by Brian Haig
“Standby helicopters are always kept at Andrews Air Force Base and the Marine base at Quantico, fifteen minutes from the White House and Pentagon. Tell your bosses you need one— now.”
“Fly to Boston?”
“My thought was we’d walk and pull the helicopter behind us. But now that you mention it, this flying thing, that might be better.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want to lose your key witness?”
“What the fuck are—”
“We know this killer has shown himself to be very clever and resourceful, don’t we?” I allowed him a moment to think about that, and then said, “Hey, forget it. Sorry I bothered you. I’ll call Meany and let the FBI—”
“Don’t even think it.” He paused a moment, then said, “Here’s the deal. I handle this, I get credit for the collar.”
“I don’t care who gets credit.”
“I do. I gotta promotion board comin’ up.”
“If she dies, I’ll put that in your records.”
“Thirty minutes, the Pentagon landing pad. And don’t be fuckin’ with me, or I’ll—”
“What’s this in my hand? Wow . . . George Meany’s business card.”
“Thirty minutes.”
I tried Janet again and left another message to call me pronto. This was when it struck me that there were other possible explanations for what was going on here. Maybe J. stood for Jeanie, and A. for Alice. And maybe poor old Mr. Morrow came home from work, tossed a frozen pizza in the oven, forgot to remove the cardboard, and presto, a two-alarm blaze. We all know how forgetful some old people get.
But, as the French like to say, “L’audace, l’audace,” which translates roughly to, “Attack, forget the risks, gamble, and win.” Forget that the French haven’t won a war in a couple of centuries.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WE LANDED AT 6:20 ON THE ROOF OF THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL Center, where Mr. Morrow had been rushed by ambulance after the fire.
Spinelli had remained busy the whole flight chattering into his headset, calling Boston to arrange police escorts, tracking down the whereabouts and condition of Mr. John Morrow— severe burns on 50 percent of his body, condition critical, in the ICU of Harvard Medical—and struggling to explain to his dubious bosses why all this was necessary.
I huddled on a seat in the back of the Blackhawk, stared out the window at the lights below, and tried again to piece the fragments together. What did Janet, Anne Carrol, and Julia Cuthburt have in common? After giving it great thought, I came up with nothing.
Anyway, a bored patrolman was awaiting us by the rooftop landing pad, and ushered us through an entrance and down a few floors to the ICU. We were led to a room with no doors. Inside, a body was laid out on a bed, covered with some form of burn sheeting, respirator on his face, IVs pumping liquids into both arms, two nurses and a young doctor huddled together and discussing something.
The doctor noticed us and came over. “Can I help you?”
I offered brief introductions and inquired, “How’s our patient?”
“Touch and go.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “The burns were quite severe. His legs and lower torso particularly.”
Spinelli asked the doctor, “What are his chances?”
“Burns . . . they’re tough.” He frowned and pointed a finger at the patient. “He’s stable for the time being. But he’s old. And as I said, burns are tough.”
In other words, John Morrow’s chances were pretty good. Were I to paraphrase the young doctor exactly, he said, My malpractice insurance is killing me, and didn’t one of you gentlemen mention you were a lawyer?
I explained to him, “We’re here looking for his daughter Janet Morrow. Dark-haired, slender, very attractive.”
He nodded. “She was here earlier. Two other sisters also. They were here all night, in fact. They left about”—he glanced at his watch—“about an hour ago, after we got him stabilized.” For good measure, he added, “Of course, you never know with burns. They’re tough.”
I went to the nursing station and used the phone to inform Janet’s cell phone answering service that I was in Boston, and I left her Spinelli’s cell phone number.
I huddled with Spinelli. I said, “Okay, she’s in the city. But where?”
He replied that he had already arranged for the Boston PD to dispatch a car to Janet’s townhouse in downtown Boston, and another to her sister Carol’s apartment located somewhere in Belmont. Had the sisters shown up at either location Spinelli would’ve gotten a call.
