Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  “Looks like the lead singer for the Lemonheads,” Harkness says. “Forget his name.”

  “Lemon what?”

  “Local rock band from way back. Not a fan.”

  “Mr. Kittredge was found on the bed next to Ms. Caldwell, in full Hoffman—needle still in his arm,” Esther says. “Looks like he shot up his girlfriend, then himself. They’d both been dead for a few hours before anyone found ’em—most of the students have finished exams and cleared out for the holidays.”

  “This looks like . . .”

  “Dark Horse.”

  “Right.”

  “But the toxicology report can’t prove it,” Esther says. “In the bloodstream, dope is dope.”

  “Gone through the dorm room?”

  “Five technicians, two hours,” Esther says. “No bags or wrappers, nothing. Looks like they had just enough junk to get high and die.”

  Patrick walks into the bedroom carrying two cell phones in his hand. “Hey, Harky,” he says. “Did a first pass at their phones. Nothing suspicious on hers—just some texts asking Dad for money, the usual back-and-forth with her friends, and sexting with lover boy.”

  “And his?”

  “The dude’s phone looks clean too, except for this text thread a few months ago.” Patrick holds out the phone and Harkness reads a brief exchange about where to meet up, questions about the price of the package.

  “When kids are texting to buy drugs, you’d think they’d be a little more clever,” Patrick says.

  “They think they’re invulnerable.”

  “They are, until they die.”

  Harkness reads further, sees that they ended up meeting at McCloskey’s. “Looks like he bought in the Lower South End.”

  “Back in the day when you could.”

  “Right.”

  “What kind of user saves a bag of junk to do months later?”

  “Rookies,” Patrick says.

  “Or hoarders,” Esther says.

  Harkness and Patrick stare at her.

  “Find out who Jason Kittredge was meeting up with in the Lower South End.” Harkness hands the phone back to Patrick.

  “On it, boss.” Patrick walks out of the bedroom, already tapping away on Jason’s phone.

  “Esther, if there’s any extra lab work that can link these deaths to Dark Horse, do it. Get whatever resources you need.”

  Esther nods, leaves the bedroom clutching a handful of yellow evidence bags.

  Harkness closes the bedroom door and locks it. Wet snow falls heavily outside the windows and the afternoon’s already fading. The desk drawers are open, floor thick with the debris from hours of searching for the elusive bag.

  He walks to the platform bed where the couple died, stares at the twisted beige sheets in the soft gray light. Shoved between the pillows rests a love-worn stuffed bunny, a little bigger than May’s but just as threadbare and dirty. He picks it up, finds that the stuffing’s compacted and the fur is almost worn off. Therese brought it from home to college—a reminder of her childhood that might have comforted her, but couldn’t save her.

  Raising it to his face, he smells the sweet-sour funk of years of anxious clutching close to Therese’s cheek, leaving it scented with tears, makeup, and cigarette smoke. He sets the bunny carefully back on the pillow. To lose a child is unthinkable. Harkness imagines the Caldwells reeling from a call from the Harvard campus police, their sobs echoing through the Upper East Side. He promises himself that nothing like this will ever happen to May—but knows this promise is impossible to keep.

  Harkness pulls out his cell phone and starts to call Candace to make sure May is safe. Then he puts it away, focuses, and sits quietly on the floor. His flickering eyes take in every detail of the room around him. He breathes the air that Therese and Jason breathed. He opens his notebook and runs through the sequence of events.

  They both finished their exams yesterday.

  Their flights home were scheduled for tomorrow.

  The last time anyone in the dorm saw the couple was before dinner yesterday.

  There’s a half-empty bottle of Prosecco in the minifridge next to the closet.

  Harkness imagines their last hours. Therese and Jason set aside a lost day before they had to face up to their families and the holidays. Harkness might have done the same thing back when he was a student. They stayed in her room all night like newlyweds, drinking and talking, reading books, smoking cigarettes. Eventually, Jason took the syringe and junk from his backpack to show Therese that he was a reckless, creative type.

