“No. I hope I’m not telling you more than you want to hear.”
“You know yourself, sometimes it’s the smallest detail that makes everything fall into place.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, Angel, it doesn’t get any more graphic than that. After I took the bar exam, I started interning in the DA’s office again. Everything was good between Connie and me. I tried to get him to go away on a romantic weekend-a bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire -one of those couples deals with the champagne and spa treatment. He kept finding excuses. Then I tried to get him alone for a romantic dinner at my condo-Rachel tucked away at my parents. He showed up. But he was expecting me and Rachel. When it dawned on him that we were alone, that I had ulterior motives, he kind of freaked out.”
Alves recognized that spark of alertness he felt every time an interview veered unexpectedly into pay dirt. “What did he do?”
“He said I shouldn’t have misled him. He said that once we have intercourse, it shifts the power of a relationship, upsets the balance. He said he was only thinking of Rachel, making it sound like I was a bad mother. He left my apartment and never came back. After that, we were never alone, not even at work. When the summer ended, I had to make money. I couldn’t intern anymore. I had sent out résumés to other prosecutors’ offices around the state. I was lucky to end up in Falmouth District Court. My parents own a house in Falmouth, so I stayed there. When the job opened up on the Island, Rachel and I moved out here.”
“It’s a nice life. Are you happy?”
“I am. Will is a wonderful guy. He’s a great father to Rachel.”
“That’s all that matters.”
“Angel, I’ve never figured Connie out. I don’t think he’s gay, and I’m not buying that line about him thinking of Rachel. If that were the case, he never would have walked out of her life that night. That’s what bothers me most. I’m a grown woman, and I’ve had my dealings with worthless men. But he can go to hell if he thinks I’m going to let him hurt my daughter.”
“Have you ever been over his house?” Alves asked.
“That’s another thing he was weird about. I dated him for a year and I never set foot in that house. He always had excuses, that he was plastering or painting, that the house was a mess, that he didn’t want me to see it until it was done.”
Angel could see that rehashing her relationship with Connie was upsetting her. “Things don’t make a lot of sense right now, Andi. Soon as I know anything for sure, I’ll tell you what I can. Thanks for seeing me. If I think of anything else, can I call you?”
“Sure.” She smiled, a little worn and weary after their conversation. “And I know, you and I never had this conversation.”
“You’re a doll, Andi.” He stood and hugged her. “Give Rachel a kiss from me.”
CHAPTER 81
Earlier, Sleep had made the mistake of not following Darget from his home in Hyde Park. Instead, Sleep had been watching the DA’s office in Government Center from across the street on one of the benches in front of the JFK Building.
He played a game while he was waiting. First he’d find a number-say, the number of pigeons that waddled past him in five minutes. With that number, he’d count the males-old and young-who walked by his bench. When he hit the right number, that one was his brother for the day.
Sleep was good at the game. He’d been playing it since he was a kid, sitting by himself at the attic window, watching the passersby on the sidewalk below. First he imagined a name-Gussy, Tony, Billy-and then a life for his new brother. Sometimes it was going to school-and a good one, like Boston University or Harvard even. Sometimes it was a great job and co-workers, a family waiting for him back on their family’s street. Little nieces and nephews Sleep could play with and babysit for.
He liked the game. It always calmed him down, made his mind stop jumping ahead to questions and back to bad times. And when the game didn’t work for him, he always had Brother Death. His almost-twin, separated when their father had to be ferried across the River Styx to the underworld. Sleep couldn’t go with his father. He’d never make it back to the living. But Brother Death, he could wade back across the river if he wanted to.
Now Sleep was tired with the game. There had been no sign of Darget.
Yesterday, Newbury Street had been a debacle. Sleep didn’t know if Darget had recognized him on the street or not. If he did, that meant that Sleep wouldn’t be able to get close enough. In fact, he couldn’t use the van anymore. Darget had seen it and would recognize it immediately. So he had rented a minivan. An electric blue monstrosity with tinted windows and sliding doors on each side, the kind that the gang kids in the city used for their missions. What he needed to do now was a quick drive-by. Catch Darget off guard and it would be done. Make it look like a gang hit.
