by Chris Mooney
29
Darby put on her thick blue gloves and crouched next to the body. She found a leather billfold tucked in his front pocket.
Jennings’s scuffed black shoes stepped beside her. She opened the billfold: FBI badge and Federal ID for Special Agent Dylan Phillips. Pine was right: the credentials looked like the real deal. She started checking the other pockets.
‘You know this guy?’ Jennings asked.
‘I met him yesterday at St Joe’s Hospital. He posed as a Fed, had this ID and badge with him, even a Federal warrant.’
‘What was he doing there?’
‘He wanted to take Kendra Sheppard’s son into protective custody.’ She pulled a black wallet out of the back trouser pocket. Connecticut driver’s licence and assorted credit cards issued to Paul Highsmith. The licence photo matched the one in the ID for Special Agent Phillips. How many names does this guy have?
‘This guy’s name isn’t Phillips or Highsmith,’ Jennings said. ‘His real name is Peter Alan. When I knew him, he was a Federal agent for the Boston office.’
Darby stood. Coop had moved off to examine the furniture stacked in the corner.
‘I knew Alan back in the day, ran into him more than once here in Charlestown,’ Jennings said. ‘He used to run informants. Placed a lot of ’em inside witness protection so we couldn’t get at them – guys like Billy O’Donnell. They called him Billy Three Fingers. Guy was an expert safe cracker. He, ah, encroached on Sullivan’s turf and when Sullivan broke Billy’s right hand, Billy started picking locks with his left. After Billy entered WITSEC, I couldn’t gain access to him. Feds wouldn’t let me speak to him.’
‘And why is that?’
Jennings popped a stick of gum into his mouth. ‘Do you know how Sullivan bought the farm?’
‘All I remember is Sullivan died during a raid on the harbour. I was in high school when it happened, what, ’81?’
‘July of ’83.’
The same year Kendra Sheppard’s parents were murdered – the same year my father was murdered.
‘Let me give you a quick history lesson to bring you up to speed,’ Jennings said. ‘Sullivan operated out of Charlestown from the late sixties. By the time he died, you’re talking about a good twenty-year stretch when he either murdered people or made them disappear, including a lot of young women like the ones buried in this basement. Sullivan liked ’em real young. The ones who got involved with him ended up dead or vanishing into thin air. Don’t ask me for an exact number, because I started to lose count. Suffice to say I’ve got files of missing women who at one time or another were in Sullivan’s orbit.
‘Now when the guy was alive, he was untouchable, which is odd when you stop to consider that you had the Boston Feds gunning for him, Boston PD, the state police. The son of a bitch was always one step ahead. I remember this one case where we planted bugs in his car. Real technical operation, took four hours to install them. The next day a whole bunch of us are tailing Sullivan. He pulls up next to my car, rolls down the window and says, “Hey, Stan, those bugs you planted in my car, do you want them now or do you want me to swing by your office later?”’
‘So Sullivan had bought off cops,’ Darby said.
‘Oh, I’m sure he had cops and guys from the state police on his payroll, but I’ll do you one better. I think Sullivan was an informant for the Feds. Now ask me how I can possibly say that.’
‘How can you possibly say that?’
‘Thank you for asking. See, the Italians in the North End, they went down like flies, one right after another. Sullivan, though, kept running his business – thrived, in fact. Not once was he arrested.’
‘What about Reynolds?’
‘Nope. It was like the two of them were untouchable.’
‘Who set up the sting on Boston Harbor?’
‘That would be the good people at the FBI’s Boston field office. Special Agent Alan was working with one of my informants, the aforementioned safe cracker Billy O’Donnell. Billy got busted and was facing a permanent vacation at one of our fine supermax prisons, so he did some wheeling and dealing with Alan, told him he had some very significant information on Mr Francis Sullivan. Alan agreed to the deal, and Billy told him that Sullivan was bringing in a major score of heroin by boat. Alan told his superiors and set up a sting on Boston Harbor, where the transaction was supposed to take place.