So that told us where they weren’t. Not where they were. Janet made her living dealing with murderers, and maybe, after hearing that her father’s house had caught fire, suspected something was amiss. But she didn’t know yet about the connection between her sister and the other two victims, so maybe not. In fact, maybe she was at that very moment having her neck snapped.
All those maybes were giving me a headache.
I suggested to Spinelli that we should persuade the Boston police to issue an all-points on all three sisters. He suggested that was a dumb and unworkable idea, that APBs require legal authorization we were unlikely to get on such thin logic, that the sisters had been up all night and had to return to their apartments and town-houses to shower, change, eat, and so on. I responded that he had a good point, but if Janet did suspect something, she probably would be clever enough to avoid her own lair, as that was obviously the most likely place the killer would stake out. He noted that I had a good point also, except the Boston PD had a squad car parked in front of her townhouse. Well, yes, I replied, but maybe Janet and her sisters didn’t know that.
Stalemate. We were both tired and our tempers were fraying. We were also hungry and thirsty, so we went down a few floors and found the cafeteria. We got a couple of bran muffins and cups of coffee and sat at a table.
Considering that we had become sort of partners, I decided I should get to know Spinelli better, and so I asked him, “So Danny, what brought you into the Army?”
“Poverty. You?”
“Nothing better to do.”
He chuckled. I think he was starting to like me. I wasn’t sure whether I was starting to like him.
I asked him, “You started out as an MP?”
He nodded. “Made it to staff sergeant, then went to the CID course.”
“Like it?”
“There are days.”
Okay, enough with these deep, probing questions. We now knew each other intimately, what made the other guy tick, and so forth. I asked, “You’re the expert here. What do you think’s going
on?”
“Ain’t got a friggin’ clue.”
“The other day you suggested this guy was a copycat.”
“Yeah.”
“Still think that?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Curiosity.” I added, “Incidentally, I saw no sign that Lisa knew Carolyn Fiorio.”
“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe there’s some other connection or motive with Fiorio.”
I thought about that. It made sense—possibly the killer knocked off Lisa, Cuthburt, and Carrol for one reason, and Fiorio for a different reason altogether. Then I gave a little more thought to that copycat idea.
Spinelli, I was coming to appreciate, was my kind of cop. The other law enforcement officials involved in this case so overintellectualized the problem, made it so fucking complicated, devised so many intricate theories and complex hypotheses that they ended up chasing their own asses. Spinelli was the meat-and-potatoes type.
I was sipping from my coffee and contemplating meat and potatoes, don’t overthink, the answer is usually right under your nose, when it hit me. I slammed the cup down and said, “Follow me.”
I raced back up the stairs, Spinelli sprinting behind me all the way back into the ICU and over to the nurses’ station.
A heavyset black nurse was staring intently at some monitors, but glanced up when I said, “Excuse me. Were you here when Mr. Mor
row’s daughters left?”
“Yes.”
“Did they leave a number for you to contact them?”
“They did.” I explained that this was a police matter, Spinelli flashed his shield, and she gave us the number.
I smiled at her and asked, “Mind if I use your phone?”
“Go ahead. Just don’t be long.”
I dialed and a woman’s voice answered, “Hello.”
“This is Sean Drummond. May I ask whom I’m speaking with?”
“Ethel Morrow.”
“I’m trying to contact Janet Morrow. Would you know where I can find her?”
“I’m her aunt. Of course I know where to find her.”
“Right. Could you tell me where to find her?”
“Well . . . she’s right here, young man. But this isn’t a good time to talk with her.”
I recalled Lisa once mentioning a spinster aunt, her father’s sister, the dragon lady of the clan, who had helped raise the girls after their mother died. She was, according to Lisa, a nosy, eccentric, tart-tongued old biddy. But she was a parental figure of sorts, I guess. And it made sense that the girls went to see her at a moment like this.
