by Jen J. Danna
“I know,” Leigh said. “There’s no obvious spatter or any other sign that he was killed here.”
Rowe got the go-ahead from his tech and stepped up to the body. He crouched down and touched his fingers to the man’s neck. “The body is well-cooled.” He grasped one wrist and tried to lift it off the ground. The arm shifted by only millimeters. “Rigor is well-established. This man has been dead for hours.”
“Was he killed here, or was he moved to this location?”
“I’ll be able to give you my thoughts on that soon.” He indicated the arms sprawled out to the side of the torso, the bent knee, and awkwardly twisted ankle. “If he was moved, it was before rigor set in. Let’s get started. Ambient temp is 11.7°C.” He pushed back the edge of the suit jacket and pulled the man’s shirt from his waistband on the right side, raising it a few inches while being careful not to disturb the blood-soaked material. Leigh winced as he made a small, bloodless incision with a scalpel just below the bottom of the ribs before inserting the long metal probe of a digital thermometer deep into the body. “Liver temp at the start of the exam is 26.6°C.” He pushed back his cuff to reveal a large luminous wristwatch. “Time-stamp it twelve-thirty-one.” He glanced up at Leigh. “I’ll do a second measurement before we pack him up to nail down the rate of cooling in this specific environment, but as a rough guess, considering the temp in the room, I’d say your vic has been dead for about twelve hours. Which is consistent with rigor.”
Leigh pulled her notebook and pen out of her jacket pocket and jotted down the information.
“Wallet in the back pocket,” Rowe commented. He deftly slid it out without rolling the body and flipped it open. “Driver’s license lists him as Peter Holt, age forty-four.” He rattled off a Boston address and then held the license photo next to the dead man’s face. “That’s definitely him. I’ll get dentals to confirm, but I think you have your victim, Abbott. The question is—if he wasn’t killed here, where was he killed and why was he moved?”
“Both good questions. I want to check out this room a little more closely and make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’d like to be able to corroborate your opinion of whether the body has been moved. Are you okay here if I grab one of the lights?”
“Just leave me that one”—Rowe pointed to a tripod—“and that. Those will be enough for me to do the exam, then we’ll start processing for trace evidence before preparing the body for transport.”
“I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to finish checking this room out, then I need to see if there’s anything to the old guy’s story.”
“You know where to find me.” Rowe turned back to his victim, and he and the tech got to work.
Leigh stepped out of the circle of light. Giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the shadows, she studied the room. She considered the shape of the building—a shorter, squatter version of New York’s Flatiron Building. Built on the sliver of land between Union Street and the MBTA railroad tracks, the back of the building faced the old Central Square train station. Red brick and Italianate in style, it was only four stories tall. Facing Union Street, the ground floor hosted a few thriving shops and a café, but hard times had left several other businesses locked and permanently shuttered.
Since the elderly man’s story implied the death had occurred decades before, possibly more than fifty years ago, it seemed unlikely that recently closed businesses or occupied living spaces could hide a body all that time. The chance of there actually being a body was close to zero.
Frowning, she turned back to where Rowe and his tech bent over her newest case. Well, maybe not exactly zero.
If you were going to hide a body, and have it remain undiscovered for decades, you’d have to put it somewhere so secret it wouldn’t be found unless you knew exactly where to look. Leigh just wasn’t seeing anything that set off warning bells.
She dragged the third tripod several feet away from the victim, turning it to direct the light beam at the back wall. Inching along the baseboard, she examined it closely, looking for any sign of blood spatter or bullet defect. The wall was discolored, making it hard to discern small spots, and several times Leigh leaned in with her forehead nearly scraping the plaster. Wrinkling her nose at the stale odor of neglect and hoping she wasn’t inhaling some kind of toxic killer mold, she studied a splotch on the wall for a moment before deciding the dark stain wasn’t something cast off by her victim.
