Michael worked through the afternoon, through dinner, through most of the evening at the Strangler Bureau, which was located in the state capitol building on Beacon Hill. He had set himself the task of combing through the murder books again, for details that DeSalvo had got wrong in his confession. DeSalvo’s confession was bogus. The more Michael thought about it, the more certain he became. It was not just that DeSalvo was wrong on the facts; his tone was wrong. Too eager, too quick to please. Too grandiose and expansive-the telltale exuberant falseness of a bullshitter. Wamsley had bought it, but maybe it was not too late. Maybe Michael could bring his boss around.
“Hey.”
Michael looked up to see Amy standing in his office doorway. She was still wearing her work dress. Her coat was draped over her arms. She slipped the heel of her foot out of her shoe and back in-tired, achy feet after a long day.
“Don’t you people lock your doors?”
“Don’t have to. We’re the cops. Who would steal from the cops?”
“Me. Some of those files out there…Imagine the headline: ‘From the Secret Files of the Strangler Bureau.’”
He groaned.
“No, no-‘From the Desk of Top Cop Michael Daley.’” She laughed.
“Alright, alright, I’ll lock the door. I didn’t know I was alone.”
“What are you working on?”
“I’d rather not say. You know, to a reporter.”
“Ah. Sounds fascinating. Well, I’m not just a reporter. I’m family too, right?”
“You’re shameless.”
“Can’t help it. It’s a job requirement.”
“Well, at the moment you can’t be both. If you’re a reporter, I have to keep my mouth shut.” Michael dropped a stack of photos on the desk. “I wish I could talk, believe me.”
“Okay, then. I’m not a reporter. What’s wrong, Michael?” Amy had to remind herself over and over that Michael was different from his brothers, easier to read, more exposed than Ricky, easier to wound than Joe.
“Amy, if I knew something, something that could maybe be dangerous…”
“Knew what?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
“Tell me. What’s the big secret?”
He dodged the question. “I don’t know how you do this, look at this gore every day.”
“You keep your distance.”
“What if that doesn’t work?”
“You make it work. Michael, what is it?”
He shook his head.
“Come on, how bad can it be?”
A beat.
He regarded her. “DeSalvo’s not the Strangler.”
Another beat.
She said, “How could you know that for sure?”
“The confession was a travesty. Wamsley practically fed him the answers, and he still got half his facts wrong. If you’d been there, you’d understand. DeSalvo isn’t a murderer. He’s got a short record. No prior history of rape or assault, barely any violence at all until these new charges in Cambridge. And there’s no physical evidence linking him to any of the stranglings-blood, fingerprints, witnesses, nothing. I could make a stronger case against a half dozen other guys than I can against DeSalvo, confession or no confession.”
“What about the other people there? Did they believe him?”
“Not the cops. Just Wamsley. Unfortunately it’s his call to make. George has always thought there’s only one strangler. Now he thinks he’s found him. Probably he’s scared shitless of not solving the case or of trying it to a not-guilty. That’d be his epitaph, and he knows it: the man who let the Boston Strangler get away.”
“Could be yours, too, if you’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong.”
Amy nodded.
“At least I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“So if DeSalvo’s not the Strangler, who is?”
“Nast maybe. Maybe someone we’ve never heard of. I don’t know.”
“Jesus. So what do you do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you say nothing, and some other girl gets killed while DeSalvo is still locked up, then what? Could you live with yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lot of I-don’t-knows.”
“I know.”
Amy smiled. “You know what your dad said to me once? A cop with a bad conscience is the worst kind of cop, because he knows better.”
“I don’t have a bad conscience.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
“What do you think I should do, Amy?”
“You’ll think I’m selfish.”
“Probably.”
“You have to tell. If the Strangler’s really still out there, if you really believe that, then you have to let people know. Otherwise, what will you say to the next girl’s mother when she asks why you knew about the danger but did nothing to stop it?”
“So who do I tell? The cops know already.”
“Keep telling them, I guess.”
“And what if no one listens?”
“Then what else can you do? Tell a reporter.”
“Hm. If only I knew one.”
“I could keep your name out of it. Call you a ‘highly placed, reliable source,’ something like that.”
“They’d know. I already told Wamsley to his face. He knows how I feel.”
“Well, you think about it, Michael. That’s a hell of a secret to have to carry around. I couldn’t do it.”
“No? Will you keep it secret, Amy? You’re not going to write this?”
She smiled again but did not answer. “Can I tell you something, Michael? Of the three of you boys, I like you best.”
“That’s not exactly what I asked you.”
“I mean it. I like you best.”
“Great. I’ll be sure to tell Ricky.”
“You’re the best one. You’ll make the right decision. I’m not so sure the other two would. But you? You’re good.”
“You’re manipulating me.”
“Maybe. But I’m not lying.”
He thought it over. “Fuck it. Go ahead and write it. What the hell. I liked it better in Eminent Domain anyway.”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“We’ll see.”
“You know, there’s something I need to talk about, too. A family thing.”
“Ricky?”
“No. Brendan.”
“I thought you said family.”
Amy sat down. She put her coat aside, slid forward, and laid her forearm on the desk. “Michael, we’ve never really talked about this.”
He avoided her eyes to muffle the little thrill of Amy, her directness, the outlandish possibility of a frank conversation about his family, the intimate pleasure of a shared confidence. She was so close. So close.
Amy wiggled further forward, to the very edge of her seat. “You don’t like Brendan.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“Do you think Brendan did something wrong?”
“Wrong like what?”
“You know what I mean. Be honest.”
“I just don’t like him hanging around my mother, that’s all.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s enough.”
