McGuire glanced up from the stack of three-by-five cards in his hands. Each card carried the name, description and personal details of suspects, witnesses and other participants in the three priest murders, plus telephone tips, leads from police informers and confessions. He held almost a hundred cards of various colours, each generated by Eddie Vance’s computer program and printed at 160 characters per second on a laser-jet machine.
The cards, McGuire decided, were worthless.
“There has to be a kid on every block in this city who looks like the one Jaycock saw,” Janet Parsons said. She sprawled in the stiff metal chair, her legs stretched in front of her, her hem riding above her knees.
“The picture may be more trouble than it’s worth, right?” McGuire said.
She rested her forehead on her hand and nodded. “Everybody who calls thinks it’s a neighbour’s kid or some punk who was hanging around the corner last week. That face looks like everybody and nobody.” She lifted her eyes to McGuire’s for the first time since she came in the room. “You think the janitor really saw somebody there? Or is he just trying to play hero again?”
McGuire tossed the colour-coded computer cards on the desk. “I believe the blond hair and that it was a young guy,” he answered. “Other than that, all I think Jaycock saw was the shotgun. That’s when he shit his pants.”
She giggled and turned her head away.
“You know what I think?” he said.
She looked at him. “What do you think, McGuire?”
“I think we should release the writing on the blackboard. To the media.”
Her hand dropped from behind her head where she had been patting her hair in place, and she stared at him, absorbing what he had said. “You’re crazy,” she replied finally.
“It means something.”
“Sure it does. It means we’ve got a way of filtering out all of the crazies who are calling us up, saying ‘I shot the fathers! I shot the fathers!’”
“‘The Priest desires.’ What’s it mean, Janet?” He leaned forward over the colour-coded cards. “Just what the hell does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Sure it does. Why not ‘To hell with Catholics’? Or ‘Piss on the Pope’? That’s your real down-home angry graffiti. You blow a priest’s face half off, then you write something like ‘The Priest desires’ on a blackboard. That’s calm, Janet. There’s nothing angry about it.”
McGuire stood up and walked to the window, where the sun was beginning to set somewhere beyond Cambridge.
“If it means something to the kid who’s killing the priests, then maybe it means something to somebody else. But we have to tell that somebody about it,” McGuire said.
“You ask the shrink if it means anything?”
“He agrees. If you’re angry enough to blast somebody with a sawed-off, you don’t write something as calm as ‘The Priest desires’ unless it’s really significant to you.”
“What’s Kavander think?”
“Kavander thinks the same as you do.” He looked over at her, and she shuddered a little. He grinned and caught himself admiring her long slim legs again. Married. He tried to recall if he had ever met her husband and couldn’t.
“Maybe you should leak it,” she suggested. “Maybe you’ve got a point. Somebody reads it, puts two and two together. . . .” She shrugged again. “Any lead will be better than what we’re getting now.” She stood up and began spreading the colour-coded file cards with her hand. “These are useless. You know what Fat Eddie’s got the girls in the steno pool doing?”
“What?”
“Typing his resume and an outline of his computer program. Wants it all put into brown envelopes with a picture of him, like a press kit. A press kit! Then he’s sending them out to the papers and the TV stations, for reference, he says. You make the little bastard an acting lieutenant and he thinks he’s Robert Redford.”
She looked up to see McGuire grinning back at her.
“Pictures?” he asked. “Like eight-by-ten glossies?”
“Yeah, the full size—” She stopped, the frozen look of anger melting slowly into a smirk that matched McGuire’s. “You devious son of a gun.”
“There’s a spare eight-by-ten of the writing on the blackboard in my office,” McGuire said.
“No kidding.”
“I could leave it at your desk. Say, in about five minutes.” Still grinning.
She stood watching him. “And what would I do with it?”
“Oh, what everybody does, I suppose. Slide it into a brown envelope for safe keeping.”
“One with the name of the Globe’s city editor on it, no doubt.”
“Just before Brenda in the steno area sends it out.”
“Good old Brenda.”
“It could get him fired, you know.”
“It could also get us a killer.”
She shook her head. “Sorry, Joe. It sounds like a hell of an idea, but count me out. I know how Kavander feels about releasing evidence without approval.”
“Then I’ll do it myself. The envelopes are on your desk?”
She nodded. “If Brenda hasn’t picked them up yet. Hey, I didn’t have a thing to do with this, right?”
“I’ll swear to it,” McGuire said from the open doorway. Then, pausing, he asked, “By the way, what does your husband do for a living?”
Her smile widened. “Didn’t you know? He owns a bar. He’s trying to build up clientele with cops. Why do you think I keep inviting you for a drink?”
Chapter Twelve
Anne Murison sighed, checked her watch and slid her magazine under the counter of the ticket kiosk. Switching off the outside lights of the aquarium, she unlocked the door of her booth and walked past the dispersing crowds of children being shepherded to the exits.
