Murder Board

by Brian Shea

  At the time it seemed like a major obstacle. Her commitment to weight loss gave her a bit more confidence, a slight boost in her self-image. Faith remembered when she’d uploaded a picture of the new and improved Faith Wilson to her profile. She remembered the boy who took notice. He was not only cute, he was downright gorgeous. He actually posted, Wow! You’re hot!

  My God, had it really been a year since that day? She remembered the way he looked at her when they first met. He didn’t pass judgment as so many others did. His smile disarmed her completely. It was the reason for her current circumstance.

  Faith licked her lips again, and again tasted the hint of cinnamon. She regretted her latte had been made with non-fat milk. She resented her father for punishing her for being born.

  The flash of self-pity and anger was instantly replaced by fear as a mud-tipped sneaker appeared in the corner of her peripheral vision. Even the burger wrapper seemed terrified of the person looming over her. She craned hard to see but the person was already gone. The footsteps moved rapidly clockwise around her body. Her head angled to follow but was too slow to keep pace.

  I remember being at the mall. I remember the struggle. And then what? Nothing.

  A tugging, and her body began to slide across the uneven ground. She couldn’t feel it anywhere except her neck and head. Jagged rocks lashed at her scalp and stung the back of her head. Her head bumped along the cold, unforgiving ground. The jarring movement jostled her head violently. Each time it felt as though a knife was buried deep in the nape of her neck. Faith willed herself not to give in to the excruciating pain, but some things could not be overcome by willpower. Some things overpowered all strength of character.

  “Help!” Faith yelled. The words barely carried enough power to reach her own ears. She swallowed hard and tried again. Her breathing became more labored and she found herself consciously making an effort to inhale and exhale. Each shorter than its predecessor.

  The dragging stopped. Did it work? Did someone hear? Maybe the monster in the dark heard Faith’s voice and had a change of heart? Her mind raced, searching for the answer.

  No words. Something was happening. Her head now shook as if being shoved. The new position gave her twisted neck an angle from which to see her assailant. A piece of her damaged recall came to the forefront. A person she’d come to know and trust over the past year stood nearby. A person who, until today, had provided and cared for her. Eyes that had once given Faith hope now held only the promise of death.

  A sudden whip of her neck sent her face down into darkness. The movement was accompanied by a pop, followed by a searing pain. Faith could no longer move her head. All efforts to free herself from her current position were lost. She drew a weak breath and swallowed dirt. Her next scream was buried in her mouth, never to be uttered. The gritty chalkiness of freshly churned earth filled her mouth. Faith spat with all her might, trying to clear her mouth. Her breath came in rapid and shallow bursts.

  Then a light patter on the back of her head. It felt like rain without the cold dampness. In her horror she realized it was not water but dirt.

  In her mind, Faith called out in vain, as the last bits of light gave way to the deep, pitch- black enveloping her.

  2

  Routine was everything. Detective Michael Kelly sought to find it wherever and whenever he could. He entered, as he did every morning, through the side entrance of One Schroeder Plaza, Boston Police’s main headquarters.

  He bumped into Bernie Cross on the way to the elevator. They’d worked the same patrol district together. Cross had gone the administrative route, climbing the PD’s ranks quicker than most. Kelly liked Cross. The newly adorned lieutenant was more of a bureaucrat than a cop, but Cross had a way of taking care of his people. At least, that’s what Kelly had heard. He’d actually never served under him. But, in a city like Boston, reputation was everything. Cross looked to be in a bit of a huff.

  “Hey Bernie, where’s the fire?”

  Bernie slapped a stack of papers and made an effort to smile. “Trying to compile the stats for the morning briefing. I had to run down and use the admin secretary’s printer. Big, fancy place and nothing works.”

  “Keep fighting the good fight,” Kelly jested. He knew every supervisor dreaded the admin meetings. It was a part of the job he hoped never to face.

  Cross scurried along as Kelly pressed the elevator button for the second floor.

