06 Every Three Hours

by Chris Mooney

  Darby saw it clearly now: the reason why the voice had been disguised, the black hat that fully covered the gunman’s – gunwoman’s – head and ears.

  Would the male-dominated BPD and FBI have taken the threats and demands seriously if they knew they were dealing with a woman and not a man? Darby already knew the answer, saw it in the cameramen and in Carlson, how they were standing a little taller, more confident, the three of them now thinking they had the upper hand because they were dealing with a woman now, the gunman no longer a clever and powerful threat but someone who could be reasoned with and manipulated, managed and controlled.

  That’s why she’s using that voice-altering device, Darby thought. Why she disguised her voice earlier when talking to Anita Barnes over the phone and then the taxi driver. But they bought her off as a man recovering from a bad cold or suffering from laryngitis, Darby knowing the way a woman could train herself to change her voice, make it deeper and more monotone, the way men usually speak. Transgendered females did it all the time.

  The gunman – gunwoman – said, ‘I just want to talk, I don’t want to hurt anyone. That was never my intention.’

  Briggs, like Darby, like everyone else, seemed flummoxed. But Darby couldn’t tell if his reaction was because, like her, he’d been expecting to see Walter Karl Torres, or if he knew this woman and was shocked to see her.

  Whatever it was, Briggs, knowing he was on live TV, quickly pushed it aside and said, ‘I’m here to listen. How can I help you?’

  ‘First I want to apologize to Anita Barnes and Linda Amos and Laura Levine for the trauma I’ve put them through. I also want to apologize to everyone in the city of Boston for what happened today. And to anyone I may have hurt today, you have my deepest apologies and sympathies. I’m not asking you for your forgiveness. I made this decision of sound mind and body. But this was never about hurting any of you, the good and honest people that make up this great city, the place where I was born and, even though I moved with my mother to El Paso, Texas, still consider my home.’

  The woman spoke confidently. Smoothly. She didn’t stumble over any of her words. She reminded Darby, ironically, of a politician who had to address people after a tragedy. Darby guessed the woman, whoever she was, had rehearsed this speech for a long time.

  Darby’s attention flicked briefly to the pregnant woman, who was still clearly in shock, still holding on to the arm clamped around her neck for balance; then she looked to the reception desk where she saw a close-up of the hostage’s face on the TV screen, the scroll underneath it reading: ‘LIVE FROM BPD HEADQUARTERS.’

  ‘My name is Grace Castonguay.’ The woman paused, looking directly at Briggs to see if the name registered. If it did, Darby thought, he didn’t show it.

  ‘I took my mother’s maiden name,’ the woman said. ‘Maybe you know my father, Walter Karl Torres?’

  ‘Tell me about him, Miss Castonguay.’

  Smooth, Darby thought. He completely avoided the question. Grace Castonguay, though, had picked up on that, too. Darby saw a spark of anger fly through the woman’s eyes.

  ‘My father told me he was shot and killed by a Boston Police detective named Robert Murphy,’ Grace Castonguay said. ‘He didn’t die right away, my father. He lingered until he died from his wounds. During that time, he decided to make amends for his sins. My father was raised a God-fearing man and wanted absolution. He asked a priest to forgive him, and was forgiven.

  ‘But my father also wanted our forgiveness – mine and my mother’s. He told me about how he, along with a man named Francis Sullivan, the FBI undercover agent who was a serial killer and the head of Boston’s Irish mob, had been instrumental in introducing heroin to Boston, especially South Boston, Charlestown, and Dorchester. He was also a murderer, my father, and he told me about several people he had killed – men, women, and one child, a four-year-old boy from Dorchester named Tae Jonah Fallows, the grandson of a woman named Anita Barnes. He did all this while he was a federal informant. The FBI didn’t arrest him. They protected him.’

  Briggs nodded, kept nodding. Then it became clear Grace Castonguay wanted him to speak, so he said, ‘If what you’re saying is true, then I can promise you we’ll –’

  ‘My father also told me he had tried to kill Boston Police Officer Stephen Fitzpatrick on the evening of September 30, 1992. My father escaped with the help of his FBI handlers, whose names I don’t know, and with the help of officers from the Boston Police Department.’