She started to pull away when something further down the wall caught her eye. Stepping toward the center of the room made it disappear, so she leaned back in, staring along the length of the wall. The surface curved gently, but a small section bowed out from its surroundings a few feet away.
Going back to the tripod, she aimed the light more squarely at that area. Then she saw it: two barely discernible parallel lines, about three feet apart, running down the wall.
Heart thumping faster with each step, Leigh crossed to the wall and ran her hand along one of the lines. It definitely jutted out from the plane of the wall. Bending, she set her fingertips on the crack and ran them upward from the floor. At about seven feet, the outcrop disappeared from beneath her touch. Her breath caught as excitement surged in her. She couldn’t see it but she started to search for any kind of defect to the right of where she lost touch with the crack in the wall. Stretching up on tiptoe, she ran her fingers along the wall, peeling paint disintegrating under her touch.
Come on, I know you’re here. Then her fingertips slid into the subtle groove. Got you! She ran her fingers slowly along the crack until it veered downward. Dropping down to flat feet, she followed it down before stepping back.
It was a door, so perfectly inset into the wall and hidden by filth and peeling paint that you had to be nearly on top of it to see it. There were no hinges visible, so the door had to swing inward.
Bracing both hands just to the right of the offset crack, she gave it a hard push. The door shifted slightly. Hinges on the right, door opens on the left.
Pulling back a few feet, Leigh threw her body against the door, hitting the wall right where her hands had been and taking the brunt of the blow with her shoulder. She gave a small groan at the impact, but elation filled her as the door shifted further. She fervently wished Matt was here—his bigger body and rower’s physique would make short work of the closed door. She stepped back to take another run at it.
“Abbott, what are you doing?” It was Rowe’s voice behind her.
She turned around, surprised to see Rowe standing just feet away. In her excitement at finding the door, she’d totally forgotten the investigation going on behind her. “There’s a door hidden in the wall. See it?”
Rowe nodded and then quickly pulled off his gloves and jammed them into a pocket of his suit. He pushed her gently to the side. “I have about seventy-five pounds on you. Let me try.”
Leigh tapped the wall. “Aim here. That seems to be the sweet spot.”
Rowe stepped back, eyeing his target. He turned sideways, grasped his right forearm with his left hand to hold it steady, and took a run at the door. With a squeal of wood on wood, it moved inward by a full inch. “Almost.”
One more hard push had the door swinging open with an ominous creak to reveal a small landing with dust and debris lining the corners. A narrow wooden staircase to their left led down into the darkness below. The air was thick and stale after decades undisturbed.
Leigh reached into her pocket for the small flashlight she’d tucked there before entering the building. Flipping it on, she leaned into the gap, shining the light down the stairs. Rowe leaned in behind her.
Cobwebs filled every corner and at least one of the steps looked dangerously rotten. The walls were painted a dark red, faded now, but with a hint of their former flair. The beam of light fell on a wooden barrel in the corner at the bottom of the stairs. The wood was aged to a dull gray and the metal bands encircling it were rusted, iron oxides leaching onto the wooden staves like a bloody smear. Just barely discernible, in bla
ck print between the rusted hoops, was the brand “Bushmills Irish Whiskey.”
Leigh nearly dropped the flashlight as her hand went clammy, and she had to clench the cylinder tighter before it slipped from her grasp and tumbled down the steps. She steadied the light and blinked a few times to make sure she wasn’t imagining the scene.
It was still there.
She turned to gape at Rowe, who wore the same slack-jawed, wide-eyed expression she imagined was on her own face.
They’d just discovered an old speakeasy, lost to time since the days of Prohibition.
CHAPTER TWO: BLIND PIG
* * *
Blind Pig: an alternate name for a speakeasy. Possibly called a blind pig because the establishment turned a “blind eye” to Prohibition, or because consuming the often-contaminated illegal alcoholic beverages sold there sometimes caused blindness.
Friday, 12:46 p.m.
The Adytum Building
Lynn, Massachusetts
“Abbott, do you realize what this is?” Rowe’s awed words echoed strangely down the empty staircase.