  He navigated the hallway to the secure door marked Homicide. His boss was already hovering around the coffee maker. Kelly liked being the first one in the office, but the pounding in his head was a not-so-subtle reminder as to why he was moving a bit more slowly this morning.

  Kelly logged in and pulled the highlights of the preceding twenty-four hours of patrol-related calls for service. Each district supervisor was required to close out his or her shift with a secured email documenting any priority calls for service. He knew there hadn’t been a homicide, no alert had been sent to his phone over the course of the night, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t a shooting or stabbing on the cusp of making its transition to his unit. He scanned the lines of entries. Then he saw it. District C-11, his old unit, were on the scene of a body. He checked his phone again. No alert. He thought he was next up on rotation, but every once in a while, cases got shuffled. Still, it was strange the alert message hadn’t been sent. Typically, every time a body dropped, a group text would be sent to all members of Homicide, a way of keeping all in the loop.

  If he were still working the street, his next stop would be the main desk to check in with the booking officer and look over the previous night’s arrest log. It was a habit he’d picked up while in Narcotics. He’d found it was good to check if any drug arrests had been made overnight. Morning holding cells were prime time to gather new informants. The dope sickness of the night’s long wait usually left people desperate for an escape so that they could hit the street and get straight. For Kelly, it had been the ultimate leverage, and dramatically increased his stable of snitches. He still kept many of his contacts from those days. Drugs and murder went hand in hand. The exchange of favors for information was a critical part of the law enforcement model. Provide protection for smaller fish in the hopes they’d ante in on bringing in a bigger collar. The gray area was where the best cops operated. Kelly spent much of his career working within its delicate balance.

  Being in headquarters, he resigned himself to digitally checking the names on the arrest log. None caught his attention, so he moved on.

  Michael Kelly spun in his swivel chair and grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen from the corner of his desk. He downed four of the orange pills with his coffee.

  The cubicle was sparsely decorated. The only picture sat next to his phone—Kelly and his eight-year-old daughter, Embry. The photo was from a few years back. Her excitement at going to her first Red Sox game was forever captured in the 5x7 photo taken at Fenway Park’s Gate B on Van Ness Street. They’d gone many times since, each enjoyable, but nothing compared to the magic of that first game. At least for Kelly. Watching that first crack of the bat through his daughter’s eyes, seeing them widen as the ball soared up into the air was a memory he hoped would never fade. She didn’t care that it was a pop fly or that the Sox had lost by four that afternoon.

  The lower half of the three partitions shaping his office space were covered in a powder blue fabric, most of which was invisible due to the info flyers and wanted persons sheets push- pinned in place. He never seemed to take down any of the old stuff. Kelly just pinned the new on top. The weight of the papers eventually won out over the strength of the pins, and they’d scatter to the floor. On those days, he saw it as divine intervention and would take a moment to do some upkeep.

  Two columns containing five workstations lined the large office space. The clusters had their own designated sergeant. In total, thirty-eight detectives and two civilians comprised Boston Police’s illustrious Homicide unit. Kelly was its newest member, a rookie by their standards
. Every time he transferred units he took on rookie status all over again. He’d undergone this transformation four times thus far in his career, and he hoped this would be his last stop. His small team was comprised of Jimmy Mainelli and Cliff Anderson, led by Sergeant Dale Sutherland.

  He stared at the board fastened to his cubical wall and sipped at the medium regular Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. The hot liquid burned as it rolled down the back of his throat. The caffeine fought to clear away the remnants of his hangover. The corkboard was his way of managing his cases, a visual system of organizing his workload that served as a reminder to the departed souls’ justice he sought. He kept index cards neatly arranged into rows and columns. Each card had a name and date written in bold block lettering. Always the same style. The name of the victim, last-comma-first, and the date the body was discovered. Blue cards denoted closed cases. Red ones were open investigations. He affectionately referred to it as the Murder Board.

  No case outweighed the others. Except one. It wasn’t even his case. One red card was set apart from the others. ROURKE, DANNY 3/17/2011. Kelly’s patrol partner. Rourke was killed while off-duty, during a home invasion robbery. It forever changed Kelly’s memory of Saint Patrick’s Day.