  ‘Miss Castonguay, if I may just interrupt you for a moment and say that –’

  ‘The names of the Boston police officers are Robert Murphy, Daniel Hill, Frank Ventura and Ethan Owen. I am responsible for the deaths of former detectives Ventura and Owen, whom I killed last year. They were already dying of cancer, and because they wouldn’t live long enough to see this moment, I decided to kill them.

  ‘But I did not – I repeat, I did not kill Trey Warren or Clara Lacy and her family. Dr Darby McCormick, who is standing to my right, said that Detective Hill told her that Detective Murphy was responsible for that. Isn’t that correct, Doctor?’

  Darby felt beads of sweat dripping down the small of her back. Her shirt felt plastered against her damp skin. ‘That is what Detective Hill told me,’ she said.

  ‘Detective Hill said that after he shot and killed Detective Murphy this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he’s alive.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Mr Briggs,’ Grace Castonguay said, ‘you were aware that a Dorchester man named Sean Ellis was convicted for the crime of shooting Officer Fitzpatrick and spent nearly twelve years in jail based on false witness testimony and doctored evidence.’

  ‘I was recently made aware of these allegations.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Castonguay said calmly. ‘You’ve been aware of these allegations for years but you chose not to deal with them. You know how I know this? I wrote to you.’

  Briggs shifted his stance. ‘I got a lot of letters while I was mayor. Still do, as a matter of fact. Too many to count.’

  ‘But I wrote to you one hundred and twenty-six times. That’s a letter every quarter for twenty years, plus a few extras.’

  The words hit Briggs somewhere, Darby could tell, like someone had suddenly driven a needle into his spine. He quickly recovered. He always did.

  ‘Mr Briggs, I’ve written you about Sean Ellis and everything that my father confessed to, and asked you to look into the matter. Everything my father said, I put in writing and sent to you. One hundred and twenty-six times. One hundred and twenty-six chances to make things right, and what did you do?’

  ‘You didn’t put your name on those letters, did you?’ Briggs asked.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘We get a lot of letters that are from cranks, see, and we –’

  ‘My father told me not to use my name because you sent Detectives Owen and Ventura down to El Paso to kill him.’

  ‘All due respect, Miss Castonguay, I –’

  Grace Castonguay moved the gun up to the hostage’s head.

  66

  +10.13

  It felt like the air crackled with an electric current, Darby feeling every muscle fibre tightening and flexing, her attention locked on the muzzle smashed into the side of the hostage’s head, the pregnant woman staring into space and gripping her belly with both hands and silently weeping through a prayer as Grace Castonguay said, ‘You promised you would tell the truth.’

  ‘Of course I will. Of course,’ Briggs replied. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘I don’t want your word, I want the truth. Lie to me again and I’ll pull this trigger, and the death of Laura Levine, the daughter of Boston Police Officer Fitzpatrick, will be on your hands, sir. I don’t want to do it, but I will to make a point. Because violence and blood are the only way to get the attention of people like you, Mr Briggs.’

  ‘I want to help you, and I want to make things right,’ Briggs said. ‘Please te
ll me what I can do to help you correct this massive injustice.’

  Grace Castonguay stared at Briggs like she wanted to kill him – and Darby hoped she would try. If the woman did, she’d have to move the gun away from the hostage’s head. If she did, Darby would be ready. Darby knew it was a small window; she’d have just a second or two to disarm the weapon.

  ‘Since you’re not going to talk about Sean Ellis and my father,’ Grace Castonguay said, ‘let’s turn to a subject you do know a lot about: the auto garage in Hyde Park.’

  And then Darby felt it creeping through her blood and across her skin, that awful sensation of a situation about to become unhinged. Only this situation was unfolding on live TV, every action, breath and facial expression being recorded in high definition and being played on TV and the worldwide web for people to view and pick apart, forever and ever, amen.