I explained, “Listen, I’m standing outside your brother’s hospital room. I flew up on a military helicopter. It’s urgent that I speak with her right away.”
“Oh, all right. But keep it short. She’s quite upset.”
A moment later, Janet came on the line. I said, “It’s Drummond. I’m at the hospital. Where are you?”
“My aunt’s house. What are you doing in Boston . . . at the hospital?”
“I’ll explain later. Give me the address.”
She did. And I wrote it down and handed it to Spinelli, who then dashed off in search of the patrolman who had met us on the roof.
I said to Janet, “Listen closely. Lisa knew Julia Cuthburt and Anne Carrol. She e-mailed them several times before they were all murdered.”
“Oh my God.”
“Spinelli’s here, too. Don’t leave your aunt’s house. We’ll be there soon.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
WE JUMPED INTO THE SQUAD CAR, A COP AT THE WHEEL, SPINELLI IN FRONT, Drummond in back. The cop punched his lights and siren, and we screeched out of the parking space. Then it struck me that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I ordered the cop to pull over and shut it down, then said to Spinelli, “What’s this guy doing right now?”
“Who the hell knows? Watching her apartment, I guess.” He scratched his nose, appeared briefly perplexed, and then commented, “Nah. He breaks into the house while the old man’s at work, positions some igniters and fuel, and a few minutes after the old man gets home, he torches the house. Right?” I nodded, and he continued, “He finds a vantage and watches the fire. He sees the fireman haul out the body, then follows the meat wagon to the hospital, so he knows which one.”
I suggested, “Where he picks up Janet’s trail. He follows her when she leaves.”
And he concluded, “He’s probably watching her aunt’s house right now.”
We then spent a few moments batting this scenario around. Of course, there was a very good chance the killer wasn’t behind the fire, that we were on a wild-goose chase, and Sean was earning himself a long session on a big couch with a very nice, very inquisitive shrink. But my instincts told me he was here. So did Spinelli’s.
If we roared into the neighborhood, horns blaring, lights flashing, we’d blow this thing. The track record suggested that this guy was very, very good; we had no idea what he looked like; he’d see us; we wouldn’t see him—end of story.
“We sneak in,” Spinelli concluded.
“Fine.”
“We need an unmarked car and some sort of disguise.”
We batted that around awhile.
Plumbers or airconditioning repairmen were the normal routines, but on short notice were out of the question. Then I got an idea and off we went.
Thirty minutes later, Monsignors Sean Drummond and Daniel Spinelli parked the beat-up Honda Civic we borrowed from Father Brian Mullraney of St. Mary’s parish in front of Aunt Ethel’s town-home in Cambridge. Charitably, the place was a pit: a small, two-storied clapboard affair, seedy and ill-tended, no front yard, just a five-stepped stoop that rose from the cracked sidewalk.
Aunt Ethel answered our knock. She was somewhere in her eighties, shrunken to less than five feet, wispy, white-haired, with a bony, scowling face and hard eyes that regarded us harshly.
I nervously fingered my collar and explained, “I’m Drummond. I called earlier. This is Chief Warrant Spinelli, a military police officer. Please . . . invite us in.”
“Why are you dressed that way?”
I said, “Please. We’ll explain inside.”
She glowered at Spinelli and said, “I assume you have a badge or something.”
He flashed his shield and we were inside, being led down a short hallway to the kitchen. The whole place smelled musty and airless, like lots of old people’s homes, and was cluttered with old-lady junk; overstuffed chairs, doilies, figurines, and so forth. The kitchen was small and cramped, and looked like a mausoleum for ancient appliances. Aunt Ethel was a very strange duck.
Janet set down her teacup and calmly did the introduction thing, which, considering the circumstances, was sort of strained. The three sisters were huddled around the table, wrung out and glum.
There followed a moment of clumsy silence before Janet asked, “Why are you two dressed like priests?”
