The Art of Dying: A Ray Hanley Crime Thriller

by Derik Cavignano

  That same subterranean stench filled his nostrils now, and for a moment, he felt like a fifteen-year-old kid again—frightened and helpless and alone.

  He reached the end of the platform and the tunnel yawned before him like a gaping, black mouth. If Flaherty was lying in wait somewhere in the darkness, Ray would be the perfect target, standing as he was beneath the last of the overhead lights.

  He cocked his head to listen for Flaherty, but all he could hear was the squeaking of rats. He tightened his grip on his gun and crept forward until the shadows consumed him. Something scurried over his foot and he jerked backward, almost stumbling into the third rail, which would’ve injected 600 volts of electricity into his body and fried him like a hot-oiled turkey.

  A snickering emanated from somewhere ahead. “What’s the matter, detective? Afraid of a little mouse?”

  Ray strained to see through the darkness. “Drop your gun, Flaherty.”

  “I don’t think so, detective. I grew up running these tunnels, so I know my way around. Just like that gangbanger who killed your father.”

  Ray recoiled as if slapped. “What do you know about that?”

  “I know a lot of things, detective. Right now, I’ve got you in my sights. If you make one wrong move, I’ll shoot you full of holes and these hungry rats will mistake you for swiss cheese.”

  “Give me a name, Flaherty, if you’ve really got one.”

  “The scent of your blood will draw them out of the shadows. They’ll sniff the air, whiskers twitching, and once they sense your helplessness, they’ll swarm over you, squeaking and skittering as they chew your face off. I’ve seen it happen, detective. They’ll fight each other just to feast on your eyes.”

  Something about the tunnel had changed, and it took Ray a moment to realize the signal light had gone dark.

  “I said give me a name.”

  “That’s not how this works, detective. You let me walk away and a package will arrive with all the details you could ever want.”

  The rails awakened with an ominous hum.

  “I’m not letting you go.”

  “What about our secret, detective? It would be a shame if that pretty wife of yours discovered your betrayal.”

  A hot breeze wafted through the tunnel and swept Ray’s hair off his brow. The rumble of an approaching train soon followed, its wheels screeching as it rounded an unseen bend.

  “I know where to hide,” Flaherty said. “But the question is, do you?”

  By now, Ray’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could discern Flaherty’s silhouette in the distance. As Ray raised his Glock, a rat scurried between his legs and he tripped over the rail and fell onto the tracks.

  The sound of the train grew steadily louder, drowning out the mocking echo of Flaherty’s laughter. A bright light washed over him and he lunged forward on all fours, his hands scrabbling for purchase in the loose gravel. The train sounded as if it was accelerating into the station. Would the conductor be able to see him so low to the ground?

  He staggered to his feet and the train’s brakes squealed in response, but how much track would it take to stop a forty-ton train?

  A horn blared and Ray could feel the wind at his back as the train parted the air. The beginning of the platform came into view and he could see the horrified expressions of the commuters gathered at the scene.

  A moment later, almost in unison, the crowd shielded its eyes.

  Christ, Ray thought, it’s gonna be close.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  When I was a child, I was afraid of creatures,

  Spawned by nightmares, books, or features.

  And as I lay awake in bed,

  And stared into the darkness with dread,

  I could sense them in the shadows,

  With claws and fangs like arrows,

  Lapping up my fears and sapping me of tears,

  While patiently waiting, their fangs salivating,

  For a taste of my flesh or to hasten my death.

  But as I aged, I grew not to be afraid,

  For no monsters did hide beneath my bed or beside.

  But fleeting were the days of fearless wonder,

  Between the savage beasts of a child’s mind torn asunder,

  And the sobering age of wisdom,

  That ironic twist beyond the schism,

  When man is unmasked as the monster at last,

  And I can’t close my eyes or crawl beneath the blankets to hide,

  For man has ample numbers to rape and kill and plunder.

  And so now I long for those bygone days,

  When all the world’s monsters could be slayed,

  With the creatures of the night—

  An entire legion of evil,

  Vanquished by the flick of a light.

  Suzie’s poems had grown longer and more intricate, but that didn’t mean they were any better. Given her current situation, she knew it shouldn’t matter, but it was one of the few things she could control, and she drew a certain power from shaping the words in a way that gave life to her feelings.

  A couple of days had passed since Greg’s aborted attempt to strangle the Artist, and since the Artist hadn’t retaliated, Suzie figured he wasn’t in the habit of reviewing the video footage. If anything, he might be watching a live feed to check on them before entering the gallery. Of course, she could be wrong, but if she was ever going to escape from the gallery, she had to start taking risks.

  The first step had been hiding the nail from the Artist, but that was only the beginning of a long and dangerous road. It had taken some delicate maneuvering to retrieve the nail from the fold of her labia and poke it into the drywall behind her. She’d managed not to cut herself during the initial insertion, but extracting it was another story. When the Artist made his rounds the next day, she blamed the blood on her period, and thankfully he accepted the explanation without question.

