Tracking Shot

by Colin Campbell

  McNulty turned sideways and crossed his legs. “Meaning the camera’s too far away to see shit.”

  “And you know that how?”

  McNulty knew he’d have to admit to this sooner or later. “Because I’ve already seen it.”

  There are rules and guidelines for conducting an effective interview. There’s a specific way to structure your questions so the subject has to expand on his answers instead of simply answering yes or no. Open questions. Not, did you do it, but rather, what did you do? Good interviews are mapped out before the prisoner is even in the room. Each area is compartmentalized.

  Before the crime.

  During commission of the crime.

  After the crime.

  Get the subject to describe what they did before the relevant time. What they were doing at the time of the offense. And what they did afterward. Use the four Ws. What? Where? Why? How? That last one only just qualified. None of that included WTF. This was a WTF moment.

  “What the fuck? Who said you could go around viewing CCTV?”

  McNulty looked at the detective. “There’s no law says I can’t.”

  Harris slapped the table. A draught blew his papers across the tabletop. “It’s not a good idea if the police are already looking at you.”

  McNulty rested a hand on the table and drummed his fingers. Twice. Then he stopped. He sensed that Harris was a good detective. He was thorough, calm and attentive. But he wasn’t following the guidelines. The interview wasn’t structured to get McNulty to account for his day. Where he was. What he was doing. Why he was doing it. The interview wasn’t even being recorded. That told him there was some wriggle room here.

  “I wanted to see who I was chasing.”

  Harris straightened his papers. “Meaning you didn’t get a good look at his face.”

  McNulty shrugged. “I doubt the cop coming up the stairs got a good look, either. It was too quick.”

  Harris rested his hand on the folder. “Before you both went over the balcony.”

  McNulty nodded. “So I checked the CCTV.”

  Harris took a deep breath. “And you still couldn’t tell.”

  “I could tell it wasn’t Randy Severino.”

  Harris tapped the folder. “Not if you couldn’t make out the face.”

  McNulty shook his head. “If it’s a stranger—someone you’ve never seen before—the camera’s too far away. But someone you know? You’d recognise them within a split-second from a thousand feet. It wasn’t Randy Severino.”

  He didn’t mention the red van. He didn’t want to muddy the water. The cops would view the recording and draw their own conclusions. McNulty didn’t want them suspecting him of anything else. Harris looked at the folder then back at McNulty.

  “Let me make it clear how much shit you’re in.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “We’ve got four dead. One more injured. All at an orphanage you’ve got a vested interest in and a movie company you work for. You’re the last person to see a camera, in situ, that contained film that could embarrass both. This case is focusing on that film now. That is my prime directive. And you searched the film guy’s room and turned up by the river when he turned up dead.”

  He held up his hands. “Stop me when any of this sounds incriminating.”

  McNulty paused before speaking. “If it was incriminating, I’d be in handcuffs and you’d be recording this.”

  Harris hardened his stare. “Don’t go thinking either of those things can’t happen.”

  McNulty knew that if he were a serious suspect he’d be talking to his lawyer right now. He kept his tone calm and even. “If I’ve got the film why search his room?”

  Harris lowered his voice. “Who said I think you’ve got the film?”

  McNulty uncrossed his legs. “That’s what you made it sound like.”

  Harris linked his fingers and flexed them until they cracked. “You were a cop. Don’t get inflection mixed up with accusation.” He relaxed in his seat. “Word on the street is your camera guy was offering to sell the film. TV news. Papers. Whoever was interested. Main person who’d be interested is the guy on the film.” He leaned back. “The shooter.” Then he folded his arms. “Or the guy trying to protect the movie company and the orphanage.”

  McNulty let out a sigh and repeated an old mantra. “I don’t help orphanages.”

  Harris sat still. “But you do work for Larry Unger.” Very still. “Did you know he was about to be called as a witness in the porn trial?”

  The room went quiet. All kinds of thoughts raced through McNulty’s head. There were all sorts of calculations to be made but this wasn’t the time to make them. Harris gave McNulty just enough time to swallow that piece of information then hit him with another.

  “There’s a rumor that somebody’s selling CCTV footage of the shooting.” He leaned forward. “And it certainly isn’t Randy Severino.”

  EIGHTEEN

  McNulty leaned on the balcony rail and looked at the river flowing past the rear of the Crescent Motel. The water was a cold black ribbon lit only by reflections from the streetlamps and traffic signals across the bridge. It was just after twelve o’clock. Midnight plus one. He remembered back in the police how much confusion midnight could cause. The legal system hadn’t worked out a way to cope with the twenty-four-hour clock used in police reports. There was no such thing as twenty-four-hundred hours. At that point the clock reset to 0000hrs. Detention records didn’t like that, so you always made the arrest at 23.59hrs or 00.01hrs. Midnight plus one.

  Knocking on Larry’s door, it didn’t matter what time it was.

  “What the fuck time you call this?” Except maybe it did.