“Michael, I need to tell you something. I see how you act around Brendan. I know how you feel; I don’t like him either. I never trusted him, never wanted him around you three boys, and I certainly never wanted him anywhere near your mother. If he ever lifted a finger to her, I swear I’d kill him. Your dad had Brendan pegged.”
“Pegged as what?”
“A cop with a bad conscience.”
“So,” he demanded, “what’s the big secret about Brendan?” He imagined Amy had in mind some petty corruption Brendan might have indulged in. The sort of Boston mischief that only the newspapers cared about-and even they did not care much.
“Michael, what do you think about the way your father was killed?”
“I’m against it.”
“I’m serious, dammit. Do you believe it happened the way Brendan says it did?”
“Why not?”
“Two experienced cops, Homicide detectives, go searching for a suspect. They go down to the docks in East Boston looking for a witness, some street kid who lives there, twelve, thirteen years old. They find the kid, he runs, they chase. Kid squirts down an alley, Joe Senior runs in after him while Brendan lags behind. Joe Senior turns the corner, kid shoots him once, in the chest-and Joe Senior is dead, bullet in the heart. Now Brendan hears the shot and, disregarding his own safety, he barrels around the corner, too, to help his partner. Kid shoots a second time, hits Brendan in the gut, and Brendan goes down, again with a single shot. Kid takes off.”
“That’s the story.”
“Do you believe it?”
“It happens.”
“Do you know how hard it is to kill a man with a handgun, with one shot, on the run? It’s hard even to disable someone with one bullet. It’s John Wayne stuff-bang, you’re dead. Only in the movies. The fact is, to kill a man with one shot you need to be very lucky or very accurate. You have to hit the head or the heart. That’s not easy when you’re both running in a panic. But this young kid puts two cops down with just two shots, on the move, killing one? Doesn’t sound right.”
“So he got lucky.”
“Twice?”
“It happens.”
“Not like that. Once is lucky. Twice? Impossible.”
She looked Michael square in the eyes until he looked away.
“And another thing: why didn’t Brendan get up and run after the kid? Why’d he let the kid get away?”
“Because he was shot. He nearly died in the hospital.”
“That was later. Internal bleeding, then an infection. Those are complications. Neither was true when he was lying there, letting that kid run right past him.
“Then, when the Homicide guys interviewed Brendan in the hospital, he gives them nothing. Just a vague description: skinny, teenage, Negro. When in doubt, just say the magic word ‘Negro’ and the Boston PD goes running.”
“They’d never seen the kid before. They were following a tip. What do you expect?”
“I expect an experienced cop like Brendan Conroy would have described the kid better. A cop is a professional witness. If it really went down the way Brendan says it did, he’d have done better than some faceless mystery Negro. Besides, how is it that no one else saw the kid? Come on-a Negro kid in that neighborhood would have stuck out like a raisin in a bowl of milk. So where is he? How come they never found him?”
“Okay, I give up. So who’s the kid who shot him?”
Her response was a simple, level look.
“The Negro kid?”
“Michael. There is no kid.”
“So who…?”
“Brendan. It was Brendan.”
“You sure it wasn’t Oswald?”
“Michael, this didn’t just come to me. I’ve been digging into it for a year.”
“So where’s the gun? If Brendan and my dad were alone in that alley, where’s the gun? They never found it.”
“Brendan could have dumped the gun anywhere. He had plenty of time.”
“Okay, so if Brendan shot my dad, who shot Brendan?”
“Brendan shot your dad, then himself.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Michael, did you know Brendan once shot a suspect in the side, right here”-she pointed to her side, just above the hip bone-“and the bullet passed right through, in and out, barely slowed the guy down at all. I have the file.”
“But Brendan was shot right in the gut, here, not here.”
“It’s not so easy to shoot yourself accurately. Not if your goal is to survive. The bullet entered Brendan’s body on a slightly downward trajectory, moving from his right to his left-just as it would if Brendan was holding the gun in his right hand. His shirt was singed by the discharge, he was shot at such close range. A few feet at the most. If Brendan weren’t a cop, they’d have thrown out his whole story based on just the physical evidence.”
“How about the motive? Brendan and my old man were best friends for twenty years. They were like brothers. Why would Brendan want to kill him? Lust for Margaret Daley? Greed for the Daley fortune?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out. Yet.”
“Wow.” Michael sighed.
“I know. Wow.”
“No, I mean, ‘Wow, you’re a lunatic.’”
“It sounds crazy, I know. But look, you’re the only one I can tell, Michael. Ricky would think I’m insane, and Joe would just kill Brendan with no questions asked. You’re the only one I can talk to. Tell me you believe me. Tell me at least you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay. That’s a start.”
“So what’ll you do next?”
“What would you do, Michael?”
“Tell, I guess. Tell Mum, at least. If she’s climbing into bed every night with her husband’s murderer…”
“She’ll never believe it.”
“No. She won’t.”
Amy smiled.
Oh, she was close!
“Look, Michael, I’m going to go write up that DeSalvo story, if you’re still willing. It’s not too late. I’ll get it in for tomorrow. We’ll talk about this later?”
“Sure.”
She got up to leave. “You know, I meant what I said. You really are the good one.”
He said nothing. Just looked at her.
“See you later, Michael.”
The next morning’s Observer blared “Tec in Strangle Probe Voices Doubt.” Arthur Nast’s grainy mug shot appeared on page one, right next to DeSalvo’s. The story carried the familiar joint byline of Amy Ryan and Claire Downey. It was sourced to “a highly placed official speaking on condition of anonymity.”
It was the last story Amy Ryan ever wrote.