by Brian Shea
Even though Boston was all one city, downtown felt slightly foreign to Kelly, the Dorchester native. It was an amalgamation of businessmen and college students from all over the world and had a much bigger feel than his hometown neighborhood. Although he loved the city in its entirety, whenever he was downtown, he always felt a sense of disconnect.
His badge swung freely as he ducked under the tape and nodded to one of the watch guards standing nearby before making his way along the outskirts of the scene to Barnes and Parker.
His gaze scanned over to where the pop tent had been erected, and he saw the dead man’s form standing out against the white of the snow he had collapsed into. He figured it was better to check in with his partner and shift supervisor to get a feel for the scene before he approached.
"Michael Kelly slumming it tonight, hanging with us hoity-toity types," Parker said in jest, knowing Kelly's general disdain for the area.
"Just doing my part to keep the rich folk safe," he said with a laugh. The banter was always the same, regardless of the weather. Detectives and patrolmen always had their one-liner shticks when in the uncomfortable presence of death or working the early stages of a crime scene. It was a way of breaking the ice, creating a norm out of the abnormal.
"What’ve we got?" Kelly asked.
Barnes spoke, summarizing whatever she had discussed with the sergeant and putting it into Homicide terms. "Our stiff over there was apparently making a withdrawal. At least that’s the best guess. The machine still had the printed receipt sticking out of it. He's got three stab wounds. One to the stomach, two to the back. No weapon located on patrol’s initial response. And no witnesses."
"Well then, what was all that about with Sutherland saying we had a witness detained?"
"Guess there was a miscommunication," Parker said, inserting himself into the conversation.
"So, no witnesses?"
"Well, not per se,” Barnes said. “We’ve got somebody detained who was with our dead guy earlier in the night. Apparently, he left the bar and wandered off. He was drunk and pissed off."
"So how did he end up at the ATM?" Kelly asked, mostly to himself.
"I guess that's what you detectives are going to have to figure out," Parker said. "Scene wide enough for you?"
"Good enough right now. I'll know more in a few minutes once I do a little quick walk-through and see what we have. I don't want to adjust anything until the crime scene unit gets here. When it comes to manipulation of a crime scene, I like to default to my technicians, and Charles will be here."
"Sounds like you're in good hands. I'll go talk to my guys, tell them to hold the scene. We're here for whatever you need. Shift change is at seven, but we can stay late. You know, my guys wouldn't mind a little bit of overtime, especially when it's just standing by a piece of tape. They live for those kinds of gigs," Parker said. "Maybe not so much on a cold snowy day, but overtime is overtime."
Kelly nodded. He knew many cops lived beyond their means and supplemented their white-collar lifestyle with blue-collar work with excessive amounts of overtime. Kelly didn’t do the job for the money. The only overtime he ever accumulated was forced on him by the investigations he worked.
A squeak of brakes cut the stillness. Kelly turned his head and saw Ray Charles pull the crime scene van to a stop near his Caprice. The technician stepped from his vehicle and took a long drag from the cigarette hanging from his mouth. He'd been doing this job for a long time and would never contaminate a scene with a cigarette butt, so he put it out before he entered the world of the dead.
He had a cup of coffee in his hand, homemade. His wife's special brew, as he called it. He washed down the taste of the nicotine with the hot, black liquid. Steam came from his mouth as he exhaled, and he huffed his way over to Kelly and Barnes, who were waiting by the tape to greet him.
"Glad you could make it so quickly, Ray."
"I wouldn't miss it for the world." He rolled his eyes. "What have we got?"
This time it was Kelly's turn to summarize the information. It was like a game of telephone, but instead of the story getting more convoluted with each retelling, it became more refined and concise.
After Kelly finished his summation, Charles said, "Let's take the walk."
The three approached in tandem to where the body lay underneath the canopy. The snow shifted to an icy sleet, clattering noisily against the top of the plastic tarp, like the sound of gravel against a windshield.