  Maybe Therese was scared at first, but not for long. Jason said he knows what he’s doing, not to worry. Jason’s laptop probably includes a Google search for how to inject drugs. They were leading each other down the ancient path of ill-fated lovers. But every moment in this cluttered dorm room was bringing them closer to their last shallow breath.

  Harkness half closes his eyes and thinks about the two dead students he saw in Esther’s iPad. He imagines them in the room, nestled together on the bed, surrounded by everything they needed—takeout food and Prosecco, cell phones and laptops, music and heroin.

  When the storm surge of endorphins washed over them, they forgot their responsibilities and worries—below-expectation grades, shifting personas, cloudy futures. This casting-off is the wonderful part of heroin, like shedding a heavy backpack and running free. The deepening that follows is just as incredible, a gentle dropping-down to a subterranean room where everything is fascinating. Read a book or stare out a window and it’s like the best movie ever.

  But as their euphoric minds disconnected, their breathing decelerated. When junk tells the body to slow down, then shut down, it does. This decision isn’t debatable or revocable. It’s the moment when delusion turns darker.

  Harkness imagines Therese and Jason hovering in the quiet dorm room like spirits waiting to be set free, then dropping back to earth forever.

  Harkness lets the dead kids go, emerges, opens his eyes. Therese kept a journal. The bookshelves over Therese’s desk hold dozens of bright orange Rhodia notebooks now scattered on the shelf, secrecy invaded, timeline broken. They’ve been searched already and revealed nothing but scraps of poems that will never be written.

  He reaches for the newest notebook and reads page after page of Therese’s looping script, interrupted by taped-in mementos—movie-ticket stubs, receipts, boarding passes, and notes scribbled on bar napkins. She would have kept the heroin bag, particularly Dark Horse with its enticing logo. The bag would be a souvenir of their lost day together, their initiation, rebellion.

  Harkness puts the diary back and scans the leaning stalagmites of novels, the slough of books in the corner, the tilted spines along the bookshelf. One book glows like an all-night diner by the side of the highway.

  Baudelaire’s poems attract an army of young depressives—that’s what his mother, a much-beloved English teacher back in her prime, told Harkness. Now that army has lost its latest volunteers, Therese and Jason—young and beautiful, dissatisfied and dead.

  Harkness opens Les Fleurs du Mal, sees Therese’s familiar scrawl on the inside front cover and a date, just a couple of weeks ago. It’s a tattered used-book-store copy with the original French on one side, the English translation on the other. He turns the pages, looking for a Dark Horse bag but finding nothing. He closes the book and pulls his thumb along the pages, riffling through them like a card dealer. He holds the book upside down and shakes it.

  As he puts the book back on the shelf, Harkness notices that the cloth spine has come unglued at the top but not the bottom. He tries to reach his index finger down into the small pouch in the spine but can’t. He takes the book over to Therese’s desk, pushes aside her papers and scarves, and shakes it upside down, spine to the desktop. A little glassine envelope flutters out like a flattened four-leaf clover.

  Harkness picks it up from the desk and sees the familiar blood-red horse.

  Downstairs, Patrick’s sitting in a dark-paneled
study room among earnest students. He’s got his headphones on and his eyes are locked on the screen of his laptop. Arrayed around him are a couple of empty potato chip bags, some peanuts, and a half-eaten Mars Bar.

  Harkness taps on the glass door and Patrick looks up. He nods, closes his laptop, and says goodbye to his new friends. Awkward fist bumps all around.

  When he opens the door, a thick wind of coffee, cheese curls, wet socks, and anxiety blows from the room.

  “Studying for finals?”

  “Figured I’d get more done in study hall than outside in the car. Still snowing out there. Plus, they have an all-you-can-eat snack bar. Did they have that when you were here?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  They pull on their heavy jackets and walk out of Finster House. Jammed up on the sidewalk, lights still flashing, their patrol car is covered with about six inches of wet snow. Harkness retrieves the brush and scraper from the trunk and clears off the car while Patrick starts it and cranks the heat.

  “Get this,” Patrick says when Harkness gets back in the car. “Guess who that text traced to, the one where Jason Kittredge is trying to score?”

