by Brian Shea
“This girl?”
“I don’t remember her. But, that’s not to say she hasn’t come through there. The girls rotate quite a bit. Only a couple regulars stick around. I’m not sure where the rest end up.”
Kelly tapped on the picture of the dead girl. “I can tell you where she ended up.”
“What do you know about the operation? Now is not the time to skimp on details,” Barnes prompted.
“I usually only stop in once a week. I pay up front, and whoever’s working security takes the cash. I assume the guys at the house are just the muscle. They don’t talk much, if at all. They rotate too. There’s not a lot of traffic during the daytime hours. I heard from one of the girls that night is a totally different scene. She told me they rent hotel rooms and hold large parties.”
“How do you find out where the parties are?”
“Not sure. I didn’t ask because there was no way I could ever attend. It would be too out of character for me to leave the house at night. I’m a family man.”
Kelly almost choked on the man’s words. He had thousands of insults loaded in his verbal catapult, but fought the urge to unleash them.
Puzzo must have noticed Kelly’s disdain, because he offered up a conciliatory attempt. “Listen, maybe asking the big guy in the jumpsuit or one of the girls might help. I’m sure they’d have a ton more info than a guy like me.”
“Not happening. The Polish gorilla lawyered up, and the girls are too scared to speak.” Kelly sighed. “That’s why we’re having this conversation.”
“Detectives, I truly wish I could be of more assistance.”
Kelly reached into a white box he’d brought in with him. He removed two paper containers each roughly the size of a pencil. He then slipped on two pairs of latex gloves over each hand.
Puzzo gave Kelly an inquisitive look. “What’s all that?”
“Part of the deal is you give me everything I ask for. I’m asking for a voluntary sample of your DNA.” Kelly held up one of the packages. “These are buccal swabs. I’m going to rub them on the inside of your cheek and remove some skin cells from the interior of your mouth. It won’t hurt.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“If what you told us is true, then nothing.” Kelly peeled open the packaging, exposing the soft applicator tip. “But, if you’re lying, then no amount of political pressure can stop me from coming after you.”
Puzzo swallowed hard.
“I can call Mr. Clark and let him know that we’ve run into a bit of an impasse with you. Maybe he can come back and explain the way this is supposed to work.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Puzzo leaned forward and opened his mouth.
Kelly finished tagging the sample and walked it down to Charles in Forensics. He asked him to see if he could get it to the lab and into Ithaca Best’s hands as soon as possible. She had some male specimens to compare it against and Kelly needed to know if George Puzzo was a match.
“Our little interrogation of Puzzo didn’t open up much for us,” Barnes said.
“Let’s attack the Tabitha Porter angle from a new perspective. We should check out the last known point the girl’s phone was showing before it went offline.”
“I assume I’m driving?”
“Unless you’d prefer the soothing comforts of my four-wheel death trap?”
The two headed out of Schroeder Plaza and back to Dorchester.
“As much as we’ve been in the Dot this week, we might as well have been reassigned back to the Eleven,” Barnes said.
She rode the bumper of the car in front of her, leaving no room for error should the person suddenly brake. A classic masshole technique of ensuring no other driver could slide into position. Lane changes were made without signaling. Another sign of weakness, of which Barnes showed none. For being born and raised in the area, Michael Kelly never adhered to the driving principles seemingly intrinsically passed from generation to generation. He gripped the handle above the passenger window and pressed his foot against the floorboard in a futile attempt to magically slow or stop the car.
“Look at the tough Michael Kelly white-knuckled in my car. I thought nothing scared you?”
“Your driving has taken years off my life.”
“Gosh, Mikey, you say the sweetest things.” Barnes accelerated and shot across into the left lane and around the car in front. The movement jostled Kelly from side to side, and his grip tightened.
“At least we’re making good time.” Kelly kept his eyes on the cars around him because he got the terrible feeling Barnes either did not see them, or if she did, didn’t care.