A little after nine o’clock, Darget finally showed up. Late, for him, and he didn’t look happy. Something was definitely wrong. The fact that Darget had talked to Natalie meant that Darget was on to him. After leaving Natalie’s store, the next logical move for Darget would have been to tell his detective friends what Natalie had said about him. If the detectives knew anything, Sleep would already be in custody. But they hadn’t come for him. Not yet. Which meant that Darget hadn’t told them anything. Yet. But why not?
CHAPTER 82
Figgs turned onto Townsend Street and pulled over, left the motor running. The ID Unit had put a rush on the photos taken of the scene and the gun in Stutter Simpson’s mother’s car. They were ready by the time he finished talking with Grady at the barber shop. He placed the photos on his lap, resting them against the steering wheel as he examined each one. Big question: Where had Stutter’s car stopped? In one photo, he saw a hydrant, and behind that, the trunk of a tree. Figgs found the hydrant easily and pulled up to that spot.
Something was nagging at him. It was too convenient, that gun found under Stutter Simpson’s butt. A gun that Simpson had supposedly used months earlier. A gun that had been passed around from one street gang to the next, all over the city. Why would it end up back in Simpson’s possession? Simpson had to know the gun had a body on it. So why would he keep it with him? Especially when he knew the police were looking for him.
Figgs stepped out of the car, surveying the neighborhood. Which houses had the best vantage point to observe the stop, the foot pursuit, the arrest, the recovery of the gun? The houses on Hazelwood Street. Figgs knocked on a few doors, the houses closest to Townsend, but mostly nobody answered. Those that did hadn’t seen anything. He made his way across a small parking lot to the next group of houses when he thought of something. There was someone he could talk to who lived in the neighborhood. Sort of. Figgs just hoped the man was “home.”
He walked across Townsend Street toward the Boston Latin Academy, one of Boston ’s exam schools. When Figgs was a kid, it was called the Girls’ Latin and it was housed in Dorchester, not Roxbury. He turned right, heading toward Humboldt, then made his way through an empty park on a worn footpath that cut diagonally across the brown grass. He spotted the shopping cart, piled high with cans, at the other end of the park, near Humboldt.
“Hey, Figgsy,” the man called out as he got closer.
The man was lying underneath a tree at the edge of the park, bundled in layers of coats, despite the unseasonably warm weather. His face was aged with drug and alcohol abuse.
“Hey there, Leo. How you been?” Figgs said.
“Doin’ okay. What’s a big Homicide detective doin’ out here in the hood? Slummin’?”
“I’m looking into something. Leo. You didn’t happen to be out here last night?”
“Might’ve been.”
“You see a dude with a ’fro get pinched by a couple of cowboys?”
“More ’n a couple.”
“What’d you see?”
“Heard them buzzing up the street. Toyota smashes into the curb and the kid bails. Big guy and little guy chase him down. Heard one cap. Figured the brother was toast. Then they bring
him back.”
“You heard gunshots?” Figgs turned back toward the street.
“One shot.”
That wiseass prosecutor forgot to mention anything about shots being fired. There was no mention of it in the 1.1 either. That’s because Simpson didn’t shoot at Greene and Ahearn-they shot at him. And missed. They wouldn’t mention anything about a police officer discharging his firearm in the official police report, a public record. Figgs would have to pull the form 26s to find out everything that had happened out here last night.
Figgs looked back toward Townsend Street. He remembered the telephone poles at the end of the street. He hit the speed dial on his BlackBerry. “Inchie, you at the House? Take a walk down to Operations for me. Tell them to pull all the footage the Shot Spotter might have picked up on the officer discharge last night near the corner of Warren and Townsend. I’ll be there soon.” Figgs clipped the phone back on his belt and turned his attention back to Leo. “You said there were more than a couple of cowboys. How many were there?”
