He pulled a padded enclosure from the satchel—making me wonder what the hell else he had in that bag of tricks—and wrapped the vial tightly before placing it in his own pocket.
“Now the files,” he said, his voice soaked in determination. “Someone’s obviously gone to pains to hide something, and we’re going to stick it in their ear.”
There’s another one of those phrases that you don’t hear all that often anymore. I let it pass and looked around the dusty, dusky room at all the dirt, at the ragtag collection of steel and wood filing cabinets sitting happenstance along the perimeter with a few of them absently, pointlessly in the middle.
Sweeney said, his voice just above a whisper, “We’ll split up again. Just take note of the cabinets you’ve already searched so we don’t duplicate. You’re looking for boxes, for envelopes, for files, for whatever, that have Mr. Cutter’s name on them, or the case number.”
We split up and went to far corners of the room. I opened a stout metal file cabinet, and the pungent odor that rose up from the empty drawer cuffed me across the face. My eyes started watering. I turned my head in search of relief and saw Sweeney standing there beside me, his mouth formed to a faint smile.
“Forgot to tell you, use this,” he said. He handed me a cloth mouth and nose mask with two rubber bands to wrap around my head. I put mine on, and he did the same.
Holding the penlight with one hand, I riffled through the files with the other—John Algers, Gregory Blinitch, Helen Duncan, Foster Grant, Luther Raymond, and on and on—but found nothing of interest, a fact that relatives of the dead might find offensive, but that’s okay. They weren’t the ones trundling through here in the dark of the night risking arrest and a whole lot worse.
Second cabinet, same. Third, same again. To add a sense of variety, I turned from the file drawers to a tall wooden cabinet behind me and pulled it open. And there, on the top shelf, eye level, sat a standard corrugated box, two feet wide by two feet tall, and on that box, written in a red marker, were the words “John Ellis Cutter.”
In my business, in any business, this is what’s known as pay dirt.
Thirty
ISUCKED IN AIRso hard I almost swallowed my mask. I looked across the bleak expanse of black at Sweeney, whose shadowy face I could see in the dim spread of his penlight as he poked through a file cabinet of his own. Rather than summon him, I lifted the box down from the cabinet and placed it on the floor. I crouched and gently pulled the masking tape that held it shut, opened it up, and peered inside.
In the narrow rays of my penlight, I saw a mishmash collection of materials. What first caught my eye were some articles of clothing—most notably an old tee shirt and a pair of boxer shorts that he must have been wearing at the time of his death. They were preserved in separate, clear, Ziploc plastic bags. I put those aside and pulled out a file folder, opened it, and shone my tiny light on the words.
First thing I saw was the title, “Toxicology Report,” written above an official-looking form. Under it, in the messy scrawl of what was probably a doctor’s writing, I focused on the line: “As2O3—arsenic trioxide. Positive.”
My hands began trembling so much that the light flickered all over the moving sheet of paper. I pulled the mask up onto my forehead and gulped deep breaths of corroded air, without even noticing the taste or the smell. I closed my eyes for a long moment, thought about happy thoughts like Baker romping after a brand new tennis ball on a freshly mown field. And then I returned my attention to the box.
Clipped to the back of the folder was another glassine bag, smaller and zipped shut, and as I shone the light against the plastic, I saw inside a blue tissue, crumpled and old. I flipped back to the toxicology report, scanned down past a lot of chemical mumbo jumbo—at least it was to me—and saw the words: “Evidence (blue facial tissue) As2O3—arsenic trioxide. Positive.”
I shone the light into the dark confines of the box again and came out with another sheet of paper titled, “Evidence map,” which included a sketch of John Cutter’s apartment and a lengthy list of everything that had been marked five years before by the guy who was on the other side of this room right now.
I began scanning down the list when I heard another loud creak, just like the one we heard before. I whirled around and saw Sweeney extinguish his light, so I did the same. In the pitch black, I put the folders and bags back in the box, and pushed the box slowly against the cabinet, getting it out of the way, just in case.
