Male was in a tux. Female was in a fancy white dress. To him they could have looked like newlyweds going for a stroll in the park. Picture those miniature plastic figures, those wedding cake toppers. He’s dressing the victims up as though they’ve just been married. That’s why all the women are wearing white instead of the carnival of colors you’d normally see in prom dresses.”
Connie opened his eyes again to find that Alves was staring at him. He had to know that Connie could be right. Connie did not avoid his stare. “What have you been holding back from me, Angel?”
“What are you talking about?” Alves asked.
“There’s something else. Something related to Chinese culture. I saw the look you gave Mooney the other day at his place. You let him answer for you.”
“I can’t tell you, Connie. Mooney will flip. He’s kept this thing under wraps for ten years. Hardly anybody knows about it. It’s one of the reasons we’re convinced he’s not a copycat.”
“I haven’t held anything back from you, Angel. I can’t help you if I don’t know all the facts.”
Alves seemed to think over his options for a couple seconds. “If I show you, it goes nowhere. You can’t tell Mooney. If you come up with anything based on what I show you, you come to me. Then I’ll relay it to Mooney as my idea. Got it?”
“I’m not looking for credit.”
Alves walked over to the girl and lifted the hair off the back of her neck.
Under the bright lights, stamped with black ink, Connie saw the familiar Yin-Yang symbol. The Tai-ji. It was upside down. The killer didn’t know anything about Chinese culture. But he wanted the police to think he did.
Alves lowered her hair and stepped away from her. “Mooney’s coming.”
Money stood aside as the photographer took pictures of the tire tread in the mud on the corner of South and Bussey.
“I think we can get a decent mold,” Eunice Curran said.
“Good. I’ll see you back on the hill.” He turned and followed the asphalt path, partly hidden in shadow, toward the opening ahead. The area looked so different at night. He remembered coming here on one of his first dates with Leslie. A warm spring day. It was Lilac Day, and Leslie thought it would be nice to go for a walk and have some bread and cheese outdoors near the little brook that ran through the woods.
Like his two unidentified victims on the hill.
That was a long time ago. Before he’d seen so much death. He and Leslie had stopped at the lilacs as they made their way through the maze of paths that wound through the trees. Peter’s Hill and the rest of the Arboretum were maintained by Harvard University, she’d explained to him. The best kept park in the city, she’d said. The most beautiful jewel in the…
Mooney stopped. He was alone, not quite at the path at the base of the hill where most of the other units were gathering. One by one, and in order, he ticked off the murder sites. The Fens. The Riverway. Olmsted Park. Franklin Park. And now Peter’s Hill, the Arnold Arboretum. It made perfect sense.
He picked up his pace. At the base of the hill, he stepped off the path and cut across the grass toward the scene the killer had left for them. He spotted Alves walking Connie through it.
When Mooney caught up with them, Alves said, “Connie doesn’t think the murders have anything to do with prom night. Thinks he dressed them up as newlyweds for their picnic in the park.”
“Interesting. ’Cause I don’t think this has anything to do with a picnic in the park.” Mooney waved his hand at the victims. “It’s more like a picnic on the Emerald Necklace.”
“I don’t get it,” Alves said.
“He’s not familiar with Boston’s history,” he said to Connie. “This minute, we’re standing on Peter’s Hill, which is a part of the Arnold Arboretum. Which is-”
“One of the jewels in Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace,” Connie interrupted.
Mooney nodded, then turned to Alves. “You’ve never heard of Frederick Law Olmsted, have you?”
Connie began, “Olmsted designed half of Central Park in New York City. Then he did the system of parks in Boston that runs from the Common to Franklin Park. Each one is a ‘jewel’ in what he called the Emerald Necklace. What kind of Bostonian are you?”
“I’m from Jamaica Plain,” Alves said.
“Most of the Necklace is in J.P.,” Mooney continued. “The Arborway, the Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, Franklin Park-”
“Got it. I’ll study up on my history of the Boston Parks tomorrow. How does this tie in?” Alves asked Mooney.
“The Boston Common and the Public Garden are the first two jewels in the necklace. Then you have the Commonwealth Mall, the grassy area that runs down the middle of Comm Ave. That leads right into the Back Bay Fens where Kelly Adams and Eric Flowers were found. Then you have the Riverway, which leads into Olmsted Park and the Jamaica Pond.”
“So the killer’s taking us on a tour of the Emerald Necklace,” Connie said. “But why?”
“Don’t know yet. Maybe Adams’s necklace gave him the idea to take us on a tour of his Emerald Necklace. Maybe he works for the Parks Department, a laborer, a supervisor.” Mooney paused. “Or a park ranger. Someone with a badge who might be able to gain your trust.”
Mooney studied the two men in front of him on the dark hill. One of them was a student of Boston’s history, the other was not. The killer was someone with knowledge beyond knowing that kids from Dorchester hated kids from Southie, and that kids from Southie hated kids from Charlestown. The killer was someone who understood Boston. Here, all along, they’d been thinking that the killer was giving them clues-the Tai-ji stamps and the fortunes. That was crap. The real clues were much more subtle. The killer was challenging them on a level he didn’t usually find in criminals.
Connie had seen something at Peter’s Hill that he hadn’t mentioned to Alves. He was irritated that Alves had kept the Tai-ji from him. Alves had never held back anything before. Maybe Alves was following Mooney’s orders to keep the symbol a secret. Maybe Alves didn’t trust him. For whatever reason, things had changed.
But Connie had the details now. He stretched out on the couch in his basement. The one place he could really focus. Here he could block out distractions and think, and now he was running possible scenarios through his head.
