by Lola Swain
The officer released the tape in front of the door and allowed a man in a white coat to enter the room and James and I followed behind.
“I’d say it’s a little late for a doctor,” I said and pointed at the man’s bag.
“Coroner,” James said.
“Ah.”
There were ten or twelve officers, some in uniform and some in suits milling about the living room area of the suite. Photographers shot pictures of the various messes Nellie and Brandt made when they trashed room and officers congregated in groups of twos and threes whispering to each other. Mr. Conway walked into the suite and shook his head.
An officer came out of the bedroom carrying my identification and held it over his head as if it was a trophy.
“Found it!” he said.
Some of the other officers ran over to him and slapped him on the back.
“Well, it’s not as if that was bang-up detective work,” I said. “Nellie and Brandt left it right on the bed at my feet.”
James rubbed his chin and chuckled.
“I’m going to go into the bedroom,” he said. “Want to come?”
“In a minute. I want to hear what Mr. Conway has to say.”
“Remember, Sophia,” James said.
“Yes, yes,” I said and put my hand on James’ back, “no interfering.”
James walked into the bedroom and I went and stood beside Mr. Conway.
Mr. Conway leaned up against the wall and put his head in his hands as two detectives holding notebooks surrounded him. A female officer handed Mr. Conway a glass of water and his hand trembled as he took the glass.
As the officers made notes in their books, Mr. Conway lifted the glass with his shaky hand and dumped most of the water on the floor. When he finally took a sip, he banged the lip of the glass against his teeth so hard, I was sure he either chipped the glass or his tooth.
“I told Detective Trenton everything I know about him, Detective Bonner,” Mr. Conway said after he finished the water remaining in the glass. “I don’t know what more I can say.”
“But in your opinion, Mr. Conway,” Detective Bonner said, “since you know him—”
“I do not know him, well, I—”
“Merely a figure of speech, Mr. Conway,” Detective Bonner said. “We’re just looking for an opinion about him. Do you think he could have killed this girl?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Conway said and placed his hand over his mouth. “I honestly couldn’t say. In my conversations with him, he certainly did not seem the type.”
The officer who found my identification came up to the group and handed Detective Trenton the card.
“Nineteen, boss,” the officer said and shook his head.
Detective Trenton looked at my identification.
“Okay, 544 Whittier, Marblehead,” Detective Trenton said and turned to one of the officers in the living room. “Jessup, go radio Essex County P.D. and have them send a couple of officers for the notification. These are some real richies, so make sure you tell them to get it fucking right.”
“Okay, Mr. Conway,” Detective Bonner said, “here’s what’s going to happen, we’re going to pull the suspect in, question him real fucking good, if you know what I mean. I personally like him for this. Something about it clicks.”
The detectives wrote in their notebooks and Mr. Conway slumped against the wall and took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.
“James,” I said, “come here!”
James ran into the living room. His olive skin looked ashen.
“That,” he said and pointed toward the bedroom and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, “is not a good scene. Fuck, sealed in that hot room. Well, you do the math.”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” I said and grabbed his arm. “Guess what?”
“Just tell me, I’m not in the mood for games.”
“You are not telling me that the collector of people is squeamish, are you?” I said.
“Sophia, I collected girls to fuck,” James said and shook his head. “Are you going to tell me or break my balls?”
“Okay, okay. I listened while the officers spoke to Mr. Conway, who, by the way, is even more shaken than you, and they said they’re going to question Brandt real good. They think he did it!”
“What about his girlfriend?” James asked.
“They probably don’t know about Nellie yet, but I’m not worried about it. She will get it. Brandt is a coward. When faced with prison, he’s not going to protect that whore. He’d roll over on her if they offered to shave even one second off his sentence in exchange for giving her up.”
Another officer ran into the room and whispered into Detective Trenton’s ear.
“He’s cuffed already?” Detective Trenton said to the officer. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“Already?” I said to James. “They have Brandt already?”
“Rich girl gets killed in a luxury hotel known for mishaps? Yeah, I can see them moving fast,” James said and stroked my hair.
“Conway!” Detective Trenton said and grabbed Mr. Conway’s shoulders. “Conway, get it together!”
“I can’t believe it happened again,” Mr. Conway said and sobbed.
“Yeah, some dumb luck,” Detective Bonner said. “Look, we are here to solve a murder. We don’t give a shit about the Battleroy’s latest public relations fiasco. All we care about is punishing that girl’s killer.”
“Yes,” Mr. Conway said and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, of course.”
“So, Conway, you with us?” Detective Trenton said.
“Uh-huh,” Mr. Conway said.
“Good, Officer Hanaran is going to take you to your office,” Detective Bonner said and snapped his fingers at a red-headed officer. “We need all records…everything. Okay?”
Mr. Conway nodded.
“Good and remember, Conway,” Detective Trenton said, “a speedy resolution to this murder will help you too, understand? It would be good if you could remember any violent outbursts or predatory-type behavior.”