They arrived in the area of Dorchester Ave where Tabitha Porter’s phone had last indicated she’d been. It wasn’t a perfect match to a specific spot and the grid coordinates had a margin of error, but it was a good starting point.
Barnes parked the car. Her ability to quickly parallel park, wedging her unmarked between two cars into a spot that, upon first impression, looked too small for a Smart Car, was as impressive as it was stressful. Kelly swore he’d felt her tap the bumpers of both vehicles ahead and behind, neither of which even registered on Barnes’s radar. She threw it in park and gave him a knowing smile.
“I’ll drive tomorrow.” Kelly released his grip from the handle and grabbed his notepad.
The two surveyed the area. Kelly looked for a spot that rang of teenage runaway. A place where a young girl would go. There was a bakery and hardware store on the side of the street where they stood. Food maybe. Tools not likely. Kelly spotted a Vietnamese nail salon across the street. Barnes had keyed on it too and nodded.
They hurried across and went inside. The Nail Palace was quiet, except for the light instrumental music chiming over the hushed conversations of the masked nail professionals speaking in their native tongue. Kelly wondered how many times they mocked their clientele as they worked their beautification process. The air smelled of citrus, but was overwhelmed by the chemical smell of the lacquered polishes.
One of the nail technicians left her elderly client with her hands under the purple-hued drying lamps and approached Kelly and Barnes.
“How may I help you? Mani-pedi?”
Kelly exposed his badge from inside his windbreaker and then stuck it back into the recesses of his jacket. Her eyes widened a bit. Police presence was not always welcome in places like this, and he didn’t want to make too big a show of their position. Local police were often confused with their federal immigration counterparts. The fear of deportation left many victims’ crimes undocumented. Kelly hoped to mitigate any barriers to her cooperation.
“We’re here about a missing girl. She may have come into your business a few days ago,” Barnes said. She held up an image of Tabitha Porter on her phone.
The nail specialist squinted at the picture. “When she here?”
“It would have been Tuesday around noontime.” Kelly watched for a reaction in the woman’s face.
She pursed her lips. “I no work Tuesday.”
“Anybody else here who was working then?” Barnes asked.
The woman turned and spoke in the fast-paced cadence of her native tongue. She broadcast what could only be assumed as Barnes’s question. A small woman stood up from the foot-washing station in the back of the parlor. She dried her hands and hesitantly approached the front of the store.
Barnes showed the picture to her. “Do you recognize this girl?”
“She came in here around lunch time. She had a friend with her.” The younger employee clearly enunciated each word. Although her command of the English language was better than her older counterpart, Kelly could tell it still took great effort to articulate her thoughts.
“Can you describe the friend?”
The girl hesitated. “Not sure. But I can show you.”
Kelly and Barnes looked at each other. “Show us?”
“We got robbed last year. My mother put in security cameras.” The girl pointed to the front of the store.
In the corner, where the yellow painted wall met the glass of the front façade, a small black orb was affixed.
“Can you access the footage from Tuesday?” Kelly asked.
“Yes. Follow me to the back.” The girl turned and said something in Vietnamese to the older woman, who Kelly surmised to be the mother, and then walked purposefully to the back door, guiding aside beaded drapes.
The heavy woman whose foot bath had been interrupted gave Kelly a smile. He eyed the stubby toes and snarled nails protruding out of the bubbling water. The detective, who’d seen a lot of disturbing things in his career, immediately found a new level of respect for the young girl’s profession.
Through the beads and to the left was a small office space. Hung from the wall above the monitor was a framed dollar bill. Incense burned on the desk beneath it, giving the room a sweet smell of lavender and rose. The girl sat and began typing on the keyboard. A moment later the screen came to life and a live image of the storefront came into view. She went to work manipulating the date and time. It only took a couple of minutes before an image of two girls appeared, standing in almost the exact spot Kelly and Barnes had stood only moments before.
