by Chris Mooney
The inside sure looked like it. Lots of dark paneled wood and low lighting. A long bar filled with bottles that sparkled in expensive tract lighting and just off to the right of the bar, a small dining area with white-linen tablecloths and votives on each table, the perfect place for trading and sharing secrets over dry chardonnay and overpriced gourmet appetizers. To the left of the main entrance, accessed by a glass door,was a cigar room with burgundy-colored leather chairs and couches and coffee tables holding copies of the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and magazines like Sailing and Vanity Fair. Merrick sat in one of the leather couches that faced the bay windows overlooking Main Street, a snifter of port or some other high-priced booze cradled in one hand, the other flipping the pages of a magazine spread across his lap. His black suit and the drawn, haggard look on his face gave him the appearance of an undertaker relaxing after a long, hard day.
Mike plopped himself down in the leather chair across from Merrick and took out his pack of cigarettes. Merrick folded the magazine and gently placed it and his snifter back down on the glass coffee table between them. Wine Spectator. Jesus.
“It was definitely a suicide.” Merrick said.
“As opposed to what?” Mike had seen the log lying sideways under Jonah’s feet. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that Jonah had stepped up on the log, tied the noose around his neck and then jumped.
“With suicides, you have to pay close attention. More often than not it’s a homicide; a person is strangled and the body is moved to another place and hung to make it look like a suicide. When that happens, you always find two sets of ligature marks, and then you know you’re dealing with a homicide. Jonah only had one set of ligature marks, and the marks matched the rope. He also had what’s called paetrical hemorrhaging—burst blood vessels you find in the white lining of the eyes. It’s the distinctive evidence that someone died of asphyxiation. And fortunately, a lot of the snow was damp because of all the melting we’ve been having, and with air as cold as it was that night, it preserved some footprints. We were able to find several prints that matched Jonah’s boots. We didn’t find a note. But if you consider the audiotape with your daughter’s voice …”
Merrick’s face changed. He carried some unsettling piece of news and was now trying to figure out how to say it.
Here it comes,Mike thought, squeezing the ends of the armchair.
“The crime scene techs finished up with Jonah’s house yesterday,” Merrick said. “Underneath Jonah’s bed we found a loose floorboard. We tore up the floor and found a decent-sized space underneath the boards. Sarah’s snow pants were in there. So was a comb with some of Caroline Lenville’s hair. Ashley Giroux’s doll we found in Jonah’s bed. His fingerprints were all over it.”
“Bee-Bee Pretty,” Mike blurted out, the doll’s odd-sounding name popping into his head out of nowhere. Rose had shown him a picture of Ashley and the small doll with red plastic hair and one foot chewed off by her dog. Ashley had the doll in her backpack the day she disappeared.
“Jonah kept a Walkman next to his bed. We found an audiotape in it.” A kink of sadness tainted Merrick’s otherwise emotionless voice. “The others were in the drawer next to his nightstand. Sarah, Ashley and Caroline.”
“You listen to them?”
Merrick nodded, and Mike again squeezed the edge of the armchair.
“What did Sarah say?”
“All three tapes were pretty much the same—the girls sounded lost, like they were in the dark and couldn’t see.” He spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “The one you heard out in the woods was spliced from the original Jonah kept.”
Mike thought back to what Lou had told him about Jonah mentioning Sarah’s name in his sleep. Jonah wasn’t sleeping; he was making his … his what? His suicide tape?
“There were some sounds we didn’t recognize, so we sent the tapes to the FBI for enhancement and analysis,” Merrick said. “My guess is that Jonah had … I think he took them to someplace other than his house. Something could still turn up. If it does, I’ll let you know.”
“What about the dogs?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The morning after I found Jonah, I saw you guys with search dogs.”
“Those were cadaver-sniffing dogs.”
Mike fumbled for a cigarette, a part of him floating above himself, looking down at him and watching while some other part of his brain was painfully aware of what was being said and was busy searching through Merrick’s words for possible holes.
“The dogs didn’t turn anything up,” Merrick said. “We’re still searching through Jonah’s house for anything that might give us an idea where he might have … buried her. I’m sorry. I wish there was an easier way of putting it.”
“What about Jonah’s house? What’s going to happen to it?”
“Jonah’s estate will be turned over to St. Stephen’s. Father Connelly’s the executor of Jonah’s will. He wanted the money to go to a charity of Father Jack’s choosing. The house is in terrible condition, so my guess is someone will come along, buy it and tear it down, build a nice Colonial or something. It will be cheaper than trying to fix it up.”
All those rooms, all those possible secrets, waiting to be torn down and forgotten.
“I’d like to search the rooms. I might see something you guys wouldn’t notice.”
Merrick stared at him like he was lost and didn’t have a clue as to how to get home.
“It’s possible,” Mike said. “And I want to listen to a copy of Sarah’s tape.”
“So you can punish yourself?”
“I want to hear it. There could be something there. You don’t know my daughter the way I do. She’s smart. She might have been trying to tell us something, you know?”