I’ll confess, I wasn’t nervous like I was when we had heard the noise fifteen minutes or so before, but I did want to take precautions.
I crouched on the ground waiting to feel Sweeney’s presence nearby, assuming he’d be crawling over, and in fact, a moment later I felt his hand on my knee and his breath in my ear whispering, “Say nothing.” A couple of minutes turned into five minutes, all of them silent. The only thing I could hear was my own wish to be someplace else—like the newsroom, with the contents of this box spread out on my desk.
Sweeney finally whispered, “I’m going to check the door. You wait here.”
I said, “I found the box.”
He didn’t reply, and I don’t know if he even heard me. Next thing I knew, he brushed against me as he slithered off across the filthy floor.
I waited, crouched in front of the box, in my mind anyway, protecting it, but from what, if anything, I wasn’t exactly sure.
That’s what I was doing—crouching, waiting, hoping—when I heard the first crash. It came from an area closer to the door. It sounded like a file cabinet being overturned, and my first optimistic thoughts were that Sweeney had simply bumped into a fragile piece of furniture and toppled it over, and that no one would hear this but him and me.
That crash was followed by an eerie silence. Neither of us wanted to call out to the other for fear of exposing our cover. But I had a worse fear that Sweeney had somehow hurt himself in the crash, even if he was the sole cause. So I set out across the floor in a blind search.
As I crawled through the dusty dirt, I heard only the sound of my own legs and body against the floor. I stopped to get my bearings, probing the blackness so hard with my eyes that my vision blurred, even as there was nothing to see.
And then another crash, this one coming from the far side of the room.
What, I wondered, was Sweeney now doing over there. I stopped in my tracks—literally—trying to penetrate the dark with my eyes, but to no avail. I listened intently, even holding my breath to hear better, though when I did that, my ears pounded and I heard nothing at all.
So I stayed still, waiting, wondering, wishing. And then a third crash, this one right behind me—the distinct sound of a tall cabinet slamming against the ground, the noise echoing off the steel and wood of the other pieces of ragtag furniture all around it. The crash was so close that I felt dust flit through the air and settle in the upstanding hairs on my arms.
What happened next unfolded in a rapid-fire series of lights and noise, like color slides flashing on a dark wall and vanishing to nothing before an image could even be discerned.
First, a flashlight flicked on near the door—the area where I knew Sweeney was initially destined. No warning, no nothing. Suddenly, there was light, a strong, harsh beam. I whirled reflexively toward the source, though I couldn’t see in the glare who held it.
Not two seconds later an explosion emanated from my left, the blast echoing off all the steel cabinets and concrete floors and rock walls of the room, and I swirled around to see a red flash in the blackness, then nothing at all. Immediately, the flashlight fell to the floor with a desolate clang. Whoever was holding it—Sweeney, I feared—had been hit.
I remained in my crouch, as silent as I think a human being could be under these circumstances, squinting through the darkness to see who that was by the door. The flashlight remained illuminated, but its beam short and forlorn, directed straight into what looked like a mop of grayish-black hair, which was likely Sweeney’s head.
&nb
sp; I waited and listened and watched, but there was no movement to see, and the only thing I could hear was the pulsing of my own ears and the beating of my own heart. My eyes were drawn to that beam of light like glue, staring at the hair, hoping against hope for any movement. But nothing.
Then I detected the slightest shuffling, the sound of feet slowly pushing along the dirty floor. I felt dust floating up in the stale, heavy air, landing on my face. I could see nothing, but I detected a presence within feet of me. I could hear someone breathing, the gentle sound of air pushing through nostrils. But it was maddening because the only visible sign of life was that one stout beam shining on what might have been the face of death.