Tabitha Porter was clearly visible as she stared up toward the camera. By all accounts she looked happy. The girl with her had wavy black hair. The footage scrolled by, and Kelly asked to fast-forward to their departure.
At no point in the surveillance recording did the camera capture a clean shot of the girl with her. The manicurist stopped the footage at the point where the girls opened the door to leave. “Did this help?”
“Are there any cameras outside of the store?” Kelly asked.
“No. I’m sorry,” the girl said, disappointed. “We only bought one camera.”
“Can you keep playing? It looks like your camera catches a bit of the street,” Barnes said.
The image started up again. Tabitha and her friend exited the store. The camera provided enough coverage to show the two standing by a dark-colored sedan. Tabitha got into the passenger seat and, a few seconds later, the car drove off. From the angle, Kelly couldn’t make out a license plate, or even the make or model.
The only thing he could tell was that as of Tuesday, 1:27 p.m., Tabitha Porter was still alive. He hoped that was still the case now.
18
The commute time doubled on his return to the office. Kelly transferred his case notes from his pad to computer. It always helped him to do so before he left for the night, a way of organizing the highlights of his investigation into a clear and cohesive format. He stared at the screen, double-checking the information one last time before logging off. The clock on the wall read 7:45. If he pushed it, he could still make it back to Dorchester in time.
Kelly was the last to leave. All of the other workstations were dark. The motion light activated when he stood up, casting the quiet office space of the Homicide unit in an eerie glow. He looked back at his Murder Board. He had crossed out Jane Doe on the red card, replaced by Faith Wilson. One minor piece of the girl’s death resolved, while a host of others lay in wait.
Kelly left the office feeling wholly unfulfilled. He navigated the busy rush hour traffic at a much slower clip than Barnes had earlier in the day. Unlike the other commuters battling their own bouts of road rage, Kelly took solace in the drive. He didn’t listen to the radio. It didn’t work even if he’d wanted. On a good day, he’d pick up static and classic rock on 100.7 WZLX. More times than not, he embraced the isolation and was glad to have a reprieve from the spoken word. The only sound, besides his Impala’s rattle, was the symphony of horns and profanity provided by other motorists.
The beat and rhythm of any case held its rises and falls. During the academy, there’d been a guest speaker, Detective James Flaherty, or Jimmy Smokes as he was affectionately known around the department. A man known for always having a cigarette in his mouth, even after the department evolved into a more health-conscious era. There were tons of classes and instructors who espoused their wisdom upon the recruits, but something Flaherty said stuck with Kelly to this day.
The raspy Irishman had been talking about working a murder. He spoke about it not being sexy and glamorous. The depravity witnessed wore at a man’s soul and played out in the mind long after the files were closed. Solved or unsolved, once you worked a body, they never left you. Like some cosmic connection, life clinging to death, or the other way around. But above all else, Kelly remembered one thing Flaherty said: In the quiet of an investigation sometimes the dead speak. If you have the talent for it, and few do, the dead will whisper to you when all seems lost. Their weak and distant voice will call out from the darkness and guide you forward.
He remembered the recruit next to him giggled. Kelly did not. There was something in the way Jimmy Smokes delivered his message, an intangible weight to the words. Kelly always meant to seek out Flaherty after and dive deeper into the man’s wisdom, but never had the opportunity. The opening in Homicide that Kelly filled was created when Flaherty, facing retirement, stuck his duty weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Maybe it was facing life after the badge, or maybe the memories of the dead finally took its toll. That’s the thing about death, especially suicide, it left the living with more questions than answers.
Faith Wilson hadn’t yet whispered in his ear. He was still grasping for answers into the disappearance and death of the suburban teen.
Kelly finally arrived in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. He pulled the Impala into the back lot of Pops’s Gym, Kelly’s second home. Pops had served as a surrogate father after the early passing of his own.
