McNulty slumped into a chair in Susan’s kitchen. Jon Harris stood over him like he wanted to punch the ex-cop. Susan was a small, quiet shell of her former self because Harris was right; as far as her daughter was concerned, this was a complete fucking disaster. McNulty couldn’t look his sister in the eye. The night was dark outside but nowhere near as dark as what was going on inside McNulty’s head.
Firing the blanks had served as a distraction and a flare. Blanks won’t kill you but fired close enough the discharge can cause serious burns and damage, especially if aimed at the face. The flash scorched one eye and down the side of the gunman’s face but more importantly it slammed the door shut on how much time DeVries had to punish McNulty.
The blue lights started flashing again immediately and the calls for backup went out loud and fast. McNulty dived for cover as the gunman fired blindly. Jerry Solomon stayed low, the safest place to hide. DeVries guided the gunmen and the girl into the back room, after which nobody saw them again.
By the time the police had breached the hallway, McNulty was standing in the middle of the courtroom with his hands wide and the movie prop gun dangling by the trigger guard, almost the same as the first time. Same reason. He didn’t want the police getting him mixed up with the shooter. First thing he did once he’d been read his rights was to ask for Jon Harris. The second was to call Susan and give her the bad news.
Tilly was gone.
Now they were all sitting in Susan’s kitchen in the middle of the night, trying to figure out what to do next. Susan was still in denial that Harlan DeVries, the man who had brought her to America, was involved in child pornography and kidnapping. Harris pulled up a chair and sat at the table.
“Play it again.”
(McNulty) “What money?”
(Gunman) “The money we’ve already killed nine people for. One more here or there won’t make any difference.”
(McNulty) “They can only hang you once you mean?”
(Gunman) “They don’t hang you at all anymore.”
(McNulty) “The judge with the hanging baskets might make an exception.”
(Gunman) “The point here being, I think we have proved our willingness to kill in pursuit of our goals. Nine down. One to go.”
(McNulty) “Your math is off. Don’t forget Severino.”
(Gunman) “Severino drowned, he wasn’t shot.”
(McNulty) “You didn’t say shot, you said killed.”
(Gunman) “We pushed him in. River killed him.”
(McNulty) “Is that the collective we? Or you personally?”
(Gunman) “There is no ‘me personally.’ Only the collective.”
(McNulty) “A single unit of three. Disciplined service. Professionals. I get that. Except your collective’s down to two. That’s ten to one. We’re on the comeback trail.”
(Gunman) “Is that the collective we? Or you personally?”
(McNulty) “There is no collective. Only me.”
(Gunman) “You do yourself a disservice. Everyone has a collective.”
(McNulty) “Not me. I’ve been alone since birth.”
(Gunman) “Wrong again. You only thought you were alone. Some collectives are hidden until it’s too late. Like family. It took you a long time to find her, didn’t it? We didn’t take that long.”
(McNulty) “Don’t you touch my sister.”
(Gunman) “Sister?”
A high-pitched voice in the background, sounding scared and weepy.
(Gunman) “Her daughter is very pretty. It would be a shame for her to become number eleven. Meaning you’re not on the comeback trail at all.”
(McNulty) “Go on.”
(Gunman) “You were a cop once, right?”
(McNulty) “More than once.”
(Gunman) “And now you’re a movie cop?”
(McNulty) “I teach movie cops.”
(Gunman) “So you’ve seen the money exchange. You know how this works.”
(McNulty) “You’re not going to do the yellow bag thing out of Dirty Harry? Bounce me all over town from phone booth to phone booth? Then, when you’re sure I’m not being followed, lead me to the drop?”
(Gunman) “Waltham’s too small to bounce you around. And when was the last time you saw a phone booth? But the not being followed part is right.”
(McNulty) “Or she dies.”
(Gunman) “There are worse things than dying. A five-year-old? Lots worse. And plenty of people willing to pay to do it.”
(McNulty) “Go on.”
(Gunman) “No cops.”
(McNulty) “There are cops everywhere.”
(Gunman) “Not where we’re going. Both bags. One in each hand. At the movie courtroom. In an hour.”
McNulty shivered hearing the playback again. Susan was sitting numb in the corner. McNulty didn’t think she even heard it. Harris leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He drummed his fingers while he considered the voices on the recording, then slapped the table and sat back. “None of that incriminates DeVries.”
McNulty looked at the detective. “I incriminate DeVries.”
“Eyewitness testimony is never as good as physical evidence.”
“Fingerprint the room. He’ll be all over it.”
“It’s his orphanage. Of course he’ll be all over it.”
McNulty pushed his chair back from the table so hard it almost fell over. “So? What are you saying?”
The detective turned calm eyes on McNulty. “I’m saying we’ll need more than your word against the richest man in Waltham if we get this to court.”
McNulty took hope from the calmness that Harris displayed. It showed he was being detached and professional. Detached was the last thing McNulty felt, but he tried to look at this from a police perspective. “Do the forensics. Follow the money. Build a case. You’ll find the links if you look close enough. The gang in the court case. Adoption papers. Fake documents. He can’t hide everything. And after today, I doubt he’ll be hanging around to let you do that.”