The Tai-ji symbol might be the key to everything. It represented the Yin and the Yang, symbols of the opposite forces of nature, in balance, continually changing. But what did the symbol mean to the killer? Was it an obsession, however misguided, with Chinese culture and philosophy? Or was he trying to give them a false lead? Either way, it would reveal something about the killer.
Interesting thought. What if it was just by chance that the first female victim had a Tai-ji tattooed on the back of her neck? Now, maybe, he was copying the symbol to make each murder look the same.
He believed that the first murders were the most important. The murders of Adams and Flowers were unorganized, spontaneous, unplanned. Something provoked the killer to strike. Stressors. A lost job, a fight with a girlfriend, sure, but more likely something like a surge of electricity scouring through the circuitry of the body till there was no choice but to act.
Connie needed to bring himself back to that time, to visualize things as they were ten years earlier. The murders had all occurred in the summer months, when Connie was home from college in Arizona, between his junior and senior years.
Connie remembered where he was and what he was doing that summer, but he needed to put himself back into the climate in the city. He couldn’t just think back on the time, he had to relive it. Then he could turn his focus on the murders and put himself in the place of the killer.
That was something that Alves and Mooney didn’t understand. They were good at processing crime scenes and pursuing leads doggedly, but they had no idea how to think like a killer.
Connie was good at that.
Sleep was a careful driver, not too fast and certainly not too slow. Just a couple of miles over the speed limit so as not to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want anyone to notice him, especially the police. His headlights, taillights and signals were all working properly. He checked them each time before he went out.
He would have liked to have gotten closer to the investigation on Peter’s Hill, but he knew where to draw the line. Push too hard and people start asking questions. He had come close enough to get a taste of the investigation, to smell the scent of the grass on a cool autumn evening, to imagine himself back on that hill with the young lovers. They must have been marvelous under those brilliant lights.
He was sure no one had noticed him, tangled in the stalled traffic. And if they did bother to take a look, that’s where his little disguise came in handy.
Now he needed to get back to work, check on his next subjects. He knew their hangouts. It was amazing how many couples were out there every night. He was sure their parents didn’t know what they were up to, drinking and partying. Or maybe their parents didn’t care.
The not caring, the indifference, that’s what made it so easy for Sleep and his brother Death to enter their lives.
It had been years since Connie had set foot in the microfiche room at the main branch of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. He had spent so many summer afternoons in this room, staring into the screens, doing research for his honors thesis in history. Even after recent renovations to the building, the room still had the dusty feel of an old library, a true depository of information. That was what Connie loved about it.
Instead of taking a rare sick day, Connie could have stayed in his office and Googled key terms related to the Prom Night Killer. There were plenty of articles online about the killer and his crimes. But sitting at a computer wouldn’t take him back to the time of the original murders. Reading the newspaper articles, seeing the ads and announcements from the time would remind him of everything that was going on, from the Boston sports teams to the local political landscape. He could read about which department stores were having sales, what movies were playing in theaters, and, most of all, how the public was reacting to the killings.
Connie planned to read every issue of the Globe and the Herald from that summer. That was how he worked, slow, methodical, and thorough. Each line he read brought him back in time. The heat came early that year, before the murders began. One of the hottest summers on record. He thought back to the Tai-ji, the Yin and the Yang, opposite forces at balance in nature. The hot and the cold. Was the killer trying to send a message about the heat that summer, that things were out of balance, that the hot was too hot, that it lasted well into fall? That wouldn’t explain why he’d stopped.
As he was going through the papers, he came across a short article on page three of the Metro Region section, just below the fold. ONE DEAD IN ROXBURY SHOOTING, the small headline proclaimed. In a bold daylight shooting, notorious gang member Marcus Little was shot and killed on Columbia Road. Although the shooting occurred on a busy section of the street, no witnesses have stepped forward. The victim’s younger brother, Darius “D-Lite” Little was arrested after a brief altercation with police. When questioned by reporters, the officer who ordered the arrest, Homicide Sergeant Wayne Mooney, refused comment.
Connie could see why Darius Little-Luther-hated Wayne Mooney. Their first meeting ended with Luther getting arrested at his brother’s murder scene. The family was vocal about their mistrust of the department and Mooney, telling the newspapers that he should take himself off the case. He had arrested an innocent grieving boy, they claimed. They suggested that he would have worked harder to catch Marcus’s killer if Marcus had been white. Mooney stayed on the case, but he never caught Marcus’s killer.
Within weeks, Adams and Flowers turned up dead. Two white high school seniors murdered. With all the pressure to catch the Prom Night Killer, Marcus Little’s murder must have slipped down on the priority list. Connie wondered if Mooney did put enough effort into solving Marcus’s murder. How could he, when Mooney was in the paper nearly every day trying to catch his first serial killer, trying to make a name for himself?
Connie was not distracted by the high-pitched squeal of the microfiche machines fast-forwarding and rewinding around him. He savored the sounds of this place. They were comforting, reassuring. Other researchers had come here hunting for information, learning about their history, reading old newspapers from as far back as the early 1800s. He had to trust that his thoroughness would lead him to more discoveries. More links in the case.
Interesting story in early September 1998. It was an article about a mob wannabe named Richard Zardino getting fingered on a gangland murder. A federal informant had testified before a grand jury that Zardino shot and killed a man in retaliation for an earlier murder. Zardino was taken into custody and didn’t breathe fresh air outside the prison walls for eight years.
The summer of ’98 had been interesting for a lot of people. Luther going crazy after his brother’s unsolved murder, Zardino taking a hit on a murder he didn’t commit, a city in fear of a violent killer, and Wayne Mooney at the center of it all.
