McNulty remembered something from the sweet menu. “Have you got any apple cobbler left?”
“We do. Would you like fresh cream or ice cream?”
McNulty looked at the dark street outside. “Something warm, I think. Can you manage a bowl of custard?”
The smile became a grin. She loved helping the Englishman. “Certainly.”
She turned away from the booth and left McNulty gazing out of the window. With the prospect of action on the horizon, he got his appetite back. The thought of apple pie and custard made his mouth water. It was a nice feeling.
FOURTEEN
McNulty left his car behind the derelict offices and walked under a ramp that swept into the Quincy Adams parking garage. He wasn’t planning on making a quick getaway. He didn’t want the car showing up on The Home Depot cameras. His footsteps echoed beneath the concrete overpass. Water dripped from a cracked seam. He paused at the edge of the shadows and examined the night.
The home improvement warehouse was closed. The streetlamps at the bottom of Center Street were sparse and infrequent. There were only two between the overpass and the end of the road, and there were no lights at all in the parking lot. The overhead sodium lights were off. The retail complex was a world of dark with pools of blackness. It was late. There was hardly any traffic and what little there was drifted along Thomas E. Burgin Parkway without a second glance toward the black hole in the night.
McNulty stayed to the left against the wall of the multi-story parking garage. He didn’t want his silhouette showing just in case anybody did look this way. Dunkin’ Donuts was less Technicolor in the dark. Bridgewater Photo Lab was darker still. He passed the coffee shop then ducked around the corner out of sight from the road. He ran through the layout of the photo lab in his mind—the counters and the display shelves and the front door. There were sensors on the door that beeped when it opened but there weren’t any infrared sensors inside. Hooknose hadn’t set an alarm on his way out. Most people who keep a guard dog don’t use an alarm system. The dog would set it off. With the alarm out of the equation that only left the internal CCTV cameras. And the dog.
McNulty took the undercooked burger out of his pocket. It was cold and sticky and smelled of blood. He kept it in the wrapper for now. He needed to get into the lab first. The front door was out. The roller-shutter door would be too strong. That left the staff entrance or the windows. McNulty couldn’t pick a lock to save his life and commercial doorframes were often stronger than their domestic counterparts. He took a leaf out of the burglars’ manual: Go for the weakest link. Most of the burglars he’d arrested had said the same thing. Why get complicated when all you need to do is break a window? McNulty broke a window.
Silence. Darkness. Smell.
McNulty finished picking out the shards of glass with his handkerchief and placed them carefully on the ground outside the point of entry, one of the blacked-out windows along the side. Apart from the thump of his elbow cracking the glass there was no noise. He had selected the window halfway along the side wall because it wasn’t blocked by display stands, just ceiling-to-floor drapes that gave the interior wall a uniform look. Once he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to cut himself climbing in, he leaned his upper body through the gap, then swung one leg in behind him. It was a balancing act. He felt like a gymnast. Five seconds later he was inside.
Silence. Darkness. Smell.
The dog didn’t bark. The dark was all-enveloping. It was the smell that worried him. He’d smelled it before, or something like it, back in the UK when his flat had exploded in a manmade gas leak. This smelled different though. More of a chemical smell than gas. Then he remembered this was a processing lab. He didn’t know what developer or fixer smelled like. It sure smelled a lot like a gas leak.
He turned on the penlight and a narrow beam flicked across the floor. With deft little movements the beam quickly explored the interior. It was exactly as he remembered only different in the dark. Darkness changed everything. It could bring out the worst in you, or frighten you, or hide you from your enemies. All it did in the customer area was confirm that the processing section wasn’t anywhere near the sales counter. That was good because the CCTV only covered the digital camera display and the cash register.
The dog still didn’t bark.
Making sure the drapes covered the broken window McNulty avoided the sales counter and worked his way toward the office. The chemical smell grew stronger. He took shallow breaths, keeping his mouth closed. His eyes began to water but he didn’t wipe them—same principle as being sprayed in the face with Mace. No point aggravating the sting. He stopped beside the clipboard hanging on the wall and leafed through the top pages. Processing slips and sign-off sheets. He didn’t know what he was reading but if they were doing something illegal it wasn’t going to be written down and signed for.
He tried the office door.
A muffled noise came from somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where. A hard little scraping noise, like nails on concrete. It was followed by something sniffing, then a whimper. This dog wasn’t very good at guarding the lab. They rarely were unless they were purpose-trained and big. The dog McNulty had seen was small and scruffy. A domestic pet drafted into guarding the building. Another sniff and a whimper. McNulty unwrapped the burger and stepped through the door.
The office was empty.
He flicked the light beam around the room. There was a desk and a filing cabinet and a water cooler. There were sales charts on the wall and inspirational slogans. Same principle as the clipboard; McNulty didn’t think the evidence was going to be written down anywhere, so he went back out and stood at the darkroom door.
This time the scratching was louder, more desperate. The dog still didn’t bark. It sounded more distressed than angry. Stepping to one side, McNulty opened the door and found out why.
