Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel

by Bruce DeSilva

  “Sir?” he said.

  “This is Gloria Costa, a photographer from the Dispatch,” I said, “and I’m Mulligan, her reporter. Captain Parisi left word for us to come up to the house.”

  “Wait here,” he said, and shut the door.

  “Thank you,” Gloria said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  We were still waiting there ten minutes later when a satellite truck from Providence’s ABC affiliate raced down the road and screeched to a stop beside the cruiser blocking the drive.

  “We’ve got company,” Gloria said.

  The driver got out to talk with the trooper, and after a minute or so the conversation grew heated. The hogs were covering a Michael Bolton power ballad now, their version an improvement over the original, but I could see that the TV guy was yelling and waving his arms in frustration. Finally he got back in the van, backed it up, and parked behind Secretariat. The crew climbed out, opened the back doors, pulled out camera equipment, and started setting up behind by the barbed-wire fence.

  “Parisi must like you,” Gloria said.

  “I’m not sure he likes anybody.”

  “Then how come he let us up here and not them?”

  “Because he knows we’ll get the story right. No dressing it up with space aliens, conspiracy theories, and Angelina Jolie.”

  “More company,” Gloria said. Satellite trucks from the NBC and CBS affiliates were coming down the road.

  Somewhere nearby, two powerful engines growled to life, giving the hog chorus a bass line. A moment later, a matching pair of Peterbilt garbage trucks with “Scalici Recycling” in red letters on their cab doors lumbered into view from behind the farmhouse. I assumed they were hitting the road for more pig food. Instead, they took a sharp right through the muddy field and rolled to a stop in front of the crime scene, blocking the view of it from the road.

  At the end of the driveway, the cruiser moved aside so the medical examiner’s van could rumble through. It rocked its way up the gravel drive, pulled into the field, and stopped ten yards from the garbage pile where the state troopers were still sifting. The door swung open, and Anthony Tedesco, the state’s tubby chief medical examiner, rolled out lugging a large, stainless-steel case. Normally, his assistants did the crime scene work. It took a big case for him to venture out from the sanctity of his morgue.

  Gloria snapped a few pictures with her long lens as Tedesco waddled to the blue tarp and knelt beside it. When he peeled it back, she put down the camera, turned her head, and said, “Jesus!”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be on this one, Gloria.”

  “And maybe you should shut up and let me do my job.”

  I was fishing for a suitable response when the farmhouse door swung open behind me.

  “The captain says you can come in now.”

  The trooper held the door for us, and we walked through it, following the sound of voices down a short hallway floored with polished bamboo. On both sides, the walls were hung with formal studio photographs of the Scalicis’ pork-fed daughters, Caprina and Fiora. We found Cosmo and Parisi in the kitchen, seated on opposite sides of a retro dinette table with chrome legs and a red cracked-ice Formica top. Both men had empty coffee mugs in front of them. Between them, a heaping platter of biscotti and cannoli.

  Cosmo’s wife Simona, slim at the waist and ample where it counted, stood at the granite countertop and measured grounds for a fresh pot. She threw us a look over her right shoulder.

  “Make yourselves at home. The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”

  As Gloria and I seated ourselves at the table, I spied six color snapshots on the sculpted steel door of the Sub-Zero refrigerator, all held in place by Miss Piggy refrigerator magnets. Cosmo saw where my eyes had gone.

  “Her name was Gotti,” he said. “First sow I ever owned.” Across the room, Simona sniffed resentfully.

  “What happened to her?”

  “After her breeding days were over, we ate her.”

  “Any Gotti left to share with your guests?”

  “It was twelve years ago.”

  “No leftover chitlins in the freezer, then?”

  “We don’t eat the viscera. We feed it to the pigs.”

  “Then I’ll settle for this,” I said. I snagged a cannoli from the stack and took a bite. “Fantastic. Did you make these, Mama Scalici?”

  “Can’t say I did. They’re from DeFusco’s Bakery in Johnston.”

  “Really?” Parisi said. “That’s what you want to ask about?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I do have a couple of other questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Caprina and Fiora safe at school, are they?”

  Cosmo slammed his fist on the table so hard, the pastry platter jumped. “You too, Mulligan?” he growled, his face a tomato. “I can’t fuckin’ believe it.”

  “Now, Cosmo,” Simona said. “These gentlemen are just doing their jobs. And such language in my house!”

  Cosmo was always quick to take offense at any insult, real or imagined. He’d spent his entire adult life trying to prove that pig farmers and garbagemen were as good as anybody else. But no matter how hard he tried or how much money he made, his kids got picked on at school, he and his wife never got invited to the right parties, and he kept getting blackballed at the Metacomet Country Club.

  “The girls are fine,” Parisi said. “We called their school to confirm. And young lady,” he said, pointing a finger at Gloria, “put the camera away or we’re done here.”

  “So who’s under the blue tarp?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  “A kid?”

  A five-second delay, and then: “Pieces of one.”

  “Which pieces?”

  “So far we’ve turned up a female torso and a couple of limbs. Tedesco will have to test the DNA to be sure they’re from the same kid.”

  “How old?”