‘One of the undercover guys,’ Jennings said, ‘a Fed named Jack King, was in communication with the command post when Sullivan for some reason stepped aboard and started shooting. King got shot, and by the time the cavalry arrived, both boats were engulfed in flames. No survivors. Sullivan and the two guys from his crew, the undercover Feds on the boat – everyone was burnt to a crisp. Divers came in the next morning to pull out their bodies. No survivors.’
‘Were you there?’
‘Oh, no, this was strictly a Feds-only party. No ATF, no state or local police. Boston Feds had a major hard-on for Sullivan. Once the Italians were out of the way, they came under some serious pressure to deliver Sullivan next. It wouldn’t look good if the Boston cops or staties delivered Sullivan’s head on a silver platter, no, they had to do it, so they locked us out. They threw our informants into WITSEC so we couldn’t get access to them. In other words, we were left in the dark.’
‘Was Reynolds involved?’
‘In the sting? Probably. Sullivan never went anywhere without Reynolds in tow. The Feds tried to prove it – Boston PD tried too, after the fact, but Kevin had a rock-solid alibi. He’s a crafty prick.’
Darby took off a glove and rubbed her sweaty forehead. She couldn’t see how all the pieces fit together: Kendra Sheppard using an alias; the Feds; the bodies buried in the basement of a home owned by the mother of Kevin Reynolds, a former henchman for the now-deceased ringleader of Boston’s Irish mafia. And don’t forget your father. Big Red is somehow involved in all of this – your father and the man who murdered him.
Jennings grinned, kneading the gum between his nicotine-stained front teeth. ‘I haven’t told you the best part.’
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me.’
‘You’re going to love this. I mean, you really are going to love it. Special Agent Alan here?’ Jennings tapped the dead man’s shoe with his. ‘He was one of the undercover agents planted on the boat. He’s supposed to be dead.’
30
‘Forgive me for asking the obvious question,’ Darby said, ‘but you’re positive Special Agent Alan was on the boat?’
‘I am, but you don’t have to take my word for it,’ Jennings said. ‘Read the FBI transcripts. That is, if the FBI will let you. It took me, oh, I don’t know, three months of visiting their office every morning before they finally produced the transcripts of what happened that night.’
‘Did you ask to listen to the audio?’ Darby knew the Feds recorded the communications between the boat and the command post.’
‘As a matter of fact, they did,’ Jennings said. ‘Sadly, they wouldn’t allow me to listen to the tapes, citing that they were part of an ongoing Federal investigation.’
Darby grinned. ‘You don’t trust the Feds?’
Jennings laughed. ‘I know, I know. I should place more faith in our government officials. But I’m a stubborn old man, Miss McCormick. I’ve seen too many things here in Charlestown – things that would make the hair on the back of your pretty neck stand on end. I’ll tell them to you sometime, but right now I want to know how a Federal agent has somehow resurrected himself from the dead only to wind up being shot to death inside Kevin Reynolds’s basement – which is full of human remains, no less. If you have any ideas or theories, I’d love to hear them.’
For the next twenty minutes she led Jennings through her brushes with the unidentified men in the woods, the driver of the brown van and the cameraman with his laser mike.
‘Now that is an interesting development,’ Jennings said after she finished. Then he glanced down at the body. ‘And this man is Peter Alan. I’ll
bet my salary for the entire year on it. But don’t take my word for it. His prints will be stored in the database.’
Darby nodded. All federal and state employees – all law enforcement personnel – had their fingerprints stored inside the national fingerprint database, IAFIS. ‘I’ll print him here,’ she said. ‘I’ll call someone from the lab to get the fingerprint card so we can get a head start.’
Footsteps moved to the top of the basement steps.
‘Hey, Stan,’ the patrolman from the kitchen said.
‘Yeah, what’s up?’
‘Is there something wrong with your phone?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Tim’s been trying to call you and said he keeps getting your voicemail. He’s got a lead on Reynolds.’