  “No idea.”

  “Anthony Incagnoli,” Patrick says in a hushed voice. “Ring a bell?”

  Harkness pauses, then remembers the connection. “Joey Incagnoli, aka Joey Ink.” He pictures the ancient North End felon as he last saw him, reading the Herald at a back table at Mr. Mach’s Zero Room, a last patch of sleaze on the edge of Chinatown.

  “Bingo,” Patrick says. “This kid’s his nephew. To be accurate, his great-nephew. Twenty-seven years old—long list of priors, including selling bags at nightclubs and a couple of aggravated assaults.”

  “The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” Harkness says.

  Patrick gives a wise nod. “Especially when it’s a bad apple.”

  “Let’s pull this Anthony Incagnoli in for a little chat,” Harkness turns onto Storrow Drive, the ice-clogged Charles on their right. Thick snow rushes toward them faster than the windshield wipers can clear it away.

  “On it.”

  “And Patrick?”

  “Yeah?”

  Harkness says nothing, just holds up the evidence bag holding the Dark Horse wrapper.

  30

  CANDACE REACHES UP and deftly knots his black bow tie, then gives both ends a gentle pull. “There.”

  “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  “Dad used to go to a lot of galas and fancy parties when he was already drunk,” she says. “Needed help getting ready.”

  Harkness slips on his black tux jacket and presses down the narrow lapels. “Do I look like a hundred bucks?” That’s how much he paid for a thirty-year-old Brooks Brothers tux at Geezer’s, the used-formalwear store in Cambridge.

  “Maybe a hundred and fifty,” Candace says. “You clean up well, for a cop.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Wasn’t really intended as one.”

  “You, on the other hand, look fantastic.”

  Candace spins around in a simple black beaded gown—her mother’s, retrieved from her father’s house in Nagog. The dress smells a little like wood smoke, but it fits like it was hers all along.

  They walk to the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. “Wow, we look like our parents,” Candace says.

  “Except younger,” Harkness says.

  “For now.”

  Harkness reaches into his top dresser drawer to find the long jewelry box. The smaller one that holds the engagement ring remains hidden under his passport, a spare clip for his Glock, and some bullets. His hand’s gravitating toward the ring as if it’s magnetized. Then he stops himself. The night of the Harbormasters’ holiday party isn’t the right time to propose. Not at all.

  “This might go well with that dress.” He hands her the long box.

  Candace lifts off the top and takes out an amethyst necklace Harkness bought from Gus Donovan when he returned the rented watch. “Wow, it’s beautiful, Eddy.”

  “Merry Christmas, again.”

  “I thought we decided that only May would get presents.” They spent Christmas morning at Nora’s, watching May open box after box, making Christmas dinner, and listening to George’s filthy carols, including his greatest hit—“Smear Your Balls with Pumpkin Pie.” The days after Christmas have been a blur of tears, toy repairs, and playdates. Exhausted, May’s safely asleep at Nathan and ­Shawna’s tonight.

  “I think you deserve at least one. Maybe several thousand more,” he says. “For now, this will have to do.”

  Candace leans up and as they kiss, Harkness’s hand wanders lower.

  “Does your dress have a zipper?”

  “It does,” she says. “But I’m not going to show you where it is until after the party. Maybe during the party if it’s really boring.”

  In the high courtyard, nasturtiums and trumpet vines cascade down to a lush central garden littered with headless Roman marble statues, low urns, and a carved sarcophagus. An onyx falcon perches in the grass next to a mosaic floor. Isabella Stewart Gardner gathered art trophies all across Europe to cobble together her version of a Venetian palazzo, transforming a swampy marsh on the edge of Boston into a palatial house, now a museum.

  “You know, if the city owned this place, the mayor would probably be trying to sell it off,” Harkness says as they look out over the garden.

  “Why?”

  “It’s just debris from the past,” Harkness says. “That’s what we all turn into, eventually.”

  “I appreciate that festive holiday thought.”