  “You’ll have to ask him that.”

  “He never talks to the press.”

  “Not my problem, Mulligan.”

  The coffee was ready now. Simona poured us each a fresh mug, took a seat at the table, picked up a string of rosary beads, and wrapped them around her wrists. To me, they looked like handcuffs.

  “Who found the body parts?” I asked.

  “Joe Fleck,” Cosmo said.

  “One of your workers?”

  “Yeah. He upchucked his breakfast and then came running for me. I took a quick look and called the captain.”

  “Fleck just found the torso,” Parisi said. “My men unearthed the rest in the same garbage heap.”

  “That garbage been here long?” I asked.

  “Came in on a truck this morning,” Cosmo said.

  “Any idea where it was picked up?”

  Cosmo started to answer, but Parisi cut him off. “That’s still under investigation.”

  “What about the arm from last month? Could it be from the same kid?”

  “I can’t talk about that on the record, Mulligan.”

  “No?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why is that?”

  Parisi glared at me.

  “Okay, off, then.”

  “Definitely a different kid.”

  “You know that how?”

  Five seconds of silence, and then: “The torso’s just starting to decompose. And the two limbs we found today?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re both arms.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. For a moment, no one spoke.

  “What the hell are we dealing with here, Captain?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “Don’t jump the gun.”

  “What it looks like.”

  “I’m going to ask you not to write that, Mulligan. It would cause a panic. If I see the words serial killer in the paper tomorrow, you and I are done.”

  “Okay, I’ll play along. But it’s gonna get crazy once the Van Sustere
n wannabes at the end of the drive get wind of this.”

  “From what I’ve seen of their journalism skills,” he said, “that could take a while.”

  As it happened, it took only three days.

  20

  By the time I got to Hopes, Attila the Nun had three dead soldiers on the table in front of her and a fourth in her sights.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Sorry, Fiona. The copydesk was shorthanded, so I got drafted to edit state house copy and just finished up.”

  “What’ll you have?” she asked, and waved for the waitress.

  “Club soda.”

  “Ulcer acting up?”

  “It is.”

  “Maybe you should give up the cigars.”

  “I don’t eat them, Fiona.”

  “No, but I read somewhere that they’re bad for what you’ve got.”

  “Most good things are.”

  “I didn’t see you at the press conference,” she said.

  “Lomax had me cover it off the TV.”

  “The attorney general holds a press conference to announce that a serial killer is on the loose, and the Dispatch doesn’t bother to show up?”

  “Appalling isn’t it? But it’s the sort of thing that’s bound to happen after three-quarters of our reporters are given walking papers.”

  “Hard to ask questions if you’re not there, Mulligan.”

  “Even harder to get answers.”

  “Anything you want to ask now?”

  “Yeah. Have you heard from Captain Parisi yet?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “He’s mad as hell. Says I’ve turned his case into a quote, fuckin’ circus, unquote.”

  “And you said?”

  “That parents have a right to know someone out there is butchering kids.”

  The operatic theme song for Channel 10 Action News, which seldom offered much of either, burst from the TV set over the bar. Fiona lit a cigarette, and we both turned to watch the teaser.

  “Is a serial killer stalking Rhode Island’s children, hacking them to pieces, and feeding them to pigs? We’ll be back in a moment with our exclusive investigative report. You’ll be shocked!”

  The exclusive investigative report turned out to be neither exclusive nor investigative. It consisted of a sound bite from Fiona’s press conference, an angry “No comment” from Parisi, wild speculation by on-air reporter Logan Bedford, and a reassurance from anchor-babe Amy Banderas that “the monster among us is a threat to every child in Rhode Island.” Then she beamed at the camera and exclaimed, “Get ready for an unseasonably warm weekend! Next up, Storm Surge with the weather.” Probably not the name his mama gave him.

  This is what will pass for local news once the Dispatch’s death rattle falls silent. I looked at my friend and shook my head sadly.

  “Fiona,” I said, “look what you did.”

  “Think I was wrong?”

  “I think you should have listened to Parisi.”

  “If what I did saves just one kid…”

  “It won’t,” I said.

  “It’s going to make parents more watchful.”

  “Not all of them, Fiona. Some of them are stupid. Some are on drugs. Some just don’t give a shit. Besides, not even the best parents can stand guard over their kids every minute of the day. If the killer wants another kid, he’ll snatch another kid. It’s as easy as picking up a quart of milk at 7-Eleven.”

  Fiona didn’t have anything to say to that. Her vanquished Bud joined its fallen comrades, and she ordered another.

  “Got the autopsy report yet?” I asked.

  “It’s not final. Tedesco’s waiting on the DNA.”

  “What’s he saying about cause of death?”

  “That unless we turn up more body parts, we’ll never know. Of course, he’s pretty much ruled out natural causes.”

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Off the record?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m afraid there is.”

  “What?”

  She just stared at me and shook her head.

  “Rape?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Violently and repeatedly.”

  We sat quietly for a while, she guzzling her Bud, I sipping my club soda and pretending not to notice that Attila the Nun had begun to cry.