He tapped his phone. “You heard the man.” His eyes hardened. “They’ve proved their willingness to kill. The most damning evidence is the evidence that can talk. The girls that Chester Brook brought into the country.” He nodded at his sister. “The innocents.”
Harris shook his head. “You said DeVries had enough legitimate adoptions to build his empire. Not all the innocents are a threat.”
McNulty held a handout, low to indicate height. “The small ones are. The ones the outfit are using now. Find them and you’ve got your evidence.”
Harris leaned back and crossed one leg. “Search teams have cleared Chester Brook. Orphanage; staff helped account for everyone in the dorms. DeVries isn’t there. The flesh trade aren’t there either. And his car was found abandoned across the river.”
McNulty shifted in his seat. “The orphanage is his legitimate business. His front. The illicit kids will be somewhere else. Somewhere he’s going to have to clean out. Scorched-earth policy: Leave nothing behind that can be used against you.”
Harris blew out his cheeks in frustration. “I’ve got guys checking his business holdings but that’s going to take forever. There are shell companies and double-blinds and God knows what else.”
McNulty rubbed his temples, trying the ease the headache that was building.
“There must be a first port of call. An import hub. Somewhere he brings the kids in if it isn’t Chester Brook.”
Harris threw his hands up in surrender. “Same applies. He’s got fingers into everything.” He shrugged. “Where to look?”
McNulty and Harris sat in silence. Then Susan uncurled and sat up straight. “I know where to look.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Linwood Country Club was two miles west of the I-95 along the Boston Post Road. It was deep in the woods in a forgotten triangle of land between the Weston Golf Club, Regis College and Linwood Cemetery. It was nearer the cemetery
. There was only one road in and one road out, and it was the same road. Everything else was seclusion and privacy. In the pre-dawn light it felt more private than ever. Harlan DeVries’s import hub. The staging post for onward transmission anywhere in the states.
The compound had a clubhouse, two narrow dormitories and a kitchen block. The kitchen block had a tall brick chimney and a furnace that could melt your fillings. It had often been used to melt more substantial things.
The approach road headed straight north off Chestnut Street and was cleared of trees on either side for a hundred yards. There would be no silent approach. There would be no catching the defenders off guard. When it comes to police raids, there are only two possible techniques, the stealth raid or the all-out assault. Since DeVries knew they were coming stealth went out the window. Next best thing is to make lots of noise with plenty of blue flashing lights and let the defenders know their best option is surrender.
The noise started with the helicopters. And the sound of diesel engines as the heavily armored convoy roared along the approach road. It was still dark but it was nowhere near being quiet. It was the vehicular equivalent of a copper’s boot through the door, and it brooked no argument.
The helicopters thudded overhead and separated once they reached the country club. One circled left and the other circled right, pumping noise and downdraft into the compound and spearing it with brilliant white light from twin searchlights. Thermal imaging cameras ensured nobody escaped into the wooded darkness surrounding the compound.
The compound gates were closed but not for long. The lead vehicle lined up front and center and hit the tall wooden gates in an explosion of splintered wood. The van skidded to a halt in the middle of the courtyard. The second van veered left and the third veered right. Before the convoy had even stopped, the back doors opened and three SWAT teams burst out. All-out assault, not a stealth raid. There was a lot of shouting. Lots of warnings that this was the police and to get down on the floor. Nobody was in any doubt that this was the police.
The SWAT teams went straight to their allotted targets, main clubhouse doors, dormitory one and dormitory two. A smaller group secured the kitchen and furnace. More doors were kicked in. More warnings were shouted. The helicopters drifted wider, one to the west and one to the east. Each observer had an angle on two sides of the exterior walls. Nobody tried to get away. Dawn feathered the horizon and picked out the dust cloud coming along the approach road as the forensics van followed the assault teams. No raid is considered successful until the evidence is gathered and bagged and labeled. Harris didn’t want DeVries skating on a technicality.
The main SWAT team secured the clubhouse and hospitality suites. They went in hard and fast and armed to the teeth. Sterile fluorescents replaced the initial confusion of darting flashlights as the lights were turned on one after another. Three men who looked like they should be working at a golf club lay face down on the floor with their hands behind their heads. They’d seen police raids on TV. They watched movies with bigger budgets than Titanic Productions. Radios squawked. Rooms were declared clear. The three men were searched and restrained with Ziploc ties behind their backs.
The helicopters were still thudding overhead, making it difficult to hear anything else. The SWAT leader had to shout into his radio to check the progress of his other two teams.
Bravo Squad breached the first dormitory in sync with Charlie Squad breaching the second. The shouted warnings were just as loud, but the team leaders were conscious of who would be in the dormitories. They used only as much force as was necessary to disarm the guards, then turned on all the lights so they could search the bedrooms. That’s when the raid became quiet and the evidence became real.