Whatever had passed me was now gone, meaning they didn’t sense me as I sensed them. I made a few bold assumptions here. If that was some sort of lawman in the room, he would have announced himself. We wouldn’t be standing here in the dark. He wouldn’t have fired his weapon and be skulking around in the pitch black. This was probably the same nitwit who had called me in the Four Seasons Hotel that morning—a rather angry gentleman, I must say.
I was busy being a genius when I saw some movement near that beam of light. I focused so hard I thought my eyes might fall out of my head. What I saw was the sickening glint of a gun barrel shining in the light, that barrel being pressed against the salt and pepper hair. I could see nothing else, as if the hand and the body that it belonged to were standing outside of the stagelights.
Then I heard that voice I had heard too many times before over these last few days, a voice like sandpaper rubbing against the civility and sanity of life, the voice of the man on the North End basketball court and in the Florida swamp.
“You’ve bought the farm, old man,” he said, not at full volume, but not at a whisper either. I was standing about ten feet away. All I could see was a small patch of hair and the insidious shine of the gun.
The voice said, “Tell me if you’re alone.”
I strained to hear, but there was no reply.
I heard a click, like he was cocking the revolver. At that point, there were no other options and no more time. So I burst through the dark, hoping against hope that there was no short cabinet between Sweeney and me, nothing that would toss me recklessly, randomly, into the black room. There wasn’t, and a second after I began, I felt my body collide with another, felt the thud of flesh against flesh, and then I started to throttle what I believe was another man’s face, my fists slamming into muscle and bone.
I felt a warm substance on my hand, which I assumed was blood. I heard the gun clank to the floor, that sound being one of victory. I felt the rather punishing sensation of a fist slamming into my left eye, but what’s the worst that could happen from that, that I’d lose my vision in this fight and wouldn’t be able to see?
I kept flailing. I had no real choice. I had a friend on the ground who was either dead or dying. I had crucial records and evidence about my publisher’s death stashed in a box in full view of whoever would ultimately turn on the light. It did me no good to duck because I couldn’t see anything coming.
I was hit in the chest, elbowed in the face, clawed on my neck. At one point, I was knocked hard to the floor, landing on my back in a cloud of dust that penetrated my mouth and nose. As I lay on the floor, I took a hard look at the light on Sweeney’s hair and thought I saw him move, but I wasn’t in the best position to tell.
I forced myself up and swung hard at the dark, missing once and then again. I didn’t sense anyone nearby anymore, so I stopped and listened, though hearing wasn’t easy over the labored sound of my own breathing.
I sensed it before I felt it, a blur of motion coming in my direction like a train emerging from a dark tunnel. And then it struck, a vicious roundhouse punch that caught me fully on the jaw, sending a crackling ache through the entirety of my face and lifting me up off my feet and down onto the ground.
I felt myself start to pass out, but knew in some small space deep in the back of my brain that I couldn’t, that if I did, Sweeney would probably die. So I fought, not this killer, but nature. I tried to mumble. I moved my arms, then my feet. I rubbed my face, blinked rapidly, did anything I could to stay cognizant of the world around me.
Then I felt a thunderous blow to my gut, which I knew immediately came from a foot, or as the police call it in their reports, a shod foot. I winced and gasped and balled up into the fetal position. He kicked me again, this time in the arm and chest. I crawled through the dark, trying to get away, but he caught me again.
As I lay sprawled on the floor, I felt something cold on my arm, put my hand on it, and realized it was the barrel of the gun he dropped when I first hit him. I gripped it, repositioned it in my hand, withstood another blow to my lower thigh, and announced in a somewhat garbled voice, “I have a gun. Back off or I shoot.”
He slammed his foot into me again, close to my groin. I had the terrifying thought that if he struck any closer, Baker would be the closest thing I’d ever have to a son.
So for that and many other reasons, I aimed at nothing more than blackness and fired. The sound exploded off the walls and echoed again through the dark space, then was followed by an eerie silence. So I fired again, just to the left of where I had before. I kept the gun trained in that spot, then moved it slightly more to the left and down, and fired a third time. It was at this point that I heard a clunk, the sound of a man falling hard to the ground.