“I think so.” Leigh stepped back into the main room. “And I think I can confirm it before even setting foot on that staircase.”
She hurried across the room, automatically circling the sprawled body on the ground and the tech kneeling beside it without really seeing either. Grasping the outer door, Leigh pushed it fully open against the wall.
She’d seen the small inset door at eye level on her way in. Seen it, but not truly registered it. And certainly hadn’t appreciated its meaning.
She swung the door partially closed so she could look behind it. A small hinged cutout of the same wood was flush mounted into the door. Both the tiny hinges and the small metal bar affixed beside the cutout to lock it in place were rusted solid.
She knew about the speakeasies of Chicago, Detroit, and New York during the Prohibition years of the twenties and thirties. She knew local history and that Boston was a hotspot for rum-running during those years because of its ports and natural harbors. Her own great-grandfather had served the Boston Police Department as part of the elite Boston Liquor Squad, so she’d heard family stories about raids throughout Boston.
But she hadn’t realized Lynn was a part of that history. Granted, given its proximity to Boston and the fact it was an oceanside town, it wasn’t much of a stretch.
She tugged at the rusted knob on the metal bar. At first it didn’t move, so she grasped it more tightly and pulled harder. There was an ear-piercing screech and then the bar slid back. Leigh pulled the cutout free of where it nested in the door, and looked out through the grille at blue sky and sunlit railway tracks beyond. She had a flash of a foggy night, a man with slicked-back hair wearing a dark suit standing on the doorstep, a stylish girl with bobbed locks and a fringed dress on his arm. A whispered password and the night was theirs.
She turned back to Rowe, who still stood at the passageway. “It’s a speakeasy, all right. This room must have been their cover. If the cops ever barged through this door, they were safe as long as they could get the hidden door closed. I bet they even kept boxes or some other camouflage nearby to push in front of it in case of emergency.”
“You think your body is down there?”
“Ten minutes ago I was thinking I should put money down on there being no hidden body here. Now I think I might have lost spectacularly.” She crossed the room and pulled out her flashlight again. “I’m going down.”
“Shouldn’t you call someone first? This is an amazing historical find.”
“First and foremost, it’s my crime scene. There’s no way I’m having a bunch of academic geeks stomping through my crime scene.” At Rowe’s raised eyebrow, she clarified. “Unless they’re my academic geeks, who I’ve already trained in crime scene protocol. Damn, I wish Matt was here. He’d love this.”
“Find him eighty-year-old skeletal remains and he’ll be here to love it, let me assure you. You’re sure you want to do this?”
Leigh flicked on the flashlight. “Positive.”
“Then you’re not going down on your own.” Rowe moved to one of the bags, pawing through it quickly until he pulled out another flashlight. “Ted, keep pulling any trace you can find and then hold the body. We won’t be long.” He nodded at Leigh. “Let’s go, I’m right behind you. And be careful on those stairs. Some of the steps look pretty iffy.”
Leigh stepped onto the landing. She slipped behind the door and then peered around the front of it. “As I thought. The door is wood, but they plastered over the front and then painted it to look just like the walls of the room. Sneaky.”
“Back then, not getting caught was a big deal. Jail sentence aside, getting caught meant a huge loss of revenue for the owners. And for the Mob.”
Leigh touched a toe to the first tread, a deep-set, narrow board of aged wood. “Maybe it wasn’t a Mob joint.” She leaned a small amount of weight on the step, and then still more. The wood groaned in protest, but held. Grasping the thick banister mounted to the wall, she stepped off the landing onto the step, pausing until she was sure it would support her weight.
“Back then, they were all Mob jobs. ‘Mad Johnny’ Orestes ran the city. He had his finger in every pie and was most likely providing the booze for this establishment too.”
Leigh froze with her foot an inch over the second step and turned to peer up at him. “You sound like you know a little bit about this.”