  Last night, she made her first attempt at picking the locks and found that if she pinched the nail between her thumb and forefinger and stood on her tiptoes, she could reach across her body and angle it into the keyholes.

  The shackles resembled oversized cast-iron handcuffs, and judging from the rudimentary construction and the coarse layer of rust, they seemed like a relic of a bygone age. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she couldn’t help but wonder who had last worn them and what fate he or she may have suffered. If there was a silver lining to any of this, the shackles probably lacked the enhanced security features of a modern lock. And maybe it was her imagination, but after a few hours of practice, she felt as if she might be close to springing one of them.

  If she did manage to escape, the Artist would be in for a shock come morning. In case he was checking the monitor prior to entering the gallery, she and Greg would remain against the wall with their shackles on, but the locks opened. And when the Artist approached them to offer breakfast or to hose urine off the floor, they would leap down from their posts and attack.

  Sometimes, she imagined bashing the Artist’s head against the concrete until his blood gurgled into the center drain. Other times, she imagined Greg stomping on his windpipe while she pulverized his balls with the croquet mallet.

  If the Artist happened to be watching the monitor in that moment, he would see Suzie grinning in the dim glow of the picture lights and might wonder if she was going insane. And if he kept watching, he would see her fiddle with one of the locks for nearly twenty minutes, her calves trembling from being on her toes for so long.

  And if the sound quality was especially good, he might even hear the distinct click as the ancient lock, at last, sprang open.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The last thing Ray saw in those final moments was Garrison charging toward the edge of the platform with his teeth bared and the muscles of his neck bulging. Ray could sense the train bearing down on him as he emerged into the station, and he was momentarily blinded by the bright lights and a gut-wrenching wave of panic.

  H
is foot snagged beneath a railroad tie and he stumbled forward, his arms pinwheeling for balance. A moment later, a crushing force squeezed his back and chest and he experienced a dizzying sensation of weightlessness.

  It wasn’t until he crashed down onto a jarring slab of concrete that he realized Garrison had hauled him off the tracks and pulled him onto the platform. He rolled onto his back and turned in time to see the Red Line train draw to a screeching halt midway into the station.

  Garrison leaned over him, beads of sweat glistening against his brow. “Damnit, Ray! What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Who said I was thinking?” He pulled himself into a sitting position and winced at a twinge of pain in his ankle. “You’re not going to ask if I’m okay?”

  “You’re a crazy damn fool.”

  “I might’ve sprained my ankle.”

  “Do you have any idea how close you came to being roadkill?”

  “Are you lecturing me? After what I just went through?”

  “Damn right I’m lecturing you. That was reckless. And stupid.”

  “I might’ve gotten a little overzealous.”

  “You think?”

  Ray draped an arm around Garrison’s shoulders. “I owe you one, buddy.”

  “You owe me more than one.”

  “Yeah,” Ray said, “thanks for having my back.”

  Garrison grinned, and Ray could feel the tension drain from the big man’s shoulders. “That was way too close,” Garrison said. “One for the highlight reel.”

  “I’ll pay you back one of these days.”

  “You damn well better.”

  A thunder of footfalls echoed through the station as several transit officers charged down the stairs. “Where’d he go?” the lead officer shouted.

  Ray pointed to the tracks.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the officer said. “We know these tunnels better than anyone. He won’t get away.”

  ***

  Except Flaherty did get away, and Ray spent the remainder of the afternoon camped out in the FBI’s situation room. He would’ve preferred to be out looking for Flaherty, but Dearborn and his superiors kept grilling him about what happened in the tunnels.

  Meanwhile, Captain Daniels of the MBTA Police displayed a map of the Red Line subway system on a screen at the front of the room. He traced a series of lines using a laser pointer. “My teams have swept the tunnels here, here, and here with no sign of Flaherty. These represent active subway and commuter rail lines, but since we’re dealing with a system dating back to 1897, we’ve also got several abandoned tunnels to contend with.”

  He highlighted the areas with the pointer.

  “Some of these tunnels are clear, but others are littered with rubble and rusted equipment, which could provide Flaherty with ample opportunities to hide. My team is moving into these areas as we speak, accompanied by a state police SWAT unit and a half-dozen federal agents. Unfortunately, there’s a chance Flaherty is no longer in the tunnels, since there are several exits between stations.”

  “What kind of exits?” the special agent in charge asked.

  “Emergency hatches, vents, even a few stairways leading to abandoned maintenance buildings. I’ve sent officers to the major locations, but if Flaherty knows his way around as well as he claims to, then it’s possible he beat us there.”

  The special agent in charge glared in Dearborn’s direction. “You’d better hope he doesn’t get away.”

  “We couldn’t have anticipated the tunnel at Finnegan’s Landing,” Dearborn snapped.

  The room fell quiet and Ray noticed that Agent Calhoun had retreated to the far wall, putting as much distance between himself and Dearborn as possible.

  “If you’d done the proper due diligence,” the special agent in charge said, “we wouldn’t be standing here, but instead you got upstaged by a city detective.”