She skirted the cylindrical Giant Ocean Tank, forty feet wide and twenty-three feet deep with an outer spiral walkway descending to the floor, home for more than a thousand fish. They swam past the glass above her in their non-stop journey. Sharks, barracuda, sea turtles the size of compact cars, angry-looking moray eels, thick-lipped groupers and dozens of other species. Anne never grew tired of watching them. Or the penguins in their open pens, diving from rocks and waddling around with their wings outstretched, their eyes strange and wide as though they were in a narcotic trance.
What was so interesting about a couple of otters?
“Time to go,” she said to the blond-haired boy. He had been reclining on the floor, his back against the wall. The otters were sleeping, curled into a single mound of brown fur.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rising quickly and reaching for his large black athletic bag.
“It’s okay. No rush.” She patted her hair again. Thirty-five dollars and Norman doesn’t even notice.
They walked together around the water tank, heading for the exit. Except for George, who was washing down the penguins’ rocks with a garden hose, they were the only people left in the building. The fish swam silently behind the glass above them.
“You know, I could sell you a season’s pass,” she said as they approached the door. “It would save you a lot of money. You could just come and go as you please. During our regular hours, I mean.”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. His eyes remained fastened on the exit door. “I don’t think that will be necessary, ma’am.”
She hated being called “ma’am.” Sometimes the young school children called her that when they were looking for a washroom. Old-maid teachers were called “ma’am.” Not a woman barely into her thirties who once left her husband behind to spend a week in Jamaica on her own. She remembered the trip and shuddered deliciously. If Norman only knew everything she had done down there.
“What do you mean, it won’t be necessary?” They were a
lmost at the double glass doors.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to come here,” the young man explained. He stepped aside as she unlocked the door for him. The sky had turned grey; fog was drifting in from the harbour, bringing with it a light misty rain.
“Why?” she asked. “You moving away? Going off to school?” Her voice became hard-edged with sarcasm. “You’re not going to get married or something stupid like that, are you?”
Stepping through the door without replying, he walked slowly towards the subway stop across the open plaza. She shouted at him above the noise of the wind and of an aircraft making its tight turn over the city, “Hey, what’s your name anyway?”
But he continued walking, and she stood in the doorway, watching him until he disappeared through the subway entrance.
Inside, the blond young man rode the escalator down to darkness in silence. He entered the platform on the Bowdoin side and waited for the inbound train that would carry him to Government Centre and connect to the Green Line.
The station, its dark and dirty walls relieved only by defaced posters of aquatic life, was deserted. With the aquarium closed for the day, outbound express trains would no longer stop at the aquarium. The schoolchildren who had left the aquarium before him had boarded an inbound train carrying them to the downtown hub.
As the young man sat slumped on the bench, the last outbound train to stop at the aquarium roared into the station and squealed to a halt. A voice scratched the air from a hidden loudspeaker, its message unintelligible. The blank faces of commuters outbound for Wood Island, Suffolk Downs and Beachmont looked out at the blond young man without seeing him.
They were showing the same interest in his presence and appearance as they had in the poster of the barracuda behind his bench. It was one of many posters in the station, promoting the New England Aquarium by illustrating some of its notorious residents.
The illustration behind the young man on the bench was defaced. Thick black ink had been used to sketch glasses over the barracuda’s eyes, and a Groucho Marx mustache had been drawn above its severe mouth—absurdities that mocked the animal’s evil gaze and menacing shape. Something else, phallic and just as absurd but more threatening, dangled from midway along the fish’s belly.
The commuter riders on the outbound train glanced at the wall, the defaced poster and the tired young man slumped on the bench. A few of them, who knew of the activities that took place in the aquarium station after hours, smirked or frowned at the sight of his graceful body and sensitive features, alone on the bench. Waiting. Inviting.
A whistle sounded. The train left the station, and the young man, his eyes brimming with tears for tragedies both recent and distant in his mind, leaned his head back.
He was no longer alone.
Across the tracks a figure stood watching the young, lean body whose large black athletic bag lay at his feet. Alvin Chadwick grinned. He had stepped off the outbound train too late to try his luck with the school kids. But this might be better. This might be good.
Alvin wore black leather pants, which wrapped his lithe, sinuous figure in a second skin. His thick brown hair was cropped squarely across the back of his neck. Nervously, his hands, the fingers long and slender, found his mouth and stroked his lips. His tongue emerged and withdrew. He looked carefully left and right, then walked quickly away, tracing an imaginary perfectly straight line in the direction of the exit and across the tracks to the inbound side of the station.
The young man on the bench remained motionless, his head tossed back and his eyes closed. Once, then twice, his body shook with a repressed sob.
Alvin Chadwick descended the stairs and walked cautiously behind the figure in the light jacket, faded jeans and sneakers. Alvin’s fingers rubbed nervously together. He felt his heart quicken and nervous excitement race through his body, a rush of adrenalin, the familiar thrill.
He approached the young man on the bench and stood for a moment looking around. The subway station was deserted. There was no sound of an inbound train. He admired the boy’s face, the smooth ivory complexion, the nose narrow and perfectly sculpted, the forehead sensitive and high. Good-looking, Alvin thought, and his hand dropped momentarily to the crotch of his leather pants and stroked the rising presence there.