“Are you kidding? I love local history. It’s kind of a hobby. And in Boston and the surrounding area, local history goes a long way back. But the Prohibition years were particularly colorful.”
Leigh chuckled and continued onto the next step. “Good to know we have a resident expert on the team. It might come in handy.”
“Why do you think I’m here with you instead of bent over that body upstairs? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And Ted has everything well in hand; I’ve already done the tricky stuff.”
They crept down the stairs carefully, skipping some steps completely, with Leigh testing the others individually before Rowe would trust his greater weight on them. As they descended, the air became cooler and staler. “I wonder if this place was ever raided,” Leigh said.
“If it were, I might be able to track it down. But you should ask Lowell about some local historians at B.U. too.”
“That’s a good point. He might know—” The step suddenly gave way under her weight. With a small cry Leigh started to pitch forward. Only her tight hold on the banister and Rowe’s quick hand grabbing her jacket kept her from pitching headfirst down the stairs. With a ragged breath, she settled on the next step, glaring at the broken tread behind her. “That was close. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Just one of the reasons I didn’t want you coming down here on your own.”
Rowe eased himself over the broken step, stretching out his long legs to the next tread down before proceeding. They continued to the bottom of the staircase without further incident. At the bottom, they paused to examine the barrel.
Rowe grabbed the lip and rocked it back and forth several times. “Empty.”
“You didn’t think it would be full, did you?”
“Not really. But do you know what a cask of eighty-year-old Irish whiskey would be worth?” He grinned conspiratorially. “We could all comfortably retire.”
“Tempting thought, some days.”
“Amen to that … but not today.” He stepped through the door at the bottom of the stairs, Leigh right behind him, both of them shining their flashlights into the open space.
Leigh gasped as Rowe went motionless beside her.
It was like stepping back in time.
Their lights slowly panned over the room, twin beams sliding over wood and glass.
Rowe whistled softly. “What are the chances there are working lights down here?”
“It’s possible. The building is powered and the place must have had electricity. Unless mice have eaten through the wir
es, we might get lucky.”
They turned their search toward finding a light switch. Leigh found several on the wall by the door—vintage paired buttons, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She slowly depressed them one at a time. Two large ceiling-mounted lights with large round bulbs flickered on, tentatively at first, then stronger. One bulb in the fixture over the bar gave a sharp pop and winked out, but the one over the remains of the once polished dance floor stayed on. The next button push lit the scrolling Art Deco wall sconces mounted high on columns throughout the room.
Stepping away from the wall, Leigh turned off her flashlight and slid it into her pocket as she simply tried to take it all in.
A dark wood bar stood at one end of the room, its long smooth surface dulled by dust and grime. A tall square bottle with a yellowed label lay on its side, cork removed and precious contents long since spilled. At the far end of the bar, a sepia poster reading “Alfred E. Smith for President—Honest. Able. Fearless.” hung over an open brass case with several disintegrating cigarettes still tucked inside.
Plaster columns topped by decorative capitals studded the outer walls. Tables were tucked between the columns, and the chairs around them—some tipped over, several broken—told a tale of rough handling and a rapid exit. A lone shoe—black leather with what must have been a scandalously high heel for the time—lay under one of the chairs shoved against the wall.
A blackjack table stood against another wall, scattered playing cards spread over the crumbling green felt surface, and a stack of chips still in the slots. Behind the table, a mural depicting Roman ruins splashed across the wall: crumbling archways, weathered statuary, and toppled Tuscan columns, all painted in cascading shades of blue.
A single forlorn music stand stood on a small raised dais in the back corner, as if waiting for the band to return.
Leigh circled behind the bar. Underneath, dusty shot glasses were stacked in rows, and two beer kegs were tucked under the long stretch of the bar, brass taps tarnished with age. Leigh grasped one of the smooth wood handles and pulled, but not even a single drop leaked out. Large glass jugs littered the floor behind the bar, some tipped over carelessly on their sides. Several wooden crates labeled by out-of-state wineries were stacked haphazardly in the far corner.