He changed into his workout clothes, consisting of a T-shirt and shorts. No fancy Dri-FIT Lycra fabric for him. Just plain old cotton. Hard to change the conditioned years of simplicity. Kelly grabbed his duffle from the trunk, buried under a spare ballistic raid vest and other police- related accouterments, his two worlds heaped together.
The familiar buzzer sounded from inside the gym, announcing the last ten seconds of a round. The Hard Ten, as Pops called it, when you unloaded everything left in the tank, exhausting the reserve, knowing the one-minute recovery period was just seconds away. Many a match was won and lost in those critical ten seconds of fight.
The final bell dinged as Kelly opened the back door, always unlocked, even though it was nestled in the heart of Dorchester, just off of Dot Ave. Pops refused to listen to reason, stating his door was always open. Kelly didn’t need reminding of seeking the gym’s refuge during difficult times, and he knew it continued to serve a similar purpose to this day for many of the young boxers it housed.
“Oh my! Boys, lookie what the cat dragged in!” Bobby McDonough, standing ringside, yelled from across the room.
A mix of leather, sweat, and blood bathed the warm air of the gym. There was no heat or air conditioning. The climate was solely powered by human exertion. Pops always said, “You want to get warm, put in work. You want to cool off, then sweat.”
Walking across the wood floors to his childhood friend, Kelly dropped his bag and pulled out his hand wraps. He hooked the loop to his thumb and began the ritualistic wrapping. Always four turns around the wrist before Kelly started his zigzag pattern, interweaving the canvas strap between each of his fingers. It was the first thing he’d learned when his father walked him through the doors of the gym.
Kelly had been eight years old, same age as his Embry, when his father caught him fighting in the street against a neighborhood bully, Antonio Marino. Fat Tony, as he was affectionately known to his victims, stole Brayden’s bicycle. Fat Tony was three years older and about thirty pounds heavier than Kelly, but none of that phased him. He’d been raised to stand up for family and never back down from a fight. Both principles, firmly ingrained, still held true today.
All the heart in the world didn’t matter without skill, and at age eight, Kelly lacked much of the latter. He took a beating unlike any kid had seen, punched and kicked by the obese pre-teen. To
those witnessing the assault, Kelly earned legend status for being able to take a beating. Each time Fat Tony knocked Kelly down, he got back up. Bloody and half-unconscious, Michael Kelly stood his ground.
His father showed up after Brayden had run to the family liquor store a block away and explained what was happening. Kelly remembered the look in his father’s eyes when he arrived, a twisted combination of pride and pity. His father snatched the bike from Fat Tony’s hands and gave the hefty boy a kick in his thick ass, sending him on his way. Nowadays his father would’ve been dragged away in cuffs for handling the scuffle in such a manner, but things were different back then.
On the evening of that same day, bruised and battered, Michael Kelly got walked through the front doors of Pops’s Gym. His father brought him directly over to the lean black gym owner and said, “He’s got the heart of a lion but the mitts of a kitten.” Kelly remembered Pops’s simple yet powerful response. “Heart, I can’t teach. Everything else can be learned.”
It started that day and continued to the present. The skills forged in the sixteen-square- foot ring served him throughout his life. Kelly had been the reigning middleweight Golden Gloves champion for his last three years of high school, one of the toughest weight classes in boxing. In a state known for its prowess in creating pugilistic artists, it had been a near-impossible feat. Pops prided himself on developing fighters from the inside out. His methodology had apparently worked because Pops’s Gym housed more local champions than any other in the area.
“I thought you weren’t going to show,” McDonough chided. “I know how much you hate punching the priest.”
“Well, you know he is a saint. At least that’s what I’ve heard,” Father Donovan O’Reilly said. He was out of breath from a round of jumping rope.
“You sure you want to do this, Donny? You’re looking a bit winded.” Kelly sealed his wrap, adhering the Velcro end. He punched his hand into his palm, checking to ensure the wrap was tight enough to keep his wrist from flexing on impact. Satisfied, he began the same ritual with the other hand.