So beautiful. And so sad. So in need of tenderness and love.
He walked quickly and silently to the figure on the bench and stood behind it, his hands poised over the head of fine blond hair. He stroked it gently.
“Are we sad?” Alvin Chadwick said gently. “Do we need someone to cheer us up?”
The eyes opened abruptly, clear and blue, shiny with tears. They stared up at Alvin Chadwick’s angular face in surprise. The young man began to move, but Alvin’s hands dropped to his shoulders and chest, stroking as they went, and his mouth went to the side of the young man’s head. “I can make you happy,” he said in a throaty whisper. “So happy.” And he inserted his tongue in the young man’s ear.
In an explosion of motion the blond young man threw Alvin Chadwick’s arms away from his body, leaped up and twisted to face Alvin, his back to the subway tracks.
Alvin spread his arms in an open gesture. “Did I surprise you?” he asked sweetly. “I’m sorry if I surprised you. You just looked so sad and alone sitting there. And so pretty.”
The blond young man stood, his legs apart, breathing heavily. He looked wildly around the deserted station, then drew his arm across his eyes.
Alvin began to move from behind the bench. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he cooed. Again his hand dropped to the crotch of his leather pants, which strained more than ever to contain the flesh within. “Come to Mummy.” The smile widened, the voice dropped in tone, heavily seductive. “I’ll catch if you’ll pitch.”
He watched the expression on the face of the blond young man change from fear to understanding. The young man swallowed once. His hands flexed, opening and closing. His eyes dropped to the park bench between them. Alvin’s hand reached to unbutton his shirt, and he glanced towards the other end of the subway platform. “There’s a quiet place, an empty room, down there,” he said as he moved around the bench. “I’ll show it to you. The decor is a little tacky, but it’s such a convenient location. . . .”
In two steps the blond young man reached the bench again. Keeping his eyes on Alvin, he stretched out his arm to grasp the black athletic bag, lifted it from the floor and set it heavily on the other end of the bench, away from Alvin.
He began unzipping the bag, watching Alvin carefully.
“Toys, have we?” Alvin lisped. “Oh, I love toys.” His voice became even more outrageous, almost a self-parody. “Say, you wouldn’t have a spare jockstrap in there for me, would you? An extra-large, naturally.”
The first rumble of an inbound train echoed in the distance.
Alvin took another step. “What’s your name, sweetie? Mine’s Alvin. Can you believe it? My mother, bless her soul, must have had a thing for a singing chipmunk.”
He froze in his place, horrified and unbelieving. His frightened gaze flew from the ugly weapon the young man withdrew from the athletic bag to the same clear, blue eyes that had opened wide less than a minute ago.
“My God,” Alvin whispered. “You don’t need that. Listen, if I offended you, I’m sorry, really.”
The blond young man raised the gun to waist level. His left hand moved spasmodically on the wooden grip, and a spent red shell flew out to clatter and roll across the concrete floor.
The sound of the inbound train grew louder within the tunnel, an animal loudness full of motion and fire.
“Look, please don’t, P L E A S E D O N ’ T !” Alvin screamed.
The first blast destroyed Alvin Chadwick’s neck as he twisted his head away. With the action of a puppet whose strings had been cut, he collapsed across the bench on his back, his arms and legs outstretc
hed.
With another quick pull, the spent shell flew out of the gun, and the young man stepped closer to the body. From barely an arm’s reach away he lowered the stunted barrel of the shotgun to the front of the glove-soft, black leather pants—which had been Alvin Chadwick’s pride—down to the place where the legs met in a hand-crafted codpiece, the flesh there no longer tumescent and threatening. As the roar of the incoming subway train grew louder, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger again.
Only the barracuda on the poster watched it all through the horn-rimmed glasses sketched over its eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
“We know him, the victim,” Bernie Lipson was saying to Joe McGuire. “The guys over at vice know him. Soon as we put his name on the line, we got a playback. Real gearbox, he was.”
McGuire stood looking down at the body of Alvin Chadwick sprawled across the subway bench. The concrete floor was painted in congealing blood, a sight he found neither shocking nor particularly interesting. It was the effect of the shotgun blast to the front of Chadwick’s pants that attracted his attention.
“Blew his balls off,” McGuire said, shaking his head. “Jesus, what a mess.”
“Doitch says he was already dead,” Lipson observed. The overweight medical examiner was a few feet away, packing his instruments back into his bag. Uniformed cops and ID men stood around in small groups, separated by the subway trains, which continued to roar by a hastily erected plastic barrier at the edge of the station platform.
“Thing is,” Lipson went on, “the guys at vice say he was harmless, this Chadwick. Not one of your violent screamers. Did a couple of terms for molesting minor boys, just a little ass petting or quick B.J.’s in an alleyway. Got him for indecent exposure in front of some little kids once. But he wouldn’t get violent, especially with somebody his age and size.” The detective shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like self-defense to me.”
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