  Even with all the attention the case was given, no suspect ever developed. It hadn’t been the first unsolved murder. The city’s cold case files bulged at the seams with nearly a thousand bodies absent closure. But this was the first unsolved murder of a Boston police officer. It was a permanent black eye for the department in the subsequent eight years since Rourke’s murder.

  The investigation into the violent death of Danny Rourke was eventually recategorized as a cold case. For Kelly it was anything but. Frank Joyce had been assigned the case, among a sea of others. It wasn’t officially on Kelly’s case list, so he worked the file on his own time, obsessing over it. Sadly, he hadn’t learned much more than the preceding detectives responsible for the initial investigation.

  It made sense he was now working in Homicide, but it hadn’t been his partner’s murder that drove him there. After the Baxter Green shooting, Kelly needed a fresh start. He seriously considered hanging up his shield and gun. But on a whim, he took the detective test and came out on top of the candidate list. Making the grade with eleven years of service under his belt, Kelly had first dibs, and took an opening with Homicide.

  Sergeant Sutherland, his direct supervisor, rapped on the flimsy metal file cabinet near the opening to Kelly’s cubicle. “Hey Mikey, you’re up on rotation. Got Jane Doe over on Von Hillern Street, at Sheffield Electric. I know you’re familiar with the Dot.”

  The Dot, Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Predominately populated by Irish Catholics when Kelly grew up there, it had now become one of the city’s most diverse places to live. The area had a long-standing history of violence. One of the most infamous mobsters, James “Whitey” Bulger, was born in The Dot. Kelly had seen first-hand the influence on his community. At an early age, he chose his side.

  “What do we got so far?”

  “Not much. Some homeless guy stumbled across her earlier this morning. Patrol’s holding the scene. Crime Scene is already on their way. M.E.’s been notified.”

  “Why are we always the last to know?”

  “Pretty sure she’ll still be dead when you get there. I know that Jimmy’s out on vacation this week. Anderson’s at court prepping for the Briggs trial. Leaves us a little light. If you want, I can task someone else to work with you on this one.”

  “Nah. Don’t bother. Everybody’s got their own bodies to work. I’ll call in if I need a hand.”

  “Oh, yeah, and I just heard. Happy birthday.”

  Kelly rubbed his temples. The throb of his headache came back at the mention of it. “Yesterday.”

  “That explains why you look like a steamin’ bag of monkey crap.”

  “You say the kindest things.”

  Sutherland began his hobbled walk away from Kelly’s desk area. He had been injured a few years back, shattering his kneecap while chasing a perp. He lost his footing hurdling a chain link fence, landing knee-first on the concrete below. The handicap was a source of contention as he’d been battling with the brass to raise his disability rating high enough to allow him to take an early retirement. The probability of that happening looked bleak, and thus the embattled Homicide sergeant was most likely destined to work his remaining three years overseeing the body beat.

  Kelly took a sip of his coffee, pulled out his leather-bound notepad, and made his first case notation. Jane Doe. Notification time: 0907hrs 3/12/2019.

  He unlocked the file cabinet’s bottom drawer and withdrew his department-issued Glock 22 semi-automatic pistol. Two times he’d discharged his weapon in the line of duty. Both times justified. Both times costly. He was in the very small percentile of law enforcement who deployed deadly force, and Kelly hoped a third opportunity never presented. But, with fourteen years to go on his pension clock, the odds were not in his favor. He undid his belt and looped the leather holster in place. Kelly then slipped the gun inside and snapped the retention strap closed. A beaded chain centered his badge on his chest, swinging like a pendulum as Kelly stood up from his chair. Detectives were given the option of wearing their badge on their beltline in front of their firearm or around their neck. Kelly always chose the neck. He’d learned during his time in Narcotics that it was much easier to see a badge centered over the heart. Very important as a plain clothes working in the field.

