“Your message is that you made mistakes. You did your time. And now you’re trying to keep kids from making the same mistakes. The people at this conference will want to know what it was like for you growing up in a tough neighborhood, losing your big brother the way you did, and then turning to crime yourself.”
“You have put a lot of thought into my life and the decisions I’ve made.” Luther smiled.
“See who comes to these things. See what people are interested in. You’ve got a unique story and people want to hear it. You just need the right way to tell it. The kids on the street are a tougher audience than these creampuffs.” Zardino spotted a packed Student Center just ahead of them. “These people have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a poor neighborhood, with gangs, guns and drugs. You know more about it than any of the so-called ‘experts’ in the room. You’ll be a rock star with the students, especially the Chiquitas.”
Luther stared straight ahead at that comment. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor about women. “I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of these people,” Luther finally said.
“You’ll be fine,” Zardino said.
CHAPTER 29
They were crammed in a small interview room on the sixth floor of the courthouse. Lydia Thomas was in Connie’s face, shouting. “I don’t care what kind of subpoena you served my son with. He’s not going into no grand jury!”
It was too early for this. It had been after midnight, after dogs at Simco’s for dinner, when they’d found Ellis Thomas hanging out in front of an apartment building on Magnolia Street. His crew took off when they spotted the unmarked car. But Ahearn got to Ellis and served him with a subpoena in front of the whole neighborhood.
Fatigue from his late nights and crazy mornings with uncooperative witnesses was starting to set in. Connie and Mark Greene hadn’t counted on Ellis Thomas showing up this morning with his mother. His angry mother. But since she was there, he knew it was best for her to let it out. Then, maybe he could reason with her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he has to go in there and tell us what he knows about this case,” Connie said.
“He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t see anything. He wasn’t there.” Ellis was slouched in his chair, sullen and silent. Mrs. Thomas reached over and pulled her son by his red-and-black Avirex shirt, forcing him to sit up straight. “Tell them, Ellis.”
Connie spoke up before Ellis could say anything. “We have a witness who says he was there.”
“Your witness is lying. Ellis was home with me that night.”
“Ellis admitted to us last night that he was there.”
“He was mistaken.”
“No one’s mistaken. Our other witness is not lying,” Mark Greene interrupted her. “Your son saw everything.”
“Who the hell are you?” she took a step toward him.
“Mark Greene. I’m the detective investigating this shooting.”
“Well, detective, we’re not in a police station, are we?” She stood over him. She was a tall woman, imposing. “We’re in a courthouse. So, unless you’re a lawyer, I suggest you stay out of this conversation. I don’t even know why you’re in this room.”
“Because I asked him to be here,” Connie said.
“Well, Mr. Darget,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “my son was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. You’ve been trying to interrogate him in this room all morning. Why haven’t you brought him to the grand jury so he can tell them he didn’t see anything?”
“Because I don’t want him to make the mistake of going in there and lying. Miss Thomas, I want us all to talk this through first. If you’d take a seat we can try to figure out what to do here.” Connie pulled out the chair next to Ellis.
“I don’t need to sit. And I don’t need to figure nothing out.”
“Please, ma’am?” Connie tried a soothing tone. “I need to know what he saw. Then we can make sure he’s safe.”
“You can’t do anything to keep him safe. You gonna ride the bus with him every day? You gonna walk him to the corner store when he want a bag of chips? These kids are vicious. They kill you for no good reason.”
She was right. There really wasn’t much he could do for her son. If these gangbangers wanted to get to her and her son, they could.
“My office has access to witness protection funds,” Connie said. “It’s nothing like federal witness protection, but we can help move you to an apartment or a housing development in another neighborhood.”
“So you want us to pack up and move out because of these thugs? You think that will make the neighborhood safer? You be giving them the power. You think they don’t have ways of finding us? No, Mr. Darget, I lived in that neighborhood my whole life. We are not moving.”
“What do you think it does when people hide in their houses and pretend they didn’t see anything? These kids know that the adults are scared of them. If you really want to change the neighborhood, someone has to be the first to stand up.”
“I know that, Mr. Darget. I’m no fool. I know what it will take to bring these kids down. If I witnessed the incident, I would be testifying in front of that grand jury right now. But this is my only child. From the day he was born, it was just the two of us. I swore I would protect him. I will not let him bear the burden of saving our neighborhood. He’s too young to carry that responsibility.”
“Miss Thomas,” Connie said, “the grand jury is a secret proceeding. It’s not open to the public like a regular courtroom. No judge sitting, no defense attorneys. It would just be me and Ellis in there. I would ask him questions and he would answer them. He’d only be in there ten, fifteen minutes, and it would be over.”
“Mr. Darget, I know there’s one more person in that courtroom. Nothing is secret in there. There’s a court reporter who takes down every word. Am I right?” Lydia Thomas asked. “And she type it out for the world to see. She put my boy’s name on the first page. She write his name before every word he speaks.”
“No one will have access to the grand jury minutes.”
