by Chris Mooney
Darby didn’t feel guilt over her decision not to warn Briggs. She wondered what that said about her and decided she didn’t care. She wondered about a lot of things these days. She was four years shy of fifty, and in spite of everything she had seen and witnessed not just last night, but over the course of her life, she didn’t feel any wiser.
What she did feel was content. Comfortable in her own skin.
Maybe that was all that mattered in life.
It was certainly all that mattered to her.
Darby looked through the two-way mirror, into the federal interrogation room. It was much nicer than the ones at the BPD stations: Starbucks coffee and folding chairs with padded seats and backs. Laura Levine, dressed in an orange inmate jumpsuit with her hands cuffed together and secured to the chains around her waist, folded her hands on the table’s smooth top and stared at the two-way mirror like she was a college student listening to a particularly interesting lecture. The tips of her fingers were stained black from ink, and the skin under her eyes was bruised and puffy, but she didn’t look like a woman who was facing a murder charge along with several other federal charges that would prevent her from ever turning her face into the snow again.
If anything, Darby thought, the woman looked lighter. Like some tremendous burden had been lifted off her shoulders.
Coop and Gelfand were in the room with Darby. They both wore the same clothes they had had on yesterday, only they were rumpled, and they both looked like they wanted nothing more than to shut their eyes and go to sleep, wake up when this had all disappeared.
Gelfand held up a big clear evidence bag that contained the Levine woman’s prosthetic pregnancy stomach. ‘Definitely a homemade thing,’ he said. ‘There’s a side compartment right here where she hid the gun. These dangling tubes? She had them taped to her crotch and legs, and all she had to do was press the lever right here and the bag of water would release, make it look like her water broke. Clever shit.’
‘Psych. eval.?’
‘Yeah. Guy who smelled like Burger King with dandruff on his shoulders came in and tried to talk to her. She said she was completely sane and said she would only speak to you. Guy tries to evaluate her and she starts singing Céline Dion songs. At the end of every verse she asks for you. So, how about it?’
‘Has she been read her rights?’ Darby asked.
‘No, we decided to bypass them, go for something different. Come on, Doc, what kind of question is that?’
‘Does she understand her rights? If she’s mentally incapacitated in any way –’
‘She constructed this,’ Gelfand said, shaking the evidence bag. ‘This look like someone who’s mentally incapacitated?’
‘I’ll speak to her only if she knows she can have an attorney at any time.’
‘Rosemary’s on standby, drooling for a chance to represent her. You talk to Rosemary? She stayed in town overnight. Boston Harbor Hotel. Had a press conference there this morning, saying she’s available. You want to go in there or not?’
‘What about the charges against me?’ Darby asked.
‘We’re not going to pursue them.’
‘Can I get that in writing?’
‘In that folder next to you,’ Gelfand replied. ‘I’ll give you whatever you want, okay? You want a pony, I’ll get you a pony.’
‘I want to talk to Commissioner Donnelly first.’
‘No need to. That thing you’re talking about? It’s all wrapped up. Right, Cooper?’
‘Right.’ Although Coop was clearly ashamed and embarrassed. Sick.
‘Wasn’t recorded and, besides, it wouldn’t hold up,’ Gelfand said. ‘Donnelly acted on the instructions of the governor and mayor, placed a listening device in there so they could see what we were up to. Donnelly doesn’t want to have to admit that in court. Now, how about we wrap this shit up so I can go home and see my kids?’
68
Darby opened the door to the interrogation room.
Laura Levine saw her and brightened. Sat up in her chair, smiling.
‘Hello.’
‘Afternoon,’ Darby said, pulling out the chair across from her. ‘Have you been read your rights?’
‘Oh yes. Several times.’
The woman had a surprisingly deep voice, the kind created from too many years of smoking or drinking, or both. Or maybe it was genetic. Laura Levine didn’t have the face of a smoker or drinker. She didn’t have much in the way of wrinkles or laughter lines, either.
‘Do you want an attorney?’ Darby asked.
‘I have a few things I want to say.’
‘Anything you say can and will –’
‘Can be used against me, yes, I know all about it.’ She looked over Darby’s shoulder. ‘Are they listening to us?’
‘They are.’
‘Recording?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. First, I want to say that I’m of sound mind and body. Meaning, I’m not insane. Second, I willingly killed the former mayor Briggs. You saw me do it.’
Darby didn’t reply, a part of her wondering if Laura Levine was going to say something along the lines of: You saw me holding that gun and you could have warned Briggs and didn’t. We both know that. Maybe he would have lived, maybe he wouldn’t, but you didn’t say anything and so I shot him. And by the way, I saw your face after. You looked relieved.
‘I don’t have any regrets about what I did,’ the woman said. ‘What I’ve done.’
‘Is Laura Levine your real name?’
The woman nodded. ‘Levine is my mother’s name. I’ve been living in Seattle, Washington, but flew back here for Grace.’
‘Grace Castonguay.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re Officer Fitzpatrick’s daughter.’
Another nod. ‘Grace and I followed your career for years. We know all about what happened to your father, and the two of us decided that if anyone would understand us, what we went through, it would be you.’
‘Because of what happened to my father,’ Darby said.
Laura Levine nodded, kept nodding. ‘We wanted someone we could trust – a reliable witness. Someone who would stand up and tell the truth which, as you know, is easier said than done.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Now? Nothing, except to thank you and to also apologize for what Grace and I put you through. That was unfair of us to do, I know, but again we needed someone who had, well, character.’