Silence. Darkness. Smell.
Only one of those counted now. The dog yelped and bolted through the door. The light beam played across the area and picked out workbenches and chemical tanks. The smell was definitely not just developing agents. It was gas and it was a miracle the dog wasn’t dead already. The other thing McNulty knew for certain as he flicked the penlight around was that the smiling woman at the front desk had been lying: Bridgewater Photo Lab did process thirty-five millimeter. He could tell by the size of the empty spools next to the developing tank.
One of the spools had developed film on it, about a quarter full. The spool stood on a complicated rig so it could be fed through an editing machine and onto an empty spool at the other end. The far end of the room looked like the science lab at his old high school—test tubes and Bunsen burners and strange round-bottomed glasses cradled in metal frames. The walls were unpainted cinderblock, not even plastered and painted. Same as the utility area of any customer-based business—cinemas, hotels and shopping malls. “Staff only” areas didn’t need to attract customers. Staff didn’t need decorated rooms.
There were two doors on the right. Each had a red light in a cage above it to signal when the room was in use. The darkrooms. Very dark now. The red lights were turned off. There was nobody working late, developing illicit film stock. There was nobody doing science experiments either, but all the gas valves were open. The hiss broke the silence like a snake stalking the area.
McNulty crossed to the workbench and turned the shutoff valves. The door swung closed behind him. His feet splashed in spilled chemicals. The worktop was dripping wet. The stench was overpowering but he wanted a look at what was on the film. He ran the flashlight over the spool and found the leader. A film canister lay open on the workbench—same size as the pizza-shaped containers Hooknose had carried out of the room earlier in the day. Either he’d forgotten one or one more would have been too much for him to carry.
Then another thought raced through McNulty’s head like a brush fire: Maybe this canister hadn’t been important enough to rescue from the impending gas explosion. Without the hi
ss of gas, the area was quiet again, except for a scratching noise at the door. Surely the dog didn’t want to get back in. The whimper suggested it did. Or that it didn’t like being left alone. It preferred being with an intruder rather than wandering about in the dark. McNulty ignored the dog.
He pulled a length of film from the spool and shone the penlight beam through it. The thirty-five-millimeter frames were big enough to see, like looking at slides if your photos were transparencies instead of prints. McNulty squinted to focus on the strip of celluloid. The penlight beam reflected off the film and bounced up the wall.
McNulty froze. The external ringer bell for the telephone was a big red circle on the wall. Factories around the world used the same system so that people on the factory floor could hear the phone if they weren’t in the office. This one had a big red circle with a striker hammer on the outside. Wires ran along the room from the divider wall. They weren’t connected to the bell. They were twisted together.
Flammable liquid. A roomful of gas. Electric wires short-circuited.
McNulty trained the penlight on his watch. How long had The Home Depot been closed? How long would Hooknose wait before making the call that would destroy the evidence? Long enough that there’d be nobody around to put out the fire? There was nobody around now.
Ignoring the film spool, McNulty barged through the door. The dog yelped. A gentle buzz sounded in the office—a strange ringtone that sounded nothing like a telephone. It rang again. Sparks crackled along the floor. McNulty scooped the dog up and ran for the window but couldn’t see it because of the drapes. He only made it halfway across the room before the place exploded and the building was filled with heat and light.
PART TWO
“You don’t get where you are today without being what you were before.”
—Helen Kozora
FIFTEEN
“And you went in why?”
“To save the dog.”
“Not because you started the fire?”
“Do you think I’d be stupid enough to be inside when it caught?”
“Depends. I’ve met some stupid people in my time.”
They were in the custody suite of Quincy Police Headquarters on Sea Street. McNulty smelled of smoke and singed dog hairs. The detective hadn’t given his name yet. The dog sat between McNulty’s feet, eating what was left of the burger. It looked calm, content and friendly. That might have had something to do with the blazing inferno and the beef burger.
It was the ceiling-to-floor drapes that saved them. The darkroom door had blown off its hinges and the ball of flame had swelled across the sales floor. McNulty had felt the heat as he guessed where the window was and dived headfirst for the opening. He ignored the drapes and his weight and momentum tore them from their track. He went through the window like a velour condom and hit the ground rolling.
Smoke billowed from the window but the flames were restricted to the darkroom area. That’s where the chemicals were. The initial explosion had forced blazing gas across the sales floor, but the force of the blast had extinguished that fire almost immediately. The darkroom area was a different matter. Chemicals and celluloid had fed the blaze. Ceiling tiles had melted and dropped pockets of fire onto the workbench. The gas pipes had ruptured and spewed flames everywhere. The heat had built up and it hadn’t taken long for the fire to spread to the office and the reception area. There were plenty of combustibles out there.
After jumping from the window, McNulty had rolled on the ground, trying to find his way out of the drapes, but all he did was entangle himself even more. He was careful not to squash the dog. The terrier was amazingly calm, as if it realized it had dodged a bullet, and was content for its rescuer to sort things out. In fact, it probably had been stunned to silence. McNulty was. He forced himself to calm down, lie on his back, then unravel the drapes until he could sit up and take a lungful of cool night air.