“Don’t try to play me. I seen your ‘secret grand jury minutes.’ I seen them plastered on doors and hallways and telephone poles in my neighborhood. The kids call them black and whites. They pass them around whenever they get them from their lawyers.”
Greene shifted in his chair. What she said was 100 percent true.
“Mr. Darget. If my son goes in there and testifies, he will be marked for death.”
“We can get a protective order from a judge,” Connie argued. “No one sees the grand jury minutes unless we charge someone. That’s the only time I have to turn them over to the defense. Then I can ask the judge to order the defense attorney not to make any copies. I can have it ordered that he not give a copy to the defendant.”
“So you want me to put my son’s fate in the hands of a lawyer?” She gave a short laugh. “I’m supposed to trust that some defense attorney is going to follow a court order and not turn over a copy of my son’s testimony to his client? What happen if that attorney says his secretary accidentally sent a copy to his client? I tell you what happen. He apologize to the court and that will be the end of it. And my son’s testimony, his ‘secret’ testimony, will be out there.”
“Most attorneys are honest and respect the court’s orders. If you’re worried about it, I can also redact your son’s name out of the grand jury minutes that I turn over. I will black out every reference to his name before I turn anything over to the defense. We’ll be covered even if we’re dealing with an unethical defense attorney.”
Mrs. Thomas stared at Connie. For the first time all morning it looked like he had her thinking. He needed to act fast and stay on her.
“Ma’am, this is your chance, your son’s chance, to make a difference in your neighborhood, the neighborhood you grew up in. Your chance to take it back. What if we were able to rally some of your neighbors to stand behind you and Ellis when it comes time for him to testify at trial? We�
��ve done it before. I’m glad you don’t want to run from these kids. It’s more effective if we can get the whole community to stand up. They’ll learn not to mess around in your neighborhood.”
“So they just move on to another neighborhood and terrorize them?”
“If they do, we’ll follow them and try to get those people to fight them the same way you did. If everyone stands up to them, they’ll eventually have no place to go. The first thing we need to do is hold them accountable for shooting Tracy Ward.”
“No black and whites floating around?”
“Court ordered, and redacted. And I’ll get people in your neighborhood to show their support for what you and Ellis are doing.”
Lydia Thomas sank into the chair Connie had provided for her. She took a deep breath. She brought her hands to her face and started to cry.
She was going to let her boy testify.
Connie felt the cold wave of responsibility roll over him. He had promised a woman he would keep her son safe. He needed to deliver on that promise.
CHAPTER 30
Massachusetts Avenue was crowded with students. Sleep savored the stroll through his favorite section of the city. He had enjoyed his visit to Boston College-such trusting youngsters there-but Chestnut Hill was so inconvenient, nothing more than a glorified section of Brighton, the forgotten stepchild of Boston. The neighborhood was tough to get to, plagued with tight, crowded one-way streets that were difficult to maneuver, and it was nearly impossible to find a parking spot-not an insignificant detail for what Sleep was trying to accomplish.
But the BC campus had served its purpose. It had pulled the police attention away from his favorite part of the city, the neighborhoods around the Fens, with so many schools, so many beautiful couples. This section of Mass Ave. near the Christian Science Park was a magnet for students from Northeastern, Berkeley School of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Even those from BU and BC managed to find their way to this Mecca of youth and beauty.
He continued on toward Commonwealth Avenue, looking in the windows of the many restaurants and bars along the way, dodging skateboarders whizzing by. Sleep was overwhelmed by the number of people basking in the sun, enjoying what was sure to be one of the last warm days before the fall settled in in earnest. All these fresh faces, young people experiencing the best time of their lives. Time could stop for them. They could spend eternity as they were, enjoying the company of a young lover, flirting, teasing, anticipating the moment when the two would become one. He could give them that gift.
Sadly, there were too many for him to attend to. He had to be selective, careful. Sleep would never just take them off the street, not without a plan. Not anymore. He had only done that the one time, the first time. It was a foolish risk he had taken. He was lucky he hadn’t been caught. But he didn’t regret having done it. Now he understood that he needed to know more about them, to study them, to learn their habits, prepare and patiently wait for the right moment, just as he had done at the football game last weekend. That had seemed risky, but he had planned. He was prepared to drive away if things weren’t perfect, but everything had worked out fine.
Sleep stopped when he reached Newbury Street. The memories of that first night came back to him in a rush as he stood on the corner, and for a moment he had difficulty breathing. Then he remembered something from high school football after wind sprints. He put his hands on his hips and raised his head to open his airway and breathed. He knew why he had come, but he wanted to take his time, savor every moment. He waited for the light to turn, then crossed to the other side of Mass Ave. and began his trek down Newbury. To the spot where it all began. Maybe he would get lucky and see her working in the shop.
He took his time, looking in each of the store windows along the way. His favorite part of window-shopping wasn’t so much the items on display, but the design of the displays themselves. He despised discount stores, the way they just threw clothes over the mannequins and stuck them wherever they found some open floor space. The boutique shops on Newbury Street were different. There was an art to setting the displays, positioning the mannequins in a way that would entice people to enter the store to learn more about these life-sized dolls, the world they lived in, the clothes they were wearing. Sleep knew that he could do this better than anyone else, even without a college degree. He had, after all, been practicing on his own since he was a little boy.