Connie rewound the microfiche and pushed away from the machine and let his eyes adjust to the light in the room. After a few minutes he got up and returned his stack of microfiche reels to the librarian.
He hadn’t realized how long he was tucked away in the room. The late afternoon sun cast a long shadow of the library toward the Trinity Church. He had spent the entire day squinting into the gray screen. Not even a lunch break. It was worth it, though. He had learned a lot about that summer, and so much had come back to him. He walked toward the church, the sun at his back, a cool afternoon breeze in his face. He would walk down Boylston and then cut over to Comm Ave. and make his way to the Public Garden and the Common. He loved that walk. He needed to relax a bit.
He called his investigators on the cell. He needed them to get some information for him. Now his head was right. Tomorrow he would get his hands dirty. He was looking forward to it.
Alves held the receiver to his ear. He wasn’t certain if he should make the call. But Marcy was standing firm. She wasn’t coming back with the twins till the killer was caught. And if he didn’t mention it to Mooney, the Sarge didn’t need to know about the call. Why close off any avenue that might lead to something?
As he listened to the dial tone, he thought about his day-interviewing students about the last time they’d seen their friends Nathan Tucker and Karen Pine alive. They were students, sophomores at Boston University, found on Peter’s Hill. All he’d uncovered after a day of interviews was that they’d been out with friends at a bar on Monday night. Used fake IDs to get in. Nathan’s friends said he was hoping to go back to her place after they left the bar, but they never made it.
He should be out on the street doing something, but right now he didn’t know what that something was. Alves dialed the number.
A woman with a pleasant voice answered, “FBI. How may I direct your call?”
“Special Agent John Bland, please.”
Alves had met Bland and his partner when they were called in on a case three years ago. But Mooney had seen that their working relationship ended in bad feelings. Mooney had “fired” them, accusing them of undercutting his investigation. Luckily Alves had saved Bland’s card. He was pretty sure Bland was the taller of the two, the one who did most of the talking.
“Detective Alves, nice to hear from you.” He recognized Bland’s voice. “How are things?”
“Not bad.” Alves lied. “You told me three years ago if I ever needed you to give a call.”
“The Prom Night Killer is back.”
“I was wondering if you could look over the case files. Tell me what we might be looking at here.”
“Do you want me to come up to Boston?”
Alves could only imagine Mooney walking in on the agent reading the files.
“Or you can send me copies of the reports, photos, everything from the crime lab and the ME.”
“Sounds good.” Alves couldn’t help but think what a good guy Bland was. He put aside all the bullshit and focused on what was important. “I really appreciate you helping me with this, especially since we haven’t been overly hospitable to you.”
“I understand the position you’re in, detective. I don’t blame you for any of this. Any time we can help catch a murderer, we’re glad to help.”
“I’ll FedEx that stuff to you today.”
“Detective Alves? About that Blood Bath case. That one still bothers me,” Bland said. “I’m not convinced Beaulieu was your killer.”
The accusation was a sucker punch. Robyn Stokes, one of the victims, was a childhood friend. Another was a colleague in the DA’s office. A wave of nausea washed over Alves. Bland’s instinct hit on something he had been asking himself since the day Mitch Beaulieu jumped from that courthouse balcony, taking the truth with him. Something didn’t sit right with the way the case ended.
“We had solid evidence against him,” Alves said, trying to convince himself. “We never got a confession. But the answers he gave us during our interview were evasive. They showed his consciousness of guilt. Beaulieu also had the opportunity and means to kill each of the victims. Then he killed one of his co-workers, Nick Costa, maybe when he got too close to the truth. And Agent Bland, the killings stopped when he died.”
“I remember reading about the evidence at the time. It was all circumstantial,” Bland continued the argument.
“Sometimes circumstantial evidence is the best kind,” Alves said. “Circumstances can’t be mistaken, and they certainly don’t lie. We had his shoe print outside a victim’s house, we had his hairs at the scene of the last murder, we found his brand of condom near the same house.” Alves was aware of how he sounded-like he was arguing a losing cause.
Bland said, “If I recall, the finishing touch was the room in his house where he had built a shrine to his father. Video of that room was leaked to the media.”
“That wasn’t our fault. That came straight from the mayor. It was a bizarre scene.”
“I’m sure it was. But it’s not what I would have expected to find in the killer’s home. It sounds like a memorial put together by a lonely, depressed young man who missed his father. A father who had also committed suicide, if I remember right. I think Mitch Beaulieu was more likely to have suicidal ideation, rather than homicidal. When the pressure gets to a guy like that he directs his frustration internally, on himself. He wouldn’t have an external lashing out at others.”
“So you don’t think he was the killer?” Alves asked.
“I’m not saying that. I’m not sure. I like to question everything. And what you found in his apartment wasn’t what I had expected.” Bland was silent for a couple of seconds. “Were there any other suspects at the time?”
“Everyone in the courthouse was a suspect.”
“So anyone who worked there would have had the same means and opportunity that Beaulieu had?”
“We had physical evidence that pointed to him.”
“Could any of that evidence have been planted?”
Alves was starting to see what had infuriated Mooney. What was Bland suggesting? That any of the items could have been placed there by someone else who had access to Mitch and his stuff? And they were too stupid to know the difference?
Bland continued, “Don’t you find it odd that this guy was so careful not to leave any evidence at the crime scenes? There was no indication that he was doing anything sexual with his victims. Yet as the police are converging on the courthouse, trying to find out who may have had access to the jurors, the killer suddenly decides to make a post mortem sexual assault on his final victim, leaving hairs and a condom at the scene that point directly to Mitch Beaulieu.”
