The Dread Line

by Bruce DeSilva

Thirty seconds later, it was over.

  Chief Ragsdale and five of his officers cautiously emerged from the park’s World War I–era bunkers and approached four bodies that were sprawled awkwardly on the pavement. The cops shined flashlights on them, kicked the shoguns aside, and then checked for pulses.

  When that was done, McCracken, Joseph, and I stepped out of the shadows.

  “Recognize them?” Ragsdale asked.

  “This one’s McNulty,” I said, “and the one over there is Vargas. I’ve never seen the other two before.”

  “Did any of you fire?”

  The three of us said no.

  “Well, I gotta make sure. Please surrender your weapons to Officer Clark.”

  So that’s what we did.

  Ragsdale stood amidst the carnage and sadly shook his head. “Well, we won’t be needing that ambulance after all. Maybe we could have avoided all this bloodshed if we’d pinned them in with our cruisers before they got to the park.”

  “If you’d done that, you couldn’t have held them for long,” I said. “And once you cut them loose, they’d have come gunning for us again.”

  * * *

  Next morning I woke up late, collected Brady and Rondo from the kennel, and spent an hour romping with them in the yard. Then I sat at the kitchen table and pounded out Richard Harding Davis’s account of the shootout in Wetherill State Park. The story credited Chief Ragsdale and his men with foiling an attempt to ambush two private detectives and a Providence businessman but said the motive for the attack was unclear. The targets had declined to comment.

  43

  The big question looming in the Bowditch affair was why he’d signed with Dunst in the first place. The lawyer must have had something to hold over him—maybe something that would make the kid poison in the NFL draft. Whatever it was, the Patriots were paying us a lot of money to figure it out.

  Before I could start digging into that, Crowder called and demanded to know what I’d been doing to earn Cargill’s money. So I drove to the hardware store to have a chat with Jenks.

  “I’ve already gone over this three fuckin’ times with Chief Ragsdale,” he said. “Then I had to tell it all over again to that redneck, Crowder. After that, I got grilled by a state cop. You’re telling me I gotta repeat it to you, now?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “I’ll try to make it quick,” I said. “Are you sure only four of your vigilantes were on the road the night Alexander was killed?”

  “Only two teams were scheduled, and they spent most of the night parked at the East Ferry Wharf drinking coffee out of Thermos bottles. Nobody in his right mind would have been on the road that night ’less they absolutely had to. The weather was wicked bad.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At home.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Watching TV, I guess.”

  “Can anybody vouch for that?”

  “Just Angie.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You must have been pretty pissed off about what happened to your dog.”

  “I still am.”

  “Angry enough to go looking for the dognapper that night?”

  “Bet your ass. But that’s not what I did.”

  He hacked violently into a handkerchief. Then he fingered a soft pack out of his shirt pocket, shook out a Marlboro, and set fire to it. That didn’t seem like a good idea to me, but it was none of my business.

  “He’s lucky it wasn’t me who cornered him,” Jenks said. “I would have burned the bastard alive, just like he done to my Layla.”

  * * *

  For the next few days, I reluctantly continued the charade. I questioned the vigilantes who were on duty when Alexander was killed and talked to Belinda Veiga’s friends and family members. All of them repeated the stories they’d told to the police.

  Nobody had a clue who’d killed Alexander Cargill—except, of course, for the son of a bitch who did it.

  44

  McCracken and I strode up the walk to the redbrick colonial and rang the bell. Conner Bowditch’s father, Malcolm, opened the door with a worried look on his face.

  “They’re waiting on you in the living room,” he said. “Come on in.”

  Conner and his fiancée, Meghan, were seated on the couch. The security man, Rene Vachon, was on his feet by the window. Malcolm dropped into an easy chair. McCracken and I decided to remain standing.

  “I take it you all read about the dustup we had in Wetherill State Park last week,” I said.

  Nods all around.

  “Two of the skells were the same ones who’d been dogging Conner,” Vachon said. “Did this have something to do with his gambling debt?”

  “No.”

  “But it did have something to do with my son?” Malcolm said.

  I nodded. “The four men who died trying to kill us were sent by a Boston lawyer named Morris Dunst. Want to tell everyone what he is to you, Conner?”

  His voice was small when he answered. “He’s my agent.”

  “What?” Malcolm said. “I thought we agreed you were going to sign with Joel Segal.”

  The contract I’d torn in half in Dunst’s office, now mended with cellophane tape, was in my jacket pocket. I drew it out and handed it to Malcolm.

  “You actually signed this, son?” Malcolm asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When?”

  “It’s dated January twentieth,” I said, “but that’s a lie, isn’t it, Conner. I think you signed it sometime during the football season, but Dunst faked the date.”

  “To circumvent NCAA rules?” Malcolm said.

  “Yeah,” Conner said. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Dunst specializes in business law, but he has no experience representing professional athletes,” McCracken said. “According to Forrest Creighton, the B.C. receivers coach, Dunst started hanging around the practice facility last spring trying to badger the team’s best players into agent contracts. The coaches threw him out several times, told all the players that he was trouble, and warned them to stay clear of him. We since found out he’d been up to the same thing at UConn and UMass. And we know, now, that he’s not just unscrupulous. He’s a very bad guy.”