“I have the name of an excellent grief—”
“It can happen,” Mike said. “Look at Elizabeth Smart. The police wrote her off for dead and the whole time she was alive, and if at any point the family had listened to the police and stopped believing, she would never have been found. But she was. She was found because the family kept on believing.”
“I’ll arrange a visit to Jonah’s house if that’s what you want. Give me a few days.” Merrick glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, I have to get going. Would you like me to call someone?”
It occurred to Mike that the last remaining member of his original family was a dog. That the only person he could call was Bill, his lifeline to the real world.
“I think I’m going to hang out here for a bit,” Mike said. “Call me when I can go through the house.”
“I will.”
Merrick paused, then stood up and walked away, his shoes clicking against the hardwood.
“Merrick?”
“Yes.”
“Ed told me about your father. I’m sorry.”
“Take care of yourself, Michael.”
Four o’clock now and the sunlight was hanging around longer, Main Street bright and busy. Mike remembered—this was years ago—he would stand right where he was now sitting and look out the window as his mother tried on shoes, the salesman smiling politely, trying not to stare at whatever lump or bruise was on her face. She was gone, dead, murdered by Lou. Sarah was gone too, most likely dead, killed by Jonah.
Mike saw himself on the morning of Sarah’s anniversary date placing the lilacs on top of the Hill.
The act wasn’t about remembering Sarah. It was about denial, his refusal to acknowledge the truth and let her go.
But let her go to where?
A waiter came inside the room, a young guy in his early twenties and dressed to the nines in a suit and a diamond stud earring in each ear. “The man who was just in here said dinner was on him,” he said. “You mind me asking who he was? His face looks familiar for some reason.”
“You know who Sarah Sullivan is?”
“No.”
“Why would you? She’s not on MTV.”
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?�
��
Mike sighed. “No,” he said. “It’s not you.”
CHAPTER 27
The time to do it, he knew, was when the daylight was still strong.
Mike drove down Anderson and saw the bouquets of flowers, the cards and candles and blown-up pictures of Sarah strewn over his front lawn and front steps. He didn’t see any reporters; they had either given up for the moment or were still congregating over at Jonah’s. He pulled into his driveway and parked his truck in the garage, out of view.
Inside, he unplugged the phone in the kitchen and his bedroom. He couldn’t afford any interruptions; it might make him reconsider what he was going to do. He went to the basement, gathered up what he needed and then headed back upstairs.
Sarah’s room was filled with a warm, soft light. The smell, that essence of her that had been trapped inside her pillows, her sheets and clothes was long gone, dried away by time. Everything else remained the same: the drawing table by the window; the autographed picture of Tom Brady given to her by Bill; the stack of Barbie toys in the corner—Barbie’s dream house and Mustang and private jet. Barbie even had her own private McDonald’s right next to her mansion. Four framed pictures hung over Sarah’s white four-poster bed: a picture of Sarah taken in the delivery room; one of Jess holding Sarah for the first time; Mike holding her; another one of Sarah sleeping in her bassinet. The pictures were Sarah’s idea, Sarah amazed and fascinated that she had once been that small.
He started with the Barbie dolls. One by one he picked them up and gently placed them inside the cardboard box. The toys, the clothes and furniture he would donate. The pictures hanging on the wall above her bed would stay here until he was ready to deal with them. The items that held stories and special memories—like the bear with the words YOU’RE SPECIAL printed on its belly; he had purchased it at the hospital gift shop the day Sarah was born and had left it in her incubator and later, her crib—these items he would box up and bury in the attic, next to his mother’s things.
CHAPTER 28
The next morning, Saturday, Mike had just reconnected the phone in the kitchen when it rang. ELLIS, SAMANTHA flashed across the phone’s caller-ID window. Mike picked up the phone. It was shortly after nine.
“How are you doing?”
The question everyone was asking him, like he was a terminal patient, the next one to follow Jonah into the ground.
“I’m doing,” he said, and poured his third cup of coffee.
“What’s your day looking like?”
“Lots of work. I’m under the gun.” They were running behind on the jobsite in Newton. The addition needed to be completed by the end of the week; Bill had been shouldering most of the weight himself, logging some serious hours. “What about you? You at the office?”
“No work for me today. I’ve decided to do what normal people do for a change and take the weekend off. Last night I watched women-in-danger movies on Lifetime, and today I’m going to go to yoga and then watch more bad TV. Right now I’m watching three guys on ESPN having telephone-pole races.”
“Telephone-pole races?”
“I’m serious. These big guys with these big leather belts around their waists are shimmying their way up telephone poles. I love sports, but this just seems stupid. Any ideas?”
“Is there a naked woman at the top?”
“That would be a no.”
“Beer?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Then your guess is as good as mine.”
Sam laughed, the sound of it lifting something in him, making him feel lighter.
“You have any dinner plans for tonight?”
“Sam, you don’t—”
“This isn’t a charity call.” Sam let it hang there to emphasize her point. “Look, why don’t you go to work, do what you need to do, and if you feel like getting together tonight, give me a call. You can call last minute if you want. I’m here all day. You have my home phone number?”
“My caller ID flagged it.”
“Okay then. Try not to work too hard.”
“You too,” Mike said and hung up with Sam’s voice humming warmly through his thoughts.