  ‘Tell us so I can help you,’ Briggs said, only he wasn’t looking at Castonguay any more; no one was, Darby included, everyone was staring at the wet spot spreading across the hostage’s crotch and moving down her legs.

  Grace Castonguay, though, was apparently oblivious that the woman’s water had broken, the amniotic fluid splashing across the hostage’s legs and on to the floor. The cameramen didn’t pan down because Darby glanced to the TV screen and saw a tight shot of Castonguay, her face crumpled in rage and contempt; and the woman wouldn’t look away from Briggs, saw only Briggs. Castonguay’s eyes were bright with tears and burning with the kind of bottomless hatred that could never be satiated.

  ‘You’re obviously in possession of information,’ Briggs said, using his ingratiating Bill Clinton-like charisma. ‘Let’s hear what –’

  ‘Tell the people of Boston how you ingored my letters? The truth! Tell everyone what happened in the garage!’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Briggs was nervous, yes, but he wasn’t acting like someone who was about to go down in flames. His empathy was manufactured and so far he hadn’t admitted to anything that could be used against him later. And if Briggs did agree with something Castonguay said, admitted to something, anything, he could turn around later and say, yes, he had admitted to such-and-such because he wanted to go along with the woman’s agenda to save the hostage’s life. And if the Castonguay woman decided to kill the hostage, well, Briggs could still turn around and say he did everything in his power to save the woman. No matter what Briggs said or did, he’d win. He’d come out of this looking like a hero. He’d run for governor and win by a landslide.

  But it was the way he kept casting nervous glances at Big Shoulders, as if the man was going to intervene, that made Darby know this whole thing had been manufactured, a show. This wasn’t running on live TV, and Big Shoulders and his partner weren’t cameramen but either SWAT or HRT, both men looking for the right moment to take down the gunwoman.

  ‘The city of Boston is watching you – God is watching you,’ Castonguay hissed, spittle flying from her trembling lips. ‘Tell us the truth or so help me, God, I’ll –’

  Castonguay cut herself off, clearly having decided she was wasting her breath, and tightened her grip on the Glock; her finger looked like it was about to pull the trigger when she swung the nine away from the hostage’s head.

  Darby saw her chance and lunged, grabbed Castonguay’s wrist with both hands and shoved the handgun up towards the ceiling. Castonguay fired but she knew it was too late and she howled in either defeat or pain, or both. One quick movement and Darby snapped the woman’s wrist and the pregnant woman stumbled forward and the two cameramen had compact nines in their hands.

  The men both fired, a pair of double-taps that hit Castonguay in the chest. Big Shoulders slammed into Darby and pushed her to the floor to protect her while his partner moved to Castonguay, who was splayed against the floor, her limbs crooked, limp.

  Briggs had grabbed the pregnant woman, who was still crying, and wrapped her arms around him. He was escorting her across the lobby, moving around the planters, heading for the exit, the woman leaking amniotic fluid along the way and clutching the precious cargo inside her stomach.

  Big Shoulders was trying to move off her when Darby roughly pushed him aside and scrambled to her feet. Briggs was moving towards the front doors because he wanted to go outside so all the TV people across the street could capture this heroic moment, turn him into Boston’s version of former New York mayor and 9/11 icon Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Giuliani.

  Darby was running now, past the security checkpoint, Briggs on the other side of the raised marble planters and talking to Laura Levine, saying, ‘Just a few more steps and we’ll get you to the ambulance, you’re doing great.’

  The door opened, and the cold blast of air that hit Darby felt like a fist. She hopped over the column but Briggs was already outside.

  She followed. When she stepped outside, she saw the woman doubled over in pain. Briggs saw Darby and he scooped the woman up in his arms, carrying her like she was his bride and they were about to cross over the threshold into their new life together. The cameras across the street were capturing the moment, and Darby heard cheering, a roar of approval. What they didn’t see was Briggs’s smug look of satisfaction at having won. His back was to the media and they didn’t see what only Darby could see: the handgun in the woman’s hands, which she pressed underneath the former mayor’s chin and pulled the trigger.