“Three. Third d-boy takes his time getting out of the backseat. Leans into the Toyota. Pokes around. Shuts it down. Then the cavalry shows up and I went about my business. I know when I’m not welcome.”
“Thanks, Leo. You’ve been a big help.”
“Don’t mention it. Listen, Figgsy. You think you could…For old times’ sake.” Leo held his hand out to Figgs.
“Sure,” Figgs said. He took a twenty out of his pocket and handed it to his old friend. For old times’ sake.
CHAPTER 83
The ferry ride back to Woods Hole was cold, long, and lonesome. But it provided the isolation Alves needed before he hit the land and the reality of what he had to do next. Alves’s feelings of loyalty toward Connie were pretty dinged up. The reinvestigation, the reopening of the case, all of it had to be just another case.
The things Andi Norton had told him created a picture of a man he didn’t recognize, a man he never knew. It had been right there in front of him all along. In many ways, Conrad Darget fit Mooney’s profile of the killer. He fit Special Agent John Bland’s profile. But could Connie, a friend, a top prosecutor, be a killer? Could he frame a friend and stand by while that friend committed suicide? More than that, could he have whispered something to Mitch that encouraged him to jump from that court balcony? Connie would have known that Mitch’s final act would show consciousness of guilt.
Maybe he and Mooney had been too quick wrapping up the case after Mitch’s death.
All the victims were linked to the South Bay District Courthouse. All of them were linked to Darget’s juries. That’s why he and Mooney had interviewed Connie first. But, he remembered, that interview had been cut short, interrupted by the phone call from Eunice Curran. With the analysis of the hairs and condom recovered at the final crime scene. The “evidence” that led them to Mitch Beaulieu.
But evidence can be planted.
And what about Nick Costa’s disappearance? The two had a contentious relationship at best. Had Connie’s co-worker gotten too close, seen something Connie didn’t want him to see? Nick Costa’s body had never been found. None of the Blood Bath Killer’s victims’ bodies had ever been recovered. None of those souls ever laid to rest.
After his talk with Andi Norton, he had a good idea where those bodies were.
It’s not inconceivable that a killer would change his MO. It’s not likely, but it happens, especially with killers of high intelligence. Killers close to the investigation. Alves remembered a conversation he’d had with Connie about serial killers. Alves was telling him about one of his criminology classes, how one of three things happens to killers: they either repent, continue killing, or kill themselves.
Connie had argued, and Alves remembered his words, his intensity, that a killer can transform himself into something else. If a killer is locked into one MO, it has to end at some point. A smart detective will figure his pattern out. Organized. Unorganized. Both patterns that control most killers, but a smart killer? He can change. He has to. Because what’s important is not the how, but the why.
The shore, the city of Boston itself-all of it seemed like another world. If Conrad Darget was the Blood Bath Killer, was it possible that he killed those couples ten years ago, as the Prom Night Killer? The murders had stopped around the time he went away to school in Arizona. Seven years later Darget shifted his MO and murdered as the Blood Bath Killer. He learned that by providing a suspect-Mitch Beaulieu-the case was closed, allowing him to shift his MO back again.
Now, as the Prom Night Killer, before the police close in, he reverts to what’s worked in the past. Make Richard Zardino, a Street Savior, a man who had served time in prison, the goat.
CHAPTER 84
Figgs stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of One Schroeder Plaza. He didn’t make his way up here very often. Didn’t usually have a need to see anyone in the command staff, or in operations.
Today was an exception. He had read through the 26s. Greene and Ahearn had written consistent, almost identical, reports. They’d spotted Stutter driving a car on Blue, followed him at speeds that weren’t excessive, which was different from what Stutter had told him, chased Stutter on foot after he cracked up the Tercel, and caught him just after Ahearn’s “accidental” firearm discharge.