CHAPTER 31
Alves was hungry. He waited patiently as Mooney unfolded the legs of the card table and set it up in the living room. There was no dining room in Mooney’s tiny apartment, so this would have to do. Mooney went to a closet and rounded up a couple of folding chairs and set them up. “Dinner is served,” he said.
Alves took the sandwiches from the brown paper bag, figured out which one was the large Italian with everything, unwrapped it and used the wax paper as a plate. He forgot his manners and took a bite before Mooney had a chance to sit down.
“What do you have to drink?” Alves asked, his mouth full.
“Tap water and beer.”
“I don’t drink Boston tap water.”
“Let me get you a beer.”
Biggie, Mooney’s Maine coon cat, jumped up on the card table and started rubbing his chin on a corner of Alves’s wax paper plate. He wasn’t sure if the cat was begging for food or looking to be petted. His head was as big as a coconut. He waited for Mooney to come back with the beer.
“I really don’t like cats, Sarge.”
“You’re not allergic.” Mooney said. “So suck it up.” Mooney lifted Biggie and put him on the floor. By the time he sat in his chair, the cat was back on the table. He flopped down on the one empty spot, as if he knew he’d get tossed out if he got too close to the food. Mooney handed Alves a beer, an ice cold sixteen-ounce can of Schlitz.
“I dislike Schlitz beer more than I hate cats.”
“Sorry. They were all out of that John Adams Wicked Pisser Summer Brew that you drink.”
“Where do you find this stuff?”
“I have my sources.”
Alves popped the top and took a sip. It wasn’t so bad, but he wouldn’t give Mooney the satisfaction. He made a face like he was drinking skunked beer, then cleared his palate with another bite of his sub. He watched Mooney take his time unwrapping his sandwich, folding the paper back so it wouldn’t touch his tie. “What did you get?” Alves asked.
“An American with mayo.”
“I forgot that hanging out with you is like going back in time. I know sub shops have Americans listed on the menu, but I’ve never actually seen anyone order one. What’s in it?”
“Bologna, boiled ham, salami and American cheese.”
“With mayo? I’d rather drink Schlitz beer.” Alves chugged half his beer and made a show of wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
“Eat your sandwich before Biggie gets it.” Mooney took a bite and washed it down.
Alves could see the man’s mind working. He could see that Mooney was not in the mood to discuss the merits of his sub sandwich. “You come up with anything today, Sarge?”
“Yeah. A headache. I told you what Stone said about the gun. Later I interviewed Eric Flowers’s parents again, started digging around in his past. First time around, we spent a lot of time on Kelly Adams. I want to be sure Flowers wasn’t the primary target.” Mooney looked frustrated. “I have to figure out why he’s started up again.”
“I had a thought about that today,” Alves said.
“Let’s hear it,” Mooney’s mouth was full, a small glob of mayonnaise clinging to his lower lip.
Alves motioned for Mooney to wipe his face and he did. “I was talking with Eunice Curran about the possibility that this guy has a hit kit like Dennis Rader.”
“BTK.”
“Rader kept everything he needed for his so-called ‘projects’ in a hit kit in his bedroom closet.”
“I read about that on the Internet.”
“Look at our guy. The wire�
�s the same, the cheap necklaces, the ballistics, and it looks like he may have had the clothes stored away. Eunice mentioned mothballs.”
Mooney nodded. “So he’s had all this stuff stashed somewhere while he was away.”
“What if he wasn’t ‘away’? I got a list of recent releases from the DOC. Only a couple of guys live near the BC campus. Their records didn’t fit. Mostly involved with drugs. No real violence or sex offenses. That got me thinking. What if this guy stopped killing because he wanted to stop. He was smart enough, or paranoid enough, to stop because he didn’t want to get caught. BTK did the same thing. Just stopped killing. He had images of his victims, so he could relive the attacks as fantasies.”
Mooney closed his eyes. He looked to be mulling things over.
“Just a thought,” Alves said. “Maybe he has pictures or video of his victims.”
“How does this help us?”
“I don’t know that it does, beyond helping us understand him better. If that’s what happened, if he’s like Rader, just a seemingly upstanding citizen with no criminal record, who can stop killing when he wants to, then it does us no good to round up the usual suspects.”
“Do it anyway. It’s a nice theory, Angel, but we have no idea if it’s true. It just puts more pressure on us to figure out how he came across Steadman and Kipping.” Mooney downed the rest of his beer. He went into the kitchen and came back with two more. “Let’s get back to the two most recent vics. If the killer ran into them at school he’s probably not a student, unless they’ve got thirty- or thirty-five-year-old freshmen running around BC. Maybe he works there.”
“Administration faxed me a list of employees, from maintenance workers to professors. I have the groundskeeper who paints the lines at Alumni Stadium and the Zamboni driver at the Conte Forum. I have the BRIC helping with that, running everyone’s BOP.”
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