  “Son,” Malcolm said, “every top agent in the country has been hounding you. Why in the hell did you sign with this asshole?”

  Conner shook his head and stared at the floor.

  “That’s what we came to find out,” I said.

  “Son?” Malcolm said.

  Under his father’s withering gaze, Conner Bowditch seemed to shrink to normal size. He shook his head again and didn’t speak.

  “No?” I said. “Okay then. Let me take a stab at it. I think it all started when Dunst asked you to shave points. Maybe he offered you some easy money. Maybe he found out about your gambling, told you that it could hurt your draft status, and threatened to expose you unless you went along with it. Whatever it was, you agreed.

  “To make the scheme work, Dunst needed an offensive player, too. That’s where Lance Gabriel came in. I figure the target was the Syracuse game, because both of you played like shit that afternoon. Once Dunst had his hooks into you, he threatened to anonymously blow the whistle on the point shaving unless you signed with him. So both of you did.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Malcolm said. “Is any of this true, son?”

  Conner just kept staring at the floor. Meghan reached over and grabbed his hand.

  “Please, baby. You’ve gotten yourself mixed up in something, and it nearly got Mr. Mulligan and Mr. McCracken killed. Whatever it is, you can’t just sit there and not say anything.”

  Conner raised his eyes and drew a deep breath. “Mulligan’s got some of it right.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s your version?”

  “Dunst kept bugging me all season. Buttonholing me outside the stadium after home games. Calling me on the phone.
Pounding on my apartment door. Barging into Mary Ann’s when I was drinking with my boys. Always waving a contract at me and urging me to sign. When I kept saying no, he offered me stuff. Money. Women. A new car. Honest to God, Dad, I turned it all down. Finally—in early November, I think it was—he came by my place late one night. But this time he brought a couple of thugs with him. When I tried to shut the door on them, they pointed guns at me and forced their way in.”

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I punched up mug shots of the Vaccas on my cell phone and handed it to Conner.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That looks like them.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “Dunst said that if I didn’t sign the contract, he’d tell the thugs to hurt Meghan. Said they’d take turns raping her, slit her throat, and leave her dead body on my doorstep.”

  Meghan emitted a small cry and dropped her head onto Conner’s chest.

  “The thugs grinned when Dunst was saying it, like they were hoping I wouldn’t sign,” Conner said. “Jesus, Dad. What choice did I have?”

  “You could have told me,” Malcolm said. “We could have called the police. I could have assigned Rene to protect Meghan.”

  “Dunst warned me not to try anything like that. He said there was no way I could protect everyone I loved. That if they couldn’t get to Meghan, they’d go after you, or Mom, or my sisters. Or maybe Coach Shroyer.”

  “What about the point shaving?” McCracken asked.

  “That was the two thugs’ idea,” Conner said. “I don’t think Dunst had anything to do with it.”

  “Go on,” McCracken said.

  “A couple of weeks after I signed the contract, the thugs came back and said they weren’t done with me yet. That if I didn’t agree to shave points against Syracuse, they’d still go after Meghan. I figured they must have threatened somebody on offense, too, but I had no idea who until Lance dropped three easy passes in the second half.”

  “Conner,” I said, “you could have saved all of us a lot of trouble if you’d come clean with me the first time we talked.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. I glanced at Malcolm. He looked stricken. Then he shook his head and said, “Well, I guess I better call the police.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “If you do, all the sordid details are going to come out. Conner’s gambling. The point shaving. It won’t matter why he shaved points. Just that he did. The media will crucify him. There’s no proof that Meghan was threatened, so everyone will think Conner placed a big bet on Syracuse.”

  “He’ll fall like a rock in the draft,” McCracken said. “In fact, he probably won’t get drafted at all.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  “Sit tight and let McCracken and me fix this,” I said.

  “You think you can?”

  “It’s what we do.”

  45

  “Mulligan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Ragsdale. Where are you?”

  “In my car.”

  “Going where?”

  “Providence.”

  “Well, turn the hell around.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to see you in my office.”

  “What for?”

  A pause, and then, “I know who killed Alexander Cargill.”

  Oh, shit! Several seconds dragged by before I sputtered a reply. “You do? Who was it?”

  “Not over the phone.”

  How the hell had he figured it out? There were no fingerprints on the Ronson can. The shoes and sweatshirt I’d worn that night had been reduced to ashes. The phone I’d used to call the police was in pieces at the bottom of the bay. I was sure there hadn’t been any witnesses in the park that night. Obviously I’d missed something. But what?

  If Ragsdale believed my story, I might be charged with involuntary manslaughter instead of murder, but that still carried a sentence of ten to thirty years in prison.

  I thought about running, but I’d never get far without money. And Ragsdale knew where I lived. If I went for the cash in my floor safe, I’d be sure to find the cops waiting for me. I continued north for a half dozen miles, pondering my options. Once I realized I didn’t have any, I turned around and pointed the Mustang toward Jamestown to face the consequences.