“The condom was found outside the apartment in a sewer,” Alves said with resignation.
“Of course it was. It wouldn’t be a very good frame-up if someone had left it on the bed with a name tag. The condom was hidden, but in a place that the police were likely to find it.”
“Why would anyone think we’d find a condom in a sewer?”
“Because Wayne Mooney was the lead investigator. Remember, I’ve looked at your case files. I’ve seen Mooney’s work. He processes a crime scene as thoroughly as anyone I’ve ever seen. And he understands the importance of making his crime scene as large as possible. Spares no expense on the yellow tape. Anyone who knows Mooney would have known the condom would be discovered.”
“What about the shoe print?” Alves felt like he was manning a sinking ship. “That was recovered at a crime scene several months and several victims before we focused on Beaulieu.”
“Think about it. If someone was planning on framing Beaulieu, they didn’t decide to do it the day before you interrogated him. The real killer had probably been planning it for months, possibly from the beginning. He may have known how it was all going to end before he even started killing.”
Another blow. More like a kick than a punch. If he subscribed to Bland’s theory, someone-most likely someone Alves knew personally-was responsible, not only for the Blood Bath murders, but for setting up and, in effect, causing Mitch Beaulieu’s suicide. “That doesn’t explain why the killing stopped after Beaulieu was dead.”
“It’s not unusual for a killer to stop for a variety of reasons,” Bland said, “especially an organized killer. If the end game was to kill as many people as he could before police caught his scapegoat, then he had accomplished his goal. He couldn’t then go out and kill more people in the same way. Not without bringing the attention to himself. That doesn’t mean he’s not still killing. Remember, no bodies were ever recovered. We have no idea why he took the bodies or what he did with them. For all we know, he could be doing the same thing, only without leaving a bathtub full of blood for the police to find.”
It was a stunning idea. That the Blood Bath killer could still be out there. The dark and threatening shadow of a terrible idea crossed his mind. Could the Blood Bath Killer also be the Prom Night Killer?
“I’ll FedEx that stuff right away,” Alves said.
The Healey Library at UMass Boston maintained all the student yearbooks from its first graduating class in 1969. Connie discovered that Richard Zardino had never graduated. But the yearbooks were full of the photos of the students around him who did. Connie wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Maybe for a good-looking dark-haired girl. Maybe a name or a face he recognized from Alves’s files. Anything tying Zardino to Kelly Adams. Hours of searching, and there was nothing. Maybe he’d wasted a day off coming here this morning.
Connie took the catwalk to the Registrar’s Office in the new Campus Center, flashed his prosecutor’s badge, and worked his way through the phalanx of state workers guarding the Registrar. A skeleton of a man with tobacco-stained fingers came out from behind a bank of computers.
Connie flashed his credentials again and introduced himself. “I’m conducting a grand jury investigation into a serious matter. I’ll need to see a complete list of students registered to take classes at the time a certain student was enrolled here. We’re looking back ten years,” Connie said.
The Registrar gave a cough that seemed to allow him to speak. “I would need to see a subpoena before I could turn over those kinds of records.”
“I understand. I’ll have my secretary fax one over right now. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait for the records.” Connie took out his cell phone and hit #1 on his speed dial.
Within minutes the Registrar was holding a subpoena under the heading of a John Doe investigation.
“Records just for that one year, 1997-’98,” Connie reminded him.
“Probably take more than an hour. There’s a coffee kiosk on the lower level,” he told Connie as he turned away.
In less than two hours, Connie was back at the library. The printouts listed the names and addresses of every student in attendance that year. Connie sorted through the sheets of names, looking for anything that might be significant.
Connie’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number but he caught it on the second ring. A couple of students stared at him for interrupting their studies, but he was glad to have picked up. It was Luther on the line. He waited while Connie made his way out of the library.
“Mr. Darget,” Luther said, “Rich Zardino and I would like to meet with you.”
“What about?”
“We need to see you in person. We have information on a homicide. It came from some kids we work with. You need to consider this an anonymous tip.”
“When do you want to meet?”
“As soon as you’re available.”
“One hour. At the Victoria Diner.” Connie looked down at the printouts. He flipped to the end of the alphabet.
Richard Zardino.
Residence: 2252 Paris Street
East Boston
Rich Zardino’s address had not changed in more than ten years.
Ray Figgs parked across from Grady’s Barber Shop on Columbus Avenue. The antique barber’s pole was turning and the “OPEN” sign was in the window. Beyond that, there didn’t seem to be any sign that Grady’s was open for business. Figgs checked his reflection in a car window. Good enough for a meeting with Stutter Simpson.
The little bell on the door jingled when Figgs stepped inside. A short, chubby man with a mustache and beard appeared from a door at the back of the shop. Grady. He waved Figgs in and waited for him to step into the back room. He closed the door behind Figgs.
Stutter Simpson sat on the edge of a cot in the small office. There was a duffel bag serving as a pillow at one end of the bed. Stutter had a moth-eaten wool blanket draped around his shoulders. A barbershop hideout. Simpson had been hiding out from the police and his enemies. Figgs had never seen Stutter in the flesh, only in booking photos. The boy looked as though he’d lost twenty pounds since his last drug arrest a year ago. The irony of the situation did not escape Figgs. Simpson’s hair was in serious need of a trim and he hadn’t shaved in a week. Probably the last time he showered, too.
Figgs sat on a little stool across from Stutter’s bed. Let the kid get uncomfortable with the silence, he told himself. Let him make the first move.