Mike was looking out the opened window, at the lilac bushes in the corner of the backyard when the phone rang again.
“So your plan is to just let me sit here and rot away,” Lou said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know goddamn well what I’m talking about.” Lou’s voice was out of breath, pinched, like a man who had just been rescued from the brink of drowning. “Knowing you, you probably read this morning’s paper and jumped for joy.”
Mike looked out the front window, at the mailbox at the end of the driveway. Still no reporters outside—at least not yet. He was sure they were still floating around Belham. The cordless phone pressed against his ear,Mike moved out of the kitchen and headed down the foyer.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what they say,” Lou said. “I’m telling you, I didn’t do it.”
Mike swung the front door open and then moved down the stairs and jogged across the front lawn, the air warm and breezy under the bright morning sun.
“You hear what I said? I didn’t do it.”
He pulled out today’s Globe and unfolded it. Right there on the front page was a color picture of Lou being escorted by two detectives. The headline above the picture read: BELHAM MAN ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF BODYGUARD.
“My lawyer retired to some other state,” Lou said. “What about that guy you used? He got you a good deal.”
Mike was speed-reading the article, words and phrases jumping out at him: evidence linking Lou to the murder of the bodyguard who had died due to complications from third-degree burns; arraignment pending; Lou’s “alleged” connection to mafia figure “Cadillac Jack” Scarlatta; his “alleged” tie to the robbery of several Brinks armored-truck robberies.
“Are you listening? I’ve only got five minutes.”
Mike kept reading. “My lawyer died.”
“Then you need to get me one.”
Mike looked up from the paper. “What?”
“I need you to get me a lawyer.”
His gaze shifted up to the attic. His mother’s items—the few he had managed to save—were stored inside a shoebox. Shortly before Lou left for Paris, he had collected all of her clothes, the pictures—just about every personal item she had left behind—and burned them in an aluminum trashcan in the backyard.
“You rotten son of a bitch,” Lou said and hung up.
CHAPTER 29
An hour later,Mike had figured it out.
When it came to the enigma that was his old man, Mike was sure of only one thing: Lou was terrified of tight, confined spaces. Lou had never come right out and said this—Lou never shared anything. Instead, it came to Mike in a sort of an epiphany one rainy Sunday afternoon when he was watching The Deer Hunter on cable at Bill’s house. Those scenes where DeNiro and Walken were stuffed inside cages, prisoners of war—that had once been Lou. Seeing the movie explained why Lou always insisted on taking the stairs instead of the elevator, why he didn’t fly if he could possibly avoid it, why he absolutely refused to ride in small cars. (“There’s no damn escape room. You get hit while in one of those, you’re dead.”)
Merrick wasn’t at the station, so Mike spoke with Slow Ed. When Mike pulled into the station, he saw the reporters gathered around the front parking lot. Mike pulled behind the back of the station where Slow Ed was at the back door, holding it open.
“They put your old man in the holding pen with Brian Delansky,” Slow Ed said as they walked down the hallway. “You know him? He’s local.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Mike said.
“Picture a juicehead around Bill’s size and twice as nutty. Two o’clock this morning we find Delansky lying on the floor in puke and blood, practically unconscious. Your old man’s sleeping on his cot. Broken nose and the ER doctor had to drain the fluid from both of Delansky’s testicles. Del
ansky’s saying he slipped and fell. How old you say Lou was?”
“Coming up on sixty.”
“I swear he’d give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money.” Slow Ed stopped in front of the door leading to the holding cell. “Fifteen minutes, then we’ve got to get him ready for transfer.”
“I remember the procedure.”
“Only your old man’s not going to make bail. Try and talk some sense into him. It will go easier if he cooperates with us.” Slow Ed opened the door and Mike walked down the dimly lit hallway.
Lou was in the last cell, sitting hunched forward on his bunk, his hands wrapped around a can of Coke. His face was sickly pale and had an oily sheen to it. Despite the coolness of the room, dark rings of sweat were visible in the armpits of his blue T-shirt, the small room packed close with day-old sweat mixed with his fading Old Spice deodorant and smoke-filled clothes.
A folding chair had been set up. Mike sat down.
Two full minutes passed. Lou hadn’t moved or spoken.
“I grew up with this guy Paulie Waters,” Lou said. “He and I enlisted at the same time. This one time, it was at night, we stepped inside a village that was supposed to have been leveled. Paulie happened to be looking the wrong way when a gook with a flame-thrower turned Paulie into a walking candle. A man screams a certain way when he’s burned. A sound like that never leaves you.”
“And what sound do they make right before you blow their brains out?”
Lou’s eyes slid off the Coke.
“The police found cigarette butts in Jonah’s backyard, behind the shed,” Mike said. “Want to guess whose prints popped up?”
“I’m not going to jail for someone else’s mess.”
“The prints were the same ones that matched the prints on the two shards of the glass bottle used in the Molotov cocktail. And to top it off, Jonah’s neighbor is ROTC. As luck would have it, he was playing around with his night-vision goggles. Guess who he saw unscrewing the lightbulbs on Jonah’s back porch?”
“They find any fingerprints on them?”