Dawn came fast after the initial horizon feathering. The searchlights were turned off and the helicopters released. The observers had filmed the entire raid from the air to back up the ground teams’ accounts. There wasn’t going to be any dispute about what had happened, and there would be no argument about what they found in the dormitories and the furnace block.
The girls were shy and scared and painfully thin. It wasn’t a full load but the dormitories housed seven girls aged between six and ten. The ten-year-olds were almost too old, having begun to develop stubby little breasts that set them apart from the little children most of the customers preferred. They were clean and well dressed and their rooms were pleasant in a utilitarian kind of way. Better than many kids had at home but with the downside that this wasn’t home.
The furnace room attached to the kitchen block was the real shocker. There was nothing overtly horrific about the plain white walls or the concrete floor but in the context of what SWAT had been briefed to expect, it was horrific enough. There were no bloodstains on the walls. There were no body parts on the floor. When the sergeant opened the furnace door and shone his flashlight inside, there was nothing but ashes and coals. Until he looked more closely, and then he was almost sick.
Nobody knew how many girls had come through Linwood Country Club. There was no ledger or account book and any evidence of those who had gone before had been cremated in the industrial oven. Sifting through the ash was a painstaking task and one the sergeant was happy to pass on to the forensics team. The little white dots of enamel were bad enough, but there was a single pair of pink shoes in the corner of the room. The owner was nowhere to be found.
The entire raid from initial breach to securing the premises had taken less than half an hour, but the follow-up examination took a whole lot longer. Evidence gathering is always the slowest part of the process, because there can be no mistakes. Lawyers and legal teams trying to wheedle their clients out of trouble have endless time to pore over the actions of police on the ground and the decisions they made. The exhibits had to be logged, preserved and labeled, and the timeline maintained for them to be admissible in court.
The cops who were present on the raid would never forget the timeline. Nobody was going to mess this one up. The people who weren’t present would hear about it later. One of those people was Vince McNulty. McNulty wasn’t part of the assault team because he wasn’t a cop, but mainly because of the conversation he had had in his sister’s kitchen before the raid was even authorised.
FIFTY-EIGHT
“He won’t be there.”
“What do you mean he won’t be there?”
“He won’t be at the country club. And Tilly won’t be there, either.”
It was that last part that got Susan shivering again. McNulty sat beside his sister and folded her in his arms; the thing he’d wanted to do in Mr. Cruckshank’s office way back at Crag View Children’s Home. He hadn’t been able to do it then and it was too late to be of help now. Her daughter was gone and now her brother was telling her that Tilly Carter wasn’t going to be at the place where the police were launching their rescue. McNulty glanced through the kitchen door where Harris was on the phone organizng the raid then looked at Susan with what he hoped were calming eyes.
“I know how his mind works.”
Susan looked at him. “You’ve only known him a week.”
“It’s been a long week.”
“You’ve only met him once.”
“Twice. Third time’s the charm.”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
McNulty glanced through the door again to make sure Harris wasn’t listening. He leaned in close and whispered in Susan’s ear. “Everything he’s done has pointed in the opposite direction.” He took her hands in his and rubbed them warm. “The movie set instead of the robbery. The robbery instead of the court case. The court case instead of the adoption agency. Everything.”
He looked her in the eyes. “He knows you know about the country club. So he won’t be there.” He stopped rubbing her hands. “I’m betting you know about somewhere else.”
Susan looked at her brother then lowered her head. The weight of expectation was too much. She took a deep breath an
d let it out so slowly that her breath trembled and she shivered all over again. McNulty held her tight. Susan took strength from the contact. Her mind raced. Nothing made sense. Until a couple of things tumbled into view and suddenly came into focus. Past and present in perfect alignment. She raised her eyes and looked at McNulty. He saw the expression on her face and nodded his understanding, even though he didn’t fully understand.
“The headmaster’s office?”
Now the dawn raid was in full swing and McNulty had made a couple of calls. The headmaster’s office wasn’t really a headmaster’s office, but it was Harlan DeVries’s private place, the place where he felt most secure. It also fit with McNulty’s theory that everything pointed in the opposite direction. The police had searched the orphanage and moved on. The dawn raid was all the way across town at Linwood. This was the John Wayne movie punch all over again. Misdirection. Sleight of hand.
McNulty put the real money in the sports bags and made his final preparations. He slowly zipped the bags then checked to make sure his phone was switched on. Satisfied that he’d done all he could to make this happen, he nodded at his sister and went out to the car. Twenty minutes later he drove past the movie set one last time and parked behind Stephen’s Industrial Cleaners.
FIFTY-NINE
McNulty crossed the manicured lawn at the rear of Chester Brook Orphanage and triggered the security lights as he climbed the steps to the patio. He wasn’t concerned about setting off the security lights. He wanted the gunmen to know he was coming. He’d told DeVries as much in a call that was brief and to the point.
“You want the money. I want the girl.”
There was no argument. There was no questioning how McNulty knew where to go. Dawn turned the back garden into a grey curtain between night and day. Mist clung to the extremities. The grass was damp with dew. He left a trail of footprints across the lawn toward the patio doors.
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