  Dearborn’s face flushed crimson. “If Detective Hanley had shared his suspicion of the tunnel, Flaherty never would’ve reached South Station.”

  The special agent in charge looked at Ray. “Is that true?”

  Ray shook his head. “There wasn’t any time. Flaherty was probably halfway through the tunnel before it even occurred to me. And if I’d stopped to run it up the chain of command, we never would’ve seen him get into the car.”

  “So you didn’t tell anyone?” the special agent in charge asked.

  Garrison raised his hand. “He told me outside of The Rock and I asked SWAT to break down the door. But that was before we spotted Flaherty in the parking lot.”

  “That’s right,” Ray said. “And as soon as we commandeered the mail truck, Trooper Garrison radioed in with Flaherty’s location.”

  “Then I guess your asses are covered,” the special agent in charge said. He motioned to Captain Daniels. “Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.”

  Dearborn shot Ray a dirty look.

  If the agent wasn’t such an arrogant prick, Ray would almost feel sorry for the guy. He nudged Garrison in the shoulder. “Thanks for backing me up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Garrison said. “I’ll just add it to your tab.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “You can’t just drop in unannounced,” Mrs. Granderling said, her face puckered up as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “Doctor Weintraub has a very busy schedule.”

  Ray strode past the reception desk without slowing. “I don’t think his patients will mind.”

  He spotted Luis exiting the tissue storage room, his dark hair tied back in a ponytail, headphones pulled down over his neck. He pointed at Luis’s chest. “Watch out for that spider.”

  Luis chuckled, not falling for it. “Are you any closer to catching that guy?”

  “I’m beginning to think he’s an evil genius.”

  “Maybe he’s just lucky.”

  “I don’t know,” Ray said. “You saw how he staged Finkleton’s murder. That’s not luck, it’s planning.”

  Luis slid the headphones over his ears. “He’s bound to make a mistake one of these days. And if I know you, you’ll be right there when he does.”

  “Let’s hope.” Ray continued down the hall and found Doc Death in his office, engrossed in paperwork. “Must be some good reading,” Ray said. “Anything to do with my case?”

  Doc adjusted his glasses. “It’s the toxicology report for Mr. Finkleton.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Mr. Finkleton had traces of Amobarbital in his system.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “It’s a barbiturate commonly used for general anesthesia. I imagine the killer used it when performing the amputations.”

  “At least Finkleton was out cold for that, but can you imagine the shock when he woke up?”

  “He also had elevated levels of amoxicillin in his system.”

  “That makes sense,” Ray said. “He wanted to keep Finkleton alive for as long as possible.”

  “If you recall, Danny McDougal died from a blood infection, so perhaps our killer went heavy on Finkleton’s antibiotics out of an abundance of caution.”

  “Which again points to some medical training,” Ray said, “though maybe not a full-fledged doctor.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What else you got?”

  Tina appeared in the doorway. “I thought I was supposed to be debriefing this case.”

  Ray folded his arms. “Haven’t you done enough debriefing?”

  Doc Death shot him a puzzled look. “Did I miss something?”

  “I’m just giving her a hard time.”

  “Would you like to tell Ray what we found in Mr. Finkleton’s hair?” Doc asked.

  “Plaster of Paris,” she said. “The exact same chemical composition as the piece we found on Danny McDougal.”

  ***

  A few minutes later, Ray stood outside of the ME’s office watching the flow of traffic on Albany Street. He heard the door open behind him and knew without turning that it was Tina. />
  “What the hell was that?” she asked. “Were you trying to get me in trouble with Weintraub?”

  “The other day at your apartment, that never should’ve happened.”

  “Then why were you flirting with me at the restaurant?”

  “I wasn’t flirting with you. I was trying to be sympathetic. You’re the one who threw yourself at me.”

  Tina’s cheeks reddened. “I misread the signals, okay? I thought you wanted me to surprise you the way I used to.”

  “I’m married, Tina.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop me as soon as I came out of the bedroom? Why’d you let me go through with it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess seeing you like that brought back too many memories.”

  She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “I’m so humiliated.”

  “It’s not your fault. I should’ve stopped it like you said.”

  “Can we please pretend like it never happened?”

  Ray nodded. “Let’s bury it deep.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I hear you had fun playing in the subway the other day,” Billy said.

  “Yeah,” Ray said, checking the rearview mirror, “you should’ve been there.”

  “No one invited me.”

  “How was court yesterday?”

  “Waste of time. Waited all day to testify for two minutes.” It was a domestic homicide they’d investigated a year earlier, and about as open and shut as they came.

  “At least you didn’t get raked over the coals like I did for the Coleman hearing.”

  “That’s right,” Billy said with a chuckle. “You got your ass reamed on that one.” He sipped his coffee. “What’s the word on Flaherty?”

  “He’s gone. Literally dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “And Larry?”

  “Last I heard, Larry’s in protective custody in the not so capable hands of Special Agent Dearborn.”

  Billy snickered. “I hear he almost got canned.”

  “Probably should’ve,” Ray said. “You got any idea where Flaherty might be?”