“W-w-what chou want with me?” Stutter asked.
No mystery how he got his nickname. The impairment probably accelerated with an injection of nerves. And he was plenty nervous right now. Figgs took his time answering. “I want to talk with you about your brother Junior. I need you to tell me who would have shot him.”
“N-nobody.”
“Let’s try this one. Who wants to kill you?”
“Everybody.”
“Narrow that down for me.”
“I can’t trust no one. My dogs don’t want n-n-nothing to do with me. Think I’m a marked man. Jesse Wilcox’s boys are gunning for me.”
“You have anything to do with Jesse’s death, Stutter?” Figgs asked.
“No, I s-swear.”
“Why haven’t you cooperated with the police in the investigation?”
“Can’t trust Five-O neither. I’m not talking about getting busted. I’m talking about getting p-popped.”
“By Five-O?”
Stutter Simpson nodded. “Some funny shit going on. Only reason I’m meeting you is my moms said you’s okay. You one of us. Says you’ve got a good rep for helping people. I can’t hide out here much longer. Grady’s stressing. Thinks he’s gonna get straightened if I chill here much longer. Look at me, man. I’m living in the back room of a barber shop. Can’t even get a haircut.”
“What do you know about Junior’s death?”
“Heard a van rolled up on him. The kind with the sliding doors on both sides. Smoked out windows. Junior walk right up to it. Someone he knew. Trusted. Then…pop, pop, pop. No chance to jet.”
“You have any idea who was in that van?”
Stutter Simpson nodded. “I told him not to trust no one on the street. So it had to be someone who wasn’t street. That’s all I know.”
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, right?”
“Can’t say what I m-might do. I find who killed Junior, likely, I’ll smoke him.”
“Your mother’s already lost one son.”
“She lost both her sons. Look around, detective. This ain’t no way to live. I’m doing this for her. Least she’ll know her boys went down fighting. Not a couple of bitches. That’s all, and that’s it.”
The kid was scared enough to be telling the truth, Figgs thought. And if what he said was the truth, then Junior Simpson was killed by someone with a badge, or someone like a church worker, a teacher, a parole or probation officer. Someone comfortable in the neighborhood. Someone he trusted.
It was starting to fit into place. It had to be Zardino. It made perfect sense. Connie had been on the computer since he got back from his meeting at the Vic with Luther and Zardino.
The information the two Street Saviors gave him was interesting. Their sources told them that Shawn Tinsley never touched a gun in his life. If that was true, Tracy Ward had lied up the grand jury so he could get a cigarette. Now Tinsley was dead and the shooter-the same one that killed his own friend Ellis Thomas because he thought he’d snitched-was still out there. Connie told Luther and Zardino he’d speak with Figgs and they’d figure out what to do about Michael Rogers, the real shooter.
But that could wait. Connie was focused on the Prom Night Killer, and he’d read every article ever written about Zardino’s arrest and wrongful conviction.
Mooney and Alves had it all wrong. They were focusing on recently released, known sex offenders that went to jail around the time the killings stopped. Their next step would be to look at all recent parolees, no matter what their crime. That was too broad a net to cast.
Did they ever think to look at someone who got out of jail, not because he was paroled, but because he had been exonerated? Rich Zardino fit perfectly. When the first murders were committed, Zardino was a kid with no record. The murders stopped when he was taken into custody. Eight years later, he was kicked loose, exonerated. Then the victims started turning up dead again. But not for two years. What happened during those two years?
Connie’s study of serial killers had taught him the way they think, the way they act, how stressors trigger their acts. Connie sat back down at his computer and Googled the name Zardino. It didn’t take long to find the mother’s obituary.
Rose Zardino. Dead of heart failure. May 7, 2008.
Not six months later, before Columbus Day, 2008, Courtney and Josh, then Nathan and Karen were all dead.
The conversation with Bland had gotten Alves thinking. He remembered what Mooney had said when they were close to catching the Blood Bath Killer. Everyone’s a suspect.
Alves walked into Mooney’s office. “How’d it go with the hypnotist?” he asked before he took a seat.
“Waste of time. It took awhile to get him under. Couldn’t remember anything else about the van,” Mooney said. “I had the BRIC cross-reference our list of sex offenders with the RMV. See if any of them owns a white van. Checked their known relatives. Killer could have borrowed the van. Reached out to the Sex Offender Registry Board too. Got about a dozen level three sex offenders who live in the areas where the vics were last seen. All of them tracked on GPS bracelets. No one anywhere near their exclusion zones, which include parks and playgrounds.”
“You have their addresses?”
“Right here.” Mooney tapped the top folder on his desk. “How’d it go with you?” he asked.
“Still looking into Karen Pine. Checked every roster at BU, every professor, tutor and teaching assistant from every class she ever took. Nothing. I’m going to run all their BOPs,” Alves said. “I’ve got the list of recent DOC releases. If you want, I can focus on parolees with links to the area around your Emerald Necklace.”
“I spent some time trying to figure out who would be interested in Boston’s Emerald Necklace. Called a few people. The Superintendent of the Parks Department for one. He gave us Rangers, tour guides, Duck Tour drivers, even the kids who pedal tourists around on the Swan Boats. Then I tried a professor of American Urban History over at UMass Boston. No hits for students writing theses on the Necklace in the last couple years, although I did learn quite a bit about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. A lot of the workers at the Parks Department have records. You want to start with them or the sex offenders?” Mooney stood up and reached for the jacket hanging on the back of his chair.