‘How do you know Grace Castonguay?’
‘We met in a grief support group back in … Gosh, we were both so young. Both in our late teens. It was a support group for kids who had lost a parent or parents to violence. It was one of those total coincidence things. As the years passed, we kept in touch and then we began to trust one another – trust, as you know, is difficult for people like us, Darby – and we became like sisters, and eventually Grace told me about her father, and I told her about mine and, well, you can imagine our surprise when we realized how much we had in common. It was like fate had brought us together. Fate or God. It brought us incredibly close. Loss.’
‘And the two of you, what, decided to join forces and come back here to Boston for revenge?’
‘We wanted the truth to come out and, as you know, sometimes the truth requires sacrifice.’
Darby said nothing.
Waited.
‘Grace wanted the world to know what her father had done, what a bad person he was,’ Laura Levine said. ‘He wasn’t like your father, Darby. He wasn’t an honest man, he was a coward. I’m not speaking ill of the dead; Grace would have told you the same thing, had she lived, which she knew wasn’t going to happen.’
‘We found Walter Torres’s fingerprints on the duct tape retrieved from Anita Barnes.’
‘That roll of tape belonged to Grace’s father. Grace made sure her father’s prints were on the tape. We wanted you to find them.’
Darby smiled wanly. ‘You thought of everything, didn’t you?’
‘Sometimes,’ Darby said.
‘Then you know the importance of confession. How good it is for the soul.’
‘Only they weren’t your sins.’
‘Grace and I knew what our fathers did. We couldn’t just sit back any more and keep our mouths shut any longer.’ The woman seemed disappointed, maybe even disgusted, at the suggestion of doing such a thing. ‘It’s so liberating to go out on your own terms, isn’t it? Make your own mark instead of having someone take it from you?’ She smiled brightly. ‘But I don’t have to tell you that. I can tell you know exactly what I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Darby said. ‘What did your father have to do with this?’
‘He lied about what happened. He knew Sean Ellis didn’t shoot him.’
‘Why did he lie?’
‘You’d have to ask him. But it ate him up, keeping that secret. At any point he could have done the right thing and he took the – not the easy way out, that’s not fair. He tried to do good, but in the end that choice was taken away from him.’
‘By whom?’
‘Everyone. First by Murphy, and then by the others. They forced my father to lie. And he did. He did. But he had a conscience. He wanted to make things right. He went up the flagpole, told everyone in the BPD brass that Sean Ellis didn’t shoot him, it was that evil bastard Karl Torres. And when my father refused to keep his mouth shut? They disciplined him. That’s when he decided to go straight to the top, to speak to Mayor Briggs. But Briggs kept ignoring him, and then they took my father.’
‘Took him? Took him where?’
‘To the garage,’ Laura Levine said. ‘That’s where Murphy and the others had their little parties – drugs, prostitutes and gambling. My father went there once, beforehand, thought it was just a place where guys hung out and played cars. You know who used to work there?’
‘Clara Lacy,’ Darby said, remembering Shapiro telling her that Lacy was a prostitute.
‘My father only wanted to do the right thing. He complained to the people in charge, all the way up to Mayor Briggs. And when that happened, the police, his so-called friends, picked up my father and brought him to the garage. They beat him unconscious. Karl Torres was there, too. Told him that if he didn’t shut up and let the matter go away, he’d wake up one day and find out I disappeared.’
‘So your father let Sean Ellis take the fall.’
‘And it ate him alive! ’
It took almost a full minute for the woman to collect herself.
Then she said, ‘My father was never the same after that. He dived into a bottle. Did drugs. They kicked him off the force. He loved being a cop, same way your father did, Darby. And that day when I came to his house and found him sitting on the bedroom floor with a gun in his mouth, I begged him not to do it. But he went ahead with it anyway – that’s how much the guilt and shame ate him. These people tortured him at every corner; all because he wanted to do the right thing, to tell the truth. Good people get killed and punished all the time, and people like Briggs and Murphy just go on with their lives. But not any more. Now everyone knows.’
‘They don’t,’ Darby said.
‘Of course they do. It was all over TV.’
‘You weren’t on TV. The whole thing was staged.’
Laura Levine recoiled, her chains rattling.
‘But I saw it,’ she began.
‘They fed the TV into the camera,’ Darby said. ‘Staged it.’
The woman looked like she had been told her child had been killed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Darby said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I should have figured as much. But the reporter was there. He’ll have to tell the truth.’
‘At some point, yes.’
‘But they’ll try to prevent it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did the TV cameras outside capture his death? Briggs?’
Darby nodded.
‘Good,’ Laura Levine said. ‘So now the world knows I did it – that I was the one who took action. And the truth will get out, Darby. There will be a trial and I’ll get to tell my story and everyone will have to listen to me this time. To me and Grace.’
Then Laura Levine closed her eyes and smiled dreamily, content and at peace, maybe, for her world had been balanced, the essential order of things properly restored.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my agents, Josh Getzler and Caspian Dennis; Donna Bagdasarian; Mark Glick and Stephen Breimer; my editor, Emad Akhtar, Rowland White and the sales staff at Penguin. A special thanks to ‘Tim’, who walked me through all the bomb stuff. I took liberties with bomb and police matters, and with certain locations in and around Boston, because this is fiction, which means I made everything up.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published 2016
Copyright © Chris Mooney, 2016
Cover images: © plainpicture/goZooma
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-92244-9
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Author
By the Same Author
Prologue
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Acknowledgements
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