“Oh, no, there was none of that.”
“That you can remember now,” Detective Bonner said and led Mr. Conway toward Officer Hanaran. “Just go with Hanaran. Get the records. Something may come to you.”
“Yes, maybe,” Mr. Conway said and looked into the living room and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Bobby.”
“Who’s Bobby?” James said.
“No idea. Maybe Mr. Conway remembers Brandt’s name as Bobby?”
James shrugged his shoulders and put his arm around my waist.
“I’m sorry today is officially the day the world learns of your death,” James said and kissed me on the forehead.
“Bonner,” Detective Trenton said, “go quietly and tell the Crime Scene people to move to the far end of the room. Then you, Franco and Smyth get on either side of him. I’ll clear a path. I don’t want a scene, get it?”
“Gotcha.”
Detective Bonner ran between the living room and bedroom gathering photographers and other forensic people and moved them to the far corner of the living room.
“What the hell?” I said and looked at James who peered over the crowd toward the sliding glass door that led to the private beach. “James?”
“Just wait,” James said and grabbed my arm.
Detective Bonner grabbed two other burly officers and walked to the back of the room.
“No!” A man said and cried.
“What’s going on?” I said to James.
“Clear a path!” Detective Trenton said and pushed people aside as he walked through the crowd.
The people in front of me parted and James gripped my arm tightly as I saw what he already saw.
A young black man sat on the couch in the living room. He wore a Battleroy Hotel bellman’s uniform. His hands were handcuffed in front of him and his head turned from officer to officer.
“I just found her!” he said. “I didn’t do this!”
“Bobby Allen,” Detective Trenton said, “you have the right to remain silent…”
“No,” I said and struggled to free myself from James as Detective Trenton read the hysterical boy his Rights.
“Sophia, you can’t,” James said.
“The fuck I can’t! I will die a thousand deaths before I see this guy go to jail. He did not kill me.”
“There is nothing you can do.”
“Let go of me,” I said. “I’ll write a note. I’ll leave it on the windshield of one of the cop cars.”
“It is against the Law,” he said.
“The Law allows innocent boys to be put in jail? This is ludicrous.”
The detectives lifted Bobby Allen to his feet. He begged the officers to listen to him, but no one cared to listen to Bobby Allen. When they informed him that he would be walked through the front of the hotel rather than taken out the back way, he wailed.
“Please! Listen, I’ll talk to you, I will, but I am begging…please take me out the back!”
“Why?” one of the officers said. “If you didn’t do anything like you say you didn’t, why do you care?”
“My mother and father work here,” Bobby Allen said. “They’ve worked here all their lives. My mother is working right now. Please don’t do this.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you did those disgusting things to that poor girl,” Detective Bonner said.
“No, please,” Bobby said as the officers pushed him toward the door.
Bobby Allen dug his heels into the carpet and stopped the procession.
“Resisting!” one of the officers said.
Bobby Allen got a hard blow across his back with a nightstick.
“This is not right!” I said.
“I know,” James said.
They dragged Bobby Allen toward the front door and suddenly they stopped him beside us.
“Fuck, he pissed himself,” Detective Bonner said.
Bobby Allen hung his head. Tears streamed from his eyes and he turned and looked right at me. James threw his arms around me and restrained me.
“I will do something, I promise,” I said as they dragged Bobby Allen out of the room. “They will know who did this!”
“Sophia,” James said and loosened his grip on me after everyone left. “I—”
“Fucking cowards, all of you,” I said.
“It’s not our fault,” he said.
“Oh, not our fault? Give me a break. You know this is wrong,” I said and stared at my sheet-covered body in the bedroom.
“Sophia, let’s go to the beach or the caves. Let’s just get out of this room.”
I looked at James, at his beautiful face, and it broke my heart that I was angry with him.
“James, I need to be alone.”
“Yes, if course,” James said and nodded. “Where will you go? I promise I won’t bother you, I just want to know.”
“I want to go to the rafters,” I said.
And then I was there, in the rafters among the beams where I spent my first terrifying night. James looked up at me and blew me a kiss.
“I am sorry, Sophia,” he said.
“So am I.”
He walked out the door and I cried. I cried as I watched the Medical Examiner and the technicians lift my body off the bed and wheel me out of the room on a gurney. I cried for my parents and my brother and sister and Katt who would learn on that day I was murdered. And I cried for Bobby Allen who was surely more terrified than I.
I sat in the rafters and tried to think of ways to help Bobby Allen and crucify Brandt and Nellie. It was much more than revenge now.
Though Massachusetts hadn’t executed a prisoner since 1947 when Phillip Bellino and Edward Gertson died in the electric chair for murdering Robert Williams, the death penalty was still on the Massachusetts’ books.
I knew that the cops, the hotel and my parents would push for a speedy resolution to this and Bobby Allen would certainly suffer for their hurried investigation. I was his only shot for exoneration and I controlled Brandt and Nellie’s ultimate fate, but these rules or laws or whatever James talked about presented a challenge.