I struggled to my feet, my mind still in something of a haze and my body feeling like I was just tossed from a helicopter into a cactus field. I staggered to the door and groped along the wall for several agonizing moments before I found a light switch.
When I flicked it on, several exposed bulbs hanging from the ceiling sprang to life, and there on the floor was Hank Sweeney, blood oozing from his lower stomach. He had somehow rolled over, so he was on his back rather than his side, probably to stanch the flow of blood. His eyes were wide open, making me think for a moment that he was dead. Then he said, “Hey, quick draw, call 911. Tell them there’s a cop down.”
Oh, yes, there was also a man about ten feet away from him with half his brains blown out of his head. More on that in a moment.
I raced toward the door and into the hallway, flicked another switch and several other exposed bulbs clicked to life. I ran down the zigzag corridor in my stocking feet, up the stairs and into the lobby, where an old black phone sat on a table by the front door. I punched out 9-1-1. When a woman picked up on the other end, I all but screamed out, “Officer down in the basement of the State County Medical Examiner’s building on Cambridge Street. We need an ambulance, fast!”
I bolted back downstairs and into the evidence locker.
“Cops and an ambulance are on their way,” I told Sweeney, kneeling beside him.
He had his hands down around his lower gut, where his black shirt was stained in a formless circle.
“How bad?” I asked, putting my hand on his forehead for no other reason than that’s what my mother used to do to me when I didn’t feel well.
He shook his head. He suddenly looked weaker than even a second before. “Don’t know,” he replied in a strained voice. “I must have passed out when I first got hit. I think I’ve lost some blood.”
“Hang in there for me,” I said, my voice growing more urgent. “Mary Mae needs you. She’s down in Florida waiting for you to come home, missing you like crazy. Don’t give up on that. And I need you. I found a box of evidence.”
His eyes were closed as I spoke to him, but opened wide again when I mentioned the discovery.
“What’s in the box?” he asked.
“The toxicology tests,” I replied. I waited a beat, making sure he was cognizant.
I said, “Positive on arsenic trioxide.”
“Those bastards. I knew it.” His eyes were hard on mine, painfully, wonderfully aware.
I added, “And a blue tissue. It tested positive as well.”
He swallowed hard, gulped at some air, shu
t his eyes for a moment, and said, “Get the tests. Take the vial of blood out of my pocket. And get the hell out of here before the cops come.”
I didn’t budge. “Not a goddamned chance,” I said. “I’m not leaving you.”
I nodded my head to his right and added, “There’s also the small matter of a dead man about ten feet away from us.” I looked over at the said dead man, lying in a pool of blood and mush that had gathered around the gaping hole in his head.
I just killed a man. The thought, the realization, came over me like a wave. But then I quickly told myself, it was either kill or be killed, and as a human being, my instinct is one of self-preservation. That’s why they have something in court called self-defense. And in this case, I was trying to defend Sweeney as well.
He grimaced and said, “Yeah, the dead man. Go get the gun you shot him with and put it in my right hand.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to do that,” I said. “No goddamned way.”
“Son, do it. If we both get caught here, we lose all this evidence. You’ll get detained. I’m in the hospital. We’re completely screwed. Get the vial of blood out of my pocket and the test results and get out of here. Now. My brother cops will protect me.”
For emphasis, he gulped hard and added, “If you don’t go, I get charged with a crime. I can explain me being here. I can’t get away with bringing a reporter down here with me.”
There was an odd kind of logic to that, cops taking care of cops, the blue wall and all. You invite a newspaper guy into the mix and all that comes crumbling down. Charges get filed. Pensions are lost. Serial murders ofBoston Record publishers remain forever unsolved.
I put the gun in his hand. “Stand back,” he said. And, still lying down, he fired it against a far wall. In the light, the sound seemed even louder.
He said, “Don’t lose the tests. I’m going to want to go over them the next time we see each other.”
The Nominee Page 29