"Beautiful weather we're having today," Charles said in jest.
The body lay face down, the man’s left arm contorted to the side and his right arm outstretched above his head. His legs were sprawled out, separating in a split.
"Would you look at that?" Charles said.
Kelly and Barnes scanned the snow-covered ground, hoping to see a piece of evidence.
"What do you see, Ray?" Kelly asked.
"It looks like he's making a snow angel." With thirty years of working the dead, the senior crime scene tech’s sarcastic, dark humor found a way to rear its ugly head in the first few minutes of the crime scene.
"Have you been working on that one the whole way here?"
"Pretty much," Ray said, taking a swig of his coffee. "I'm glad you liked it.”
“Let’s get started, shall we?" Barnes asked.
"I just need to grab my gear.” Charles switched to a more serious tone.
"Me too," Kelly said.
The three broke off and headed back to their respective vehicles to gather the items they would need to effectively process the scene.
14
Photos and overalls were completed. The body had been rolled, giving Charles more ammo for his dark humor arsenal. The senior tech commented that rolling the heavyset, middle-aged man was like making the iconic Frosty the Snowman.
The information provided by the street boss, Sergeant Parker, had been accurate up to this point. Three distinct stab wounds. One deep puncture in the lower abdomen, right of the center, just above the hip line. The two entry points in the back were higher up. Charles surmised the wound left of the spinal column had been driven in deep. Conjecture, when at the hands of experience, moved a case forward instead of requiring them to wait for the autopsy report. Charles believed this wound, if deep enough, would have penetrated the chest cavity near the heart and was most likely the killing blow. Kelly saw no indication to the contrary.
The white snow surrounding the corpse was now soaked in the dead man's dark blood. With the close-in scene complete, all photographs and evidence collected, the body was now shrouded by a yellow tarp and awaiting the arrival of the ME’s office to make the removal.
The gray morning light would be breaking soon, and with it, the commuters would begin heading to work. The media vans had arrived, beginning their breaking news broadcasts under the glow of several bright spotlights. Thankfully, the body was obscured from view.
They hadn't located the murder weapon. As luck would have it, the perp had left a trail of blood that arced in the direction of School Street. The gap between each droplet widened as they progressed away from the body, indicating the suspect picked up the pace.
When they first arrived on scene, Kelly noticed a series of footprints in the snow around the body, freshly coated by the falling snow. Casting a footprint was impossible in snow, but by using proper angles and light coupled with a measurement tool for reference, usable photographs could be obtained. One shoe print had remained relatively undisturbed, protected from the sleet by the canopy. Charles captured the image before it was lost to nature. Definitely not boot treads, meaning the print didn’t belong to the responding officers; rather, it was a zigzagged sneaker tread measuring roughly nine inches.
The blood droplets were lined with triangulated orange evidence markers, photographed, and samples were collected. The direction of travel led toward the Faneuil Hall Marketplace.
"We're going to need to get that ATM video footage," Kelly said, staring at a bank’s business front
. Adjacent to that was a narrow alleyway that would be the perfect spot for somebody to lie in wait in the darkness.
"I'm already on it," Barnes said. "I put a call in to the bank’s emergency after-hours number. I left a voicemail, so hopefully we’ll get a call back soon. Worst-case scenario, we'll wait until the bank opens and we should be able to access it then."
The receipt sticking out of the ATM had been retrieved.
"Well, we have a pretty damn good timestamp for when this occurred, or at least a close approximate." A transaction for $160 was processed and completed at 2:12 a.m.
No wallet was found on the victim. The detainee, one Charlotte Dupree, who claimed to be the dead man's friend, said his name was Jason Palmer, age forty-eight, of Medford, Massachusetts. When asked why they were in downtown Boston, she said that they were just catching up over a couple of drinks at a bar in Faneuil Hall.