I needed to figure out how I could steer the course without doing the steering. The newspaper box in the lobby that provided guests with copies of the Boston Globe would be my only link to any information on the case. I vowed to make this my death’s work.
The investigators stripped the bedroom of the mattress which my body decayed upon and left the box-spring in the room. There was a large stain on the white cambric that covered the wooden slats. When everyone was gone and the suite was dark, I stared down at that stain from the rafters and screamed.
I rested my head on one of the beams and closed my eyes. At one point during my sixteen hour sleep, I heard a light rap at the front door to the suite. I knew it was James and I turned my head and fell back to sleep.
I dreamt I was an Inquisitor and enacted a special torture just for Brandt and Nellie. I ripped their bodies apart with my hands, pulling flesh from their sinewy tendons, squeezing marrow from their bones with my teeth. I allowed them the opportunity to beg for mercy, to plead with me to stop hurting them and after, I cut their tongues out of their mouths. And when they passed out because they could no longer endure the pain, I woke them with buckets of ice. An epic bloodbath, I drank of them until there was nothing left.
I awoke to more ruckus as police officers, though in lesser numbers than the day before, took more pictures and surface swabs around the suite. As I watched the officers going to work in the rooms, James snuck into the bedroom, hiding behind a particularly large cop.
“I can see you, you know,” I said.
He shook his head and looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said and held his arms out. “I’m just checking on you. I brought you something that I’d like you to take a look at.”
James placed a large, red leather-bound book on the edge of the box-spring.
“What is it?” I said as I peered at the book. “It looks like a family bible.”
James looked up and smiled.
“It is, of sorts. It’s our history of this place. I think it may help fill in some gaps.”
“Thank you. I’ll read it later.”
“Okay,” he said as he looked around the room. “So, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Yes, I see. Can I sneak anything in for you? Something to eat? Drink?”
“I’m neither hungry nor thirsty.”
“But you’ve not had anything at all,” he said and shook his head.
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to waste away to nothing.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said. “So, what have you been doing?”
“Oh, you know,” I said and stretched, “just hanging around.”
“Ha, good one,” he said and looked around the bedroom. “I see they removed—”
“Me,” I said. “Yeah, yesterday evening. They took the mattress too.”
“Testing it probably,” he said and rubbed his hands together. “You sure there’s nothing you need?”
“The Globe,” I said.
“Well, I’ll check the library. Never actually seen one around, but I can’t say I’ve ever looked,” he said and moved closer.
“No, not a globe, the Globe,” I said. “As in, the newspaper.”
“Ah, the Globe, okay. Checking the baseball scores?”
“No. You know why.”
“Sophia,” he said and looked down.
“Never mind, I’ll get it myself.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll grab a copy late tonight when everyone goes to bed,” he said.
“James,” I said and sighed, “I’ll get the paper myself and yes, I’ll make sure no one is around to see a newspaper floating by itself through the lobby. Don’t worry about it. I know that probably sounds passive aggressive, but it’s not, seriously. I don’t want to involve you in anything that may be against the rules.”
“I know,” I said and frowned.
“Are you sure I can’t do anything for you? You know, I do a hell of a tap dance,” James said.
James shuffled his feet and moved his arms up and down. I bit my lip and covered my mouth so he couldn’t see me smiling as I watched him. He was, without a doubt, the worst dancer I have ever seen in my life.
“Here comes the finale!” James said.
He did two spins, tripped over his feet and fell to the ground. James scrambled to one knee and held out his arms and looked up at me.
“That’s a smile,” James said and pointed. “Your eyes are smiling. That’s good enough for now.”
He walked toward the door and turned around and winked at me before he left.
I rested my head on the beam and stared at the stain on the box-spring. I came down from the rafters and grabbed the book and brought it back up with me.
The book’s pages were heavy parchment and the edges were lined in gold. It was hand-written in the most beautiful script and reminded me of the antique volumes by the Grimm brothers that my mother kept behind glass and were off-limits to her children’s grubby hands.
I read the story of the Battleroy’s history while I was once again filled with red rage and hate as I thought of Brandt and Nellie.
PART II
“For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
who art as black as hell and as dark as night.”
William Shakespeare
The land on which the Battleroy Hotel sat was first inhabited by the ill-fated Nauset Indian Tribe and the tribe’s relations with explorers began around the time of Columbus’ voyage to the New World.
The Nauset were largely suspicious of the explorers but Adelaide’s father, a sachem in the tribe before Adelaide’s death, encouraged his people to interact with the explorers. Her father thought the Nauset could teach the men much about survival and in turn, the explorers would reward the Nauset’s hospitality.
But this was not a relationship of reciprocity and it was soon apparent to the sachem, especially after his beloved daughter’s death, that the explorers used their teachings and their people for their own gain. Epidemics in the forms of tuberculosis and small pox transmitted from infected explorers all but wiped out the Nauset Tribe.