Alves had had enough of his quiet house. Late-night cups of coffee alone. No line for the bathroom. He wanted Marcy and the twins back home where they belonged. “Let’s flip a coin. Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked, knowing Mooney never refused anything free.
The early morning sun shone through the windows of the catwalk at UMass Boston. Connie watched the students changing classes. They moved in slow groups, texting and talking on their cell phones.
He’d come prepared with subpoenas for four professors. Zardino’s math teacher was dead, and his psychology and economics professors had nothing to add, as the classes were held in lecture halls with hundreds of students.
One old-timer left to talk to.
He took the elevator to the sixth floor and checked the office schedules on the wall outside the main office. He located the office he was looking for and took a seat at a small round table designed for students to meet with their tutors. On the table was a stack of school newspapers, the Mass Media. He thumbed through the pages full of safety tips: avoid being alone in the deserted spots like the library’s upper floors, and always walk to isolated parking spots with a friend. The school was implementing a Safe Escort program that would operate nights and Saturdays. It was his habit to read everything-from the front page to the sports reports.
He was almost finished when he saw the quarter-page announcement for an upcoming lecture.
Brown Bag Lecture Series
Learn how unjust our criminal justice system is. Meet Rich Zardino, a man who spent eight years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Hear, in his own words, about his nightmare. His is a story told with power and emotion. Don’t miss it.
Cookies and beverages provided by the Anarchists Club
Sponsored by the Philosophy Club
It seemed Richard Zardino was everywhere.
When she finally showed up, herbal tea in hand, Zardino’s silver-haired English professor held Connie up for what seemed like an hour while she dug through old mimeographed files and dusty student essays. But it was worth the time. Richard Zardino, student in English 101, section 18, had written an essay about a myth. “Sleep, and Death, his brother, dwelt in the lower world. Dreams too ascended from there to men. They passed through two gates, one of horn through which true dreams went, one of ivory for false dreams.” The professor had given him an F, with the notation: “Source is Edith Hamilton. Always properly cite your sources.” The plagiarized essay was presented to the Dean of Students, who promptly ruled that Richard Zardino receive an F for a class grade.
Within a month, Kelly Adams and Eric Flowers were dead.
No one would be in the office yet, not on a Saturday morning… except for one person.
It was a little after seven a.m. when Connie stepped into the assignment office where the closed case files were archived. Jason Reece had worked in the office for close to twenty years. He had started in the assignment office out of college, and he took his job seriously. He was the first one in every day, including Saturdays, making sure he kept the information in his database active.
Every time he went near Jason’s office, Connie stopped in to say hello and chat. A rabid Bruins fan, Jason was always willing to talk about the good old days when the NHL let the Black and Gold inflict a lot more black and blue. His ultimate fantasy would be an early ’70s home game at the old Garden-not an unobstructed seat in the house-with the Philadelphia Flyers, the Broad Street Bullies, in town to take on the Big Bad Bruins. Every hockey fan in Boston knew they would never witness that style of hockey again.
“Hey, Jay,” Connie called out. But Jason wasn’t at his desk. He was in, though. Otherwise the door would have been locked. Not so much to protect the files that were stored there, but the Bruins memorabilia on the walls. They were covered with autographed photos and sticks and pucks. There was a 1972 pennant signed by Derek Sanderson, Bobby Orr and Pie McKenzie and a framed, autographed Cam Neely jersey.
“What’s up, Connie?” Jason popped out of the back room where the case files were stored. “You’re here early.”
“I’m trying to draft an opposition to a motion for a new trial that’s due next week. Could you pull a file for me? It has some good motions and oppositions that I can use as samples.”
“Case name, buddy?”
“It’s an old one, but the motions were just heard within the last few years. I’m hoping you haven’t sent it off to the state archives. Defendant’s name is Richard Zardino.”
“I remember that one. He got a new trial.”
Connie nodded. “The DA eventually had us assent to the motion. Then we dismissed the case. But the motions that were filed early on were good. Mind if I take a look through the file? I’ll get it back to you Monday morning, first thing.”
“No hurry. Keep it as long as you want. Let me see if I still have it.”
“Jason,” Connie called. “Nine days, thirteen hours, and fifteen minutes.”
“You’re the man, Connie,” Jason called back. “Can’t wait for that first puck to drop.”
Alves lay in bed listening to the comforting sound of the shower running. The twins would wake up any minute. Then everyone would rush around getting ready for church, just like it used to be, before the killings started again. And after church, there was the big dinner at Marcy’s mother’s house, where Marcy and the twins were bunking out. They were back for the weekend-so Marcy could catch up on the laundry and her paperwork for school. Give him a taste of all he was missing.
Even with all the pleasant distractions, Alves couldn’t keep his mind off work. After his conversation with John Bland, he understood that it was at least a possibility that Mitch Beaulieu was not the Blood Bath Killer. That meant that someone else was. Because his old friend from the neighborhood, Robyn Stokes, was one of that killer’s victims, he couldn’t talk to Marcy about his doubts. Robyn had been one of Marcy’s best friends growing up, and Marcy was already nerved up enough about the Prom Night killings, never mind rehashing cases they all considered closed.
The last person he could talk to was Wayne Mooney. Mooney hated the feds. His last face-to-face meeting with John Bland and his partner had ended in a dustup of epic proportions. He’d basically thrown the feds off the case and gotten himself launched to Evidence Management. Besides, the Blood Bath case was closed. Solved. Why open up all the grief for the victims’ families and friends? For the Department? Still…
It bothered Alves not to tell Marcy. Despite their recent problems, they had a strong marriage. They trusted each other and kept no secrets. He couldn’t think of any other way to put it. They knew each other at the core.