‘Coop called you earlier but couldn’t get you on the phone,’ Darby said. ‘I tried calling you from the road and kept getting your voicemail.’
Jennings took out his phone and examined it. ‘That’s odd.’
‘What?’ Darby asked.
‘It’s dead. I thought the battery was charged when I left the house. I’ll have to grab a spare.’ He turned to the stairs and shouted, ‘Get Tim on the phone; I’ll be right up.’
Jennings reached into his pocket, came back with a business card and handed it to Darby.
‘These gentlemen you mentioned seeing in Belham today: if you see them again I want to know. I might be able to help you identify them.’
‘How will I get in touch with you?’
‘Talk to Jake – that’s the patrolman upstairs in the kitchen. He’ll be able to track me down.’
‘Before you go, post someone at the front door. If these men I mentioned are lurking around, I don’t want them to gain access to the house. I’d also like to call Detective Pine from Belham and bring him into this, as the two cases are related.’
‘As long as everyone shares, I don’t have a problem.’
‘You won’t have a problem.’
‘Good. Keep me in the loop.’
‘Will do.’
Jennings ran up the basement steps. Darby turned her attention to the cardboard box packed with bones.
Two skulls stained brown from their time buried in the soil. Judging by the smooth cheekbones and shape of the foreheads, both skulls belonged to Caucasian females.
‘Darby.’
She turned to see Coop standing just a few feet away.
‘While you were talking with Jennings, I tried calling the ME’s office,’ he said. ‘I kept getting static.’
She took out her phone. It turned on fine but the screen kept flickering.
‘All of our phones aren’t working?’ Coop said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
She thought back to what she’d seen earlier on the hospital video. The man posing as Special Agent Phillips – Peter Alan, according to Jennings – had brought with him some sort of high-energy radio frequency device that fried the circuitry inside the hospital’s security cameras, computers and phones. Was there some sort of HERF device down here?
Darby looked around the basement. A small black plastic device sat on the top of a chest-of-drawers. The unit was the size of a pack of cigarettes and had a tiny glowing green light. No buttons, only a switch. She turned it and the green light disappeared.
She checked her phone. The screen had stopped flickering.
‘Try your phone.’
He did. ‘It seems to be working. No interference. That device, is that the HERF thing Teddy C. told you about?’
‘I don’t think so. If it was, our phones would be dead. My guess is it’s some sort of jamming device.’
‘Then why is Jennings’s phone dead?’
‘Don’t know.’ She crouched again and searched the rest of the man’s pockets.
Inside the suit jacket she found another black device – this one flat, maybe half the size of a paperback book. It had a thick rubber antenna and a blue LED with a frequency number. I think I found your HERF device, Ted.
The device didn’t seem to be turned on – if it had been, their phones wouldn’t be working at all.
Darby looked at the spent rounds scattered across the floor.
‘There’re nineteen of them,’ Coop said.
A normal nine held sixteen. An extended mag could accommodate the number of spent shells lying on the basement floor. Given the tight pattern of shots on the body, she guessed the Glock eighteen had been set to semi-automatic fire.
Coop had moved to the dusty four-drawer oak chest lying at an angle next to the Asian armoire. He sidled up to an old mattress and dismantled bed frame leaning against the wall and turned on his flashlight.
‘Take a look at this,’ he said, and shined the beam of light behind the chest.
31
Darby saw several footwear impressions in the dirt – some good enough to cast. Each one was the sole of a sneaker, judging by its shape and tread pattern.
‘The tread pattern is different,’ Coop said, ‘but it’s the same size as the one you found in Belham.’
‘I agree.’
‘Kind of an odd place to be standing, don’t you think?’
‘Not if you’re hiding.’
‘Exactly. If you wanted to pop your Federal friend, why not do it when he’s coming down the steps?’
‘Good question.’
‘I also took a look at the grave behind that armoire and found another human skull.’
‘Why were you in such a rush to get down here?’