So I explained that, and what I had learned from Lisa’s computer file, ending with our suspicion that the killer might be, and, in our view, probably was, hanging around the neighborhood, and he wasn’t through.
My explanation came out a bit rushed, and understandably, the kitchen became very hushed and quiet. I mean, the Morrow sisters had just learned that their father’s incineration was no accident, that one sister might be marked for death, and that the grim reaper might be lurking behind the garbage cans in Aunt Ethel’s backyard. They were hardy women, and nobody got panicky or anything, but nobody looked drowsy anymore.
After a few moments, Janet asked, “Why burn down our house? Why try to kill my father?”
Spinelli replied, “To get you up here. Your old man’s the cheese in the trap.”
“Why? If he wanted to kill me, why not D. C. ?”
Why indeed? Exactly the question I had been trying to piece together on the flight up. I wasn’t sure, but back at the hospital, Spinelli had given me an idea worth exploring and I said, “Spinelli still thinks this guy is a copycat.” I then asked, “Why do people copycat?”
Janet pondered this interesting question a moment, then replied, “The normal motives are envy, sympathy, or a perverted sense of brotherhood. Some want to feed off the fame and deeds of other killers, and some want to outdo famous killers, employing the same patterns and techniques, but excelling over the original. Emulation and ego enhancement.”
I nodded. Her Harvard Law professors would be proud of her. This was a textbook reply, almost verbatim. But I’d had a little more time to consider this thing, and it had struck me that part of the problem was that everybody was too wedded to their textbooks. I suggested, “How about as a cover-up? He wants somebody else blamed. Yes? No?”
“That could make sense,” Janet replied.
I continued, “And until now, nobody’s found a link between the victims, thus the prevailing opinion is that there is no link. Killing you would cause everybody to rethink their theories and assumptions.”
“Yes. But killing me up here engenders the same risk.”
“He might think otherwise. Boston’s outside of the scope and jurisdiction of the task force down in D. C. Also, the killer isn’t aware of your. . . relationship to the head of the FBI field team. Or your entanglement in the investigation.” This was obviously true, she nodded, and I continued, “So maybe he intends to kill you differently than he did Lisa and the others. Arrange your mur
der without any obvious parallels.”
Janet thought about this, then pointed out, “You’re making a lot of guesses.”
“Look, I know this sounds odd, but . . .” I thought about how to couch this: “I’m starting to understand how he operates.”
“You’re right. That’s completely off-the-wall.”
“Humor me. Now, let’s call the Boston PD and get out of here.”
“Out of here?” Janet asked.
“Right. Away from this guy.”
Janet exchanged looks with her sisters, then looked at me and Spinelli. She said, “Would you two step out of the kitchen? We need a moment to discuss this thing.”
I glanced at Spinelli, and said to her, “There’s nothing to discuss. Call the Boston PD.”
She pointed a finger. “I think you’d be comfortable in the living room.”
Well, what could we do? It was their house, so Spinelli and I shifted into the living room, where we began studying Aunt Ethel’s very extensive collection of porcelain and crystal figurines, which, if you’re into those things, was pretty interesting. There were several hand-painted ballerinas, and lots of tiny, delicate horses, and some unusual unicorns, and . . . who gives a shit.
“We should’ve called the Boston PD,” I informed Spinelli.
“Maybe.”
No maybes about it, pal. The four women in that kitchen were grieving over the murder of their sister and the attempted murder of their father. The shock of those events was not likely to lead to clear thinking or logical conclusions. I felt uneasy, realizing I had misplayed this, hoping they weren’t convincing one another to do what I was sure they were trying to convince one another to do. After a time, Janet finally called us back into the kitchen. The four women were seated around the table, and I didn’t like the pissed-off, determined set of their faces.
“Have a seat,” said Janet.
Well, there were only four chairs, all of which were taken, so Spinelli and I brushed aside some clutter and hoisted ourselves up onto the linoleum counters, which earned us a really nasty glower from Aunt Ethel.
“We have a plan,” said Janet.