  On the TV, the sports guy was showing NBA highlights. Fiona locked her eyes on the screen as Paul Pierce drained a last-second three-pointer to ice a game for the Celtics. Then she clunked her Bud down on the tabletop, looked at me with wet eyes, and said:

  “I wonder what he’s doing with their heads.”

  21

  In the days following Fiona’s press conference, parents all over Rhode Island showed up late for work and skipped out early so they could ferry their children back and forth to school. Elementary and middle schools held assemblies so Officer Friendly could repeat the customary warning to avoid strangers. Grandstanding local officials pledged stepped-up police patrols of schoolyards and playgrounds. The cops complied, knowing full well that it wouldn’t do any good. The killer would hunt where the police weren’t.

  Four days after Fiona’s press conference, on a clear and cold Tuesday morning, Angela Anselmo rapped on my apartment door and asked if I could drop Marta off at school.

  “I hate to bother you with this,” she said, “but the nursing supervisor yelled at me for being late yesterday, and I’m too afraid to let Marta walk to school alone.”

  “It’s no bother,” I said. “I’m happy to do it.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  “Need me to pick her up in the afternoon?”

  “No. I’ll be off by then, so I can do it.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “I’m setting up a car pool with some of the other mothers in the neighborhood, so we should be okay.”

  “Good. But if you run into a problem, you can count on me.”

  “Thanks so much,” she said. Then she turned and dashed down the stairs.

  Fifteen minutes later I collected Marta from her apartment, led her to the Bronco, and asked her to buckle her seat belt for the short drive to Feinstein Elementary School on Sackett Street.

  “I’ve been listening to you practice every night, Marta,” I said.

  “I hope it isn’t disturbing you, Mr. Mulligan.”

  “It’s not. I’m enjoying it. You play beautifully.”

  “Old Man Pelligrini doesn’t think so. He bangs on our ceiling every night. Yesterday, he came to our door and yelled at Mama. Said he was going to call the police if I didn’t stop making those awful screeching noises.”

  “He’s just a grumpy old man. Don’t let him get to you.”

  I pulled up in front of the school, let Marta out, and watched her skip up the walk. I didn’t pull away until the door swung shut behind her.

  * * *

  That afternoon, just fifteen miles east of Providence, 492 kids spilled out of the red-brick elementary school in the little town of Dighton, Massachusetts. Most of them scuttled onto waiting buses, but thirty-eight of them lived close enough to walk, Patrolman Robert Dutra told me later as we sat together in his squad car and sipped cups of takeout coffee. Parents wary of the alarming news from Rhode Island were waiting for most of the walkers, but sixteen of them, mostly third- and fourth-graders, were on their own.

  Dutra watched six of the walkers cut across the school parking lot and turn left onto a sleepy country road. The other ten scampered down the long macadam driveway toward Somerset Avenue, the closest thing the little town had to a main road. The small-town cop had been on the job for a year—long enough to know what he should be doing but not long enough to be bored by his baby-sitting assignment.

  “A crossing guard was on duty at the corner of Somerset and Center,” he told me. “I knew I could count on her to look after the kids.” So he pulled his cruiser out onto the country road to keep an eye on things there. />
  Peter Mello, a nine-year-old fourth-grader, walked north on Somerset Avenue with three of his friends. The crossing guard helped Peter’s friends cross Center Street and watched them scoot north. Then she stopped the light traffic on Somerset so Peter could cross it and head east on Center Street.

  The crossing guard’s name was Shirley Amaral. She’d been doing this job for eight years, and she’d always taken her responsibilities seriously, but the news from nearby Rhode Island had made her extra-vigilant. Normally she would have headed home once the children passed her post. This time, she remained on the corner so she could keep an eye on both Peter and his friends as they walked toward their houses. None of the kids lived more than a half mile from school.

  About a hundred yards from the corner, Center Street drops steeply, beginning its decent to the Taunton River about a quarter mile away. Amaral watched Peter drop out of sight down the slope and then turned her attention back to the boy’s friends. When she lost sight of Peter, he was sixty yards from his front door. He never got there.

  “Think this has something to do with the child murders in Rhode Island?” Dutra asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you didn’t think so,” he said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

  22

  The Red Sox traded Manny Ramirez away two seasons ago, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the news to my best friend. He was Rosie’s favorite player, and the news would surely break her heart. I unfolded the autographed Sox jersey with Manny’s number 24 on the back and draped it over the shoulders of her gravestone, just as I did every time I visited.

  It was late in the year for the grass to be this green. I knelt in it and read the inscription on the headstone for what had to be the hundredth time: “Rosella Isabelle Morelli. First Woman Battalion Chief of the Providence Fire Department. Beloved Daughter. Faithful Friend. True Hero. February 12, 1968–August 27, 2008.”

  Rosie had been racing to a house fire on a foggy night when her car crashed and burned. The fire had been deliberately set. I’d feed the arsonist to Cosmo’s pigs while he was still breathing, if only I knew who he was. Rosie and I had been best friends since we were six years old. Over the years, dozens of other friends had come and gone. Work had gone from bad to good to bad again. Lovers had consumed and then abandoned us. Through it all, Rosie and I told each other everything. Some habits are hard to break.