The shower stopped and he could hear Marcy singing “Winter Wonderland.” Down the hall, he could hear the twins giggling. Slowly, things would return to normal. It would be great to sit in the stuffy church, go through the paces-up-down-kneel-stand. Great to offer a silent prayer that his family seemed to be coming through the horror of the past few weeks. His wife was humming, his children were outside the bedroom door, arguing over which one of them got to turn the doorknob. In that peaceful moment of thankfulness, a thought came to him.
How do you find out who a man really is?
Simple enough.
You go talk to the woman.
Wayne Mooney knew he was ambitious, trying to make the run from the Common to Franklin Park, taking the scenic route along the Emerald Necklace. It had to be five miles, maybe closer to seven or eight. A gorgeous Sunday afternoon in late September might not have been the best time for him to make the journey. People were everywhere, with kids in strollers, on bikes, riding Razors, and those sneakers with the wheels. It was a freaking obstacle course.
The killer wouldn’t be setting up his couples now. He would wait until dark, during the quiet time, somewhere between midnight and four in the morning. Any earlier, he could run into people coming home from a night out. Any later and he’d likely be spotted by some early bird runner, a newspaper delivery man. Mooney needed to talk to the Commissioner about borrowing some bodies from the Strike Force, setting them up at strategic locations around the Necklace. But which locations?
The killer had started out at the Fens. He’d skipped the Common, the Public Garden and Commonwealth Mall. Why? Too wide open, heavily populated with the homeless, runaways, and the elderly. Then he goes from the Fens to the Riverway. Next stop Olmsted Park, where Mooney was right now, where the MDC skating rink used to be.
Then he stops killing for ten years. Logically, he should pick up where he left off. Jamaica Pond should be next. Sure, there are houses around the perimeter, but there are still secluded spots that would create beautiful backdrops. But he skips the Pond and starts working from the other end of the Necklace. Why? Why go to Franklin Park then the Arboretum? Why start working back in the opposite direction?
As Mooney jogged down the hill toward the Jamaica Pond, he saw the boathouse, some of the sailboats already tipped over in neat lines, in preparation for winter. He saw the groomed walking paths, the woods surrounding the pond, the thick shadows cast on the little spans of neat grass. This had to be the next spot. Besides the risky spots near the Common, Jamaica Pond was the one Jewel missing in the killer’s Necklace. This was where the killer would come next.
Michael Rogers felt something warm and sticky on the ground under him. His legs were useless and it hurt to use his arms. His insides were messed up pretty good, otherwise he wouldn’t be tasting blood in his mouth, coughing it up from his lungs.
His legs had gone numb the second he heard the shot. If he had only seen the van coming down Walnut. He’d gone behind that thorn bush to take a leak. When he stepped back under the street light, the van was parked not ten feet away. The sliding side door was already open. Funny thing, he hadn’t heard it slide. And the interior lights weren’t lit. Right away he knew something was wrong, but he hadn’t had time to run. No time to reach for his toast. It had happened so fast.
The first shot tore into his gut. He felt the burning in his back and belly, but nothing else. Once he hit the ground, he was useless.
The dude that got out of the van had a dark hoodie drawn tight around his face, black gloves and jeans. Maybe dude was one of Tracy Ward’s crew, maybe one of Ellis Thomas’s cousins. Payback. But he couldn’t make out anything familiar about him. Not even his walk.
Michael Rogers wanted to see his face. He tried to tell the shooter, but the words wouldn’t come out. Only choking and more blood. He tried to gather enough saliva in his mouth to spit, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t afraid to take chrome to the dome. But he wanted to see who the shooter was first.
Dude stood over him for what seemed like the longest time before he took the heater out of his waist and aimed it down at his head. Then Dude opened up his hoodie enough so the street light lit half his face.
Michael Rogers nodded.
At least he had an answer.
Figgs spotted something. A small shiny object threw back the light of his flashlight. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt in the mulch groundcover of the playground. Michael Rogers was lying ten feet away in this quiet corner of Mothers’ Peace Park. Ironic. What mother would be at peace knowing her kids were playing here? At night, this kiddie playground was the most dangerous area of the park. Surrounded by tall shrubs and isolated from neighbors by an old church on one side and a school across the street, it offered the perfect seclusion necessary for drug dealing.
Aside from the first responders who found the body, no one had been in or out of the playground. Figgs had ordered everyone to stand by while he made a cursory walk-through. He reached forward and picked up the object. A shell casing:.40 caliber. He placed it back down where he had found it. His knee popped as he stood up: another sign of aging.
Figgs made his way toward the patrol supervisor from District B-2. He motioned toward the broken street lights. “We need the lighting crew out here. Ballistics, too. Sergeant Stone, if you can get him.”
Michael Rogers lay on the mulch, eyes staring skyward, a dark bullet hole in his forehead. The blood pooling beneath him was thick and glistening. Another mother had lost another son. Another mother’s life would come to nothing but grief here in what was supposed to be a place of healing.
It was almost noon on Monday before Connie entered the main office of East Boston High, flashed his badge, and asked to speak with the headmaster.
The weekend had been productive. He’d spent time in his basement going through the two archive boxes that made up Commonwealth v. Richard Zardino. Police reports, grand jury minutes, trial transcripts, motions for new trial. Everything.
Zardino had been set up good. The prosecution had a single witness who testified that Zardino had murdered a local thug. The witness had a bad record, and that came out at trial. What didn’t come out was that he was an FBI informant who caught a break for trafficking guns and drugs. The witness had to have been looking at thirty years, on a good day. To give him a break on a serious case, the feds needed something big in return. Information that helped solve a murder was good. But testifying for the prosecution at a murder trial was winning the Triple Crown.