  The palm trees and topiaries are covered with tasteful white lights. Safe from the latest snowstorm and freed from their families and the holidays, hundreds of guests stand inside the stone cloisters, champagne flutes and cocktails in hand. Their conversations echo through the courtyard, drowning out a Spanish guitarist playing medieval Christmas songs on a low stage.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Candace says.

  “For a crime scene,” Harkness says. In 1990, two thieves broke in over St. Patrick’s Day weekend and took $500 million in art—a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, a Manet, and more.

  “I don’t think the museum people want to be reminded about that.”

  “Largest private-property theft ever,” Harkness says. “The robbers were wearing police uniforms.”

  Candace leans toward him. “Was it you, Eddy?”

  “I was in middle school.”

  Their banter, usually fast and occasionally furious, speeds ahead double-time tonight, and for good reason. Among the hundreds of guests, there’s no one they recognize. They talk fast to hide the fact that they’re alone in the crowd.

  “They’re not as scary as I thought they’d be,” Candace whispers.

  “The Harbormasters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Most people look okay,” Harkness says. “It’s what they do that makes ’em scary.”

  They walk along the cloisters, past bejowled bankers and their bejeweled wives. They pass a woman in a sparkling white dress, her tanned neck encircled by a chain of opals the size of quail eggs.

  Candace’s gaze narrows. “You know what I’m learning?”

  “What?”

  “No matter how much you pay for an eye job, you still end up looking like a scared raccoon.”

  “Good to know,” Harkness says.

  Candace and Harkness study the crowd like birdwatchers observing an alien flock. Fueled by success and money, the men exude steely confidence. Ambitious bellies are putting cummerbunds and tux-shirt buttons to the test. These men don’t need to exert—others do that for them. By contrast, their wives look tough, tanned, and toned, like personal trainers who got to cherry-pick the jewelry counter at Saks.

  “Cheery bunch,” Harkness says.

  “And sexy,” Candace adds. “Ha.”

  “I think they reproduce asexually, like starfish.”

  “Anythi
ng to avoid touching.”

  Harkness turns to Candace. “I should probably be networking with these guys. May be out of a job pretty soon.”

  “Somehow, I just don’t see you as an investment banker,” Candace says. “You’ll always be a cop, Eddy.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Harkness keeps escalating Narco-Intel’s surreptitious assault on the mayor and the Manchester Group. Patrick’s leaking documents like a mini-Snowden. Esther’s spreading online rumors. And it’s starting to work. A cover story in the Globe scrutinized O’Mara’s old-boy connections while Improper Bostonian chronicled Neil Burch’s drunken late-night shenanigans in Lansdowne Street nightclubs. An end-of-year poll shows his approval ratings sinking below 50 percent. But O’Mara’s still the mayor, with no end in sight.

  “Here’s my man Robert Fayerwether.” Harkness nods toward the rail-thin éminence grise striding through the courtyard, a long white silk scarf thrown over his confident shoulders. He’s agile and deft, conferring briefly with guests who flow toward him like water. Among them are Mayor O’Mara and his puppeteer, Neil Burch, who looks like a hard-boiled egg jammed in a tux.

  “Remind me why he invited us?” The invitation arrived via courier, its black envelope marked in silver ink with the crude X that the Harbormasters used to scratch on the side of every ship that they deemed worthy of unloading its goods at the port of Boston. Inside, the engraved invitation was definitive. You and a guest will be attending the annual holiday party of the Harbormasters.

  “I think Fayerwether and I really bonded the other day at the St. Pancras Club,” Harkness says. “He knew my father. We both went to Harvard. And we’re both working to destroy the city of Boston as it is.”

  “I’m assuming two of those are true.”

  “They’re all true,” Harkness says. “Just in different ways.”

  A woman in a tan dress steps down into the courtyard, and the Spanish guitarist stops playing, stands, and raises the microphone for her.

  “Good evening,” she says with a smile—the first sincere smile Harkness has seen all night. “I’m Katherine Aiello, managing director of the Harbormasters. And I’m here to welcome you to our annual festivities. This is our three hundred and eighty-sixth year of celebrating the great city that we all love so dearly.”