  “I always take a shower at midnight.” Larry spoke through the steam and the hiss from behind the shower curtain. He’d answered the door with a towel around his waist and if that wasn’t surreal enough he got back into the shower as soon as he’d let McNulty in. McNulty stood in the bathroom doorway feeling like he was having an out-of-body experience.

  “Aren’t you scared you might turn into a pumpkin?”

  Larry chuckled. “I stayed in too long once. Looked like a prune except all pink.”

  McNulty tried to prevent that picture settling in his head. “Well, don’t forget to wash behind your ears.”

  Washing and gurgling noises came from the shower. “I wash everywhere. That’s why I’m fresh and awake in the morning.”

  McNulty covered his eyes. “Too much information. Can you hurry it up?”

  Larry spoke through the curtain. “Never compromise. Never surrender.”

  McNulty raised his voice above the hissing water. “What about all that, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference?”

  Larry stuck his head out of the curtain. “If you prefer a different shower go visit Amy. She’s worried about you.”

  McNulty lowered his hands. “About my personal hygiene?”

  Larry wiped his forehead to stop water running into his eyes. “About your personal well-being. Since she heard about Randy.”

  McNulty kept his eyes on the pink round face. “Severino was offering to sell the reverse footage.”

  Larry tilted his head to one side. “And you’re offering to download the CCTV footage.”

  “You told her about that?”

  “She knows you better than you think.”

  “That’s worrying.”

  Larry disappeared back behind the curtain. “That would come under the ‘serenity to accept the things I cannot change’ part.”

  McNulty stepped away from the door. “Well, get serene about this. When were you going to tell me you’re being called as a witness in the porn trial?”

  The shower was turned off. Larry stuck his face through the curtain again.

  “What?”

  Larry’s extremities were all pink where they st
uck out from the bathrobe. His face and his arms and his short, fat legs. He didn’t offer to make coffee or brew some tea. He was hyper enough without added caffeine. “You’re kidding, right? Nobody’s told me.”

  McNulty shook his head. “It’s what the lead detective said.”

  Larry sat at the table opposite his technical adviser. “He pulling your chain? Trying to get a bite?”

  McNulty shrugged. “Could be. Not much point though. Something I can check so easily.”

  Larry crossed his legs. “But not while you were in custody.”

  McNulty leaned back in his chair. “I wasn’t really in custody. Not seriously anyway.”

  Larry looked at the Yorkshireman. “They dragged you off in handcuffs. It was all over the news. Right after a close-up of Randy Severino.”

  McNulty raised his eyebrows. “They overreacted.”

  Larry blew out his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter now. The whole world saw Titanic Productions’s police adviser being dragged away by the police.”

  McNulty made a circular gesture with one hand. “I’m sure you’ll spin it in your favor.”

  Larry tapped a finger on the table. “What I can’t spin is our first AC turning up dead.”

  McNulty sighed. “Or your judge getting shot on the movie set.”

  Larry stood up and started pacing the floor. “Especially if the first AC was involved.”

  McNulty waved a calming hand. “He wasn’t involved.”

  Larry stopped pacing. “He was trying to sell the footage. That’s involved enough.”

  McNulty lowered his hand. “He didn’t shoot anybody. Everything after that is just fallout.”

  A light went on behind Larry’s eyes. “Unless we spin it like he was trying to draw out the gunman. Letting him know we caught him on film.”

  McNulty shifted in his seat. “Not a good idea. Painting a target on your back.”

  Larry pulled the robe tighter. “It’s what you’re doing.”

  McNulty looked at the shiny, pink prune. “I’m a stronger swimmer.”

  NINETEEN

  Night turned into day. June turned into July. Waltham began gearing up for its plans for the Fourth of July and McNulty geared up for his plans for the bogus CCTV. He wasn’t finished with the red van yet though, so the following morning saw him walking down the alley to Abko Auto Body again. Banners were already going up on the lampposts along Linden Street.

  July 4th Parade

  www.waltham.ma.gov

  10 a.m. Banks Square Waltham

  sticking out of one side of the lamppost, and

  July 4th Fireworks

  and Evening Show

  7 p.m. Waltham High School

  on the other, like two giant sails catching the wind.

  Police inquiries always start the same way, you start with what you know or who you know, or where you know. House-to-house inquiries fan out from the house where the crime was committed. In the case of the shooting, that would be the orphanage that had been turned into a movie set. With the van, it was the place that suggested the grey was undercoat. He found the foreman in his office.

  “Interesting idea. The neutral undercoat thing.” McNulty stood in the doorway. “Tell me, do you guys have a body shop fraternity?”

  The other thing about police inquiries is how long they take. In a Larry Unger production this part would be covered by an expert use of montage and background music. Asking the questions takes long enough but traveling from location to location adds time and distance to the equation. Getting lost trying to find some of the workshops didn’t help. Hooking into the body shop fraternity went a long way toward shortening McNulty’s day.

  The foreman not only helped with the legitimate panel beaters and spray shops but also made a few calls to uncover some of the backstreet off-the-books garages. McNulty used the tried and tested routine of starting where you are and then fanning out, so he did the auto strip on Linden Street first. Just for completeness, because he doubted they’d painted the van on the same street they’d done the shooting.