  You read what it’s like to die and you watch all these TV shows and you see it in movies but nothing prepares you for the actual moment. I know I’m dying and I … peaceful is the wrong word. Right now, I’m strapped to a gurney inside an ambulance and I can see faces hovering above me and I can hear voices shouting and I can feel needles and IVs being stuck into my skin, flooding my veins with saline and what I’m guessing is morphine or some other narcotic to help fight the pain. And it’s working. I can’t feel anything.

  And that’s a gift. When I imagined this moment I saw myself sprawled out on the floor, bleeding out. I imagined hearing a gunshot go off and then it entered my brain and I’d feel nothing. But I’m alive at the moment, and I can see and feel and hear, and I can think, and I’m not thinking about dying. I’m thinking about how you get one life, how that’s the only thing we know for sure. You get one life and you get to decide how you want to use it.

  And I decided to use mine to tell the truth.

  Some people can let things go, turn their back, move on, whatever. I wanted to be one of those people who left a mark. I wanted to leave making sure the world – or at least the people of Boston – knew the truth about my father. He wasn’t a good man. As he lay dying, he told me his secrets. His sins. He revealed to me the man who lived behind his eyes.

  And the world needs to know that. Because we only have one chance to make a mark in this life, and I chose how to make mine. I want people to know that I cared about the truth. That it mattered.

  The truth of our lives is what matters most.

  67

  The next day

  Darby woke up the next morning to a fire alarm.

  No, not a fire alarm or even the blaring alarm of the hotel’s clock radio, but the angry and deafening bleating of the hotel phone, the ringer so loud she was sure it had woken up everyone sleeping on the first floor.

  Coop was on the other end of the line. ‘I tried your cell,’ he said, his voice thick with exhaustion. ‘I called three or four times.’

  Darby sat up in bed and saw the red numbers on the clock: 1:14. Not a.m. but p.m. She knew that because, after her deposition, she had been dropped off at the hotel at 1:34 a.m.

  She picked up her smartphone. It didn’t turn on.

  ‘Battery’s dead,’ she told Coop. ‘I forgot to charge it.’

  ‘Laura Levine hasn’t asked for a lawyer, and she refuses to speak to anyone but you.’

  ‘She’s definitely Fitzpatrick’s daughter?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s no question.’

  ‘She from Boston?’

  ‘She was born here, then she left after her father die
d. Lived with her mother in Arizona until her mother died.’

  ‘The fingerprints on the duct tape, you said they belonged to Torres.’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘How did they get on there?’

  ‘I don’t know. How quickly can you get here?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Government Center. I’ll have someone pick you up.’

  ‘I can walk.’ The FBI’s Boston field office was less than a twenty-minute walk.

  ‘Most of the sidewalks haven’t been cleared yet,’ Coop said. ‘It’ll be easier and quicker if I sent a car to pick you up.’

  ‘Give me ten.’

  Darby showered in less than five; her father, a former Marine, a big believer in efficient bathing. As a kid, if she spent any longer than five minutes in the shower, Big Red would enter the bathroom, pull back the shower curtain and shut off the water.

  She used the blow drier, not wanting wet hair clinging to her shoulders, not in the winter, and put on her spare pair of jeans and a collared shirt, this one white. The rest of her clothes went into the garbage. She’d buy another spare set of clothes somewhere down the road, wherever the road took her.

  Eight minutes later, she was standing outside, underneath the heated roof over the hotel’s main doors, hands in her pockets as she looked out at the people, mostly business owners, shovelling and snow-blowing the sidewalks in front of their businesses and creating tall white mountains on the edges of the street which was, at least at the moment, free of traffic.

  Within the relative quiet of the morning – okay, afternoon – she reflected on last night.

  After the Levine woman shot Briggs, she dropped the gun, a .32, a six cylinder, and then dropped to her knees and put her hands behind her back. Darby didn’t have any authority to arrest her – didn’t have handcuffs. The cameras captured everything, and while Darby stood next to the woman, the patrolmen from across the street hearing the gunshot and running their way, Levine closed her eyes and tilted her head up to the falling snow, as if it was going to wash her clean.