When the information became public, a judge allowed Zardino’s motion for a new trial. The DA decided not to prosecute the case and Zardino was free. Since he’d been exonerated, his name would not appear on a list of parolees from the DOC.
That’s why Mooney and Alves had overlooked Zardino as a suspect.
He’d returned the files to Jason Reece early enough, but it had been almost ten o’clock before he reached his contact at the School Department. The power of another grand jury subpoena, and he had records showing Zardino’s school assignments from elementary through high school. And he’d confirmed that the first two victims hadn’t attended the Boston Public Schools.
On the drive through the Ted, Connie had thought how there was a lot of information in old yearbooks, most of it useless, until you needed a youthful detail on a person that could only be found in those depositories of nostalgia.
The headmaster was a small, tidy woman wearing the kind of dark suit a politician might wear. Connie flashed his badge and she was on the phone, requesting a copy of the yearbook from Zardino’s graduation year, 1997, the year before the murders began.
“Could you tell me again why you need this yearbook, Mr. Darget?” she asked while they waited. She was so slight she seemed to float when she moved.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. A grand jury investigation is a secret proceeding. To protect the innocent more than anything else. Suppose I tell you I’m looking for information on a Jane or John Doe and my investigation ultimately turns up nothing,” Connie wanted to soften her up, win her over to his side. “You would still know that we investigated that person and it might damage his or her reputation.”
Her assistant appeared with the book, and the headmaster held it close to her chest like armor. She didn’t offer it to Connie. “I understand, Mr. Darget. But I would have to make some calls first.” She still held the book close. “I’m the one getting sued if a student’s privacy is violated.”
Connie reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “What I have here is a grand jury subpoena with your name on it, ma’am. It would require you to appear and bring whatever records I request.” Connie watched the look of concern deepen on her clear face. No makeup, just a hint of shine on her thin lips. Nobody liked going to court to testify. It was an inherent fear in people.
“I don’t think that’s-”
“Why don’t you let me look at the book today, here, on premises. If I find what I’m looking for, you’re all set. No need to testify. If, on the other hand, you feel uncomfortable with that, I can see you up the grand jury tomorrow at One Pemberton Square, downtown.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Darget.” She handed him the book. “Let me find you someplace where you can look through this in private.”
“I may need to make some photocopies if I find anything useful.”
“Of course. Anything you need.”
Ten minutes later Connie was sitting in an empty teachers’ lounge going through the book. He didn’t want to miss anything.
There wasn’t much to miss. Zardino wasn’t the most popular guy. No pictures of him except for his yearbook portrait. Age had carved some measure of distinction into the puffy adolescent face. His features were more defined now, his eyes no longer downcast in teenage angst. The Richard Zardino Connie knew had made the best of his prison years, his face a map of his hard-earned successes. His eye, droopy in the old studio photo, now looked more like a trophy from a prison brawl.
But the text below his photo was what Connie had been looking for.
Nickname: Richie
Activities: Stage crew, Photography Club
Ambition: To marry the girl of my dreams
Favorite Quote: The arms of night restrain both men and immortals.
Connie heard the bell, followed by the sounds of kids shuffling from one class to the next, of shrill screams and laughter, the slamming of locker doors.
That quote. The other kids had things like Life is what you make it and To be half the man my father is. Zardino went for something from a classics class. At East Boston High? And that girl of his dreams. Was she real or imaginary?
Alves waited outside the classroom in Austin Hall until her law students had filtered out. Sonya Jordan stood at the front of the room packing her bag.
“Can I help you?” she asked without looking up.
“I’d like to talk with you about Mitch Beaulieu,” he said.
As she looked up, he saw a flash of recognition in her eyes. Then she went back to arranging her notebooks and textbook in her bag.
“I only need a few minutes of your time,” he persisted.
“I asked for a few minutes of your time three years ago. I tried to tell you about Mitch, to explain that he wasn’t capable of doing the things you believed he had done. I wanted to convince you that he was a good man, his only mistake was trusting whoever it was that set him up. You didn’t want to listen then. You, Detective Alves, treated me like some dumb bitch girlfriend in denial of her boyfriend’s criminal behavior.”
The anger in her voice stunned him into near silence. “I’m sorry,” was all he could manage.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Detective. You and your boss were so hell-bent on closing your case, putting it into the solved column, that you didn’t want to hear the truth. You had your man. All the better, a black man. Mitch Beaulieu was dead, and his suicide was as good as a confession. Now you come in here and think I’m going to speak with you?”
Sonya Jordan had the reputation as a fierce defender of her clients and as a brilliant but difficult lawyer. Alves had to get through to her. “I lost someone, too. One of the victims, Robyn Stokes. My wife Marcy and I grew up with her.”
Sonya Jordan looked away for a moment. “Marisela Alves is your wife?”
Alves nodded. “How do you know Marcy?”
“I represented Richard Zardino in his appeals. He and I make the rounds of the area colleges and law schools, letting students know about the injustices inherent in our criminal justice system. I speak with her classes at UMass Boston every semester. I didn’t know she was married to a cop.”
Alves smarted at the pejorative word. Cop. “Opposites attract.” Alves smiled.
Sonya Jordan didn’t. “What do you want from me?”
Alves knew what he had to say. And he knew that once he said the words out loud, they could never be taken back. No matter what the collateral damage. “I have to ask you to keep this conversation confidential, Ms. Jordan. At least for now. I think I might have been wrong about Mitch.”