‘Anything involving Kevin Reynolds makes me nervous.’
‘You didn’t mention anything about him when we were in the car.’
‘I didn’t know he was involved until we pulled up to the street,’ he said. ‘When I saw the house, that’s when I knew.’
‘Jennings gave you the address. You didn’t recognize it?’
‘Darby, I don’t know everyone who lives here.’
‘Do you know Reynolds?’
‘Sure do. He introduced the town to herpes.’
‘How well do you know him?’
‘I don’t. He’s sort of a neighbourhood fixture – people still cross the street when they see him. At least the people who grew up here still do.’
‘You’ve been awfully quiet.’
‘I’ve heard Jennings’s rap before.’ Coop shut off the flashlight. ‘I’ll go get a fingerprint card. I’ll call Mark and Randy, get one of them to come down here so they can take it back to the lab.’
‘Tell me more about Reynolds first.’
‘He worked for Sullivan from the time he was seventeen. Kevin was a bouncer at this local bar called McGee’s. Place is a real shithole. You only went there if you were looking to score bad coke or get stabbed. Mr Sullivan saw Kevin in action a few times and offered him a job as a bodyguard and chauffeur.’
‘Mr Sullivan?’
‘Sorry, old habit. You saw Sullivan on the street, or if he came up and said hello, that’s what you called him. Frank was big on respect. If you didn’t show it to him or Reynolds or any of his flunkies, you’d better have a good dental plan, ’cause you’d be crawling home with two black eyes and at least one missing tooth.’
‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’
‘I never had any run-ins with either of them. I kept my distance. Not that it was easy. When I was growing up, Frank and his boys owned every inch of these streets. You did what you were told.’
Coop moved to the grave. ‘I’m surprised Kevin’s mom didn’t smell these bodies. I wonder if they poured lime on them.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘Why are you asking me?’
‘You grew up here.’
‘Your point?’
‘I’m sure you heard rumours about missing women.’
‘Sullivan and his crew had a merry-go-round of young ladies. If you had the IQ of a Tic Tac, he moved you to the front of the line. Too bad the guy isn’t still alive. You’d find him real interesting.’
<
br /> ‘Why’s that?’
‘He was a serial killer. We’re talking numbers that surpass those of Ted Bundy.’
‘I don’t recall anything about Sullivan ever being arrested.’
‘He never was. The guy was untouchable. You can attain that status if you have inside help.’
‘Anyone we know?’
He shook his head.
‘Do you know the names of any of Sullivan’s female victims?’
‘No.’
‘You must know something. The guy lived in Charlestown, I’m sure you –’
‘Darby, I’m not a walking history book when it comes to all the shitheads who’ve lived here.’
‘What’s bothering you?’
‘Sullivan is a sore spot for me. The people who lived here when I was growing up – my parents included – viewed him as this Robin Hood character who, okay, while not a nice guy, was actually good for the city because he kept drugs out of here. Which was bullshit. Sullivan started selling heroin in Southie, making big money, and he’s walking around here telling people how he’s going to kill anyone he catches selling it. The man was a genius at playing both sides of the fence.’
It’s more than that, she thought.
‘The other thing is, you know how I feel about Charlestown. How it’s stuck with this townie reputation, that everyone living here is collecting welfare while planning to rob a bank or armoured car. Do we still have our fair share of yahoos and junkies? Absolutely. But name a place that doesn’t. Of course, the press would lead you to believe that that’s all we have living here. Charlestown’s different now. We’ve got a better class of people. The gentrification wave cleaned up most of the shit, but the press won’t report that. And when the news gets out that bones were found in Kevin Reynolds’s house, it’s going to resurrect all that Irish gangster bullshit again. It’s like a skid mark you can’t wash from your underwear.’
‘Thanks for the visual,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome. Now can we get to work?’
Darby didn’t answer. Coop was keeping something from her; she could feel it in her gut. ‘What is it about Kendra Sheppard that’s really bothering you?’