Barnes took the lead on the field interview, quickly breaking the woman down and punching holes in the story. Dupree conceded she and Palmer were having an affair and had met for drinks after a business meeting Palmer had earlier in the day. But during the course of the evening, Palmer had told her that he was ending their relationship and returning to his wife.
He had stormed out of the bar, saying he was going to Uber his way home. When Barnes asked why he would be using the ATM, Dupree explained that Palmer typically paid for anything related to their romantic trysts in cash. Harder for the wife to track. Apparently the two had racked up an impressive bar tab, and Palmer needed the cash to cover the spread for his ride from downtown Boston to the suburbs of Medford. According to the mistress’s narrative, Palmer’s wife had grown increasingly suspicious in recent months, part of the reason he’d decided to put an end to their relationship.
Dupree vehemently defended the position that Palmer’s wife had anything to do with his death. For a mistress, she was surprisingly protective of the now-widowed spouse. Kelly figured the guilt was confronting her under the circumstances.
Dupree’s story, told in dramatic fashion, boiled down to the simple fact the two had been drunk and disagreed on the status of their relationship’s future. She said Palmer made his angry departure just before last call while she remained and had another drink to wash away her anger. Kelly made a note to confirm this on her bar tab. But in reading the distraught mistress’s non-verbal cues, he didn’t note anything of suspicion.
She had waited in the back of a marked cruiser for the better part of ninety minutes while Kelly and his team processed the scene. Kelly didn’t want her input to slant his investigative eye; he needed to absorb the evidence the picture painted without any taint.
During that time, Dupree’s intoxication had slowly transitioned to a brutal hangover. She told Barnes that once the lights went on in the bar, the not-so-subtle reminder for patrons to make their way to the door, Dupree became desperate to talk with Palmer. She called him but he didn’t answer. A simple enough check of the phone records would confirm this. Kelly noted it.
In some strange act of desperation that even Dupree couldn’t quite fathom, she ran out into the snowy Boston night in search of her lover. Kelly figured the overindulgence in martinis provided the push needed to make such a decision. After wandering the area looking for Palmer, Dupree said she came upon the red and blue strobes of the BPD cruiser.
Kelly had learned from Sergeant Parker that a unit patrolling the post-bar crowd saw the man down and stopped to check on him, assuming he was either a homeless person or a drunk passed out in the snow. Charlotte Dupree had run up and melted down at the sight of Palmer’s body.
After concluding her account of the time she’d spent with Palmer, Dupree asked if anything she said would be used in a police report. Barnes fielded the question, saying most of what they talked about could be redacted and she’d only be needed if and when the case proceeded to a jury trial. The reality was, Palmer’s wife would be privy to the case, if not while it was ongoing, then at least at its conclusion, receiving the devastating news that on the night her husband of twenty-six years died, he was in the midst of ending a long-time affair. Salt in an open wound.
There was no speculation that Dupree had anything to do with the murder. The first officer on scene described her as distraught and utterly shocked that the man she had just dined with and consumed copious amounts of drinks with was now dead. Gathering exculpatory evidence was also important, and so Charles had taken DNA swabs of her fingernails.
After Dupree was released from the scene, Barnes informed her that they would be in touch if they needed anything further.
"Looks random," Kelly said.
"Possibly. Maybe crime of opportunity, drunk guy at an ATM, somebody walking by. Why knife him, though? Why not just take his money? Why kill him?"
"I don't know. People do stupid things. A lot of the reasons behind the why wouldn't matter much anyway, right? The wallet missing makes me lean toward robbery."
Sutherland called, asking for an update.
“Looks like a street robbery gone bad,” Kelly said. “We grabbed some good potential evidence and a usable shoe print. ATM footage gives us a timestamp, and hopefully when we hear back from the bank, we'll have access to the video footage that'll give us something we can use to help ID our doer."
"All right, sounds good. Just keep me posted."
In the background, Kelly heard one of the patrolmen yell, "Found something over here."