  * * *

  I stepped into the police station and walked past several uniformed officers. None of them drew their weapons. None of them told me I was under arrest. As I headed down the hallway to the chief’s office, my panic subsided a little. If Ragsdale had found me out, would he have called and asked me to come in? More likely, he’d have tried to take me by surprise. Still, my hand shook as I rapped on his door.

  “It’s open.”

  I stepped inside and found Ragsdale behind his desk, fiddling with a pair of handcuffs. Suddenly, I felt sure they were meant for me.

  “Did you drive back from Providence,” he asked, “or did you run all the way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You sweated right through your shirt.”

  I shrugged, collapsed into an office chair, and tried to slow my breathing.

  Ragsdale rattled the handcuffs and then dropped them on the desk. “I took these bracelets off of Marlon Jenks a half hour ago,” he said, “just before I locked him in a holding cell.”

  “What?”

  “He always was kind of a hothead,” Ragsdale said, “but I never figured him for a killer.”

  “You think Jenks killed Alexander?”

  “I know he did.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He confessed.” The chief picked up a sheet of paper and waved it at me. “After I arrested him at the hardware store this afternoon, he sat in the interrogation room and wrote the whole story down for me.”

  “Can I see that?” I asked.

  Ragsdale slid the confession across the desk. My hand shook as I reached for it. Just a one-page scrawl on lined paper torn from a legal pad. One sentence leaped out at me: “When I saw him with that dog, I thought about what he’d done to my Layla, and I just lost it.”

  “I don’t know about this, Chief. It’s awfully thin. He doesn’t mention any of the details you held back. Nothing about the wallet and car keys on the trunk of Alexander’s car. Nothing about the can of lighter fluid. In fact, he doesn’t seem to know anything that hasn’t already made the news.”

  “He says he doesn’t remember much,” Ragsdale said. “Claims he was in a daze after he slugged the kid and whacked his skull on the ice.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “No, and neither can I. After he wrote this down, he lawyered up.”

  “Start at the beginning,” I said. “What made you arrest him in the first place?”

  “His wife came in this morning and said he told her the whole story a couple of weeks ago. According to her, the guilt’s been eating both of them up ever since. So she finally decided they had to come clean.”

  “When’s the arraignment?”

  “Ten tomorrow morning.”

  With that, I congratulated Ragsdale for clearing the case and drove straight to Providence to talk things over with my best friend.

  * * *

  The flowers I’d placed on Rosie’s grave the last time I visited had long since withered. I felt bad that I hadn’t stopped off to pick up some fresh ones. I flopped down in the grass, wrapped my arms around the headstone, and gave her a hug.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring the Manny Ramirez jersey with me today, Rosie. It’s hanging in my closet at home, and I was in too much of a rush to go get it.…

  “Hell, yes, there’s something wrong.”

  And then I told her what I’d done.

  “He was a bad guy, Rosie. The world is better off without him in it. I’m in the clear as long as I keep my mouth shut, but there’s no way I can live with this.…

  “Because somebody else just
confessed to the crime.…

  “No, I don’t have any idea why he did that, but I’ve got to get him free of it. He has a wife and two kids, Rosie. I can’t let them pay the price for something I did. I just wish there was a way that didn’t involve me spending the next decade or more in prison.…

  “Yeah. I’d miss our talks too.”

  * * *

  “It’s not a good time for you to get involved in this,” McCracken said. “We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us on the Bowditch mess.”

  “I know, but I can’t let Jenks go to prison for something he didn’t do.”

  “What makes you so sure he’s not the killer?”

  “It’s more than just a feeling,” I said.

  He waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, he got up, went to his office bar, poured me a glass of Irish whiskey, and placed it in my hand. Then he sat back behind his desk and asked me to run it down for him.

  I gave him everything—except for the name of the real killer.

  “Okay,” McCracken said. “There are a lot of reasons why an innocent man would confess to a murder. To protect someone else. Because he craves notoriety. But in this case, I’m betting it has something to do with that quarter-million-dollar reward.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “The money will go to his wife?”

  “She turned him in, so guess so, yeah.”

  “Still, it seems odd,” McCracken said. “A lot of people go a quarter million in hock to stay out of prison.” He sat quietly for a moment and rubbed his jaw. “Is Jenks an old man?”

  “Just forty-five.”

  “So he’ll die in prison or be a codger when he gets out.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then there must be something else going on in his life that makes money for prison a good deal.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Any idea what it could be?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “If I were you,” he said, I’d try to find out if he’s got debts that are too big to get clear of.”

  46

  Giuseppe Arena agreed to see me at his summer place in Newport, a sprawling Nantucket-style cottage with weathered cedar shingles, a wraparound porch, and a glorious view of the sea. I drove Mister Ed up the winding crushed-shell drive and parked under a sprawling oak that was just beginning to leaf. The doorbell was answered by a maid who informed me in Spanish-accented English that the man of the house was waiting for me around back.