  The net widened. McNulty took in wreckers and repair shops in Waltham, South Side and Auburndale. He set the boundary at Watertown heading east, concentrating on the south and west. He took in spray bays at West Newton, Norumbega Park and Stony Brook Basin, and all points in-between. The day wore on into afternoon and all he had to show for it was an understanding of just how much work the July Fourth Parade generated for the local economy. Everything except emergency bodywork and repairs had been put on hold as the floats and parade vehicles were cleaned and sprayed, and brought up to standards.

  Some of the auto centers suggested other places to try. Some of the other places suggested way-off-the-books premises. Most of them he could drive to. Some required a bit of walking. The only constant was the rusty foreign car that kept turning up in his rear-view mirror. And the guy who kept watching him. White male. Medium height. Medium build.

  It was the head mechanic at Stony Brook Basin Auto Body who finally pointed McNulty in the right direction. McNulty took with a grain of salt the mechanic’s assertion that he’d heard about a red van looking to repair a dent in the roof. Anyone who called himself Head Mechanic when he was, in fact, the only mechanic had to be taken with a certain amount of scepticism. The body shop he gave up didn’t have a name, and there wasn’t even an accurate address—not really an address at all, just that place under the cloverleaf of the I-90 and the I-95.

  McNulty took the surface roads alongside the I-95 and got lost twice trying to find his way under the spaghetti junction of concrete pillars and overpasses. The roads became narrower and drier and turned into dirt tracks that trailed clouds of dust. He stopped and checked his mirror when he thought he was getting near. When the cloud of dust settled, the rusty car had gone.

  McNulty turned and looked over his shoulder. The track was clear. He felt a tickle of goose bumps on his neck. The road was too open for covert observation, but the car had hardly been hiding on all the roads leading up to this. There were various possibilities why he wasn’t being followed anymore, but the one that stuck in his mind was the most obvious: The driver knew where McNulty was going.

  McNulty brushed the thought aside and faced front again. He eased forward into the shadows of the overpass and felt the day turn cold. By the time he’d found the workshop hidden beneath the highway he already knew this was a very bad place.

  TWENTY

  McNulty parked in a litter-strewn turnaround facing back the way he’d come. He waited for the dust to settle but didn’t get out, scanning three-hundred-sixty degrees from the safety of the car. Even with the doors and windows locked, it didn’t feel very safe. He turned the engine off and did what people always do when they’re nervous. He started talking to himself.

  “Well you dozy shitbird. What are you doing here?”

  Concrete buttresses and sloping roadways curled around all sides and overhead. There were so many angles and curves that the clearing looked like Picasso had been pouring concrete. Looking up made McNulty feel dizzy so he concentrated on the land around him. There was plenty to hold his attention. So long as he did it while holding his breath. The smell of rotting vegetation suggested a garbage dump but the shapes humped around him looked more like a derelict sculpture park.

  McNulty got out of the car, moving slowly so he didn’t have to take deep breaths. He closed the door and leaned on the roof. The space under the highway was wide and flat and had been cleared of trees and foliage. The turnaround was dirt and gravel surrounded by rusting throwbacks to better times. Some cars on blocks, a couple of farm vehicles with shredded tires, and twisted carnival floats from parades gone by. There were cartoon faces and giant heads—something that might have been a spaceship before the paint rusted away. A dinosaur with its head cut off. It was like an elephant’s graveyard but without the elephants. The last place you’d think of coming to have your car painted.

  The workshop was a wo
od and corrugated-sheeting structure set against the central buttress with something that could have been living quarters leaning next to it. There was a splintered porch with warped steps. McNulty half expected to see a rocking chair and a banjo. He made guitar noises with his mouth then riffed the banjo reprise. It was a step up from talking to himself. The voice from the cabin sounded like the crack of doom in the silence.

  “Y’all like guitar music do yer?”

  McNulty turned toward the man standing on the porch. “So long as you don’t have a banjo.”

  The porch creaked. “I could get one if you like.”

  The man was overweight with long straggly hair. He wore bib overalls that were barely cleaner than the surroundings. He wiped his nose on one sleeve. “Way you’re talkin’. Makes me think you’re casting aspersions.” He waved a hand to take in the junkyard. “Like maybe I’ve got a tree trunk waiting to bend you over.”

  McNulty kept his eyes on the man while checking his peripheral vision for any other movement. So far the man seemed to be alone. “I just like movie themes.” He waved his own hand at the surroundings. “Feels more Deliverance than James Bond.” Then he jerked a thumb toward Waltham. “You know they sell Aston Martins over there on Linden Street?” He was letting the man know about his connection with the place where a fake judge had been shot and three others were killed.

  The man looked unmoved. “We don’t sell ’em here.”

  McNulty nodded toward the carnival floats. “You gearing up for the Fourth of July?”

  The man drew himself up to his full height and puffed his chest out. It was a big chest. The steps creaked as he came down to the yard. Dust exploded around his feet when he hit the ground. “I’m gearing up to beat me some nosy bastard’s ass.”