"Hold on, Sarge." Kelly lowered the phone and walked over. Across the street, outside the boundaries of the yellow police tape, a patrolman stood beside a trashcan near the T station entrance. The gates were closed to the Blue and Orange Line connector rail.
"What do you got?" Kelly asked as he walked closer.
The patrolman pointed his flashlight into the trashcan. Good cops had good instincts, and apparently this young officer fell into that category, making use of his time as he waited for his shift to end.
Following the beam of light into the can, Kelly saw a brown leather billfold. "Got a wallet," he called out.
Charles walked up to them. "All right, give me a second. I'll photo it in place. We'll mark it with a placard, then retrieve it."
A few minutes later, all was done.
Kelly had half-forgotten his sergeant was still on the line.
"What is it?" Sutherland said, only getting one side of the conversation, most of which had likely been muffled by Kelly’s hand.
"Recovered a wallet. It’s our victim's. I'm guessing our perp dumped it on the run. Maybe we'll get something usable off this."
"Maybe, maybe not. It's cold as hell tonight. The guy probably had gloves on," Sutherland said in his gruff voice.
"Hey, trust in a little Irish luck once in a while, Sarge."
"It didn't get us anywhere on the Tomlin case, did it?"
A biting blow but one Kelly took in stride. For all intents and purposes, Sutherland was right. No amount of Kelly luck had prevailed in locating The Penitent One.
"Well, maybe I'm due." Kelly clicked off, then turned to the senior crime scene technician. "I think that does it. Ray, it goes without saying, but the wallet and shoe print are going to be top priority."
"Mike, you know I always make your cases my number one."
Kelly was glad the senior technician had taken him under his wing and worked so hard for him when they handled a case together. No sitting around on potential evidence. You'd think after thirty years of working homicides, the jaded nature of the beast would take hold and he would slide. But if anything, Raymond Charles got sharper and more dedicated as the time passed, as if he could see the end of his career coming and wanted to make sure that justice was found for every victim.
"ME is sending somebody to retrieve the body,” Kelly said. “Not sure where he's going to fall on their priority list, but I don't think it’ll matter too much. Nothing earth-shattering here in terms of complications."
"Hope you're right. It does look promising," Charles replied, walki
ng away.
Barnes and Kelly broke the scene down, leaving Sergeant Parker and his men in charge until the ME removed the body.
As Kelly and Barnes made their way under the tape, they saw Jimmy Mainelli approaching with two large cups of Dunkin' Donuts coffee and an apologetic smile.
Had it not been for the warm cup of coffee, Kelly might've offered a more scathing remark. But after taking the Styrofoam cup and feeling its warmth penetrate his icy hands, he instead said, "Better late than never."
"Well, this looks promising," Barnes said, hanging up the phone. "Check this out."
Kelly and Mainelli got up from their desks and bookended her.
A couple of keystrokes later, an image populated her screen. "The bank got back to me, sent me this link and gave me an access code to pull up the video from the ATM camera."
"My fingers are crossed," Kelly said, leaning in closer and catching her clean-linen scent. It was pleasant until Mainelli’s musk overpowered it.
On the screen, a blurred image of a man came into view. Kelly immediately recognized Jason Palmer’s pudgy jowls. He had become close with the dead man after spending the last two hours with his frozen corpse.
Seeing him alive was strange, a stark comparison to the lifeless form he’d etched into his mind. Palmer came into focus on the black-and-white footage. He was well-dressed in a blazer and wool trench coat. His tie was loosened, and his Oxford collared shirt was partially untucked. These were the same clothes he was wearing when Kelly saw him.
Kelly watched the drunken businessman swaying inside the ATM enclosure as if being blown by a heavy wind. But he knew that the only wind came from Palmer's undoubtedly high blood alcohol concentration, which must have been off the charts based on the stupor they were witnessing on screen.
Somewhat sad his last moments of life showed him in such an incapacitated state as he ineffectively fiddled with his wallet while trying to retrieve his ATM card.