Figgs wanted to ask the detectives some questions, but it was too late for that. The Commissioner’s Firearm Discharge Team had arrived on scene within minutes of the shot being fired. They took the detectives’ guns and did a quick briefing before the union rep showed up with the union lawyer. Greene and Ahearn were immediately taken to the hospital to be treated for stress-related injuries, standard operating procedure in the aftermath of a police shooting. Now Figgs couldn’t speak with them without the lawyer being present.
There was only one lawyer he wanted to speak with right now. Darget hadn’t written a report. He wasn’t a member of the department, but he had given a statement to the patrol supervisor on scene. His story was consistent with the two detectives, only he didn’t get involved in the foot pursuit. He laid back at the crash site until backup units arrived. Never saw what happened when the detectives followed Stutter through the yards. Only heard the shot and saw the detectives come out with the suspect unharmed and in custody a few seconds later. Darget would be worth talking to. When the time was right.
Figgs stepped through the double doors into Operations. He walked up the short set of stairs into the room where the Shot Spotter techs monitored the system. No sign of Inchie. Figgs angled his way around some tables with computer monitors and printers, toward the one human in the room, the tech with his eyes fixed on the three massive computer monitors-widescreen TVs, really-in front of him. “Sergeant Figgs, Homicide. Detective O’Neill talk to you about the shots fired last night at Quincy and Warren?”
“Officer discharge,” the tech said, not looking away from the screens. “Didn’t pick much up. They were in the backyards when the shot went off.”
“That’s okay. I want to see what was happening in the street. How’s this thing work?” Figgs asked, looking at the LCDs.
“The Shot Spotter picks up the shot and an alarm sounds within four to seven seconds.” The tech had obviously given this speech a few dozen times. “The system immediately pulls up a grid map, an aerial image of the surrounding streets, the whole neighborhood. Then it uses the sound sensors to triangulate and pinpoint the location of the shot. The closest cameras will zoom in on that location. I’ll show you.”
Figgs watched as he pulled up the aerial image of the familiar neighborhood he had visited that morning. Then the tech switched to the video footage. The camera shot a wide angle. It focused on the yards on the left side of the street, across the street from where Leo was resting, across the street from Stutter’s cracked up car.
But there was the car on the far right of the screen. And Conrad Darget walking up to the car, doing something with his hands, looking into the car, leaning in on the driver’s side.
Exactly where the gun was located. Funny, Darget forgot to mention all that to the PS when he gave his statement. Must have slipped his mind.
CHAPTER 85
Luther sat on the steps of the old Victorian watching the sun set over Highland Park. The Crispus Attucks Youth Center was buzzing, a group of boys playing hoops in the driveway-skins versus the shirts, even in this cool weather-with a few girls cheering them on. Inside the Center, boys and girls were using the computers to do research for school papers or getting tutored by older kids.
Luther checked his watch. Richard Zardino should have been here by now. They had planned to go out tonight and meet with some of the potential clients they had been mentoring on the street, the ones who refused to come to the Youth Center. Luther and Zardino had to meet these kids on their own turf if they were going to get through to them. This was the part of the job that Luther loved, working with the kids everyone else had given up on.
This would be the second time Zardino had blown him off in the last week. What was wrong? Rich was acting different, preoccupied, and when Luther tried to talk to him, he was distant. When they did meet the kids, Zardino wasn’t listening to what they had to say, and listening was the only way to gain their trust.
Luther saw a set of headlights turn the corner onto St. James from Warren and climb the hill. He stood and walked to the edge of the curb. This had to be Zardino.
But it wasn’t.
It was a late model, dust-covered Ford Five Hundred. When it pulled next to the curb, he could see that it had blue lights in the grill and strobes mounted on the dash. Jump Out Boys. Detectives.
Ray Figgs eased himself out of the driver’s seat. He didn’t look like the same Ray Figgs he’d seen when George Wheeler’s body had been discovered or on the night Junior Simpson was shot and killed. He looked more like the Ray Figgs who used to chase Luther and his boys around when they were younger, runnin’ and gunnin,’ before Luther found his calling. More color to his face, more meat on his bones.
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