That’s when the red and blue lights came flashing into the parking lot and two uniform cops stood over him pointing guns in his face. In their eagerness they failed to tell him he was under arrest, but that was the general idea. The dog trotted over to the patrol car and cocked its leg. McNulty agreed with its assessment.
The fire department had been as quick as the police. They had the fire out and started damping down, even before McNulty was bundled into the patrol car and transported to the police station. Bridgewater Photo Lab was a concrete bunker of a building. All the fire damage was inside. Ferocious and destructive. McNulty reckoned that whatever Hooknose wanted to hide had been melted or crisped. All he had to go on was a split-second look at three frames of film.
McNulty was formally Mirandized in the car and arrested on suspicion of starting the fire. His reply after caution was the basis for his defense:
“I went in to get the dog. I should be up for a medal.”
He was booked in and searched at the charge desk. His property was sealed in a Zip-lock bag and put in a locker behind the counter. Wallet. Car keys. A torn napkin from Dunkin’ Donuts. They had let him keep the remains of the burger because it kept the dog quiet. At this stage they didn’t try and take the shaggy terrier. McNulty was placed in an interview room instead of a cell. The detective came in ninety minutes later. The opening salvo didn’t go too well.
“Depends. I’ve met some stupid people in my time.”
McNulty stroked the dog behind the ear.
“Not tonight.”
The detective sat opposite McNulty in a chair that was fastened to the floor. So was the table and the other three chairs in the room. There were no sharp edges. A solid metal hoop was welded to the center of the table, but McNulty wasn’t handcuffed to it. The detective tapped his ear.
“That accent. Where you from?”
McNulty tapped his chest where the name badge should be.
“Who’s asking?”
The detective leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table while he decided whether to be annoyed or not. He chose not. McNulty was impressed. Unless you had irrefutable evidence, a cop’s main aim was to get the suspect talking. Best way to do that was to build a rapport. Falling out in the first three minutes wasn’t the way to go. The detective stopped drumming.
“Sorry. I’m Neil Armstrong.”
McNulty smiled. “Like the astronaut?”
Armstrong nodded. He’d heard all the jokes before. “First man on the moon. Nearly as far as you.”
McNulty stopped stroking the dog. “Vince McNulty.”
Armstrong tapped a manila folder on the table.
“I know. West Yorkshire Police. Savage PD. Titanic Productions.”
He indicated the terrier between McNulty’s feet. “Dog rescue.”
The terrier wagged its tail. Armstrong made small talk.
“What is that, anyway?”
McNulty considered the dog’s breed for the first time and was surprised when he realized what it was. He snorted a laugh.
“A Yorkshire Terrier.”
Armstrong smiled. “How’s that for a coincidence?”
McNulty shrugged. “Small world.”
Armstrong leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
“You were a cop. You know how we feel about coincidences.”
McNulty wiped his hand clean of burger juice. “The Yorkshire thing?”
Armstrong handed McNulty a tissue from his top pocket. “You, just happening to walk past when the fire started.”
McNulty dried his hand on the tissue. “Who said it had just started?”
Armstrong opened the folder and took out a pen. “What were you doing over there?”
McNulty screwed the tissue up and dropped it on the table. “Isn’t this where I’m supposed to ask for my lawyer?’
Armstrong straightened the folder and lined the pen up along one side.
“If you want, I can get one. Stick you in a cell until he turns up. This time of night. Could be a couple
of hours.”
McNulty nodded. “I’ve used that line before. It’s a good one.”
Armstrong wasn’t deterred.
“Do you want a lawyer?”
“No.”
“So, what were you doing over there?”
McNulty turned sideways in the chair so he could stretch out his legs.
“Stretching my legs.”
“Without your car?”
“You can’t stretch your legs in a car. Going for a walk.”
It was getting to crunch time, where McNulty would have to decide how much to tell the police. He could hardly admit to breaking into the processing lab, that was a given. Also, he didn’t want to bring Larry Unger into this by explaining he was investigating the theft of film stock, especially since Unger had already said to drop it. The movie industry was a strange thing. Sometimes a news story could help publicize a film. Sometimes it could ruin your career. This was somewhere in-between. Bottom line was he couldn’t admit breaking in so everything else followed on from that.
Armstrong made a big show of checking the file.
“You parked your car way over. Across the parkway.”
He ran his finger down the page.
“Before it got dark.”
Then he checked his watch for effect.
“You were in the diner a long time.”
McNulty shrugged.
“I was hungry.”
Armstrong looked up from the papers.
“Not waiting for The Home Depot to empty and for it to get dark?”
“It’s a nice diner. They do good food.”
Armstrong indicated the Yorkshire Terrier.
“The dog liked it.”
The dog wagged its tail. McNulty patted it on the head. Armstrong kept his eyes on McNulty.
“You always take a burger with you on a walk?”
Final Cut Page 7