  As he was about to set off for the scene, he checked back at his calendar. An E was marked in the upper corner by today’s date. He pulled out his cellphone.

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m not going to be able to grab Embry tonight. I caught a case.”

  “Again?”

  “You tell the family of the dead that it’s an inconvenience. Do you think I like missing time with our daughter?”

  “It’s really hard to answer that honestly. This is the second time in the last week you’ve had to cancel on her. Can’t you pick her up and drop her with your mom?”

  “Mom’s got a busted hip. Not sure how much help she’s going to be.” Kelly gave an aggravated sigh. “I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to break free. Case popped up a few minutes ago and I don’t have a feel for it yet. I don’t want to say yes to that. I think it’s just best you plan on picking her up, and I’ll call if I can swing it.”

  “Maybe we need to adjust the custody arrangement. We could just stick to weekends when you’re not on call.”

  “Seriously? I’d end up seeing her only a couple times a month.”

  “Wouldn’t be much different from what you are doing now.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ll get this thing under control. You’ll see. I don’t see why you’re making this such a big deal. When we were married, I had to adjust my schedule all the time and you never gave me any crap.”

  “We’re not married anymore, so yes, things are different now.”

  “I’ll call her tonight and explain. It’s not like I’m out on a hot date.”

  “What about Thursday? Marty and I have dinner plans. I really hate getting a sitter if you’re available.”

  “So, now I’ve been reduced to date night babysitter?” Kelly let the hostility linger for a moment. “I can’t. It’s Thursday. I’ve got Pop’s.”

  “At some point, you and your childhood buddies need to grow up and part ways.”

  “Those guys used to be like brothers to you. Same neighborhood you grew up in. Remember?”

  “I guess I’ve moved on.”

  “Sam, we’re not doing this today.”

  Silence. Samantha Jordan had reverted to her maiden name once their marriage ended. Kelly knew his ex-wife well enough to be able to picture her face. He could envision her pursed lips holding back the onslaught of expletives she wanted to bury him in. Although a reserved person by nature, Samantha had a hot streak, and once unleashed, there was little to stop it. Like the breaking of a dam. Kelly was gla
d she held back. The last thing he needed this morning was a verbal lashing courtesy of his ex.

  “Listen, Sam, I’ll get this sorted out. Promise. I’m still adjusting to the new job. Things’ll settle down. Embry’s going to be all right. She knows I love her.”

  “Just don’t go around making promises you aren’t capable of keeping.” Samantha ended the call.

  Kelly slid his crime scene go-bag out from under his desk. He stuffed his notepad into the zippered slot on the outside of the satchel. Grabbing his coffee and stepping out into the crisp air of spring, Kelly cleared his head. The body he was about to see would need him to be at his very best.

  3

  The Impala shuddered and whined loudly as he put it into park. Michael Kelly wasn’t a car expert by any means, but it didn’t take a mechanic to tell his department-issued Chevrolet was on its last leg. Being the newest addition to the unit meant he was the last on the list for a new vehicle. Rookie crap. Most of these sedans had been phased out of service and replaced by the Caprice. There was a little peace of mind in driving a clunker; nobody would care if he wrecked it. He figured the quicker it got totaled, the better off he’d be.

  Kelly stood ten feet from the bright yellow tape denoting the scene. More times than not, he was forced to adjust this barrier, extending scenes far beyond the initial layout determined by the Patrol Division’s assessment. Kelly took out his notepad and jotted down his arrival time. Flipping to a blank page, Kelly started with a rough sketch of the area. Not an artist’s rendering by any stretch, but it served its purpose. He’d go back later and do a more comprehensive diagram with measurements, but it was always a good idea to get a gist of the layout before stepping inside the scene. The crime scene technicians would do a digital mapping and 3D reconstruction, most of which was done with case prosecution in mind. On occasion, the mapping software enabled him to get a better perspective on bigger scenes. But Kelly found nothing beat experiencing it first-hand. No camera could capture the intangible essence of those moments when walking among the deceased.